American Culture

Dear Friends,
Greetings! I am entering into my third day here in Pennsylvania in the United States. I have the blessing of a morning to myself in a peaceful home with wireless internet.

I am enjoying the rolling hills and compact, rounded trees of Pennsylvania. I have been in this state two or three times now and each time am struck by the differences between the rolling hills here and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. The are both beautiful in their own ways....for me the mountains will always be home.

Yesterday I was able to visit a Presbyterian Church Camp in those rolling hills of Pennsylvania. The camp is located on a large piece of very beautiful property. Tranquil and serene are the words with which I choose to describe this church camp. Of course the scene at the swimming pool was not tranquil and serene -- squealing children, lots of splashing and yelling, and, dare I say, joyous goings on and music made to the Lord? However, the rest of the property was tranquil and serene.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday which led me to reflect on several things....those things are what I am going to share with you today in this blog.

It is possible that around the year 2000 a cultural shift began to happen in the United States. Now, probably some of this was taking place before the year 2000 and certainly it has continued since the year 2000. For a long time our society has been transitioning towards being mobile and, well, temporary. People take a promotion with a job and the whole family moves across a state or across the country. I heard on television about a new scheme being considered for corporations whose employees must frequently relocate; having the employees rent their homes. Then there would be a network of homes for rent across the United States, fully ready for new occupants to move in with just suitcases. Somehow takes the punch line out of giving our kids wings and --- what is that word????? -- ROOTS??????

In having our lives become essentially rootless things are disappearing like, for instance, neighborhoods. Now people just happen to live on a street with other people. The idea of children growing up in the same home with a neighborhood full of other children, their best friends and playmates, who they know all of their growing up years, is becoming a thing of the past.

As I was having this conversation which, on the surface, was related to the shrinking enrollment for Church Camps, I realized some different things.

The face, and the depths, of America are changing. Our values are changing as well. I understand from listening to other people that in perhaps the 50's and 60's (of the 1900s) church tended to be a cultural thing, that was what people did on Sunday mornings, they went to church. Then perhaps later in the century it became that people made a real choice to go to church on Sunday mornings because that was where they really wanted to be. Church held meaning for them. They weren't going to another country club, they were going home.

Church attendance is shrinking now, for a variety of reasons, and so is Church Camp. America's soul is being eaten and occupied by material wealth and consumption. Neighborhoods are rare these days. The kind of neighborhoods where kids grow up together and there is a weiney roast on the 4th of July.

Sports have become King, as far as I hear. There is now a competition for soccer and other sports on Sunday mornings. As I listened to the other person involved in this conversation at the Church Camp yesterday I found myself thinking, someone is making $. Someone is making money, and lots of it. If sports and other camps which are almost required, even though no one would say that out loud, to "fit" in, someone is making money. Sports and consumption are competing with God in American society. MONEY is competing with God, with Jesus Christ, in American society. I kid you not.

The way has been found to undermine relationships. We are kept on the go. We are earning more money and becoming slaves to the jobs which move us to other cities in other states and keep our relationships from developing into RELATIONSHIPS. We are not encountering the Risen Lord in the idolatry of making money, of fitting into American culture and therefore we see no need to send our children to Church Camp where American culture might have a chance of being undermined. OUR lifestyle might be undermined. And by golly, we can't have that! Now, it wouldn't happen by someone verbally attacking capitalism, although that could happen. It would happen because children might encounter God for themselves.

They might encounter God for themselves away from the noise of American consumption and away from the idolatry of Sunday morning sports. They might HEAR God in the quiet places at camp. I found that there were a lot of quiet places at the Church Camp in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. All it took was walking a little ways from the swimming pool and there was plenty of quiet. There were plenty of places to commune with Jesus Christ and discover the he is more important than the money that someone is making by transforming our American society into a transitional, rootless, sports loving, belly gazing country.

While we cannot produce an encounter for someone with the Living God, we can cooperate with the Holy Spirit in helping to create spaces for that encounter. It is the work, the job so to speak, of the Holy Spirit to encounter. I saw the "dorms" for the youth at the Church Camp. I was overwhelmed. Those dorms, while extremely frugal to American youth would be considered luxurious to my Sudanese students in South Sudan. My students often have to ride 2 1/2 to 3 hours EACH way to the college on a bus and are as likely to go to a home with no electricity as they are to go to one without. More likely actually. To have a simple dorm with a bunk bed and a kitchen area on the campus of the Nile Theological College in Malakal, South Sudan, would be a miracle. The money that we Americans spend on buildings and structures in the United States is so extravagant, it was a relief to me to see a simple dorm at the Church Camp. Even so I am quite certain that a Refugee Camp anywhere in the world would never look so good.

The youth at the Church Camp aren't allowed to have MP3 players, cell phone, computers or tvs. The space is created for an encounter. The possibility exists.

I wonder if that possibility ever exists for their parents.
Blessings,
Debbie