The Gospel According to the Joneses: Christianity and the Middle Class

In my last post, my friend, Lindsay (who has a great blog you should check out), left a comment posing a question too big to answer in a simple reply:

How did Christianity in America become the realm of the middle class?

It’s really a strange phenomenon that if one were to make a mental picture an American Christian, they’d likely see a White suburbanite. In most countries, this wouldn’t be the case. For starters, there simply is no middle class in many countries. However, I think it’s also significant that in most countries, especially in countries where the church is growing, Christianity is more frequently associated with the poor.

So why, then, is Christianity in America associated more with the middle class than with the poor? What does a religion whose leader taught “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” have to offer a class of people who are economically more stable and wealthier than the majority of the world? Why would a class of people so obsessed with “keeping up” with fashion, technology and material possessions be so ready to call Lord the one who told one man to sell all the had and give to the poor? I have a number of theories, and I’m guessing the truth lies in a combination of these and other ideas.

1.) America’s heritage and values. Christian values have been woven into the story of America, at least as many people tell it. The first (European) settlers came seeking religious freedom. Our founding fathers designed the law of the land around Christian values. Even early on, people considered America a “Christian nation.” (This is despite all of the very unChristian pieces of our history, like stealing land from natives and participating in the human slave trade, but that’s a whole other blogpost.) Christianity in many ways is considered as American as baseball and apple pie. And who likes baseball or apple pie more than the middle class?

2.) The evangelical church’s evangelism strategy in the 20th century. I’ve become more aware of this as a church planter. For years, the “church planting model” for evangelical churches in America was something like this: 1.) find a new developing suburb. 2.) buy several acres of land there. 3.) build your church. 4.) watch the people come. This is how most evangelical churches grew, particularly the evangelical megachurches, which are almost always located in the suburbs. The problem is that while this was happening, most were completely ignoring the fact that demographics in the neighborhoods of existing churches were changing, especially in the city. Most urban churches, however, continued their ministries as culturally White, middle-to-upper-middle class congregations, despite their surrounding context becoming increasingly less wealthy and less White.

3.) Our consumerism. I’m becoming more and more convinced that this has been the source of much of the church’s problems in the past 50 years. Along with buying land in a growing suburb and building there, church planters in the 20th century (and many still) stressed the importance of finding your churches ‘niche’ ministries. The underlying assumption was that everyone was looking for a church; your church just needed to provide what ’seekers’ were looking for. This resulted in church buildings that resemble shopping malls and movie theaters, church music that imitated top 40 pop music, and ministries targeted to very specific demographics. This consumerist model of doing church led to divisions among Christianity; most evangelical churches today can be linked to a particular race and economic class. (The consumerist model also led to the church losing it’s appreciation for beauty and shifting its focus more toward cultural imitation as opposed to culture making. But again, a whole other blogpost…)

4.) We’ve watered down the gospel. A friend of mine who used to work for the administration at my alma mater, Grove City College (a college that’s about as Christian middle-class as you can get) once said to me, “Grove City College talks a lot about ‘Christian values,’ but they never talk about Jesus. Jesus is far too radical for Grove City College.” I think this is an absolutely true assessment (at least in terms of the administration and overall culture of the place). The Christian values of the Christian American middle-class are an incomplete, if not at times inaccurate, representation of the teaching of Christ and his first followers.

To sum up, Christianity has become the realm of the middle class mainly because the evangelical church in America has targeted them in the past century. The evangelical focus on church-planting in growing suburbs often left many urban and rural areas neglected. Our focus on the middle-class included ministry models that reinforced already-present class divisions in America, and failed to challenge middle-class Christians with portions of the gospel that challenge middle-class values.

“Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays”… part two: the issue isn’t persecution. it’s effective witness.

Last week, I began reflecting on the “battle” fought every December over whether the greeting “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” is more important in public discourse. I questioned whether Christians ought just to give up the battle and begin seeing the “Holiday Season” as a holiday completely different from Christmas. You can read it in its entirety, along with the comments, here. The post generated more comments than anything else I’ve ever written on here (granted, soliciting comments through my facebook status probably helped that). Based on people’s comments, and on my own further reflection, here are some conclusions I’m coming to:

It’s simply erroneous to imply that stores instructing their employees to say “Happy Holidays” and not “Merry Christmas” is anything resembling persecution for customers who happen to be Christian. Not to mention, doing so would also be insulting to those saints from previous ages and currently in other parts of the workd who have faced actual persecution and even martyrdom. That being said, if a store clerk wanted to say “Merry Christmas” and faced negative consequences from his employer for doing so, that would raise some free speech issues and be closer (but still probably not equivolent) to persecution.

The fact that this battle is happening, though, does raise contextual issues for Christians seeking to give faithful witness. Christmas has been commercialized. So much so , I would argue as I began to do in the last post, that the result is a completely different holiday bearing little-to-no resemblance to its original significance. The problem is that most Christians have responded one of two ways. Either they’ve completely given in to the whims of the culture and no longer celebrate Christmas as a Holy Day, or they just complain a lot and expect the culture to change back to the way things were. Actually, most Christians, paradoxically do both.

