The Several Varieties of Cultural Christianity

A mind bubble

I’ve been thinking a lot about cultural Christianity, of late. And with that what the term might actually mean. There appear to be several ways to take the phrase.

It seems to me “cultural Christian’ arose pretty much in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as scholars began to tease out the whole idea of religion and its place within cultures. The use has been pretty straightforward. It speaks to people within a culture who identify with the dominant religion, in this case basically Europeans and Christianity, but have no particular belief in its doctrines.

In Europe and English speaking Americas this has increased with the rise of secularism.

What sparked this reflection here, was my reading some conversations among Christian friends. They were focused on the cultural Christianity offered by Christopher Hitchens, who famously has declared “I call myself a cultural Christian.” He elaborates how despite not believing, “I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I feel at home in the Christian ethos.”

Kind of cultural Christian in a nutshell.

What made this confession of an attenuated Christianity especially interesting in the moment is that it was one of the four horseman of new atheism claiming the term. It is quite illustrative of our time and place.

Of course, Hitchens then takes another step.

He posits this cultural identity rathe specifically against Islam. And then goes at it hammer and tongs. It gets pretty ugly, quickly.

It shows how culture, any culture has boundaries. And, I find it interesting that religion, even this most vague sense of religion is maybe the most important place where the boundaries of us and them, the lines that define a culture, happens.

Me, I see two truths going on here.

One is that people are all of us woven out of stories. And sort of the master story of the West has been informed completely in conversation with the evolution of what we can call Western Christianity, Roman Catholicism and the various strands of Protestantism, specifically. Maybe with an emphasis on the Protestant parts.

(Orthodoxy, Eastern and Oriental and the ragged remains of the Church of the East have largely been outside of all this. Although it should be noted there’s been a steady stream of Evangelical conversion into Orthodoxy here in English speaking North America, which has carried with it some of the more noxious forms of nationalism. Something the Orthodox have always found themselves prey to, a sort of structural weakness in a complex and in many ways most compelling form (okay forms) of the Christian tradition. But, again, this phenomenon lies mostly outside this small reflection.)

(The place of Judaism here is worth noting, as well. If Christianity, attenuated or believed is the norm, then… Judaism becomes the perennial internal other, sometimes tolerated, sometimes persecuted. I think it’s important to note the continuing current of anti-semitism, and is eruptions going on today. And worth noting how Christianity, cultural or otherwise is very much a part of it all.)

It’s a rare culture that isn’t permeable, at least to some degree. And in the United States, specifically, with its foundational myth of not being about blood, genetic relationships, but rather creedal, with an almost religious regard for its founding documents, opens that door into this specific variation of our culture, further opens the possibilities. As well as pushback. Witness the undercurrent of our national politics in the moment, with lots of seeking clarity between us and them.

I mentioned this question of cultural Christianity blended with cultural hegemony, often flavored with ultra nationalist and far right-wing sensibilities on a social media platform and one of my friends observed how it was textbook “white supremacy.” I have some problems with the reductionism I sometimes witness within the white supremacist narrative. But I thought this was spot on. This is precisely where the currents of identity in our western culture find not only self-identity, but all the ammunition one might want for an ideology of othering. With everything that follows that othering. Disregard is the least of it. Exploitations small and large fill out a litany of what can be the worst of it.

To be noticed. We are most vulnerable to that which we don’t see.

That’s one truth.

There’s another.

But the part of this that most has my attention is the religion of it. And with that a question. Is the religion of cultural Christian limited to hymns and holidays and a whiff of nostalgia? Or, can there be something more in it?

Back to my Christian friends who were discussing the idea. I think perhaps universally they rejected such attenuated faith part and parcel. After all it basically is Christendom without Jesus.

For them, I think I’m fairly characterizing their view, Christianity must be rooted in the person and teaching of Jesus. And, again, I think this is a fair summation, that Jesus must be a historical person who is both God and human, and who died and was resurrected. What that means might be discussed, but those are irreducible for them.

They might look across traditions sympathetically. And I know some do. But there remains a line. With its own in and out. That’s sort of the nature of definition, as well as with cultures.

But.

Here I find myself thinking about universalism and perennialism. This is where I live. And in that context, what an attenuated approach to Christianity, what might be found within a cultural Christian world?

