Make Culture Christian Again
Everyone agrees. The West has a problem. For good or for ill, what we used to call “Western civilization” is crumbling. The monuments of its past are being pulled down. Its heroes are being wiped from the public memory. Efforts at stemming the loss are vilified as “racist” and “white supremacist.” Nobody in polite society wants to be associated with its institutions and ideals anymore.
Particularly not with Christianity.
Even in so-called conservative circles, to call oneself “Christian”—as opposed to “Judeo-Christian”—is something of a faux pas. A bit gauche. Definitely lowbrow. Not particularly intellectual. Certainly not something a rational thinker would wholeheartedly embrace. Well, perhaps it is okay to be Christian in the circles I frequent online, but then I have never been invited to the right cocktail parties. Not that I would have any idea how to behave.
Then again, as they say, turnabout is fair play.
I’m a Christian, and Christianity has always been a bit embarrassing to the highly cultured.
Augustine of Hippo found Christianity’s lack of culture particularly painful before he became a Christian. He was, after all, a teacher of rhetoric, and the scriptures (at least in the translations in which he read them) could not hold a candle to the great literary works of the pagans. It was only when he heard Ambrose unlocking the mysteries contained in the Christian scriptures’ crude phrases that he was able to swallow his pride as a rhetorician and embrace the sermo humilis of Christ.
You could say that being embarrassing to the highly cultured was, is, and ever shall be Christianity’s defining USP.
Or, at least, it should be, if you understand the difference between “culture” and “praise.”
Culture is about how people live. What language they speak. What they wear, what they eat, whom they marry, how they interact with each other socially. How they raise their children. “High” culture issues in art, architecture, music, philosophy, and science, but it, too, is grounded in the ways in which people live. Culture has to do with the ways of the flesh: sex, food, bodily manners. It has to do with the way in which people manipulate the world around them materially, whether for the sake of physical necessity or for the sake of beauty.
Culture, in other words, is of this world. But Christ’s kingdom is not.
This is why it is so hard to spot Christians in a crowd. Christians eat everything. Christians wear the same clothes as everyone else. Christians sport piercings and tattoos—or not. Christians play all different kinds of music. Christians make all different kinds of art. Christians have no particular skin or hair color. Christians marry whom they please, not whom their families tell them to marry. Christians read all different kinds of stories. Christians speak every language on earth.
Christians, in other words, blend. But they do not mix.
It was ever thus, even in antiquity.
As one early Christian explained in a letter addressed to the tutor of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius:
Culture is about marking oneself as belonging to a particular group.
What is infuriating about Christians is our refusal to worry about belonging or marking ourselves as in any way “cultured.” As Remi Brague notes in his Curing Mad Truths: Medieval Wisdom for the Modern World (2019), unlike with other religions, there is no such thing as “Christian culture,” only Christians who participate in the culture in which they find themselves. In Brague’s words:
This is the paradox on which Western civilization, insofar as it is Christian, depends: what makes a culture “Christian” is not its social institutions or material artifacts.
What a makes a culture “Christian” is its focus on God.
The monks of the Middle Ages understood this paradox. They worked and they prayed, but they did not do so for the sake of “culture.” They worked and prayed out of the desire to praise God as the Creator of heaven and earth, and in order to do so, they developed great art forms, particularly music, liturgical poetry, book-making, painting, metalworking, drama, and architecture.
Great art—or food or clothing or social institutions—does not make a culture great. What makes a culture great is the purpose for which the art is made.
This is why modern art sucks.
It is also why Western civilization is failing.
Without God, “culture” is simply “cult.” Idolatry. The worship of things that human beings have made. Things like statues and Constitutions. Things like flags and governments. Things like ideas about freedom of speech and equality before the law.
All artifacts of human invention.
All things of this world.
But Christ’s kingdom is not of this world.
And yet, the world that God made is good—and worthy of praise as a creature of God.
