A Culture Against Culture

Little time for blogging or much else, lately, as your humble blogmaster has been blessed with an abundance of paying work and has been keeping his beard to the grindstone.

One line of thought has been bubbling on the back burner; TLBC is primarily about Western culture and how to save it... while having "a jolly time". Of late the following has been running through my brain;

1) It is impossible to maintain a healthy national life without a common culture.

2) It is impossible to maintain or develop a common culture without a common religion.

3) We decided - as a people, at the very inception of our republic - to have no common religion.

Discuss.

(In other words, we've been trying for centuries to cobble together a culture out of the tattered remnants of other cultures with no central organizing principle other than individual liberty. Can it be done? It doesn't appear so.)

Comments

[John Kasaian]

What this country had as a common culture, in the East and from the outset was basically western european, Protestant, colonial and rebellious (in the form of religious sects seeking greater freedom.)We can add: agrarian, maritime & merchantile as well. In the west the common culture was spanish, native american (which differed from the Eastern model since the western people were made up primarily of natives and not european pilgrims) evangelical (in the form of Catholic missionaries,)agrarian and paranoia(adue to the russians, the english as well as the dutch pirates.)

I think the traditional "common culture" has been illustrated as being either Episcopal & New English OR western & "frontier" lawlessness.

OTOH if we take motion pictures as a guide (the successful ones are the movies which portray the characters as we would want to be portrayed---heros that remind us of ourselves as a culture and villains whom we, as a culture, would want to vanquish) It becomes more complicated.
When "gangster" films came on the scene in the 20s and early 30's gangsters were portrayed as evil scum, while in the later 30's as the depression manifested itself more deeply in the plight of the citizenry, "gangsters were portrayed as likeable ordinary people who were "caught up" in illegal activity only for the purpose of surviving some unfortuante turn of events, at which point they were hunted down like animals and executed.

What do today's hit films tell us about how we as a nation want to see ourselves portrayed?

I think one of the great things about Catholicism is that aside from the strong cultures immigrant Catholics have (Irish, Italian, Polish, Hispanic, Fillippino etc..) there is also the unifying traditions and culture of Mother Church. I find it ironic that much of this culture has been suppressed by the Church in the US in the name of "getting along" with those who have been traditionally suspicious of the Church.
I sub in a Catholic school and it would be so easy to restablish much of the culture but sadly many of the teachers are ignorant of this rich culture as well.

[John Kasaian]

The more I think about this the more it seems to be that the best, strongest Christendom would manifest its self in the same way as the best, strongest anti-abortion law, which is to say that it wouldn't be a law at all, but rather a REALITY, and to act contrary to it would be unthinkable(like jumping off a tall building is contrary to the reality of gravity.)

[jacobus]

Disagree with #3.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801396,00.html

Note that our national religion is most certainly NOT Catholic and is in many ways anti-Catholic.

[Tim J.]

Yes, jacobus, the agenda in the article is the very opposite of Distributism. Collectivism is an iron fist in a velvet glove.

[John Kasaian]

That's a very disturbing artice! It is sort of like a Protestant version of Liberation Theology.
Proof that University Presidents shouldn't be allowed to make decisions of importance beyond those effecting, say, the marching band.

[Tim J.]

Sounds like the forerunner of the unctuous World Council of Churches.

[John Kasaian]

I'm beginning to fear that our "national culture" is not too far from that of the Orcs.

[Artaban]

I would argue there was a common religion--insofar as it was Judeo-Christian. While there may have been a multiplicity of Christian denominations and sects, the Bible remained the core commonality between them. Thus were Bibles actually used as the primary text in the early public school system.