I think I’ll probably have to stop watching the TV show Bones again.
I stopped a while back, but was seduced in again, because there’s nothing on at that time that I’m interested in watching (or there didn’t used to be; I need to check the new schedule). I was lured back because a) I’m fascinated by that whole forensic science business (as long as it’s on TV and I don’t have to smell the evidence), and b) the star, Emily Deschanel, is smoking hot—not in the reconstituted Pam Anderson style, but in the exquisite Ingrid Bergman style.
The thing that bugs me about the show is that it has religious overtones. Not constantly, but one of the running themes is the conflict between Dr. Temperance Brennan’s atheism and FBI Agent Booth’s easygoing Catholicism. Booth generally gets the best of it too, as it’s obvious that he’s happier and better adjusted than she is.
The show even makes efforts, now and then (and this is fairly rare on television), to present practicing Christians as fully-rounded, sympathetic human beings.
And that’s the problem. Because the show has a definite opinion on what a real Christian is.
Last night they presented a mystery where a body was found that exhibited both male and female characteristics. It developed that the victim was a post-op transsexual. He/she was identified as a former TV evangelist (money-grubbing, it goes without saying) who had turned his back on all that, embraced his “true identity,” got a sex-change operation, and founded a small church called (if I remember correctly) “The Church of Inclusion,” where everyone accepted everyone (except for judgmental conservatives, one assumes) and no divisive moral rules were enforced (except for having small carbon footprints and voting for bigger government, one further assumes).
It seems to me that American Christians, in our day, are about equally divided between the Augustinians (to choose a name for those of us who believe in objective truth and the importance of right doctrine) and the Oprahites. The Oprahites believe that “spirituality” is important, but that it’s essentially make-believe, so why not agree to believe in “nice” things, things that make people feel good?
No, that’s not fair. Oprahites believe, I think, that there is a God, but that He/She/It is such a mystery that each of us must reach out to He/She/It the best way we can figure out, and that it would be arrogant and judgmental to think that “our way” is better than anyone else’s.
Because God hasn’t really told us anything. So we can never be dogmatic.
That’s what troubles me most about this election. I see this election (assuming that Obama wins, which seems a good bet) as the cultural tipping point; the place where the American majority explicitly rejects Augustinianism and declares itself Oprahite.
Some of you are saying, “So what’s the problem?”
And that’s precisely what worries me.
Even if we do reject the one and embrace the other, it won’t be for long. I don’t think we will go down that road or any long road for long. We are diverse.
I’m with Phil–are you really saying Clinton was so much more doctrinally correct than Obama, or so much less touchy-“I feel your pain”-ey? Or that we hit a turning point with the election of Clinton…then another reversal with the election of Bush, and are about to re-turn away from Christianity as a nation?
Truth be told, there’s never been a portion of the nation that doesn’t deny objective truth. And there’s never been a portion that doesn’t strive with fear and trembling to follow God’s Word. At least not since the time when both Jonathan Edwards and Ben Franklin were around to fight over the heart of the nation.
I personally find it more worthwhile to worry about what I, and others who like me acknowledge Divine Revelation and Objective Truth, should change/attack/defend, rather than what a single election means about the shape of a nation.
Re. Bones….yeah, you either have to shrug stuff off or, eventually, stop watching every crime procedural on television. Because zany religions create interesting crime, and in the eyes of the Hollywood consensus evangelical Christianity is a pretty zany religion.
Your arguments have merit, but I think I sense something more profound here (either that or it’s my digestion). Bill Clinton is clearly an Oprahite, but I don’t think he ran as an Oprahite. I’m told that when he ran for governor of Arkansas, he took his handlers’ advice and joined the largest Baptist church in Little Rock, making a point of joining the choir and sitting in the middle, where the cameras would show him behind the pastor during the televised services. Clinton saw it as to his advantage to appear to be an Augustinian.
What I see of Obama is an implied message that says, “Yeah, I’m an Oprahite. You got a problem with that?” He comes from a church that appears to be centered not on doctrine but on ethnicity. His message seems (to me) not to be, “Don’t be afraid; I won’t radically alter our culture,” but “I will radically alter our culture, and if you don’t like it you’re a bigot.”
If I’m right, that signals a huge cultural shift, and one that bodes ill for the traditional church.
If I’m right, that signals a huge cultural shift, and one that bodes ill for the traditional church.
Only if people vote of Obama because he’s an Oprahite. I expect most of them would vote for him for other reasons: keeping abortion legal, losing the war in Iraq, funneling more tax money into their own pockets, etc.
That makes sense. But, it seems to me, in the past the Oprahism itself would have disqualified a candidate. Today it’s a neutral thing, or possibly even an advantage. That seems to me to make it a watershed moment.
Note that I’m not saying that this election is in itself the locus of the culture change. I’m saying that it marks the tipping point, where changes that have long been building finally reach critical weight.
Good point. I wonder if it means that US Christianity is becoming more Oprahistic, or that for more voters religion in irrelevant.
We should talk this through with each other. It will be a good discussion. For now, I’ll throw out that I remember hearing of a survey that McCain polls higher among those who attend church regularly and Obama higher with those who attend irregularly. However, young people apparently believe Obama will be healthier for religion in our country. I assume that means religious freedom, but it wasn’t specified in the report I heard on the radio.
Also, the stock market in Baghdad is up. heh, heh. I guess foreign investors are bullish.