Everything that we conservatives say we value about Western civilization has its ground in Christianity and the praise of God as Creator of heaven and earth. Paradoxically, the reason that we are at risk of losing those things—our institutions, our traditions of art, music, philosophy, literature, and architecture, our history as nations—is because they were never about “culture.”
Insofar as they were Christian, they were not about us and our desire to be “cultured.” They were about God and giving praise for his gifts.
If we are losing our culture, perhaps it is because we are no longer thankful enough for God’s gifts.
Perhaps it is because we have forgotten the ground of our being in God and are grasping at idols instead.
References
Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, trans. Roberts-Donaldson
Rémi Brague, Curing Mad Truths: Medieval Wisdom for the Modern Age (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019)
For further reflections on the importance of Christianity to Western culture, see MedievalGate and Medieval History 101: The Unauthorized Version.
*NB: Even in antiquity, Christians were remarkable for not aborting or killing their children.
Particularly not with Christianity.
Even in so-called conservative circles, to call oneself “Christian”—as opposed to “Judeo-Christian”—is something of a faux pas. A bit gauche. Definitely lowbrow. Not particularly intellectual. Certainly not something a rational thinker would wholeheartedly embrace. Well, perhaps it is okay to be Christian in the circles I frequent online, but then I have never been invited to the right cocktail parties. Not that I would have any idea how to behave.
Then again, as they say, turnabout is fair play.
I’m a Christian, and Christianity has always been a bit embarrassing to the highly cultured.
Augustine of Hippo found Christianity’s lack of culture particularly painful before he became a Christian. He was, after all, a teacher of rhetoric, and the scriptures (at least in the translations in which he read them) could not hold a candle to the great literary works of the pagans. It was only when he heard Ambrose unlocking the mysteries contained in the Christian scriptures’ crude phrases that he was able to swallow his pride as a rhetorician and embrace the sermo humilis of Christ.
You could say that being embarrassing to the highly cultured was, is, and ever shall be Christianity’s defining USP.
Or, at least, it should be, if you understand the difference between “culture” and “praise.”
Culture is about how people live. What language they speak. What they wear, what they eat, whom they marry, how they interact with each other socially. How they raise their children. “High” culture issues in art, architecture, music, philosophy, and science, but it, too, is grounded in the ways in which people live. Culture has to do with the ways of the flesh: sex, food, bodily manners. It has to do with the way in which people manipulate the world around them materially, whether for the sake of physical necessity or for the sake of beauty.
Culture, in other words, is of this world. But Christ’s kingdom is not.
This is why it is so hard to spot Christians in a crowd. Christians eat everything. Christians wear the same clothes as everyone else. Christians sport piercings and tattoos—or not. Christians play all different kinds of music. Christians make all different kinds of art. Christians have no particular skin or hair color. Christians marry whom they please, not whom their families tell them to marry. Christians read all different kinds of stories. Christians speak every language on earth.
Christians, in other words, blend. But they do not mix.
It was ever thus, even in antiquity.
As one early Christian explained in a letter addressed to the tutor of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius:
For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity.
The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines.
But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners.
As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring.* They have a common table, but not a common bed.
They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified.
They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.“Yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.” Our early Christian apologist is being disingenuous. Of course Christians are assailed as foreigners and persecuted as rubes. We do not belong in the world, everyone knows it, and it drives them crazy.
Culture is about marking oneself as belonging to a particular group.
