Tradition of the Church
Lost in the ‘60s

Tradition is anti-individual. In the 1960s in the USA, individualism became important. A traditional culture requires shared virtues and character traits in individuals agreed upon by the members of the culture as desirable. And, virtue and character are mediated by institutions of authority such as families, voluntary associations, schools and churches. The problem is that in the turbulent ‘60s all institutions of authority were under attack.

The result was that the “shared” ideals of the culture were not longer recognized as shared. Many were seen as the tools of oppression and control of the authorities who were only interested in staying in control. When the cry “Hey, hey, ho, ho, western civ has got to go!” was raised at Berkeley, it was because younguns no longer wanted to hear about the values of dead white men who represented the established order. The ‘60s radicals wanted freedom from the past. They were seeking a divorce from tradition. It was sociological postmodernism. I want my own social order because there is no correct, overriding social order binding on all folk. What is your tradition does not have to be my tradition.

Autonomy of the individual became the currency of the realm. And, the rest is…as they say…”history”. The unifying factors in our culture are few. Try to name a few. How about, anti-smoking? Global warming is trying to establish traction, but its 1st cousin environmentalism comes very close to universal acceptance. After all there is an “Earth Day” that is all about our collective responsibility to the earth. My dear wife reports even Campbell Soup is packaging with green labels as proof of their eco-friendliness. Question: If Lucky Strike brought back “Lucky Strike Green” [which for all you sub 60s, went to war in WW II] would that make smoking Luckys o.k.?

In academia, race, class and gender are big unifying issues. At least in the framework of being the apex of an enlightened culture, reaching a classless, raceless and genderless society would be a worthy goal. This has been difficult to achieve in practice since it takes tipping the scales in favor of the heretofore unfavored in order to achieve equity. And, this has taken decades of the full weight of government power to bring about redistribution between the classes and give advantage to minorities of color and sex. It is rather astonishing that the one authority that is acceptable is the government when used to advantage the disadvantaged!

There is a significant intersecting of this anti-authoritarianism and the contemporary church. When the culture was captured by those who wanted nothing to do with institutional tradition, the church reacted in one of three ways: Who cares, or separation from the culture, or adapting to the culture. We can all try to cubby hole into those responses certain denominations or churches with which we are familiar. But, the important thing to see is that “engagement” is not apparent in any of the responses. Whether it is “us v. them” or “keep away from them” or “we’ll become just like them”…there is a failure to take culture seriously except for their personal “hobby horse” reasons.

In what has become the modern evangelical church this is what we see. We are to pluck individuals from the culture and introduce them to Christian music, Christian entertainment, Christian novels, Christian exercise programs, Christian diets….you get the point. The Christian has to like Veggie Tales and CCM to be truly redeemed. Salvation is reduced to providing the saved with alternative consumption and entertainment opportunities. No thought is ever given to redeeming the culture by bringing folks to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and then impacting the world, and everyone in it, for Christ. Evangelicalism is busy creating a sub-culture that is waiting for the Rapture.

This is no different from the secular minded individual. That person has no time for spiritual matters. Those are private issues and have no impact on culture. Is that not the same result reached by our modern evangelical? Spiritual matters are all about separating us from the culture and creating our own culture. The big difference is that the non-Christian cares about his culture. When you think about it, there is a quite frightening result in both cases…faith is privatized!

The culture we live in is only good for scoring spiritual points. The Christian faith has become highly individualized. The Church Fathers, the history of the Church, the “solas” of the Reformation, none of it has any impact on the 21st century church. Acts tells us the apostles turned the world upside down for Christ. That is no longer a concern of the 21st century church. The institution of the church as the supernatural authority of Christ in this world to bring the Kingdom to fruition has been lost. Lost in the tsunami of anti-traditionalism leading to radical individualism all spawned by the social earthquake of the ‘60s.