|
In Review: April 8, 1998
|
|
|
Christ vs. culture in the 20th century Modern concerns revolve around money and work, not salvation
Christianity and Civil Society: The Contemporary Debate
The Crisis in the Churches: Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe
Robert Wuthnow
Two recent books by Robert Wuthnow, the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton, examine the complex relationship between Christianity and the rest of culture. Christianity and Civil Society: The Contemporary Debate (1996) is the print version of the Rockwell Lectures Wuthnow delivered at Rice University in 1996. The Crisis in the Churches: Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe (1997) is a report on an extensive study of Christian churches in America, their parishioners, and the attitudes of both toward their financial situations. The result of much research, this book presents a great many statistics yet is anecdotally fascinating. We learn, for example, that it is common for clergy today to speak in "the language of therapy" when counseling people about career choices, advocating a search for personal happiness above all else; and that people who attend religious services every week are just as likely as those who don't to deal with job-related stress by going shopping. Church and State
The first book acknowledges that the results are not yet in on the great American experiment of separating church and state. In spite of all the rumors about a decline in religious commitment, Wuthnow quotes recent polls showing that 69 percent of Americans are members of a church or synagogue, and at least 94 percent of us believe in God. Therefore, if we are to live together in this country, we cannot ignore the influence of Judeo-Christian ideals on ourselves and our neighbors. And yet some aspects of Christianity -- its otherworldliness, its millennialism, and its sometimes absolute positions on moral issues, for example -- do not always seem compatible with the things we must do everyday to get our bills paid, move forward in our careers, participate in our government, and treat other people fairly and appropriately. Should we do these things within the context of our religious beliefs, and if so, how? As Wuthnow writes, "Some Christians generate mistrust because their convictions are so strong that they seem intent on imposing them on everyone else; other Christians generate mistrust because their beliefs seem incapable of giving them any moral guidance on public matters at all." These lectures provide a thoughtful framework for seeing Christ-and-culture tensions in a late 20th-century context. Serving God and Mammon
The Crisis in the Churches focuses specifically on the question of how to live in a society in which we are expected to serve both God and mammon, and Wuthnow takes the position that the two must be integrated. He shows that most churches need more money if they are to continue to provide the services they want to; and that most individuals feel as though they need more money, though they are sometimes driven to that feeling more by the pressures of living in a materialistic society than by actual needs. He explains that churchgoers overwhelmingly are members of the middle class, and that work, possessions, and financial security are among the foremost concerns in the minds of middle-class Americans. Therefore, he concludes, "The churches must be more active in ministering to the economic concerns of middle-class parishioners themselves, helping them to understand their work as ministry, to cope with stress and burnout, to keep their priorities straight with respect to money, and to manage their resources with greater care." He also states that churches must give their members better reasons to contribute to the church." These tasks are sometimes complementary: if people work hard and manage their money well they will have more of it to give. On the other hand, Wuthnow notes, "Pastors inevitably play a dual role. In their so-called prophetic role, they are called on to speak critically about prevailing assumptions and lifestyles. In their so-called priestly role, they are the wardens of the church, charged with keeping its pews occupied and its coffers full." Worldly concerns Wuthnow never minimizes the complications inherent in trying to translate the huge and complex body of Christian thought into practical terms for a diverse society with a multitude of goals and pressures. He does, however, start with a firm assumption that it is the proper place of the church to be deeply involved in the most secular of activities, the making and spending of money. In the terms of the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, who codified the prevailing ways of understanding the relationship between "Christ and Culture" in his seminal 1951 book of that title, Wuthnow's approach is clearly rooted within the "Christ of Culture" paradigm. Although Wuthnow identifies himself as a practitioner of Christianity, he is also a social scientist and apparently a pragmatist. He urges the clergy to respond to the worldly concerns of their parishioners, thereby ensuring the survival of their own profession. -- Heather C. Liston '83 Heather Liston is the director of development for The Academy of American Poets.
Most of those who write about the information highway seem fixated on what lies ahead. What most of us probably want is to better understand this social and technological phenomenon. Readers of John Seabrook '81's Deeper: My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace may not get the scoop on the computer language Java, but they will find out how the Internet works. Seabrook, a staff writer at The New Yorker, begins with a story that is probably unique to the late 20th century, about his earliest encounter with digital technology, when computers still digested paper punch cards. Children of the mid-1980s probably won't recall the first time they toddled over to tap a Macintosh keyboard. Seabrook's tale of how he grudgingly accepted computers is a preamble to the moment when he buys a modem and ventures online: "Just as I became used to the idea that my computer was a typewriter, it changed into a telephone," he writes. Seabrook gradually discovers that the Internet is not only a useful tool, but a new communication frontier. He ends up comparing that frontier to a geographic one -- the Old West -- which his grandfather explored in the 19th century: "I have sometimes wondered whether destiny has, in its joshing-around way...compelled me to repeat [my grandfather's] experience, in metaphor, in cyberspace," he writes. Along the way, Seabrook exchanges e-mail with the railroad baron of the software world, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft; has a run-in with a two writers whose "flame" e-mail messages give him a taste of the Internet's verbal vigilantism; and gets embroiled in the complicated politics of online discussion groups. Seabrook uses metaphors and historical parallels to explain what the new technology does. He also tells us why it matters. His thoughtful and often humorous reactions to what he found online should entertain and inform both Luddites and expert surfers. (Simon and Schuster, $25) -- Paul Hagar '91 | |