What is infuriating about Christians is our refusal to worry about belonging or marking ourselves as in any way “cultured.” As Remi Brague notes in his Curing Mad Truths: Medieval Wisdom for the Modern World (2019), unlike with other religions, there is no such thing as “Christian culture,” only Christians who participate in the culture in which they find themselves. In Brague’s words:
For instance, there is in Judaism a Talmudic cuisine, based on the rules of Kashrut; there are Christian cooks, but there is no Christian cuisine. There is in Islam a so-called prophetic medicine, based on the pieces of advice given by Muhammed in some cases and summarized in some collections of hadith which have this name, prophetic medicine; there are Christian physicians, but there is no Christian medicine. There is in Islam an Islamic dress code, the Islamic veil for each grown-up female, the commandment that each adult male let his beard grow and trim his mustache; there are Christian tailors and hairdressers, but there is no Christian fashion.Are you starting to understand why “Western civilization” is under threat? Christians have no way to defend themselves against traditions grounded in culture, that is, in everybody adhering to certain cultural rules—and yet, without Christianity, cultures die.
This is the paradox on which Western civilization, insofar as it is Christian, depends: what makes a culture “Christian” is not its social institutions or material artifacts.
What a makes a culture “Christian” is its focus on God.
The monks of the Middle Ages understood this paradox. They worked and they prayed, but they did not do so for the sake of “culture.” They worked and prayed out of the desire to praise God as the Creator of heaven and earth, and in order to do so, they developed great art forms, particularly music, liturgical poetry, book-making, painting, metalworking, drama, and architecture.
Great art—or food or clothing or social institutions—does not make a culture great. What makes a culture great is the purpose for which the art is made.
This is why modern art sucks.
It is also why Western civilization is failing.
Without God, “culture” is simply “cult.” Idolatry. The worship of things that human beings have made. Things like statues and Constitutions. Things like flags and governments. Things like ideas about freedom of speech and equality before the law.
All artifacts of human invention.
All things of this world.
But Christ’s kingdom is not of this world.
And yet, the world that God made is good—and worthy of praise as a creature of God.
Everything that we conservatives say we value about Western civilization has its ground in Christianity and the praise of God as Creator of heaven and earth. Paradoxically, the reason that we are at risk of losing those things—our institutions, our traditions of art, music, philosophy, literature, and architecture, our history as nations—is because they were never about “culture.”
Insofar as they were Christian, they were not about us and our desire to be “cultured.” They were about God and giving praise for his gifts.
If we are losing our culture, perhaps it is because we are no longer thankful enough for God’s gifts.
Perhaps it is because we have forgotten the ground of our being in God and are grasping at idols instead.
 |
| God as Creator Bible moralisée, ca. 1220-1230 Vienna, Cod. Vindobonensis 1179, fol. 1v |
Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, trans. Roberts-Donaldson
Rémi Brague, Curing Mad Truths: Medieval Wisdom for the Modern Age (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019)
For further reflections on the importance of Christianity to Western culture, see MedievalGate and Medieval History 101: The Unauthorized Version.
*NB: Even in antiquity, Christians were remarkable for not aborting or killing their children.
Great work!
ReplyDeleteA carpenter with only a hammer sees every problem as a nail. A fresh convert proselytizes loudest. I'm not faulting you, I agree with much of your linking western civilization to Christianity (Accepting your unspoken, Christianity means Catholicism.) but I feel the fall of civilization can not be tied to too tightly abandonment of God, I see it as being due more to the creation of gods; the state, the society, the latest whatever.
ReplyDeleteMore and more I suspect humans are, generally, hard wired to worship. Visiting the Russian wild far East, I remember in a graveyard, the older headstones had Orthodox crosses carved in to the top, the newer ones, an enameled disk with a Russian star containing a hammer and sickle mounded in the same position. I saw both as an expression of faith and worship.
OK, OK, I'll stop picking nits &, none the less, as Unknowns says above, great work!
I am a fresh Catholic, but a lifelong Christian, and a medievalist for over thirty years! Plus being an historian, I tend to take the long view on things. It drives my modernist colleagues nuts, too!
Delete"I feel the fall of civilization can not be tied to too tightly abandonment of God, I see it as being due more to the creation of gods; the state, the society, the latest whatever."
DeleteThis is a strange statement. The creation of more "gods", like "the state, the society, the latest whatever" is due exclusively to the abandonment of God.
