by Os Guinness
This combination (institutionally understructured, ideologically oversold) is a potent blend that makes the private sphere highly unstable and volatile. One moment the impression is all freedom. Do-it-yourself this, do-it-yourself that, and almost miraculously little worlds arise overnight, replete with new homes, new friends, new lifestyles, new identities. The next moment, the impression is all fragility. The neighborhood changes, separation and divorce are in the air, children drop out, sickness strikes, a job is axed, and in an instant liberty becomes anxiety, which becomes catastrophe. For every newly constructed mini-world that rises, another is collapsing.
Privatized freedom, in other words, is highly precarious. Under-structured, it is the victim of outside forces pulling it apart. Oversold, it is the victim of inner forces tearing it down. What begins with Atlas ends with Humpty Dumpty, and all the king’s counselors, therapists and attorneys cannot put the pieces together again.
Both aspects of this general dilemma apply to the religious world too. How privatized faith becomes under-structured is evident in many of the fringe groups in the charismatic movement—the “off-off-Broadway” of the world of the spirit. They cut themselves off from the Church of the past and from the wider Church around the world, and very often from other local churches too. In place of these, they concentrate on the private and personal, often in a form no larger than the nuclear family or a home fellowship group. Wind surfing requires a somewhat smaller crew.
Where does this lead? Such groups have a social base that is smaller, shakier and shorter-lived. They lack theology, they lack a sense of history and tradition, they lack discipline and accountability, and they lack clear boundaries as to what membership involves. As “thin” communities, built only on choice, rather than “thick” communities, built on custom and tradition, they are easier to join, but easier too to leave. Launched more easily, they capsize more easily. Viewed overnight, they seem to offer the liberation and flexibility of a highly personal and deeply authentic faith. Viewed over the course of a generation, they have all the ocean-going stability of a cockleshell.
The way in which privatized faith is oversold is equally plain. Drop into your local secular bookstore sometime and size up the amazing range of how-to and can-do publishing. Do people want to improve their memory, banish boredom, relax, cope with stress, overcome fears, brighten their love life? It is all there for them, with self-awareness the dominant theme, and success, wealth and peace of mind close behind.
Then visit a local Christian bookstore. The themes and style are precisely the same; only the gloss is different. Ninety percent of the books are about “I, myself, and me.” I was recently shown a title that even I could hardly believe: Me, Myself & I Am—the vision of the Adversary that once terrified Moses on Mount Sinai and launched the culture-shaping power of radical monotheism now domesticated for cute Christian self-help.
As with consumerism, privatization brings out the best in “copycat Christianity.” Originally, Christians mimicked the words of pop songs. Then the copying craze spread to advertizing jingles (“Jesus is the real thing,” brought to you by association with Coca-Cola). Now the instant imitation is the predictable response to every fad. When dieting became fashionable, for example, Propaganda and Disinformation were ready with a line of counterfeit slogans. But they were redundant even before they were released. The Christian ones were far more fatuous. Dieting Christian-style became “Trim for Him.” Then, with the stress shifting to fitness, there came Aerobic Praise, Devotion in Motion, Praise-R-Cise, and the most astounding so far: the album Firm Believer and the slimming slogan, “He must increase but I must decrease.”10 Seriously.
Even Propaganda and Disinformation were taken aback. By traditional Christian standards these slogans were nearly blasphemous. Some other dirty tricksters must be at work. But the slogans proved authentic. Normally, canny copywriters use puns to give their products a leg up, caring little for the original meanings. (The 1970s slogan “Datsun Saves,” for example, takes one of the Christians’ most precious slogans and lowers it to the level of fuel efficiency. “Jesus Saves” is then devalued forever, and no one can ever hear it in the same way again.) Incredible as it may seem, Christians now do the reverse: They use double meanings to sell their product, and not only devalue the original meanings but de-mean themselves in the process.
Firm Believer says it all. With spiritual narcissism so well advanced, “firm believer” is a matter of aerobics rather than apologetics, of human fitness rather than divine faithfulness. Shapeliness is now next to godliness, and to judge by the new “shape-up centers” in Christian stores, training righteous character has given way to trimming the right curves.
Poor old Paul. Wrong again. Bodily exercise now profiteth much—for the fitness gurus at least. Poor old John the Baptist. Decreasing, for him, meant losing his head, not shedding some pounds. But then our bandwagon believers are in danger of losing their heads as well. No wonder such privatized faith has been described as “credit card religion.”11 It takes the waiting out of wanting. It certainly takes the waiting out of waiting on God.
We are now at the stage between the setting and the springing of the trap. This is our operational moment of truth when there is no way out but forward. There remains the one major risk to which I have referred. Instead of sealing faith’s captivity in the private sphere, something might trigger the reawakening of a faith that is both personal and culturally powerful at once. Faith would then elude capture and break out into the larger world again.
