At the time
not a few voices will testify that Desegregation and issues like busing were
just as important. Over time the cultural narrative shifted. Under Reagan the
vision was more forward looking rather than rearward. No more longing for the
days of Hoover. Instead it was morning in America. Throughout the 1980s many Christian
conservatives realized their previous way of thinking had been wrong, the
political narrative shifted more heavily toward issues like abortion and school
prayer. The opposition to Civil Rights simply faded away and the record of it
disappeared down the memory hole.
Interestingly
for Christians growing up during that period (1970's-80's), not formally
praying or reading Scripture in school wasn't a big deal. My wife talks about
how she growing up in a small town public school she was very conscious of the
fact that she was different. She wasn't like the other kids. That was okay, but
there wasn't some kind of expectation that the establishment school system was
going to accommodate her. It would have seemed strange for them to have offered
prayers.
Besides, can
someone really 'stop' you from praying?
Having also
lived in the same area for many years I now know many of these teachers (quite
a few were still around when we got married and moved here in the late 1990s) and
we can laugh together at the absurdity of this or that teacher conducting a
Bible reading or publically leading a class in prayer. It's pretty silly and
just accentuated in a small town when you actually know a lot more about people
and their lives.
My wife
remembers a definite antithesis. This area is also heavily Roman Catholic and
there was no sense (as there is today) that they were somehow fellow Christians
in any sense of the word. When studying history my wife and I (in Christian
circles on opposite ends of the country) both remember learning about
Constantine and the Crusades, and thinking that's all 'Catholic' stuff. It has
nothing to do with Christianity. No one in our Fundamentalist circles
identified the Middle Ages with Christianity.
She
remembers (as do I) when even the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) movement
had that sense of antithesis and apocalyptic disengagement.
I was never
into the music. She actually found great comfort in it as a teenager. It was an
encouragement as she set out each school day to interact with and face the
world. I attended Christian schools and many of the kids I went to school with
were listening to it. I certainly heard it and knew the names of the bands but
I was far more interested in Rush or Iron Maiden than Petra or Amy Grant. Petra
even visited my school once and spoke at our weekly chapel. My wife was quite
impressed when I told her as were many of the Christian kids and teachers at my
school, but I remember at the time I couldn't have cared less.
Revisiting
some of that older CCM material it is striking how a lot of the music has that
real 'underdog' kind of feel to it. It's you against the system, songs about
poor struggling families while the world has it all. One is even reminded of
the quasi-Christian Kansas and their great song 'Dust in the Wind'.... a
beautiful song that would hardly strike a chord with the modern Dominionist.
Today the
Christian music movement has become so broad as to really defy any kind of
definitions or parameters. I know the mainstream CCM stuff that they play on
the Christian Pop/Adult Contemporary stations is not the same type of music.
Not only has the style changed, so has the content. I hear a lot about Jesus
empowering me, and how 'I' matter. It's quite different.
I wonder
what role the theological shift has played? The Fundamentalist and Evangelical
Churches really took on the theology of Dominion throughout the 1980's, but
especially throughout the 1990's and ever since. Then you had the whole Rick
Warren and Willow Creek type movements really beginning to shape the
Evangelical Mainstream with their emphasis on psychology, prosperity and
numbers, along with the pro-Catholic emphasis by groups like Focus on the
Family and all those surrounding Charles Colson.
The quest
for power and fulfillment in success shape the message and even the sub-cultural
zeitgeist.
Please
understand I don't really care anything about CCM. I just find aspects of this
to be interesting.
Even the old
CCM coming in part out of the Jesus Movement was a reformist movement trying to
question aspects of the conservative status quo. A lot of them were sort of
like Christian hippies. As I've said before about the hippies I appreciate many
of the questions they were asking and aspects of their movement but largely
their answers were terrible and of course in many cases wicked. But just
because the secular hippies were wrong it didn't mean the Establishment Nationalism
pro-Capitalist pro-War factions were right either.
The Jesus
Movement was anti-Establishment. They were trying to break the stiff and reserved
powers running the various denominations and institutions. I can't agree with
them on their doctrine of worship but I can agree with their criticism of the
Church functioning as an institution and as a functional arm of Right-wing
politics.
To a certain
extent I can respect some of them more than the Falwell types that were also
coming to the fore in the 1970's.
That
antithesis, even if flawed, seems to be gone now. The counter-culture is now
just the culture and has just become a branch of the larger political Right.
One day I
was both baffled and disturbed to find a video of John Schlitt of Petra and
John Elefante (formerly of Kansas) singing with Jay Sekulow of Pat Robertson's
ACLJ on drums.
Sekulow
stands for the forces of big business and great financial power. Granted he
focuses on a narrow window specifically the concerns of the Christian Right,
but that's what the Christian Right in fact stands for! Capitalism, the
Military-Industrial Complex, Nationalism... the old Establishment that held
unquestioned power before the 1960's. He stands for the lies of the
Establishment. He's their creature, a professional propagandist and liar. He's
made a career of it. He's the type of fraud that needs to be denounced by the
prophets of our day. I've listened to his radio show countless times. He's a
manipulator and a deceiver that somehow has convinced himself that it's okay to
lie as long as it serves the greater good. He thinks the Kingdom of God is
built through the force of law, the threat of the police and waging war and he
promotes all these things with great zeal. He's every bit as evil as his master Pat
Robertson.
Why are
these Jesus-rockers (in effect trying to be the prophets of their day) playing
with this guy? How does beat the system, become 'the system'? How does the band
that sang "Play the Game Tonight" and "Dust in the Wind"
become the people who want to support the Military-Industrial Empire?
Why the
shift? Was the anti-Establishment prophetic voice all an act, or has something
happened?
Recently I
looked up an old Fundamentalist preacher I knew from about twenty years ago.
Mind you I've never accepted this man as a Christian but at least was quite
familiar with the world he inhabited. He's raving about the Crusades and how
Christian they were! What happened? When I knew him he would have never done
that. He'd blast Bill Clinton and the Crusades. Is it just his hatred of
Obama and his recent statements at the prayer breakfast that have led him to
such a position?
In the end,
it's power. It corrupts and destroys. The Christian Church abandoned its
position of being counter-cultural and antithetical to the culture at large and
sought political power. In the process it sold out and fundamentally changed
its nature. Some might say CCM in trying to mimic the mainstream culture had
already sold out, was already in the trap of worldliness. It very well could
be. There's an argument to be made there.
But I (and
my wife) are just so surprised to see how many things have changed and how many
people who are plenty old enough have forgotten how it was just 25 and 30 years ago.
People want
accolades, they want security and they certainly want money. They want to
control the narrative of society and many Christians refuse to accept the
wilderness way, the paths of the pilgrim. They want to control the city and so
in the end - for many the antithesis is not a way of life but a tactic to win the
war.
Petra used
to sing... we are strangers, we are pilgrims, we are not of this world.
So sue them when you don't get your way? Hire Sekulow? Is that the answer? I guess so.
Sadly in
their selling out they've won no battle. The just think they have. And in fact
they're fighting the wrong war.
While it's
not about CCM to be sure, Iain Murray's work 'Evangelicalism Divided' is
helpful in understanding the spirit that led Evangelicalism to a compromise
with the world, a desire to be accepted and respected. Even though I am not
uncritical of Murray, he rightly identifies the spiritual influence behind
this. I suspect the same discussion he's having about Christians in academia
and vis-à-vis popular culture in general is applicable to what I'm talking
about here.
