Conflict Between Christianity & American Culture

Many Christians today find a conflict between Christianity and American culture. American culture has developed over time along secular, scientific, and non-disciplinary lines that many Christians find contradictory to their faith. This is seen in political action taken by fundamentalist churches in particular to try to redirect the course of American culture in this "cultural war," as Pat Buchanan characterized it in a speech at last year's Republican Convention. Yet, much of American culture has a religious base or source related to the Protestantism, and specifically to the Puritanism, of our ancestors in New England. Many of the ideas accepted in American culture can be traced back to this earlier period in our history, ideas such as the work ethic.

Traditional American culture was closely allied with and responded to religious institutions. The churches were key sources of power and support for the battle against Britain in the American Revolution, for instance, and would continue to affect American life through directly and in a massive way through the nineteenth century. Many of the characteristics of religion in America derived from the nature of Protestantism in general and by the kind of Protestantism that developed in the American nation. One important element was the fact that unlike in europe, Protestantism in America was not in protest against a present or past Catholicism but was instead involved in building a new culture of its own.

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result is that churches are filled primarily with people committed to a self-denial ethic. . . These two opposing conceptions of how human beings should view themselves and how they should behave in the world helps explain the tension between Christianity and American culture today. Certain essential conceptions deeply embedded in American culture clearly derive from Protestant roots, but much of American culture today is viewed as anti-Christian or non-Christian to the point where there is open antagonism. The ethic of self-denial and the ethic of self-fulfillment are in opposition. Bibliography Jackson, Samuel Macauley. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book, 1953. Miller, William Lee. "Religion and Political Attitudes." In James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison. Religious Perspectives in American Culture. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961. Sample, Tex. U.S. Lifestyles and Mainline Churches. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox, 1990. Christocentrism is the doctrine which focuses primarily on the Person of Christ. The word "Christocentric" originally referred to systems of theology which maintain that God has never

Category: Philosophy - C