That is the worst-case prospect for us. So, I would urge constant vigilance on your field agents at this point. Let me illustrate the danger with two current examples that we are monitoring. At one time they each looked potentially disastrous, but both are going our way now.
The Megachurch Mirage
One of the recent movements that we are following with great care is the church-growth movement, and especially its championing of megachurches. At first sight, these churches looked extremely dangerous, with their passion for reaching out, their determination to overcome stereotypes, and to present the Adversary in the best possible light to those outside the Church. Then, when they get their clients in—and no one disputes their success in doing that—they do an above average job in catering to their “felt needs” of every kind, felt needs that appear to be for gyms and bowling alleys as well as for guitars and PowerPoint presentations.
But we soon saw why the megachurches would be no threat to us. Critics have pointed to other weaknesses in the movement, such as the way their “seeker-sensitive” stance so often becomes a faux version of the spirit of the age. But there is a simpler reason why they do not pose a problem in the end. The megachurches do not rock the boat of privatization. They reinforce it.
There you have it. So long as the mega-booming activities remain in the private sphere and the more successful they are, the better—for us as well as them. They are just a religious equivalent of shopping malls: “Every need under the sun now under one roof.” So let the competition to be “the biggest church in the world” heat up. Let all the interests catered to in the name of “felt needs” proliferate exponentially. Let the conferences describing the latest ministry “innovations” and “out-of-the-box” pastors be hotly over-subscribed. None of it will amount to a hill of beans while it remains in the private sphere. “Privately engaging, publicly irrelevant” is still the yardstick of our success.
The Political Seduction
Along with the story of the megachurches, we have followed the course of the Christian right for thirty years. It goes without saying that here, if anywhere, is a movement that could have undone privatization in one fell swoop. American Evangelicals are the ones who count in the West, and prior to the 1970s they had been privatized for most of the twentieth century. Remarkably, most had even slept through the 1960s, the most radical and influential decade of the century. The comment “privately engaging, public irrelevant” was actually made in the ’60s.
The wake-up year for Evangelicals was 1973, which saw the convergence of Watergate, Roe v. Wade, and the OPEC crisis, so it could have spelled disaster for us when the Christian right emerged toward the end of the ’70s. Imagine what might have happened if an army of William Wilberforces had sprung forth to engage American life. But there was no need to worry. Politicization had affected American life at large since the 1930s, both inflating politics and tempting Americans to rely on it to do more than politics can ever do, so we were relieved when Evangelical political engagement was soon politicized in the same way.
A protest in one of their own manifestos came very close to the mark: “The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the Church becomes ‘the regime at prayer,’ Christians become ‘useful idiots’ for one party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs are used as weapons for political interest.”12
Useful idiots? We could not have said it better as Evangelical leader after leader kowtowed to the White House and danced to the tunes of the political puppet masters. In 1870, Lord Acton said of the Roman Catholic cardinals who pronounced the Pope infallible at the First Vatican Council that “they went in as shepherds, and came out as sheep.” Entering the Oval Office seems to have the same unnerving power over Evangelicals. One Christian leader defended his weakness in confronting a president by saying that he “intended to go in as Nathan, but ended up being Barnabas.”
Naturally, some leaders of the Christian right huffed indignantly at being described as “useful idiots,” while many outside the movement smirked in agreement. But equally naturally, no one did anything, and the protest was ignored. As these brave Evangelicals can all see now, the Christian right failed to achieve almost all its stated goals. More importantly, it so abandoned the traditional Christian maxim of “doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way” that it came to contradict the Adversary’s ways altogether. Instead of his superhuman command to “love your enemies,” “turn the other cheek,” and “do good to those who hate you,” the Christian right became so politicized that it was carried away and became all-too-human, demonizing their foes with relish and indulging in fear-mongering with abandon.
Again the result is delicious. Evangelicals (with our help) have created the most vicious backlash against the Christian faith in all American history, at least among the elites. Listen to the new atheists and their adoring admirers. When Christopher Hitchens throws his well-aimed barbs, charging that “religion poisons everything,” the American elites now applaud wildly and think of the Christian right. These, after all, are the “American ayatollahs” and the “Christian fascists.” Think how far we have come from the dangerously genial days of President Eisenhower and Billy Graham, and it is all progress.
Periodic outbreaks in public life such as the Christian right will never harm us. Politicization is an extreme that is the mirror image of privatization, but it compounds the work of its twin. Whereas privatization undermines the integration of faith, politicization undermines the independence of faith. And where do you think disillusioned Christians go when they give up on a politicized faith?
As always, we remain alert, though never mistake caution for hesitation. Nothing is insecure but thinking makes it so. Apart from these two tripwires I have indicated, nothing stands between our plans and their consummation. The Director calculates that if we can sustain our efforts for one more generation, victory will be ours. The trap is set. We have only to wait for one more lifetime to spring it.
