Traditional, Faithful, Mainstream, Representative, Typical?
September 19, 2005
Terry Mattingly has clarified his meaning and terms somewhat regarding the Poynter and GetReligion posts I mentioned here earlier today. He writes that he never mentioned “traditional Evangelicals,” which I think he intends as a reference to my remark about his list of “representative Evangelicals” other than (and very unlike) Pat Robertson. (I’m not sure what a “traditional Evangelical” could be.) At any rate, it is true that Mr. Mattingly did not specifically identify the people on his list as “evangelicals.” I thought he was implying it in the ECT and Time Magazine sense. Perhaps we are both–along with most religion writers–somewhat confused by the complex realities and the reductive nature of general labels.
At Poynter, Mattingly mentioned “Christian conservatives” and “conservative Christians”–meaning theological or political conservatives–or both or either? He noted that “mainstream evangelicals and traditional Catholics” appear uninterested in or unattached to Robertson. It is clear enough to me that this grouping is based upon Mr. Mattingly’s knowledge (which many journalists lack) that media-savvy evangelicals a generation or more younger than Pat Robertson and faithful catholics (of every era) are liable to regard Mr. Robertson as an abominably tasteless and ignorant sap, and they are also liable to be politically diverse–and often more politically liberal relative to Robertson. However, I know this because I am directly familiar with the kinds of people being described, and I can read between the lines. For a reader substantially ignorant of evangelicals and catholics, what good are the terms “mainstream” and “traditional?”
“Mainstream” is always a loaded, relative term. Mainstream compared to what? Relative to much of the other religious programming on broadcast TV and cable, Robertson looks pretty good and is clearly still a dominant player. He reaches a lot of people, and those people have no reason not to think what they are seeing is not common Evangelicalism/Conservative Protestantism/Religious Rightism. I’m not sure it is exactly uncommon. Can a person be uncommon or unrepresentative relative to a certain group but indicative of what is “mainstream” for that group? In the youth/pop/stoopid culture, “mainstream” means “square” and passé. Is Brian McLaren–mentioned in Mattingly’s Poynter piece–approaching “mainstream?” Many young evangelicals, post-evangelicals, post-protestants, emergents, hemhorragents, or whatever they wish to be called right now seem liable to reject “mainstream” anything. As for “traditional,” it also implies an opposite. What is a “non-traditional” catholic? Are “traditional” Catholics not “mainstream?” Are “mainstream” evangelicals not “traditional?” Whose tradition, what traditionality?
It seems that Mr. Mattingly and I may agree that the whole concept of “evangelical leader” should be scrapped or at least transcended at appropriate times, if that is what he means when he says that journalists should seek “traditional Christians of various pews who are experts on many different kinds of topics.” But here “traditional” definitely proves to be a more devilish term than even “evangelical.”
The average history-illiterate American newsreader is not sure what any large words mean or what “tradition” is, even though many of these readers surely identify as Christians of various kinds. Further, free-church Evangelicals, Anabaptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Calvinists and Catholics are not equally “traditional” relative to each other and the larger history of the church in terms of belief and practice. This fact is historically and politically significant in many ways, as in the history of a dominant anglo-north european protestant culture that, as in the examples of JFK and Judge Roberts, transmogrifies longstanding protestant anti-catholic sentiment (e.g. catholics are “superstitious,” spiritually “legalistic,” and controlled by Rome) into hostility toward faithful religious observance and orthodoxy in any trinitarian church.
What I think Mr. Mattingly really means by “traditional” is “faithful.” I.e., Christians of different traditions who are trying to maintain fidelity (and largely succeeding at it) to whatever tradition they belong to. I agree wholeheartedly that these are the kinds of people that journalists need to understand better, but I have to say that Mattingly’s designation “traditional” clearly must exclude free-church, non-confessional, post-confessional evangelicals and protestants by any other name. There is nothing so distinctive about these groups but that they do not have a tradition unless it is a tradition of dispensing with tradition and making up new things which may sometimes look very “traditional” but which are really voluntaristic neo-traditionalist fetishes akin to a taste for “mission,” “craftsman,” “arts and crafts,” and “art deco” furniture made in China as opposed to the standard Evangelical “Eames era” plastic, formica, naugahyde, and melmac, which can also be acquired from China. (What comes around, goes around. Ned Flanders may one day be retro-cool among Spanglishop-speaking, post-emergent “christers” until that movement also becomes “mainstream.”)
But of course journalists like Mr. Mattingly may not use the modifier “faithful” to differentiate any Christians without accusation of bias even though it is a point of fact whether or not a person is or is not faithful to the present doctrines and laws of her church. “Traditional” may be used as long as “traditionalists” do not mind and “non-traditionalists” can take it as a pejorative. I am skeptical that either will be motivated or helped to understand the other better, if that is the goal.
This is Traditional, Faithful, Mainstream, Representative, Typical? in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: “I’ve Got a Stone in My Shoe” (Pat Robertson) | Next: The Cost of Mentioning the Unfashionably Obvious | TrackBack (1) | Comments (0)
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