Just one item today. I wouldn’t want you to waste time on anything other than whetting your appetite here and then satisfying it by reading the essay this is all about.
America is the exemplification of what I call the project of modernity. That project is the attempt to produce a people who believe that they should have no story except the story that they choose when they had no story. That is what Americans mean by “freedom.”
(Stanley Hauerwas, quoted by Rod Dreher)
That quote struck me as a remarkable way of expressing an insight I was exposed to decades ago. The commonest formulation I’d heard is summarized as “the shift from status to contract” – i.e., the diminution of obligations that come from who we are rather than from what we’ve chosen.
But Hauerwas’s formulation, it turns out, runs deeper than that: We’re exonerated, even if we chose, if we didn’t fully appreciate what we were letting ourselves in for.
I try to help Americans see that the story that they should have no story except the story they choose when they had no story is their story by asking them this question: “Do you think you ought to be held accountable for decisions you made when you did not know what you were doing?” They do not think they should be held accountable for decisions they made when they did not know what they were doing. They do not believe they should be held accountable because it is assumed that you should only be held accountable when you acted freely, and that means you had to know what you were doing.
I then point out the only difficulty with such an account of responsibility is that it makes marriage unintelligible. How could you ever know what you were doing when you promised lifelong, monogamous fidelity? I then observe that is why the church insists that your vows be witnessed by the church, since the church believes it has the duty to hold you responsible to promises you made when you did not know what you were doing.
The story that you should have no story but the story you choose when you had no story also makes it unintelligible to try having children. You never get the ones you want. Americans try to get the ones they want by only having children when they are “ready.” This is a utopian desire that wreaks havoc on children so born, just to the extent they come to believe they can only be loved if they fulfil their parents’ desires.
Of course, the problem with the story that you should have no story except the story you choose when you had no story is that story is a story that you have not chosen. But Americans do not have the ability to acknowledge that they have not chosen the story that they should have no story except the story they choose when they had no story. As a result, they must learn to live with decisions they made when they thought they knew what they were doing but later realized they did not know what they were doing. They have a remedy when it comes to marriage – it is called divorce. They also have a remedy regarding children – it is called abortion.
(Emphasis added)
Dreher paraphrases the conclusion of Hauerwas’s piece, which I hadn’t mentioned is titled The End of American Protestantism:
This ethos, says Hauerwas, is deadly to the Church. The Church has a story to tell, a story that we are engrafted onto. Says Hauerwas, “A church so formed cannot help but be a challenge to a social order built on the contrary presumption that I get to make my life up.”
In this sense, the Church has not conquered America, says Hauerwas; America has conquered the Church. The only churches that will survive are those that hold on to their own story, the one they didn’t choose, but rather receive — even though it puts them in fundamental opposition to mainstream American culture.
Need I mention that Orthodox Christianity, the Church which receives, preserves, and transmits Holy Tradition intact, is by definition the holder of something it didn’t choose, but received?
Hauerwas is the most important thing you’re likely to read today. Don’t miss it.
But steel yourself. It’s one hammer blow after another. Their force may be the source of the strong reactions in Dreher’s comboxes – initally, at least, very negative toward Hauerwas.
The rest of this blog is excerpts.
Bonhoeffer accurately characterized America Protestantism as “Protestantism without Reformation.”
American Protestants do not have to believe in God because they believe in belief. That is why we have never been able to produce interesting atheists in America. The god most Americans say they believe in just is not interesting enough to deny …
“I do not know if all Americans have faith in their religion – for who can read to the bottom of hearts? – but I am sure that they believe it necessary to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion does not belong only to one class of citizens or to one party, but to the entire nation; one finds it in all ranks.“ (Quoting Tocqueville)
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As a result Americans continue to maintain a stubborn belief in a god, but the god they believe in turns out to be the American god. To know or worship that god does not require that a church exist because that god is known through the providential establishment of a free people. This is a presumption shared by the religious right as well as the religious left in America. Both assume that America is the church.
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So an allegedly democratic society that styles itself as one made up of people of strong conviction in fact becomes the most conformist of social orders, because of the necessity to avoid conflicts that cannot be resolved. (1)
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… [T]he fear of death is necessary to insure a level of cooperation between people who otherwise share nothing in common. That is, they share nothing in common other than the presumption that death is to be avoided at all costs.
That is why in America hospitals have become our cathedrals and physicians are our priests. Accordingly medical schools are much more serious about the moral formation of their students than divinity schools. They are so because Americans do not believe that an inadequately trained priest may damage their salvation, but they do believe an inadequately trained doctor can hurt them.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 