Previous essays in this series have explored the matrix of an honor-shame culture in American Southern history, and how the American church found itself in moral bondage to the peculiar institution of slavery. We can see the consequences of the moral captivity of the church that was a prerequisite for the system of race-based slavery and the racial segregation that followed it, and the dangers to religion — for none of us exists in such a sectarian enclave that’s entirely disconnected from our culture — in the context of the segregationist South. An example of the ways in which this captivity was particularly insidious is the way it is evident even in the work of those committed to progress in the area of race relations.

In 1963, eight white clergy wrote a letter to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., counseling a delay in the demonstrations he and others had planned for Birmingham, Alabama. It is of particular importance that these were sympathetic, at least to integration, and not ardent critics of King, nor were they people spewing hate from their pulpits. Quite the opposite. Biographers and journalists have noted how several of them were known to have preached to their congregations in order to support civil rights. All eight had written an open letter to Governor George Wallace the preceding January to chastise him for inflammatory rhetoric. (For more information about these clergy, see this story on AL.com).

A cross section of Birmingham’s white religious leaders, the eight clergy were: Rabbi Milton Grafman of Temple Emanu-El, Catholic Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Methodist Bishop Nolan Harmon, Episcopal Bishop Charles C.J. Carpenter, Episcopal Bishop Coadjutor George M. Murray, Methodist Bishop Paul Hardin, and the Rev. Ed Ramage of First Presbyterian Church. A number of these men continued to work in favor of civil rights after the famous exchange of letters. Influenced by King, Durick became a well-known advocate for civil rights who cared for the poor when he was Bishop of  Nashville between 1969 and 1975 (see his obituary here). In regard to Charles Carpenter, the Bishop of Alabama, Brandt Montgomery has written for Covenant about his stance on civil rights.

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In “Honor, Shame, and the Gospel in the American South, Part I,” I identified several challenges that the mimetic rivalry that race-based slavery and segregation presented to the violence perpetuated, and violence avoiding, culture of the American South. Fundamentally, the oppression of slavery and later, Jim Crow, could only be maintained through violence. This violence was justified by the threat of greater violence should the system be brought down. So strong was the threat of this violence — the idea of a race war, or the softer threat of losing what one had (for poor Southern whites), one’s personal or family status being diminished, or simple alienation from family and neighbors — that it drove the sense of the necessity of violent reprisal to slights real or perceived. To not respond to insults or transgressions of the social order — to not attempt to reestablish the settled equilibrium — was to invite violence or exclusion upon oneself or loved ones.

Jackson Wu, whose comments about sharing the gospel in honor-shame cultures sparked the thoughts for the first essay, offers this instructive Chinese idiom to explain issues of “face”: “People want ‘face’ like a tree wants bark.” Consider what benefit bark is to a tree. Bark protects the tree and makes it identifiable. Likewise, face or honor serves to protect the more vulnerable aspects of personality. Wu writes: “One’s ‘face’ refers to how people value him or her.” So honor and respect do what we would readily conceive, i.e. bringing praise to the person who receives them, but they also do something we might not expect: they offer protection of some sort for our deepest selves. Consider how this reflexive need for self-protection might play out in an honor-shame culture like the American South, with the issues of race added to the mix.

In part one, I shared Gary Ciuba’s observation that “Honor made self-estimation into nothing but an imitation of how the southerner was esteemed by others. And since southerners desired such mimetic validation, they copied the desires of the other so that they would regard themselves as especially well-favored in the looking-glass of communal approval. The result was that the community of honor was a network in which each member was at once a model for everyone else and a disciple of everyone else” (Desire, Violence, and Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction, 21). The construction of this community of honor required that everyone’s behavior, and especially behavior touching upon race, was tightly controlled with transgressions triggering violent responses.

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I recently read a guest post by Jackson Wu on Ed Stetzer’s blog The Exchange.

“4 Keys to Evangelism in Honor-Shame Cultures” discusses the different approaches that might animate a presentation of the gospel in an honor-shame culture as opposed to a conscience-guilt culture. Most of the United States is dominated by a conscience-guilt culture. But scholars of the American South have argued that the culture of the region has been predominantly an honor-shame culture.

Most folks probably identify the cultures of Asia with the tendencies that define honor-shame cultures. However, Wu notes that “so-called “honor-shame” cultures exist in the East and the West.” Indeed, there are often subcultures within a society that maintain a contrasting paradigm to the dominant culture.

In the series of posts which follow, I plan to discuss the particular honor-shame dynamic of the American South, specifically how it is deeply bound with issues of race and class. Then I will take a look at a specific instance of a Christian challenge to injustice that seems to take into account the honor-shame paradigm of the region. Finally, I will look at Wu’s “4 keys” and discuss the ways in which they could be helpful for those of us ministering in the South.

Southern Honor, Southern Shame

In many ways, Southern culture is honor-shame based. Even as the culture of the region is shifting (and these notions may be giving way in favor of a more general American sensibility), they are not of passing historical or sociological interest. This is particularly so since the honor-shame paradigm is so entrenched in the history of racial and class conflict. This raises the question of whether Wu’s insights in regard to presenting the gospel in honor-shame based societies could be considered and fruitfully employed by those ministering in the American South. I believe that they can be helpful and that his insights might provide a way forward for Christians to address some of the lingering ills of race and class division in our region.

