The first full chapter of Clapp’s book is entitled “America’s Southern Accent” and shows, quite effectively, that when we talk about American culture generally we are largely talking about Southern culture — “but now southern identity, like the Mississippi in flood, has surged well beyond the banks of the South as a region. In so much of its culture, religion, politics, and society, all of America now speaks with a southern accent” (p. 1). I believe this is exactly right, although critics will not be slow in pointing out (correctly) various exceptions to the pattern. Not everybody likes grits, however much they ought to. And the point is not that the ante-bellum South, some sort of Jeffersonian agrarianism, has conquered, but rather that the South in what it has grown to become — good, bad, and indifferent — has in fact become the dominant region of this country. This drives our music, our wars, and our worship.
This is what Clapp is referring to when he says “the South did not lose the Civil War” (p. 2). Certain character traits, long nurtured in the South, help explain why America as a whole is so strikingly different than Europe. Clapp notes the possibility that this has to do with “ancestral temperament,” and I would probably weight that more heavily than he does. I agree with Clapp that the history of the region is the dominant factor, but then go on to note that the hardscrabble Celts who settled that region had a lot to do with why the story went the way it did.
“Then, under the humiliating shadow of the Lost Cause, Wolfe, Faulkner, O’Connor, and otghers made vital contributions to the national culture. From an even more subjugated position, black southern Americans built on liberating spirituals and intricate African rhythms to brew jazz and the blues. And it was steeping in the blues pot that eventually gave the nation — and the world — country music, rock music, and soul music. American popular music simply is southern music” (p. 15).
Woven into the musical, political, and military history of the region, we see that revivalistic (and very individualistic) Christianity has long dominated the South, and has come to dominate American evangelicalism generally. There is a lot to criticize in that individualistic approach to God, but there is also a lot that is admirable. God has used it in ways we could not have anticipated (keeping the faith alive in America among them) — once again, God draws straight with crooked lines.
It is when Clapp leaves off observing and starts prescribing that the trouble starts.
“Though the United States has not been and ought not to become a ‘Christian nation,’ the predominance of Christian citizenry past and present, as well as the inherently public (and not merely private) nature of historic Christianity, means that this faith — along with others — must be given its due in the unfolding of the American identity” (pp. 7-8).
I can understand, for example, a pessimistic Christian saying something like “no nation
can become genuinely Christian.” That is erroneous, in my view, but it is coherent. Such a one believes that God has ordained human history in such a way that the gospel will not successfully convert any of the nations of men. I believe that the nations will one day be as full of the knowledge of God as the sea is wet. That is what we call a difference of opinion over a question of fact. But when Clapp says that our country
ought not to become a Christian nation, and he says this as a Christian, he is saying, by implication, that certain people have a spiritual
duty to refuse to believe in Jesus. Which I cannot get my mind around.
This implication is even more clear when we take note of what Clapp acknowledges elsewhere. He genuinely appears to want to have it both ways.
“Culture is a cultivating process that forms a certain kind of people and persons. Language, rituals, purpose-defining stories, and artistic creation are at the heart of culture . . . Accordingly, it is clear why comprehensive cultures each have a sort of religion at their core” (pp. 12-13).
Yes, it is clear. All cultures have a religion at the core, and to use the words of Tillich, whom Clapp cites, all societies have a shared set of “ultimate concerns.” And when that shared set of ultimate concerns comes out in the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is no way to keep that faith from shaping the culture. As the faith is imperfect, so will the shaping be. But give it time. Yeast doesn’t work through the loaf in five minutes.
Clapp wants some sort of tight, organic relationship, and he acknowledges that the faith is central, not peripheral. But then he gets tangled up.
“Rather, let us imagine that the slow, rolling train is the kingdom of God, witnessed and pointed to by the gospel and the church’s life under the gospel, but not contained or controlled by any earthly institution — not by the church and certainly not by the nation-state America” (p. 18).
And here we can identify the problem. Clapp believes that when a nation “becomes Christian” this puts the kingdom of God in a subordinate position. When the kings bring their honor and glory into the New Jerusalem, Clapp reverses this, taking it for the ministers and elders bringing their honor and glory into the corridors of secular power. He is opposed to the Christianization of societies because he is concerned that the gospel will then become just one more tool that the honchos will use to manipulative the masses. And he is right to be concerned — that
has happened, and can happen again. And so it comes down to faith — do we believe that the blessing of Abraham will come to all the nations or not? I agree with Clapp that the kitchen can become quite messy, but there is a glorious dinner at the end of it. All Clapp can see is the messy kitchen, and never any dinner.
But notice where this takes him. Not only does the nation-state America not have the right to control the kingdom, in his view, neither does the church — “not by the church” in the quote above. This means that Clapp doesn’t believe in the Christianization of the church any more than he believes in it for the public square. Which seems kind of odd.
But this means (surprise!) that Clapp’s faith is very similar to the faith he is describing as arising out of the South — individualistic, radically revivalistic, non-institutional, and private. The faith of the South is Baptist and yet still public and culture-shaping. Clapp’s is private, with occasional public forays, and anabaptist. And he doesn’t know which way to go. He wants to go with the Christians, but only if they don’t go too far in that direction. “I will march with your army, and fight and die, if needs be. But if it starts to look as though we might win, I’m outta here.”
