by Os Guinness
In the first place, the new Christian interest in cultural analysis is almost completely restricted to intellectuals. Under the pressure of the so-called knowledge industry, there has been such a drive toward specialization that their own analyses are becoming more rarefied and less intelligible to ordinary people. Congresses, consultations, reports and papers are proliferating, and an impressive new jargon is emerging. Sophisticated talk of “evangelologists” and “missiological hermeneutics” is replacing tactless, old-fashioned phrases like “passion for the lost.” But their mission is no more effective.
This flurry of cultural analysis will not cause us problems. We should even work with this trend, so that Christian evangelism suffers the same fate as apologetics and becomes an almost purely theoretical exercise—well staffed and monitored by a growing band of scholars, experts and consultants who know everything there is to know about evangelism, but never do it.
Dirty Word, Essential Tool
More importantly, Christians are using tools of analysis that do not have a chance of detecting where our most damaging work is being done. As you know, in intellectual circles today there are three main approaches to analyzing culture: the history of ideas, which traces the family tree and intellectual pedigree of thought; cultural anthropology, which interprets thought in the setting of human cultures and customs; and the sociology of knowledge, which interprets the impact of everyday experience on all that passes for knowledge. Fortunately, they have almost completely overlooked the last, which would lead them straight to the heart of our Operation.
Anyone who stopped to think would see that all three approaches are necessary. They do not compete; they complement each other. But if one should be overlooked, far better for us it be the third. It is the least used, but it would be the most useful for the Church at the present moment.
If we can keep Christians working away like beavers on the other two approaches, they will not notice the limitations. Cultural anthropology may be helpful in describing the less-developed world (or the “mission field” as they used to describe it), but is difficult to transfer to the modern world. Similarly, analyzing the history of ideas has its own shortcomings and it has practical difficulties. It is hard enough to do and harder still to make useful sense of to the average person. (After all, how do Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard really influence the nine-to-five world of the exuberant Pentecostal in Buenos Aires or the staid Baptist in Birmingham, Alabama?)
It would be tricky for us, however, if they ever cotton onto the sociology of knowledge.6 It would present them with no such drawbacks. It deals with the modern world and insists on seeing it from the perspective of ordinary experience. Fortunately, the very name “sociology of knowledge” is off-putting enough to sound like a dirty word. And although the core idea is simple and practical, it can easily be surrounded with enough jargon to make it unintelligible. Keeping a smoke screen around the sociology of knowledge is crucial. Once Christians see it as a simple tool and begin to use it, our position is at risk.
Forgive me if I insult you by belaboring the difference between the history of ideas and the sociology of knowledge, but many philosophers have never bothered to grasp it. They only use the former. The history of ideas traces the genealogy or family ancestry of an idea. It follows the line from a “thinker” to his or her “thoughts” to their impact on “the world”—how ideas “wash down in the rain,” as it is put. The sociology of knowledge does the opposite. It traces the line back from people’s “social setting” to their “thoughts,” and shows how the former shape the latter.
As I said, the two approaches are complimentary, not contradictory. Both are needed and both are useful. But when only one is used, large parts of life are not understood properly, which is precisely our secret advantage with Operation Gravedigger. We can subvert the Church through culture because Christians do not use the tool that best analyzes culture at an ordinary level.
There is a delicious irony here. Christians are weak precisely where they should be strong. Because if they were to think about it, they would see that the best proponents of the sociology of knowledge have been Christians—Blaise Pascal and Peter Berger supremely—and that the tool is only an elaboration on what the clearest Christian thinkers have seen all along: that truth seemingly “changes color as it changes climate,” as Pascal put it.7 That said, this is the sort of analysis we dare not let them regain.
There are obviously some areas in which the history of ideas is the very tool they need, so Christians can scrape by without using the sociology of knowledge at all. For example, if they stick to discussing worldviews as ideas only—secularism, humanism, communism, and so on—then the history of ideas approach goes a long way. But many world-views are comprised of far more than philosophical ideas, and the extent to which social contexts play a part would surprise them.
The Answer Is on Your Wrist
In many areas of the modern world, the history of ideas comes up badly short. For example, try asking an average Christian which thinkers have shaped their modern view of time in the crazy, pressured, 24/7 “fast-life” of the advanced modern world in which they find themselves.
“Aha!” they would rush to reply, furiously wracking their brains to recall the details of the latest brilliant Christian worldview seminar that has recently been the rage in Evangelical circles. “The modern view of time is linear and progressive, and is a result of the biblical view of time as it has been interpreted by Augustine and reinterpreted by contemporary thinkers such as Einstein—and then secularized, of course, through scientific time-and-motion, efficiency experts such as Frederick Taylor.”
