What in the World is Going on in the USA? Culture and Religion Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction

Its an interesting time to be alive in the USA. We are seeing history in the making as someone I’d consider a wannabe tyrant attacks and dismantles our nation’s highest law (the constitution) and laws passed by congress. It’s a crisis I’m not sure the USA has experienced since the civil war. What makes things worse is the degree of support he seemingly has from Christian (particularly evangelical) circles. The support is odd though as it’s directed towards a felon who has consistently broken his family and stands for things seen no where in the words and life of Jesus (or scripture). It’s enough of an oddity that there is a term to describe these people directing relgious support towards the current administration: christian nationalists.

The tragedy here is that their actions and stated beliefs stand often in direct opposition to scripture and the life and words of Jesus (particular in the ways they dehumanize and attack the imago dei - the very image of God - in others like immigrants, refugees, people of color and the LGBT - particularly T - community).

There’s much discussion all over the place about how this has happened. I’d like to offer some perspective based on my time teaching Christian leaders overseas. Primarily I think it’s a discipleship issue; people are being discipled not into the way of Jesus as scripture expects but instead into the way of American culture. It’s this backwards - even antichrist - discipling that produces large swathes of people willing to throw out the basic commands of Christ in favor of their own selfish desires.

Understanding culture

Culture is a big part of this discussion. It’s really important to understand. For the purposes of this article I’m defining it as the way a collective group of people lives, rooted in their expressed values, attitudes, customs, traditions and day-to-day activities and behaviors. This is the definition I used while I taught overseas. The TLDR of it is that culture is everything that identifies you as belonging to a particular group.

Understanding religion

Religion is also a big part of it and also needs to be understood. I’ll use the dictionary definition: The belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers, regarded as creating and governing the universe (from here). It’s the spiritual part of existence that many people directly experience in many different ways.

The intersection of culture and religion

Digging a little deeper, it’s important to recognize the ways that culture and religion are interwoven. They didn’t really exist apart from one another in many peoples lives. That’s because there is significant overlap in expression: religions have values and customs and traditions just as culture does. Theses describe everyday behaviors and life. In many situations it can be difficult to separate one from the other.

The “divine, demonic, dirt” interplay

In teaching about religion and culture to church leaders we’d look at how every cultural identifier (whether an attitude, a custom or whatever) could be placed in one of three boxes: demonic, dirt and divine:

• The demonic box is full of things that are inherently bad, unhealthy or “evil”.
• The dirt box is full of things that are neutral. I don’t much like the name dirt because I think it has other implications that outweigh the alliterative potential but it really is meant to mean neutral.
• The divine box is full of things that inherently point to the divine in some way.

In teaching I’d always ask what the church leaders thought would be the typical breakdown and they’d always be wrong. They’d naturally see tons of full boxes in the demonic category, a few in the dirt category and a larger number in the divine category (if speaking of their own culture). The reality is though that the demonic category is typically mostly empty - human nature just wants to fill it up because of a need of control which comes easily thru “othering” people. There are things that should go here but it’s few and far in between. The same is true of the divine category. It’s mostly empty. Almost all of culture is neutral.

This is important to consider and keep in mind because when we view other cultures, human nature wants to jump towards demonizing things we don’t understand when they probably aren’t bad at all.

Likewise when considering our own, we put things in that divine box that don’t belong there, prioritizing them over and above anything else in our or other cultures. This latter tendency in particular plays out in the development of Christian nationalism and the co-opting of Jesus centered theology. Bits of American culture like manifest destiny, the American Dream, American exceptionalism, etc get elevated to the “divine” box without merit, thereby changing the nature of religious formation.

I think this goes without saying but because religion has values, customs, behaviors and the like, these same boxes fit. And this begins making things really messy.

What’s actually just culture? What’s religion? What’s OK to let go of in your religion grid in favor of something in the culture grid?

Breaking down religion

I want to look a bit more closely at religion. When I taught this topic, we’d break religion into two broad categories of beliefs. These were folk religion and formal religion:

Folk religion

Folk religion looks to local cultural customs, traditions and values to interpret the universe. There is a distinct through line from culture to religion when it comes to folk religion. It tends to be passed on person to person and lacks the formal institutions that the next category loves.

Formal religion

Formal religions originate (typically) outside of the local culture. They have their own interpretations of the universe. Think Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. They are big picture, long-lived and formalized (ie, texts, rituals, etc) in ways folk religion just isn’t.

