Saturday, July 10, 2021

Be the 21st Century Counterculture

 


13 comments:

  1. Will you just look at those white racists praying that God will destroy Antifa and BLM.....

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    1. How is that relevant to this post?

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    2. The impression I have is that OC is being sarcastic. After all, it's officially accepted narrative that we can assume they are racist due to skin color.

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  2. Two US flags (one a cartoonish late addition) but no cross visible. I've been to churches like that. It's not particularly hard to find Protestant churches that make a big deal out of the 4th of July but treat Pentecost as a footnote, sort of like Hanukkah or Yom Kippur from a Christian perspective.

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    1. Yep. Depending on the particular protestant denomination. Some follow closely the liturgical year. Others take pride in not following it at all, save Christmas and Easter. I remember as a Baptist minister I brought up the idea of doing Advent. One of my staff ministers rebuked me for trying something 'too Catholic.'

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    2. Yes, some of the churches I attended as a child actually went out of their way to de-emphasize both baptism and the Lord's Supper out of fear that if they took those very seriously, they would become Catholic. There's some truth in that, but they never seem to examine what that might imply.

      I am more concerned, though, with the attitude that people should worship in a Christian church because "America is a Christian nation." This is basically a civic religion in which we worship our collective self; the gravy may be Christian, but the meatloaf is worship of Caesar. This goes back to the beginnings of the US. The "National Cathedral" in Washington prominently advertises how the building was first envisioned as a "great church for national purposes." "For national purposes" -- not for the glory of God, unless the god you worship is Uncle Sam.

      We might as well face up to this. For the typical American, Superbowl Sunday is a bigger event than Easter Sunday. When I heard (some time afterwards, since I had to be born first) that John Lennon had claimed that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus", that never sounded like a blasphemy to me, but like something that might well be true -- and so much the worse for popularity.

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    3. Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that, history will prove me right. Jesus was OK. But His disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me. We [The Beatles] are more popular than Jesus now. - John Lennon.

      Popular culture has been beating out the church for some time. And there is, and always has been, a temptation to confuse the academy and the temple, or the arena and the sanctuary. I think that, and trying to thread the need to confront the world, be in the world, and yet not be of the world, has been the great challenge for believers since the beginning. It should be love of country because you're a Christian, not be a Christian because you love your country. A big distinction, but one easily missed.

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    4. To be fair, Anglicanism has been vanishing and shrinking for quite some time.

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    5. This is true. It's not dying as fast as some, but it's been in the running for quite some time.

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    6. Too much of The Catholic Church in America is influenced by Irish-American culture. Irish Americans and especially Irish-American Catholics spent so much time trying to prove how American they were, they stopped trying to be Catholic. They became more concerned with fitting into America than with converting America.

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    7. That could be. It's certainly plausible. As I said, throughout the ages the trick is to love country because of one's Christian faith, not be a Christian because it's good for the country.

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    8. That's usually not an easy balance to reach

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    9. Nope. Like my son's football coach used to say, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

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Let me know your thoughts