The Great Unraveling

In April 2016 I wrote a post that said “We live in a strange, disordered time.”

Little did I imagine how much more strange and disordered our world would become.

 

In that post I described a youth conference session led by religion editor Phyllis Tickle. 

She talked about the accusations and disruption that have accompanied times of change: inquisitions, beheadings, violence and horror from challenged religious powers. 

 

Whenever there is so cataclysmic a break as is the rupture between modernity and postmodernity… there is inevitably a backlash.  Dramatic change is perceived as a threat to the status quo, primarily because it is. 

 

She ended with a warning so sharply stated I’ve remembered it almost word for word: “If you leave here and you don’t do ministry on your knees, in constant prayer, you haven’t heard a word I’m saying.”  

I wrote then: 

I’ve been rethinking one of her metaphors: chords woven of many strands that slowly come unraveled, and the period of danger and uncertainty as new strands are woven together.

 

The strands around us are frayed and loose: our understanding of gender and sexuality. Our experience of race and nationality, privilege and belonging. Economic models of work and wages. Ideas about democracy, justice, faith and family.

 

We fortify the past, desperately struggle to hold the strands together. 

 

We look around for someone to blame, grab for stones, throw without thinking.

 

People I know who have always valued honesty, kindness and respect enthusiastically support a presidential candidate who can’t speak without lying, demeans everyone who disagrees with him, believes winning justifies any dishonorable behavior.

 

People whose parents and grandparents were immigrants and refugees not very long ago talk of building walls, closing borders, shutting off aid to the greatest wave of refugees since the days of World War II.

 

More people struggle with poverty and inequity than at any time since the Great Depression.

 

More people of color are incarcerated in the US than were held in slavery, many for failure to pay exorbitant fines which by any measure of justice would be illegal. Many others are held, pretrial, because they can’t afford bail.

 

This week, hundreds have taken to the streets: in Philadelphia to demand economic justice and a living wage; in DC, to demand fair elections and an end to campaigns sold to wealthy donors and dark money industries. Black Lives Matter protests have been gathering in Minneapolis, Phoenix, Chicago, Philadelphia. Campaign stops in New York and Pennsylvania have been marked by growing protests, dozens of arrests, threats of violence. 

That was written in 2016. Take it all and multiply it. Deeper divisions. Deeper dysfunction. The chaos of a politically-driven Covid-19 response. Staggering unemployment. Federal agents tear-gassing protesters in the streets of Portland. A presidential election far more contentious and important than any in recent memory, all to be held in the shadow of devastating disease and growing distrust in our electoral systems.
 

Will 2020 be remembered as the great unraveling? 

 

Andy Crouch, former editor of Christianity Today, suggests organizational leaders approach this Covid-19 season “as an economic and cultural blizzard, winter, and beginning of a 'little ice age' – a once-in-a-lifetime change that is likely to affect our lives and organizations for years.”

He points to an earlier time of great upheaval, “the first centuries of the common era, [when] Rome was beset by war, by plague, by famine.” 

[T]he paganism of Rome had no solution for these things, and had no plan for them. Rome was built on war; the only way they knew how to govern was war. When plague came, the pagan priests fled. And when famine came, Rome only fed its citizens. Eventually the grain shipments did not even suffice to feed their own citizens. Non-citizens were left to starve.

 

In the midst of that culture, the first Christians created an alternative. They did not participate in violence—they did not participate in the empire’s wars. When plagues came, they served and nursed the sick, often back to health. When famine came they fed anyone they could, all the hungry, whether you were a member of their community or not. They created a different culture in the midst of Rome’s worst case. 

Our current political system seems ill-equipped to handle the complexities of Covid response. Is testing availability driven by public good, or our president's concern about public perception? Is guidance evidence driven, or designed to please a partisan base?

Our profit-driven economy, focused on share-holders rather than workers, has furthered the harm: pushing regions to reopen when workers have inadequate health care and personal protections, inadequate child-care, housing, transportation. 

 

How will followers of Christ respond in all of this?

Argue about masks?

Fight to reopen churches?

Advocate for release of non-violent accused awaiting trial in crowded jails?

Plead the cause of peace with a president intent on using force against 1^st amendment protest?
 

Pray for non-partisan solutions in an increasingly partisan landscape?

Polls show a majority of white evangelical Christians still holding fast to a divisive president while other conservatives step away. 

Polls also show younger Americans turning their back on a politicized faith.

The gracious witness of early Christians hastened the spread of the Christian faith.

Will the current response in this great unraveling produce the opposite effect? 

Crouch asks: 

Why are we here? Are we here for cultural preservation? Preserving a way of life, preserving a certain standard of living? If so, we should be terrified at this moment.

 

Or are we here for cultural transformation? To bring a deep change in the world? If so, we should be energized, because we have everything that we need.