Dear FBP,
ReplyDeleteThis post is most excellent. I really like the way you've pulled together St. Augustine, The Letter to Diognetus, and Brague to bring out the essential truth about our Lord not mandating particular cultural norms (beyond his Great Commandment and the Memorial of the Sacred Liturgy), but rather that all Christian culture flows from praise of the Logos.
I think, when examining Religious Cultures, they do stand out because each (Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, etc.) has physical roots in a particular part of planet Earth. Christianity was birthed in an area where there was an already deeply established culture... be that food, clothing, etc. Christians had no day-to-day tradition to bring to places with them except for their Beluef in Christ. No problem with that. Creating beauty in the name of Deity is a worldwide cultural tradition. Consider the incredible works of ancient Egypt, or the ancient marvels like Ankor Wat.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing Christians can do to contribute to any culture is to respect non-Christian cultures as much as they want Christian art, music, etc. to be.
If there is beauty, God appreciates it.
Pre-Islamic Arab tribes had a culture of their own before Islam, Ka'aba was already there, so was Hajj. Hare Krishna is a current of Hinduism that began in the 16th century in India, a place that had a deeply established culture. They strongly advise wearing Vedic clothing, Christians don't ask other Christians to dress like the Romans did.
DeleteThis is so true. This post describes excellently a phenomenon easy to spot but difficult to phrase.
ReplyDelete"...yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred." That reminds me of Chesterton's observation that he started looking seriously at Christianity (I cant' remember whether the Church in particular, or just Christianity in general) because all the arguments against it seemed to contradict each other (it was supposedly too ascetic AND too permissive, to cerebral and too emotional, too high-brow and too much the faith of the unwashed, etc.) and he wondered what the thing was that so many people hated without any one clear reason why.
ReplyDeleteI just learned of you and your work and your faith journey. I am a life-long learner, so your insights expressed in this blog post are most helpful. We are but sojourners with a 'long view'. Your point about culture without purpose is just a cult (idolatry). I will keep you and your efforts to speak up in prayer.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for these lectures. This is nothing like the medieval history and literature courses I took at university. Just got through the lectures and am off to look at your reference links!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. I just saw Milo's book and till then had merely assumed Medieval Studies still to be a bastion of Christian culture in academia. How could it be otherwise? I am shocked that the haters and "deconstructors" have spread their insidious poison there, too!
ReplyDeleteYour series has quickly become my favorite part of unauthorized TV. Keep them coming!
ReplyDeleteI find your use of the sentence, "The monuments of its past are being pulled down.", rather troubling.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt you will claim to be speaking metaphorically of the destruction of the "bastions of tradition", rather than about any literal blocks of marble - but given that you follow that sentence with reference to "heroes" and then throw White Supremacy and racism into sharp focus, I can't help feeling that you really are lamenting the policy of removing statues of Confederate generals from public display.
If I am correct in this assumption, then I think you have made a huge mistake. I'm not even talking about the mild hypocrisy of a Christian bemoaning the destruction of cultural artifacts, when early Christians had no qualms in neglecting and in some cases actively destroying the vestiges of the pre-Christian and non-Christian world.
I'm talking about the tacit offence taken at a move to remove the symbols of racism that were put in place long after Lee surrendered at Appomattox, symbols whose sole aim was to remind African Americans just who still held the power, and what the "natural order" was.
I realise that your field of study does not encompass the modern era - but surely you can't be unaware that these statues are merely the physical tip of an ideological iceberg that has no place in modern society. They are a manifestation of historical revisionism that, as a historian yourself, you should be more than happy to see the back of.
These statues are not great works of art - many deserve to be destroyed simply for offending aesthetic values. Apart from some that have been sacrificed to the gods of "seeing to be doing something that demonstrates worthy contempt" in a show of hammer-smashing of false idols, most will be retired to museums where they can languish in their proper context.
So why so upset by this? And if you really weren't making allusions to this policy, why write something that is too easily interpreted this way?