I witnessed some of this in my coming of age in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. As far as religion went, specifically, I was able to encounter Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and various kinds of Buddhists. These included immigrants, but also converts.

And there was a bubbling consensus they all opened windows toward something intuited as being connected. What that was, was unclear. But it represented a bone deep optimism about our human possibility in the deepest matters of the heart. Totry and put a name on it, I would say two words both work, each with their own problems. The one is universalism. The other perennialism.

And.

I agree with those who say it is very hard, maybe even impossible to be a perennialist without rooting in a specific tradition. It’s a trick of our human condition. The universal is only ever known in the particular.

So, at that time and place, there weren’t a lot of universalists unattached to a tradition. And I can think of none that have survived the test of any time at all.

But how particular must that particular be?

And with that cultural Christianity. Can one claim a Christianity that does not believe in the unique historicity of Jesus as the incarnation of God in a way no other person is?

I’ve met more than one Christian who seems to fall into that category. They are bound up with that cultural Christianity. They love the hymns and the holy days. And more than that, they can throw themselves in the cycles of the church year, and they can and do receive communion. Some even become clergy.

And they need not get caught up in the ultra-nationalism thing. That seems to simply be an option among those who find cultural Christian describes them, in some significant part. An odious option, to my heart. Another option, is quite different. It is opening to the other. It i finding the other complements and challenges and invites. The other becomes a mirror of the heart.

Now all this does imply a meta narrative. I think that’s obvious. They’re not just playing games, or spiritual dress up. There’s a depth to this. Or, to the parts I care about. But which one? Perennialism and universalism.

Me, I reject the variation on perennialism, the Traditionalist meta narrative, as we hear it from Rene Guyon and related. I also reject the different religions all teach the same thing variation on universalism narrative. I recall one academic commented on Swami Vivekananda (whom I adore) saying “all religions are true,” that he meant all religions are Hinduism. Both perspectives, that there is a secret current, and or all religions teach the same thig, fall apart with any honest read of the major religions as they actually present themselves.

That said, I still find a meta narrative.

I call it a kind of naturalistic perennialism. I believe we all have in our being as humans the ability to see through the differences to some kind of deep connection. I believe there is an intuitive insight, I believe rooted in our biology, certainly as something natural, that everything is connected. I find the term from Vedanta, nondual, very useful. It seems to me the mystical current in religions all do touch this insight in a hundred different ways.

The encounter is as particular as can be. It is an intimate encounter. But it is easy to see others having some kind of encounter that can be recognized.

Personally, I find the Mahayana analysis especially as presented within Zen and the Huayen the most resonant. And I believe all natural things are flawed. Which perhaps attenuated my Buddhism. I find parts of the Buddhist narrative not helpful. The old story of multiple lives, for instance, and an understanding of karma as the engine for those many lives. Somehow this has not stopped me from spending many years fully emerged in the disciplines of my found faith.

And at the same time that attenuation, that hesitation about truth claims rooted in a historical event or events, opens doors into my relationship with Christianity. Not only can we recognize each other across traditions, but we can be taught by each other.

These boundaries are permeable.  

Here I think of the wonders that might be available to someone from within a Christian context, but who has not found the deep place for herself, himself. The forms of those hymns and rites might indeed create a place of welcoming.

While I think Alan Watts is a bit snarky and maybe a bit too certain, his Behold the Spirit shows what this can look like. It’s way into the deep. The deep intuition informed by the tradition held lightly.

So, this is a different consideration of cultural Christian. And it is within this framework I was able to let go of Christianity without much rancor, and to give a significant part of my life to investigating the Zen matter.

So, I want to hold it up as something to be met generously.

And. In my dotage, still, a practicing Zen Buddhist, but also I am able explore the gifts of my natal tradition. I am informed by the stories and rites of Christianity without believing in the historicity of the creedal assertion.  

I seem to have been given a passport that allows me to travel around the world.

And a way into depth, both informed by my passionate embrace of a way, and my seeing variations on a path that, as I said, challenge and invite.

This informs and enriches my spiritual life in numerous ways.

Shallow?

Others will judge. No doubt.

But for me, as a Zen Buddhist and cultural Christian, I find my life in all its parts enriching.

And me? I’m just grateful…

Photograph of a caravan in the Moroccan desert is by Sergey Pesterev