As with the last two week period, I am again posting two unrelated articles for discussion. -NB
Christianity Today “Who Are Americans: What Christians Contribute to the Search for a National Identity” (June 2010)
By Chuck Colson with Catherine Larson
Nations around the world are suffering from identity crises. Perhaps it began two decades ago, when the last European holdouts were dragged in and the European Union was finally established, a move described by one journalist as “the triumph of the Eurocrats over the peoples of Europe.” More recently, The New York Times reported on France’s efforts to articulate its national identity. Soon thereafter, controversy erupted when Switzerland banned the construction of Muslim minarets. The Times and Forbes reported on identity crises facing South Korea and China, as immigration makes largely homogenous nations increasingly diverse.
All these reports raise the question, “Who are we?” --which is also the title of scholar Samuel P. Huntington’s final and most prophetic book. “The more general causes of these...questionings,” wrote Huntington, “include the emergence of a global economy, tremendous improvements in communications and transportation, rising levels of migration, [and] the global expansion of democracy...”
There’s also an identity crisis bubbling just under the surface in the United States.
Huntington documents several challenges to a cohesive sense of American identity. First, while early settlers and immigrants were never ethnically homogenous, they largely traded in the same Anglo-Protestant cultural currency. But as 21st-century demographic trends increasingly draw people from other quadrants of the world, shared cultural assumptions erode.
Exacerbating the problem is a rise in dual citizenship and more subnational identities, which have created divided loyalties. Meanwhile, in the business community, an increasingly globalized economy has caused leaders to adopt a more transnational identity, what some call “Davos man.” And aside from a temporary resurgence of patriotism after September 11, Huntington documents how academic elites have led the way in devaluing patriotism and American history.
We rightly pride ourselves on our multiethnic, multiracial society. But as our society grows ever more diverse, how will we understand our national identity?
Huntington poses four possible solutions. The first is a creedal community whose identity exists only in a social contract embodied in the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents. This has historically provided cohesion. The next option is a bifurcated America, one that is bilingual and bicultural like Canada or Belgium. The third option is an exclusivist or imperial notion of America. And the last alternative, the one Huntington clearly favored, is a reinvigorated core culture and religion coupled with the earlier solution of a reinvigorated creedal community.
Can a Christian worldview inform us as a we wrestle with out national identity? Any kind of racially or ethnically intolerant society would be incompatible with Christian principles.
Further, we know that the core values of our creeds, which in particular promote the dignity of all people, resonate with Scripture and are worth preserving. American patriotism does not rest on jingoistic nationalism but on a universal creed that says, “All men are...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Liberty is one of those unalienable rights. And this core value, also emphasized in Scripture, teaches us that we cannot force beliefs on others. Our founders understood, however, that freedom of religion is not synonymous with expunging religion from public life, a problem that I and others addressed last fall in the Manhattan Declaration. So if Huntington is in fact right that the U.S. needs a reinvigorated religious commitment, it won’t come from a nation-mandated religion but rather from a reinvigorated populace.
I believe, then, that for national identity to be salient in the midst of our changing society, we need a recommitment to our creeds, a respect for American history, and a proper role of patriotism, rooted in love of neighbor. Our founders’ Judeo-Christian heritage helped produce a culture in which moral responsibility, transcendent ethical principles, and the dignity of all people could flourish--a culture in which our creedal values made sense. This is why our role as leaven within society is so important, and why we must continue to bring biblical influence to the public square, reinvigorating society.
As we do so, we must guard against the easy tendency to embrace xenophobic notions or fall into equally perilous trap of promoting subcultural identities over national identity. People will not live with, let alone die for, a nation that has abandoned its religious moorings and adopted a creed that suggests we simply live together in cosmopolitan bliss. Millions of us, however, have been willing to live and die for beliefs rooted in our deepest convictions about God and man--convictions that were expressed so well in the stirring words of our national creed, the Declaration of Independence.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I have much respect for Chuck Colson or I would not have posted this article. I think he often does a very good job at proposing an approach to politics and policies in the particular that is rooted in “the contours of a Christian worldview” (as I have often heard him say). But I also posted this article because I think he, and many conservative Christians especially, are prone to intertwining their Christian and American identities in ways that we should resist.
