Why America confuses Europe

The most recent issue of First Things includes an article that begins with 2 reflections on his past by the author. In the first he recalls asking a German friend in grad school what she found most remarkable about the U.S.. She replied with a story about an evangelical women telling her about her prayer journal. The prayer journal alone would be most unusual for a German, but she kept it on a very advanced home computer. This combination of piety and technology struck the German woman as troubling and at odds with what she thought the modern world should be. Piety was out of place with the modern, technological world. The second reflection was from an academic conference at which a Scandanavian woman spoke on the American interplay of religion and politics. Educated Europeans, she pronounced, understood that Freud was right, that religion is childish illusion and a form of neurosis.

We were recently visited by our friends the Conrads who have lived in Germany with Campus Crusade for the last 30+ years. I asked Duane to have a look at this article and whether he thought it was correct, based on his experience. He agreed: the American view that Christianity is compatible with both democracy and modernity is completely baffling to Europeans.

The article then revisits European history regarding how complete the rejection of Christianity was, from the French Revolution onward. He points out that in France, they even wrote a new revolutionary catechism to emphasize this, which included things like this:

• Question:What is baptism?
• Answer: It is the regeneration of the French begun on 14July1789 and soon supported by the whole French nation.
• Question: What is communion?
• Answer: It is the association proposed to all peoples by the French Republic henceforth to form on earth only one family of brothers who no longer recognize or worship any idol or tyrant.

This catechism no doubt went along with the new role of the cathedral of Notre Dame as a 'cathedral of reason' in which the church had been thrown out. They felt obligated not to just leave the church, but in fact to attempt to completely redefine its terms and its places.

As an American the experience of religion being completely free from any direction or coercion from the government is something I take for granted, but it is in fact quite exceptional. In Europe, the old monarchies were so allied with the organized church, with the church often playing the role of king-maker, the church was both identified with tyrants and in fact supported tyrants. In America the church has been free to hold the government accountable morally. In Europe, they were partners with the government and did not, could  not, hold it accountable for its tyranny. Now, having lost all moral authority, they also cannot hold the culture morally accountable as it has collapsed into depravity. The quest in Europe is for the church to re-gain some moral authority.

It seems to me that the issue in the U.S. is for the church to keep its moral authority. The church must be the voice that holds our culture accountable morally, including the government but not only the government. That is one reason we must call out the immorality of our culture, whether it is abortion, homosexuality, adultery, pornography, or whatever. If the church does not stand as the voice of morality, holding  both the government and the culture accountable, then no one will. No one else can. To speak with moral authority requires a life of moral excellence. Somehow we often lose sight of that in this very free nation, where our faith seems to be just one more consumer good.  The morality of the church is not just a consumerist choice, or just optional. While the church is never free from sinful behavior, it is still held to a higher standard than those who reject the very idea of morality, as Europe has done.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the Islamic world. In places like Iran, the monarchy was overthrown and replaced by a religious tyranny, one tyrant exchanged for another. Will Islam also become viewed as incompatible with freedom, as the church was in Europe?