I read two books recently, The Rise of Christianity and The Barbarian Conversion. I will offer a full length treatment of the ideas in both books, and try to integrate them, in a later post. But, I want submit an idea that has been nagging me for some time: in the United States, secularists and conservative Christians tend to perceive Christianity very differently in its historical context.
By this, I mean that the two books above sketch out the dynamics and expression of Christian faith during two periods: the first is a sociological treatment of growth of Christianity between 0-350. During most of that period, Christianity was a sect within the context of a pluralistic pagan empire, and individuals who were Christian were often self-selected urbanites. The second book deals with the period in Europe between 500-1400 when the non-Roman peoples of Europe (that is, those who came from a non-Roman milieu or whose lands lay outside the bounds of the empire) converted to Christianity. During this period, the “Church of the Nobility” was often dominant, and Christianization was imposed from above, often on a recalcitrant peasantry who did not internalize the substance of the faith.
What does this have to do with the United States of 2004? After 1500 we all know that the Reformation occurred. It was a period of violence and political chaos, driven by religious divisions, that eventually culminated in the rise of religious tolerance as a solution to the problem of theological and confessional faction. Just as the original Christians perceived themselves a people apart, an elect who were saved and pure, in contrast to the iniquitous debauchery of the pagan empire, so some radical Protestant sects later in the Reformation also took this stance. The myth of the Universal Church finally came crashing down, and a situation of de facto religious pluralism emerged in much of Europe, and this process has reached its most extreme conclusion in the United States.
When secularists hear that this is the “most religious advanced nation on earth” it gives them the willies. They look at statistics that show that 85% of Americans are self-identified Christians, that the president is invariabley a believing Christian, and often of a more conservative kind, that churches form a crucial social glue in many small towns, and it makes them feel marginalized.
On the other hand, many evangelicals perceive themselves as a people persecuted, inundated with a pop culture that is contrary to their morals, dominated by a cultural elite hostile to their faith, and ruled by a worldly political class that gives the nod to their principles, but does not abide in practice by the tenets of their professed faith. Though many evangelicals will assert that the United States is a “Christian nation,” they express this with some trepidation, acknowledging the reality that in practice there is quite a bit of “paganism” suffusing the mass culture.
It seems that the two groups live in separate worlds. I think part of it is that evangelical Christians, Protestants born out of the Radical Reformation, tend to see the “medieval church” as a detour from “true Christianity.” Groups like the Baptists see in the “primitive” Christianity of the pre-Constantinean centuries the echo of their own faith. This was a period when they were set against the state, a people apart who did not have access to the levers of power. Though the executive branch may be under the control of one of their own confession, many evangelical Christians still carry within them the mindset of the early Christianity, which imagines itself as the saved remnant in the midst of an the greater culture that has rejected their testimony.
In contrast, many secularists would rather not think of the early Church, with its images of martyrs persecuted for their faith, the government oppressing a religious minority, and Christianity being espoused by “progressives” rather than conservatives. Rather, secularists will focus on the medieval church, where there was a tight integration between power and sancity, where witches were burned, “heretics” persecuted, and peasants forced to profess a belief in a Christ they barely comprehended. Secularists imagine themselves standing against the power and the glory of the medieval church, the instrument of the state, a pawn of power, while in reality that church was shattered hundreds of years ago.
The reality on the ground today is far different, because we live in a democratic republic. The imperial autocracy of pagan Rome or the decentralized oligarchies of the medieval period are not good models of how Christians and non-Christians should and do interact. In some ways, the public profession of faith by political leaders, the nods to the importance of the church as a civic institution, and so forth, mimic the medieval period. On the other hand, the sectarianism, the divorce of state and church explicitly, the pluralistic faction, are more characteristic of the Roman Empire. The reality is that we live in a new time, while both extremes of the religious spectrum in the United States are working within paradigms lost.
Posted by razib at 01:14 PM