ReplyDeleteI pasted four sentences/passages from Colson’s article below in the order in which they appear in the article. We can all agree that referring to the Church or Christians is different than referring to the U.S. or Americans. Yet notice Colson’s use of plural pronouns below and the lack of clarity as to which community he is referring to. He moves from “us” meaning the Church or Christians in one clause/sentence/paragraph to “we” in the next meaning the U.S. or Americans without clearly stating who is speaking of.
“Can a Christian worldview inform US as a WE wrestle with our national identity?”
-us = Christians?
-we = Americans
“Further, WE know that the core values of our creeds, which in particular promote the dignity of all people, resonate with Scripture and are worth preserving.”
-we = Americans
“Liberty is one of those unalienable rights. And this core value, also emphasized in Scripture, teaches US that we cannot force beliefs on others. OUR founders understood, however, that freedom of religion is not synonymous with expunging religion from public life...”
-us = Christians
-our = Americans
“This is why OUR role as leaven within society is so important, and why WE must continue to bring biblical influence to the public square, reinvigorating society.”
-our = Christians
-we = Christians
Some will argue that this is a Christian magazine based in the U.S. so he is simply addressing American Christians and does not have to distinguish between Church and nation. I, however, think that it is always important to clearly identify which community/institution one is talking about because the nation has different demands on our allegiance than does the Church and the Lord toward which it points. When I speak of “we” Americans I am speaking of a public/legal identity expressed in the concept of citizenship that informs how we relate to the state and other citizens in legal matters. When I speak of “we” Christians I am speaking of a comprehensive identity that informs how I live as a father, husband, son, friend, neighbor, parishoner, colleague, student, advocate, consumer, citizen, and so on. I say all this to stress that being an American is an abbreviated identity while being a Christian ought to shape the kind of American I am as well as everything else.
While referring to the book “Who Are We?” by Samuel Huntington, Colson writes, “Huntington documents several challenges to a cohesive sense of American identity.” In the next paragraph Colson says, “Exacerbating the problem is a rise in dual citizenship and more subnational identities, which have created divided loyalties.” I challenge the idea that trying to recapture or develop a “cohesive sense of American identity” is an enterprise Christians should be concerned with in the first place. I agree that Christians should seek to affirm those aspects of the American political community that promote justice in the Christian sense, which is an integral part of being the Church. But we do so because we care about justice, not to promote a cohesive national identity.
Ultimately, we have a liberal democratic political order, which means that a narrow framework of agreed upon principles (individual liberty, property rights, elected leadership) shape our political institutions, ideas, and behavior. But in America we also have some powerful stories that surround this narrow order that produce in many people the sense that being an American is much more than being a citizen of a public/legal community. These people see America’s founding as divinely ordained, its decisive contributions during the industrial revolution and two world wars as further confirmation of God’s guidance, and its ascent to superpower status (including defeat of Soviet Russia) as still more proof of America’s exceptionalism. I’m not saying that God doesn’t work through nations, but to presume as much in a particular instance is dangerous for reasons I don’t need to mention. Now, this American story of exceptionalism is very powerful and contains powerful symbols, and this is precisely the reason why Christians, in order to protect our own hearts and minds, ought to take great care in distinguishing our Christian and American identities, our higher and lower allegiances. For example, we should be against flying the American flag in our churches, not because it is a symbol of little consequence, but because it is such a powerful symbol and can so easily become a rival to the cross (not in reality of course, but as a matter of perception, which matters more if you’re the one perceiving).
ReplyDeleteColson should have first explained why he thinks Christians should be involved in promoting a cohesive national identity and then taken more care in specifying who the “we” is that he is speaking of throughout the article.