The social structure of the American South was determined in the antebellum years by the reality of race-based slavery, and in the postwar period by the reality of slavery’s fitful end and the slide into Jim Crow. The rise of the civil rights movement and all that has transpired since has left the South dealing with and reacting to these issues of honor and shame.

The most effective cinematic portrayal of the Southern honor and shame paradigm that I have seen recently is the movie 12 Years a Slave. I contend that it is a film that — along with Schindler’s list — should be required viewing at some point in high school or college.

The dynamic depicted so well in the film is the underlying violence and palpable sense of coiled tension running underneath the polite veneer of antebellum society. Throughout the  film, one gets the sense that, over and above the cruelty employed to maintain order, even greater violence was promised and close at hand. One clear example of the promise and requirement that dishonor be met with violence occurs  when Solomon Northup (the man whose journal the film is based on) offers what is perceived as an insult to a working-class white man. I don’t believe it is giving too much away to say that this perceived insult spawns a great deal of trouble for Solomon as the man in question seeks to expunge the shameful mark on his character — that is, to save face — so that he is not exposed and opened to violence himself.

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I‘ve written before about the problematic political sorting happening in America’s churches. People have a propensity to seek and attend churches that match their political convictions, rather than to be formed first by their faith and to let that direct their political engagement. This trend is detrimental to the Church, as well as society, and this sorting is part of broader cultural trends that relate to the way people identify with either of the two leading parties.

The origin of many of these trends bears moral scrutiny on the part of Christians, as each has resulted in more homogeneous, polarized, and partisan political movements in the United States. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, has been researching the key fissures in our common life; he and coauthor Sam Abrams put together a ten-point list summarizing the major systemic issues they have identified as being the root of many of our political woes.1

1. Party realignment and purification 1964-92

2. Mass sorting of liberal vs. conservative voters by 1990s

3. Change in Congress 1995 — death of friendships

4. Media fractionation and the Internet (1980s and 1990s, respectively)

5. Residential homogeneity, urban v. rural 1990s

6. End of the Cold War, loss of common enemy 1990s

7. Increasing immigration and racial diversity 1990s

8. Increasing role of money in politics, negative advertising 2000s

9. Generational changing of the guard 1990s

10. Increasing education since 1970s

Christians should notice that the partisan realignment that began in 1964 was to a significant degree prompted by disagreements about racial equality and civil rights. The way this sorting led conservative white Southern Democrats into the GOP, and fundamentally changed the nature of the nation’s politics — leading to a more homogeneously conservative Republican Party, and a more homogeneously progressive Democratic Party — means that racial dynamics have been a largely forgotten foundation of the subsequent culture war, which matured into our current partisan impasse. The shift of the South toward Republican politics was a decades-long process, with the transition arguably beginning as early as Franklin Roosevelt, and continuing under Eisenhower, with a number of factors at work, but the relation to racial tension is undeniable.

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Donald Trump has floated the idea of repealing the Johnson Amendment, which bars nonprofits, including religious institutions, from making political endorsements or openly partisan statements.

I’m agnostic about the Johnson Amendment. I can imagine that, should it be repealed, the activities some Christians would engage in would be unwise, but churches got along before it. Even with the amendment, the Religious Right has managed to alienate much of the nation, and many old-line denominations have alienated a good percentage of the people who formerly filled their pews.

Be that as it may, the proposal should lead us to consider the ways in which the Church should or shouldn’t be political.

My basic thesis is simple: It is intrinsic to the nature of the Church to be political. It can’t be avoided. In relation to the world as it is, the Church offers an alternative politics. Even the name church, deriving as it does from assembly (ekklesia), indicates its political reality. In the ancient world, the word sometimes referred to the governing body of the polis, or ancient city.

Nevertheless, I recognize that some may chafe against my use of political, taking it as they do to mean something fundamentally partisan. The fact that it is strange for us to think of the political, divorced from the dominant parties of our political system, illustrates something of the problem.

Ostensibly, the very fact that we have a political system — a social ecosystem or ordering of society — within which the parties function should demonstrate that political rightly has a broader connotation than the parties. The parties (and not only the big two) represent, at their best, different philosophies of, or approaches to, ordering our common life as a nation. But by and large, on the most important matters, their differences relate to prudential decisions about how to prioritize issues, or what manner of solution to offer.

The tools they use to till our societal soil, and the seeds they plant, are partisan. The tilling and planting is politics.

The Church, then, is by nature political, but it is not naturally or normatively partisan. At exceptional times, the politics of the Church may require taking up a partisan banner, but such times are exceedingly rare. Partisanship is most often counterproductive to the Church’s immediate political goal: demonstrating to the world a different way of being a community, proclaiming God’s kingdom to an earthly empire, and relativizing all earthly loyalties in light of the cross.