Christians need to find a new way to respond. For the church to simply go along with this cultural change is to give up on giving faithful witness to Christ. For the church to try to change things by flexing the flabby remnants of its influential cultural muscle is simply delusional, and borderline unethical. Christians need to respond in a way that is subversively counter-cultural, not for the sake of winning back Christmas, but for the sake of showing the world the value of following Jesus.

So, what does that look like? I have a few ideas, but I”m more curious to hear what you all think? How do Christians faithfully celebrate Christmas and subvert our culture’s commercialized “Holiday Season”?

“Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays”… Part One:Is It Time To Give This One Up?

For about 20 years or so now, my mom has owned a Hallmark store. I would work there when I was in high school and during college breaks. Obviously, I would work more at Christmas time. On several occasions there, I would have conversations with other employees about the appropriate phrase to say to customers after ringing them up. Some insisted on saying “Happy Holiday” (or something similar), and claimed that saying “Merry Christmas” would be offensive. I, being the proud (and stubborn) Christian that I am insisted on saying “Merry Christmas,” and a few others did with me. People did notice, and some even commented. Interestingly, I never once heard someone say they were offended. Instead, I kept hearing people (Christians, or at least nominally) tell me how much they appreciated that, and they couldn’t stand hearning “Happy Holidays.”

Christians seem to think that they’re losing something in a culture that says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” To give another example, just check out this new song by the Christian Singing Group “Go Fish” called “Christmas With a Capital C.”

The more I think about this, the more I wonder if it’s just time for Christians to give this fight up. Maybe it would be better for the sake of our witness simply to recognize that American culture, broadly speaking, does not celebrate Christmas. Christmas is a holiday marked by worshiping God for sending his Son, Jesus Christ into the world. Our culture celebrates “The Holiday Season,” a holiday that’s not Christmas, but happens to be celebrated at the same time of the year. Maybe instead of insisting that our neighbors and local businesses acknowledge our celebration of Christmas, it’s time for us to acknowledge that our culture is no longer interested in celebrating Christmas per se. Then we can respond missiologically rather than by fighting a culture war and longing for a return to Christendom and the cultural privileges that came with it.

For the half dozen or so of you who read this, I”m curious to know your thoughts. Has the American “Holiday Season” become something entirely different from Christmas? Should Christians acknowledge this? If so, is it ok for Christians to celebrate both Christmas and Holiday Season, or should Christians reject the alternative?

And since WordPress now lets you create polls:

We Need to Repent: A Reflection for the Beginning of Advent

If this article from the NY Times isn’t a call for us to repent of our consumerism and greed, I don’t know what is. The article reports that this morning (the morning after Thanksgiving) a Walmart employee died after being trampled by a stampede of shoppers who broke down the doors of the store just 5 minutes before it was supposed to officially open. Jdimypai Damour was one of a handful of employees trying to keep the doors shut until the store’s opening by pressing themselves against the door. They were eventually overcome by the large crowd of shoppers pushing on the other side. The doors snapped open, and people began falling onto one another. Mr. Damour was at the bottom of the pile. As he layed there, shoppers ignored him, stepping over and around him. Even as police arrived and tried to give him CPR, shoppers continued to ignore him and even pushed the police.

I’m tempted to rant about how shocked and appalled I am, and I could do that very honestly. More than anything though, I feel sober and humbled. This tragic act shows the ugliness of our culture’s (or perhaps our race’s?) greed and consumerism. Human beings are actually capable of being this greedy; so greedy that we’ll step around a dying man, even push the police officers trying to help him, so that we can get a good deal on an item from Walmart. On top of that, most of the items sold that morning were probably some product of injustice (unfair wages, not environmentally friendly, etc.).

I wonder what those shoppers who were there are thinking now? What about the parents who were there, ignoring this hurt man and rushing to buy toys for their children? What’s going to go through their minds on Christmas morning when their children open those presents and say to them, “Mommy! Daddy! Look what Santa brought me!”?

Sunday begins the season of Advent. It now has the reputation of being the time that begins the Christmas season. We think of it as the four weeks or so that we spend shopping for gifts and decorating houses. It’s also the time we start going to party after party, giving and receiving gifts, and eating more in one evening than some on this earth will ever see in their lifetimes. It grieves me that this is what Advent looks like for most people, including myself.

It’s time for Christians to put an end to the consumerism of Christmas, and a great way to start is to recover the original meaning of Advent. Advent was originally meant to be a penitential season (like Lent). It’s a season in which we reflect on this world’s need for Jesus to return and bring the Kingdom of God in it’s fullness, and a time for us to spend waiting and praying for that day to come. In the past (and in the present still for some Christians) Advent was a time of fasting and self-denial, not feasting and self-indulgence.

I’ve often heard it said by pastors to their congregants that we should take time to “pause” in the midst of the chaos Advent and Christmas bring and remember “the reason for the season.” I don’t think this is enough. We can’t just pause. Pausing won’t bring change. We need something more radical than pausing. We need to stop. We need to stop expecting to give and receive gifts that put us into debt and that we don’t need anyway. We need to stop consuming more than we need and start loving our neighbors. If we don’t our consumerism and greed will continue to reveal the worst in us, as it did this morning at Walmart.