In comparison

Hopefully those definitions make sense. I want to do a quick compare and contrast using my broad personal context as an example. If it wasn’t clear that context is the USA and Christianity. To do this we are going to look at 5 categories: questions addressed, beliefs, leadership structure, organizational structure and code of ethic.

Questions addressed

By “questions addressed” I mean how does it deal with everyday life? What questions is it seeking to answer?

Christianity as Formal Religion: While Christianity wants to address questions of everyday life, it’s often relegated to big picture questions like ”What is the origin of life? What is salvation? What happens when I die?”

American Folk Religion: American folk religion hones in on everyday questions like “Why am I sick? (Wellness trends) What is success? (American Dream) How do I get more stuff? (hypercapitalism)”

Beliefs

Christianity as Formal Religion: Christianity has clear written texts and fixed beliefs. Look at the Bible and creeds like the Apostles creed.

American Folk Religion: Folk religion is comprised mostly of myth and ritual: the doctrine of discovery, manifest destiny, the ringing of the stock market bell

Leadership structure

Christianity as Formal Religion: Christianity has specialized leadership and schools to train them. Think of pastors, bishops, elders, deacons, apostles, prophets.

American Folk Religion: Folk religion has informal roles and leans into specialists seen as exemplifying its standards: Think of people perceived to have power and success and the ways they are glorified or the prominence of certain podcasters or the notoriety some business men.

Organizational structure

Christianity as Formal Religion: Christianity has centralized institutions. Think of churches, seminaries, mission organizations, non-profits, etc.

American Folk Religion: Folk religion does not have a clear organizational structure by “design” (it’s nature) but informally focuses on think like Wall Street or collective groups like MAGA.

Code of ethic

Christianity as Formal Religion: Christianity has a formalized moral code. It’s seen in things like the sermon on the mount, the letters of Paul, the work of the prophets, etc.

American Folk Religion: Folk religion tends to be very pragmatic. Lines like “We do what we need to do to be successful.” take precedent. Ideas like those found in beliefs drive a self oriented ethic. American exceptionalism prioritizes those that colonized the USA above all others.

When culture becomes religion

Hopeful that brief compare and contrast was at least instructive in seeing the ways religion takes shape and the potential ways culture can affect local folk religions. It’s pretty natural from a culture perspective to have some sort of folk religion / formal religion divide. Jesus I think expects this and emphasizes discipleship because of it.

Discipleship is the process of becoming more like Jesus. It’s a continuous growth or transformation process where Christians are supposed to hold everything they are, whether action, thought, belief or attitude, up to the lens of Jesus and see how it compares. It’s designed to prevent the anti-Jesus ways in which we might want to live from taking hold in our life. It’s being able to ask the question ”What would Jesus do?” and then stop with anything he wouldn’t do.

Discipleship is something that doesn’t typically happen alone. We have small groups. We meet one on one with fellow Christians. We hear from preachers. Discipleship is very much a communal process. So what happens if some of these people stop asking “What would Jesus do?” when their folk religion answers the question in a way that they like better? They start discipling other people in the way of their folk religion instead of in the way of Jesus. As more do it, and do it with more questions, the nature of discipleship changes. Instead of communities being formed in the way of Jesus (towards love and peace and nonviolent engagement; towards standing against empire; towards the recognition of the problem of wealth and the needs of the poor, for example) they start being formed in the way of the American folk religion with a thin Jesus veneer.

This becomes exponentially more problematic in light of the ”divine, dirt, demonic” discussion. Things Jesus prioritizes like love of neighbor (and neighbor meaning all) gets thrown out of the divine box and into the demonic box. Things that exemplify the American folk religion (that Jesus would see as evil) replace it. It’s usurping Christianity as a religion. It’s usurping the way American culture values things as well. It’s all very tragic.

In conclusion, some hope

It feels like there isn’t much to be hopeful now, if I’m honest. I hate the way Jesus is being tossed aside in favor of “American” values. There is some tiny measure of hope though: for people that truly claim faith, the answer is right in front of them. All they have to do is take seriously the words of Jesus.

I think some people know in their heart and are just afraid to walk it out. For them, I want to continue to try and speak openly and validate their inclination to live like Jesus.

To those that claim faith but don’t let it actually touch everyday life, I hope to be both an example and challenge.

Maybe some change can happen. Maybe there is some reason to hope.