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A good deal of digital ink was spilled over the incident at the Cincinnati Zoo, and it is already fading from our collective consciousness: the 4-year-old boy who fell into the enclosure, and the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla, Harambe, who was put down by the zoo in order to protect the child. There were the usual recriminations when tough decisions have to be made and the usual outrage about the death of an animal, particularly an endangered one.

Taking the time to analyze situations — investigating, asking questions, or playing “what if,” assuming we don’t couple those things with outrage, threats, or abuse — can be helpful. One of the few ways our response to challenges may improve is through asking tough questions. But in this and other recent situations, few people are actually engaging in anything constructive (though some pretty good memes were inspired by it; see below).

Several articles have discussed the situation from Christian perspectives; our friends over at Mockingbird wrote two of them. Sarah Condon’s piece was a thoughtful and compelling plea for grace, reminding us that we are all closer than we realize to our own 15 minutes of public shame and scorn:

Life is full of gorilla pit failures. But we live in a culture that is only interested in talking about failure if there is a perceived victory to absolve the mistake. We long to control and to rise up from our lives, but there is no victory here. A boy was almost killed and his parents will be wounded forever. There is no “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” that will fix their hearts after such a terrifying moment. Certainly the newsfeed backlash must make the entire experience so much worse. Sometimes terrible things happen, and there are no mechanisms for blame that will make anyone feel better. (“You Are One Day Away From Being Tabloid News: Why We Are All the Gorilla Pit Mom,” Mockingbird [June 1])

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And Eric Dorman (full disclosure: a friend and parishioner of mine) has written about how the response to this event and our culture of perpetual outrage reflect our own failings and sinfulness:

And before anyone starts to feel smug, let’s remember that Outrage’s psyche comprises more than one part. Right and left, young and old, religious and non, Buckley and Vidal — we’ve all created this monster. The beast is our child. (“Feeding the Beast: Grace for an Outraged World,” Mockingbird [June 2])

Indeed, Dorman reflects, we aren’t just purveyors of outrage, we’re addicted to it. But why? Why are we so quick to show outrage? Why does our collective blood run so hot at the deaths of animals, or the latest offense against public sentiment, yet so lukewarm or cold at the deaths of our fellow human beings, whether it be people dead from war, famine, gun violence, or other forms of murder? Some have tried to answer the question, arguing that we react so strongly to the deaths of animals because we anthropomorphize them, and we get caught up in the mob mentality. Meanwhile, we have been conditioned to accept human suffering, and are perhaps only jogged from our stupor by events of outstanding horror and brutality, such as the mass shootings in Orlando.

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Politicians — at least the ones running for president — love theme campaign songs. I don’t know if it’s because they believe they’re a quick way to get a crowd fired up, or if it makes them feel like superheros or professional wrestlers. Whatever the reason, they like playing them when they come out to speak. Sometimes they get in trouble for using songs without permission, especially if their political views don’t align with those of the artist.

Sometimes, the songs politicians pick may reveal something about their personality or their values. A politician who chose the Avett Brother’s song “Ill with want” as their theme would likely get my vote.

The Avetts are one of my favorite bands, hailing from my home state of North Carolina. The guys from Concord have been getting some attention for the past few years, but for a while they labored on while being outshone in the public eye by some of the bands they’d influenced, like Mumford and Sons. The Avetts were raised in a church going family and occasionally still sing gospel songs with their dad and other family members at their concerts or at festivals like Merlefest.

Their lyrics are often evocative, and where some bands and musicians make their case on lyrics that do their best to avoid particularity, the Avetts seem to thrive on it. Rather than speaking about a sort of generalized human experience, their songs convey a sense of solidarity through the shared experiences of specific places, relationships, and events.

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Perhaps surprisingly, it sometimes seems they’re channeling Augustine through Americana music. Some of these semi-Augustinian ideas emerge precisely at the moments that the Avetts wrestle with the assumptions of American life, precisely where our politics need challenging.

In “Down with the Shine” they sing:

There’s nothing good because nothing lasts
And all that comes here, it comes here to pass
I would voice my pain but the change wouldn’t last
All that comes, it comes here to pass.

Such lyrics relativize the pursuit of possessions, and even achievement. Their song “Head full of doubt, Road full of promise” includes a verse that could be seen as a critique of partisanship itself, as well as the idea that somehow something outside of ourselves can provide our identity — a totem, to use Walker Percy’s analogy from Lost in the Cosmos — such as a favorite team or a favored political candidate or party:

When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it.

Nowhere, however, is their invocation of the Augustinian spirit more noticeable than in “Ill with want” from their album I and Love and You. I have written about aspects of this song before, but I want to explore it more deeply here. I’ve chosen “Ill with want” because I think it represents the most lengthy and sustained example of a helpful critique of the consumerism — the “affluenza” — of our culture.

Beginning with the first verse, the song pushes back against a number of assumptions held closely by American society:

I am sick with wanting and it’s evil and it’s daunting
How I let everything I cherish lay to waste
I am lost in greed this time it’s definitely me
I point fingers but there’s no one there to blame.

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