MEMORANDUM 5
The Smorgasbord Factor
FROM: DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CENTRAL SECURITY COUNCIL
TO: DIRECTOR DESIGNATE, LOS ANGELES BUREAU
CLASSIFICATION: ULTRA SECRET
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.” H. L. Mencken might repeat his wicked remark about some of the fast food you will encounter in Los Angeles. For you, perhaps, it may not be so telling since your immediate contrast will be with the English equivalent. But I never think of his remark without recalling my time in Paris. Mercifully, French democracy did not extend to a popular leveling of taste. They know how to prepare food superlatively, and they know how to serve it.
Have you ever noticed how the way food is served affects the person dining? I remember a curious example of this when I was dining in Los Angeles some years ago. I visited your predecessor just as Sunday brunches were becoming the rage, and he took me to the opening brunch at a lavish ocean-front hotel.
The opulence and bounty of the table were magnificent, and the endless choice of dishes strained the term “smorgasbord” to the limits. But what was fascinating was people’s response as they faced such an array. A few ate what I suppose they would have ordered anywhere, taking their pick without a moment’s hesitation, almost as if the sumptuous range were not there. These were the minority.
Most people acted quite differently. Some treated the choice as a challenge to their capacity, an affront to their reputations for never passing up a bargain. Others were less sure of themselves. They wanted to miss nothing that was tasty or new, and probably no meal in all their lives was chosen and eaten so self-consciously. They inspected the full board, weighed the options, asked advice of those ahead, and dithered forever before finally selecting their choice, obviously aware of what they had left behind. Clearly, the surfeit of choices threatened to play havoc not only with their waistlines but also with their confidence and peace of mind.
That is a trivial incident (hardly the sort that would figure in your reports to the Council), but it captures the essence of the third pressure we are bringing to bear on the Church. It was in fact this incident that gave the third pressure its code name—the smorgasbord factor.
Before I go further, a word about your reports on the advance trips to L.A. In terms of theoretical understanding, you have clearly accomplished the switch from counter-apologetics to cultural subversion as swiftly as I hoped. But you hardly seem able to disguise your disdain for the post-secular alternatives to the Christian faith that you have come across in California.
I trust this is only a mild form of culture shock. We hardly expect you to “go native” with some of the target movements, but California is as much the womb of the gods as the dream factory of the Western world. Too great a sense of distaste will be a handicap to you. I would hate to conclude that your life in Oxford was that much of an ivory tower existence.
The Heart of the Matter
The technical term for the third pressure, the smorgasbord factor, is “pluralization,” a dry term for a devastating process. By pluralization, I mean the process by which the number of options in the private sphere of modern society rapidly multiplies at all levels, especially at the level of worldviews, faiths and ideologies—decisively affecting the consciousness of what choice means and how the chooser sees it.1 The key feature here is not just variety but such extreme variety within a single society.
This process of pluralization, unlike secularization, is neither new nor difficult to understand. The first century A.D., when the Church was born, was a period marked by a similar pluralism. The collapse of confidence in the classical gods of Greece and Rome had left a cavernous vacuum, and into it was sucked every imaginable kind of popular philosophy, esoteric cult and mystery religion (including, alas, the Adversary’s).
You might think that this early experience of pluralism would have prepared Christians for resisting pluralization today. On the contrary, they have completely forgotten what it was like. Whereas pluralism once left them more sure of the truth and superiority of their faith in contrast to others, it now leaves them less sure. Indeed, their moral and intellectual caving-in resembles the notorious “failure of nerve” of the pagans that characterized the popular mood of the first century when the classi
cal religions failed.
There are simple reasons for this different response. As the Church grew from a tiny minority to a dominant majority, its experience of being a monopoly disarmed Christians and made them forget what the challenge of pluralism was like. Besides, the experience of centuries of dominance left them with a guilty conscience about all the evils and excesses of that dominance. Most importantly, the modern brand of pluralization is a uniquely powerful one that is at the heart of globalization. And this time it comes hand in hand with both the process of secularization and the philosophy of postmodernism. The result for us has been sensational.
Pluralization, then, is not new. But it does run counter to more normal human experience, which is characterized by a desire for an underlying coherence of things. Every society in history has had differences within it, such as differences of work, rank or tradition. But at the same time, most societies have had an underlying cohesion, and usually the most cohesive force in any community has been its religion.
In Europe, for instance, despite the enormous diversity (such as the differences of language and the presence of Jews, Muslims and atheists), the underlying cohesion was provided by the Christian faith. Hence “Christendom.”
That’s why the traditional role of religion in society has been described as a “sacred canopy”2 or “global umbrella.”3 It overarched all of society and culture, defining the world and determining the way of life for those who lived under its shelter. What it denied was forbidden. What it ignored did not exist. What it affirmed as true was self-evident.