Such an answer would be right, of course, but only up to a very limited point. What the earnest believer would miss would be a far more obvious shaper of modern time right under his nose—or more accurately, on his wrist: watches and clocks, and such children of the clock as schedules, timetables, diaries, calendars, business plans, efficiency, measurable outcomes, and the like.
Probably our earnest Christian would overlook these things because they are not part of “worldview thinking” and they are so obvious that they are hardly worth attention. But there he would be wrong. The clock has been described as the most important invention in the West, and a central secret of the power of the West. Reinforced and accelerated today by the computer and by nanotechnology, today’s fast-life includes turbo-capitalism, business at the speed of light and war at warp speed. Accelerated time is one of the primary shapers of our modern world, and far more influential than any individual modern thinker. Today’s Westerners are the first generation to organize life at a speed far beyond human comprehension.
Much closer to the mark in understanding the modern view of time would be the Filipino description of Westerners as “people with gods on their wrists.” One quick look, and they’re off. Or the Kenyan saying—“All Westerners have watches. Africans have time.”
Do you know Jean-François Millet’s painting The Angelus?8 As the sun sets and the Angelus rings out, two peasants stop and bow reverently amidst their work in the fields. You could not have a greater contrast than with modern fast-life. Earlier, “sacred time” could even break into the world of work. Today, the secular time of accelerated fast-life routinely breaks into every area of life, including worship and Sunday.
In other areas, the history of ideas has little or nothing to say, so many Christians are hopelessly at sea. Take certain mundane but hardly inconsequential areas which we have monitored over the years, such as the craze for the drive-in church in the 1960s (“Come as you are—in the family car”). It would be futile to try to analyze such four-wheel fellowship solely from the history of ideas.
Some nimble interpreters might claim to “discover” that all along the Adversary’s handbook should have read, “Praise God in the chariot!” But they would miss the obvious point: a culture of mobility plus convenience—Los Angeles par excellence—leads quite naturally not only to drive-in theaters and banks but also t
o drive-in churches. Driving-in is as natural as breathing to your future fellow citizens on the west coast. Many of the L.A. churches are really commuter fellowships. Walking to church only means walking from the parking lot.
These may be trivial examples, and the drive-in church, unlike the impact of fast-life, did not last long. But they all illustrate the same point. Overlay upon overlay, the effect in molding lives through culture looks trivial but is radical. The slow, subtle but all-powerful shaping of culture has all the advantages of a complete philosophical revolution with none of the disadvantages of intellectual sweat.
That suits us down to the ground. Without a proper grasp of the sociology of knowledge, it is highly unlikely that Christians will detect our work before it is too late. Some enemy analysts have recently succeeded in drumming into their people’s minds, “As a man thinks, so he is.” That in itself will not disturb the Operation. But it is absolutely essential that the true relationship of thought and culture as a two-way conversation remains well obscured.
Not Only in California
“While Christians sleep.” Count on the Sandman effect. Together, the two factors I have outlined make the Western Church almost totally defenseless and vulnerable to our subversion. The Church is in a coma.
I must return to your original point, however, and end with a note of caution. We would be piling irony upon irony if our strategy, which is built on subverting strength, were itself subverted at its strongest point. Subversion works best when the process is slow and subtle. It must never be recognizable until it is irreversible. This means that all sectors of the modern Church are to be subverted at once, although obviously in different ways and at somewhat different speeds. The situation must never arise in which the dire subversion of one sector becomes so exaggerated that it is obvious and acts as an alarm to rouse the rest of the Church.
You must take special note of this. The danger of exaggeration is particularly strong in cities such as Los Angeles or Las Vegas, where the local culture is so powerful and distinctive. It is all too easy to produce the bizarre. Your temptation will be to confuse extreme with effective, and so to overplay your hand and give the game away. Strictly between us, this was precisely the mistake made by your predecessor, and the reason why he was “promoted” to another region. Had it not been for the prompt intervention of the Disinformation Department, our whole Operation might have been in jeopardy. As parts of the Church began to stir at the extraordinary things they saw in L.A., Disinformation covered his excesses by soothingly repeating, “Only in California. It could only happen in California …”
The fact is that we are making the Church captive not only in California but also all around America and all around the modern world. For lasting results, remember finesse. Subtle compromise is always better than sudden captivity. See that their dreams are undisturbed.
