Some years ago, I read American Judaism, a book by Jonathan Sarna, who teaches Jewish history at Brandeis University. He made one observation in particular that stuck with me, and that was that Americans’ comparative indifference to matters of religious preference have played a significant role in the decline over time in Jewish identity in the United States. Unlike certain societies in other parts of the world, Jews in this country have faced few if any formal legal impediments to living their lives. There may have been in different times and places varying forms of social and cultural discrimination, but there have been few to no laws barring Jews from professions, regulating intermarriage with non-Jews, rules governing where Jews could live, or special clothing they’ve had to wear. The American experience has lacked legally enforceable signs that remind Jews that they are Jews, and over time, Sarna observes, American Jews had lost much of their distinct identity as Jews. This may have been true when Sarna originally wrote it, but I have to wonder how that analysis might change in light of anti-Semitic episodes that have occurred in the last few years.
As Christians in developed countries, we can learn from this observation. We pay little attention to our culture’s tolerance of Christianity because Christian influence on western culture has been so pervasive for so long. Western societies have become so thoroughly organized around commerce, and obsessed with other forms of identity – race, sexual orientation, gender identity – that formal religious beliefs play a smaller and smaller role in how we identity ourselves. This is not the case in every part of the world, but I think it very much true here. For all of the things over which they differ, Jews and Christians in America share the common experience of not living under a legal regime built to remind them “you are a Jew” or “you are a Christian.”
Christians in the West have also not had the experience of not having identity imposed on them, but mainly by virtue of living in places where Christianity has a certain cultural dominance even in the absence of formal enforcement. In the United States, the Christmas and Easter seasons play important roles in the social calendar even when not observed religiously, and the Roman Catholic Church retains a powerful cultural role even in nations like Spain and Italy where formal religious observance has declined. We have grown accustomed to everyone else following our rules and using our terminology. We have not been marked out from non-Christians because our culture seldom chooses to do so, and so it has not occurred to western Christians in a long time that the world might be other than what it is for them: broadly accepting, and generally tolerant.
Western Christians, frankly, have taken all of this for granted, and as we look out onto a world increasingly hostile to Christian lifeways, we have to take into account how Christians used to live in the world. The earliest Christians lived in a society that did not accept them. The first Christians marked themselves out by refusing to take part in the cults of state, an act that commonly drew the charge of atheism from their pagan neighbors. Early Christians refused to partake in practices common to the culture around them, including the now repellent exposure of unwanted infants. These people lived in a world not their own, and they knew it. To a 2nd or 3rd century Christian, his very modes of living served as a reminder of his distinctiveness and of his identity. Like Jews, Christians early on were singled out for their difference from the society around them. Only with the conversion of nearly all of Europe to some flavor of Christianity could Christian norms be assumed the default state of living.
This likely would have struck the first Christians, especially those of a more apocalyptic bent, as bizarre, and it should appear to us as more than a little strange too. We easily forget, standing where we do, that the men who wrote the scriptures did so in times and places in which they could not take acceptance for granted. Israel’s God marked off his people from the nations of the world with a unique covenant, and made them to follow special observances outlined in the Torah. Furthermore, the story of God’s people has seen them live in a state of exile more times than should make us comfortable. Israel was held in bondage in Egypt, then suffered the Babylonian Captivity generations later. Jews scattered again with the fall of Jerusalem, and time and again, Jews have found themselves forced out of their homes, regrettably often at the hands of Christians. Throughout world history, Jews have known what it means to live other than the world would have you live, and have suffered for it.
While Christians in developed countries today face nowhere near the kind of impediments that Jews have faced, or that Christians outside the West sometimes encounter today, we see now the emerging contours of a world moving from indifference toward traditional religion, to suspicion, and eventually to outright hostility. Broadly Christian assumptions about family, life, and morality are being discarded, and regarded as outdated or repressive. Secular magistrates interfere with the operations of religious bodies, and elected officials interrogate Christian nominees for high office about their religious beliefs. To hear some people describe this, you would think this exceptional, unprecedented, never before seen. None of this, however, should surprise us.
I say this because I find precious little in scripture that should persuade us that living as Christians in the world will be easy, yet we find ourselves shocked when the world shows itself less than hospitable to Christian teaching. The story of God’s people in the world in Old and New Testaments has been one of scorn, mockery, and disdain, and the Bible teaches us that we will be thought of as fools. Christians living in Christian societies – whatever that can be said to mean – have long enjoyed the fruits thereof for centuries. When we are told that Christianity is outdated, that it is no longer needed, none of this should surprise us. In fact, we should expect it. The church’s story – Israel’s story – has always had within it the notion that our ways may not be the ways of the world, and some understanding of the church’s Jewish roots clarifies this. Going from dominance to marked out as odd or different may scare us, and it should scare us, but that in and of itself should not cause us to despair. But when we do despair, we forget Israel’s history, and the continuing cycles of exile and redemption contained therein. The people that walked in darkness have indeed seen a great light. But we still walk in darkness, and we ought to remember that as well.