The Public Face of Christianity Has Become a Cartoon

It was the hat, you see, that smile, that smirk.Julie Irwin Zimmerman, writing for The Atlantic, called it a Rorschach test, which is the best way to think of that viral scene involving students from Covington Catholic High School and Nathan Phillips. Proving true what C.S. Lewis wrote: What you see and hear depends upon your point of view but also upon what sort of person you are.It's why, for me, seeing that hat and that student's smile, I immediately recalled the darker images of our past, specifically those background faces in pictures from a half-century ago, those cold, gleeful, indifferent faces preserved in black and white photos of 1960s sit-ins. To be honest, that's what first came to mind. But then also came images of Charlottesville; my mind couldn't help but draw in dark lines on my brain all those ignorant, angry men -- and from there, other images and fears, both the history and future of our inhumanity. It is, I'll confess, what instantly flashed in me. Because I guess that's my bias, bent by memory and fear.But then the lens widened and a more complex story emerged. Perhaps my first associations were wrong. Who provoked whom? Was it a smirk or a smile? Why the chanting? Why the laughing? And where were the adults? And who the hell were those guys with Bibles in their hands taunting teenagers? All of it unfolding in an addictive drama of social media: the fragments, the judgments, celebrity tweets, all of it over the course of 48 hours playing out like some surrealist play. The end product: confusion, a malaise of opinion, a few apologies and a few more dug in. But, of course, no conversions, no weakening of the tribes.It's why this strange scene at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial has taken on the significance it has. Because it's an icon of us, the image of two people not speaking to each other, surrounded by onlookers, laughers, videographers, live streamers. Evidence that the image has defeated the word, it's proof of our new sub-rational age, an age of screened social power, an age of "influencers" and digital hatred. A world collapsed into media, it's conditioned each of us to render judgments based on imagery and aesthetics alone, associating images, just as I did in an instant, tweeting and retweeting, crossbreeding confusion. It is what we've become: confused fools taunting each other, dancing, chanting, shouting at each other at the foot of the memorials of our past.But again, that hat. It is, among it all, what I can't get over, an image I can't help but associate with other images. And it's where my religious faith comes into it, because these kids were from a Catholic school, there on a march for life, protesting, motivated supposedly by their faith. Now it's not a question of rights or the freedom of expression or the properly Catholic distinction between the political and the partisan I'm interested in; although, of course, those are important questions. Rather, for me, as a Catholic, it's first a question of witness and beauty and the problem of the sublimation of gospel to the lesser hegemonies of culture and state and, consequently, the loss of Christianity's public voice.You see, Christianity and Catholicism and the "ideals" taught by the faith are what motivated Nick Sandmann's calm in the face of Phillips' drum; so Sandmann says. An explanation I'll accept, it's why I'm less bothered by his smile than I was at first. But still, that hat. If faith were central, why not wear an image of the crucified? Or perhaps the Virgin? Why not the aesthetic of charity instead of the political, the divisive? That's why I can't get over the hat, because it symbolizes the humiliation of Christian witness, the faith pimped for politics. It betrays a Christianity so hollow of imagination and guts that it covers itself in the pathetic mantle of political interest instead of embracing the vulnerable charity of God. That is, it reveals that many of us just don't look like Jesus anymore, that we show instead something less, something grotesque. But this is to get mystical and theological and to touch upon our grave spiritual sickness.Put simply, if seen as a clash between young Christians and others hostile to their position or persons, then, from a Christian point of view, the Lincoln Memorial confrontation was failure. If the whole spectacle is an icon of America, of our devolution as a people, it's also an icon of the state of American Christianity, or at least certain segments of it. The beauty of holiness traded for campaign swag and for the promises of politicians: It's why the public voice of Christianity has become a cartoon. Joshua J. Whitfield is pastoral administrator for St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and a frequent contributor to The Dallas Morning News.What's your view?Got an opinion about this issue? Send a letter to the editor, and you just might get published.  Continue reading...

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