MEMORANDUM 3
The Cheshire-Cat Factor
FROM: DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CENTRAL SECURITY COUNCIL
TO: DIRECTOR DESIGNATE, LOS ANGELES BUREAU
CLASSIFICATION: ULTRA SECRET
Have you acquired a taste for Lewis Carroll while you have been in Oxford? He could not be more different from the French writers I was working with, but I quite enjoy him for light reading. At any rate, you will remember his celebrated Cheshire cat and the giddying effect it had on Alice. Slowly, beginning with the end of its tail, the cat began to vanish until there was nothing left except the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
“Well,” thought Alice in surprise, “I’ve often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”
That is an excellent picture of our success in subverting the modern Church. Unlike the Cheshire cat, however, the Church is not vanishing of its own accord and cannot reappear at will. Think of it. Less than three centuries since our Operation began, and we have drained the reality out of the Western Church. Where it has not vanished entirely—in fact even where it appears to be flourishing numerically—what is left is little more than an empty, lingering grin—empty, certainly, by contrast with what it once was and it was supposed to be.
Our greatest triumph is in what has long been the Church’s heart-land—“Christian Europe.” For the last six centuries the history of the world was virtually European history, and whoever rules the world of tomorrow will rule a world pried loose from its own traditional past by European ideas, European tools and European precedents. Yet as André Malraux said in the last century, “The death of Europe is the central fact of our time.”1 Do you think it is only a coincidence that the death of Europe followed so closely upon the stilling of the faith that was its heart beat, and that we now have “Christian America” close to a similar tipping point?
“Eurosecularity” is now a settled condition, even a cliché. From Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic to the Urals, the dawning of the modern world has reduced the Church in Europe to a condition that, measured by its former standards, is one of virtual collapse. Even in countries like England, shaped unmistakably by centuries of reformation and renewal, less than one adult in ten attends church each week.2
But how about the Church in the United States, that super-Europe or Europe-across-the-water? At first glance, the picture of Christian faith and practice looks better there. More than eighty five percent of Americans still identify themselves as Christians, and in areas like the upper Midwest, roughly three-quarters of the population are church members.3 But a closer look shows that the boom is curiously limited. The burgeoning movements are in the suburbs and among the middle class, but they are conspicuously absent from the key leadership institutions of the world’s lead society. Where, for instance, are Christians in the universities, the press and media, and the professional associations?
Even where the Church appears to be doing well, the Operation is actually succeeding. The coming of the modern world has led to vital changes within the Christian faith in America even where it is booming, such as the megachurches, so that numerical strength masks spiritual weakness. The same historic Christian words are said and sung in church, but what is shown in Christian lives tells a different story. The indicators of faith are still up (buoyant numbers, increased giving, high spiritual interest and so on). But contrary to the popular impression, the impact of faith on moral, social and political life is declining. One out of every three Americans now claims to have been “born again,” yet that now means everything and nothing and American life goes on much as before.
We are at the point where there may actually be more Christians in America than ever before, with more money at their disposal, more powerful technologies to use, more positions of national influence to fill, and a greater global opportunity with which to respond. But with the corruptions from within, the opportunities will be squandered. With many Christians little or no different from their “pagan neighbors,” much of American Christendom is more modern and more American than it is any longer decisively Christian.
Take an example that I have dined on for a while. There have never been more Evangelicals in any recent presidential administration than under George W. Bush. The President himself, the Secretary of State, two Attorney Generals, the Speaker of the House, the Whip, the Senate Majority leader, and so on—all were Evangelicals, and all in their turn were pronounced inept. So many, so high, and all to such little effect. It would be tempting to stop and gloat, but that is a tiny triumph in the overall picture.
Imagine showing the Church of today to the Christian of yesterday, to that old renegade Paul of Tarsus, for example, or those hyperventilating intellectuals, Augustine, Calvin or Pascal. Misguided as they might have been, they would rub their eyes in disbelief. Compared with the solid body of the Christian thing they knew, what’s left of the Church, as one of her present agents laments, is little more than a “disembodied wraith.”4 If the Adversary were to return to the earth, as he threatened, would he recognize as his followers those
who claim his name?
I will explain as we go on how we have pulled off this historic success, and how we can now exploit it to the full. But bear in mind that the Cheshire-cat factor is only the first of three pressures which we have brought to bear on the Church. You will appreciate the full extent of the damage only when you can stand back and survey the impact of all three pressures together.
This first pressure happens to be the most important, since it is the earliest and most basic. But it is also the trickiest to grasp, and even the confusion works to our advantage. It may not be quick to reveal its secrets, but master it because it is breathtaking when you understand it.
Chaos and Confusion
The technical term for the Cheshire-cat factor is “secularization.” But I have to say at once that this idea has been surrounded with such confusion that many people have given up on the notion completely and now assert that there is no such thing. As you can imagine, this delightful chaos serves us superbly, and it can be traced back to the superb work of the Department of Disinformation.
The idea of secularization has been around for more than two centuries. Put simply, it is the claim that the more modern the world becomes, the less religious it will be. According to this view, Europe is the pacesetter and the future of the world, whereas America is the exception. For its own reasons, the U.S. was said to be out of line. Somehow it was both the most modern country in the world and the most religious of modern countries.