Why are you assuming I am talking about political monuments? Do you not follow the reports of what is happening in Europe to churches and their art? I was talking about Christianity. Surely you cannot be unaware of the loss of Christian artifacts.
DeleteAs for Christianity's response to previous religious art, have you visited the Pantheon lately? Have you read about any pre-Christian cultures? How? You might want to watch my Medieval History course on Unauthorized.tv. I have been talking explicitly about the process of conversion and its effect on culture.
No offence - but I outlined why it was a reasonable assumption that you were at least making an oblique reference to Confederate statues.
DeleteI'm not aware of what is happening to European churches and their art - is there some sort of Henry VIII style stripping of altar pieces?
I've not been to the Pantheon in over twenty years - remarkable to see such an amazing building still standing when so much didn't. It must have been a real inspiration to the early church builders.
But as I said, I'm not really concerned about the hypocrisy of complaining about the loss of cultural artifacts.
Wait - you're not talking about Notre Dame are you? I mean, I know that wasn't "pulled down" but destroyed by fire during renovations. I'm certainly not aware of any churches being pulled down - and it seems really odd to describe the "loss of Christian artifacts" as "monuments of its past are being pulled down". And I really don't understand how you made a connection between the Christian artifacts you were definitely talking about - and heroes and racists.
So, casting all coyness aside,
I don't believe you. I don't believe that someone who was worried about people nicking the lead from church rooves, would describe the crime as the "monuments of its past are being pulled down", and certainly wouldn't need to invoke racism and heroes.
But just in case- should I go to my local cathedral and mount an all night watch....
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14044/europe-churches-vandalized
Deletehttps://voiceofeurope.com/2017/11/germany-two-hundred-churches-damaged-christian-symbols-destroyed-just-one-region/
https://www.faithwire.com/2019/04/16/french-churches-are-being-destroyed-at-a-terrifying-rate/
oh wow - I did not know. I did not know just how lax your research was. I'm sorry, but I would have expected a decent historian to know about things like verification of sources. I would have thought you might want to link me to actual data, rather than opinion pieces that are sourced from neo nazi websites.
DeleteIntriguingly one of the articles actually compares the vandalism (broad term, that) of churches to that of synagogues and mosques. About 1000 attacks (not specified what an attack consists of) on churches, to 100 on synagogues and mosques - all in France.
Now, can you see the problem with presenting the figures like this?
Did it occur to you to consider the total number of these religious buildings, and how that might skew things. Like for instance the fact that there are 45000 catholic churches in France, and only a couple of thousand mosques. I haven't found any total figure for synagogues in my five minute search- but there are about 30 in Paris, where half the French Jewish population lives. That means that 1 in 45 churches - at least, since I didn't look for non catholic church numbers, and about 1 in 20 synagogues/mosques were attacked in 2018.
So whose religious buildings are suffering more attacks proportionally? And how many attacks on French churches make up for the destruction of 80% of the synagogues in Germany in the 1930's (you know, the culmination of centuries of European antisemitism by "western european christian civilization".
But, again, this is a side issue.
You're just going to ignore that, as much as you would like to wheel out this subject as evidence for your train of thought - it's not. It's obviously not. If you were concerned with churches- why didn't you mention the trend for church closures due to dwindling attendance?
Why did you bring up White Supremacy? NO-one is calling anyone who complains about vandalism of churches a White Supremacist. When I watch my local news and see some little grey-haired parishioner complaining that someone's nicked the candlesticks - believe it or not, my first reaction isn't to call her a Nazi.
So my suspicions are not allayed. I called you out - and you panicked a bit and reached for the closest thing at hand - it must have been in the same general pile of right wing propaganda. But the explanation doesn't tally with how you wrote your introduction.
Now, if I had written a short passage that someone took to be defending Confederate statues, I would take pains to reassure the reader that in fact I didn't support what they stood for, and understood the desire to take them down. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to you to do the same.