infinite improbability

Red and Blue States and Cultural Divide

Parableman has an interesting discussion about how part of the reason that people in blue areas don't understand Christians is because people in those areas are much less likely to come in to contact with genuine Christians during the course of their everyday lives than people in red areas. He suggests that rather than abandoning those areas because they are so liberal and hostile to Christianity, Christians should be moving to those places to be salt and light and to engage the culture, not because of any hope for political gains, but because they need the light of Christ there too, and without a Christian witness, they're going to end up just as dark much of Europe is today. I think he makes a good point. After all, how are we going to communicate with people in the cultural elite on any real level if the only impression they have of Christians is angry protests against one thing or another? We need real dialogue, and you can't have that if Christians avoid the areas where culture is being shaped.

On to a slightly different subject.... Whether we like it or not, there is a genuine divide in this country, and it's not a particularly useful exercise to write it off as just the "Hollywood elite" not understanding "regular people." As those of you who read my blog with any regularity know, I grew up in Florida, which is ostensibly a red state, but, with the exception of parts of north and central Florida, it doesn't have much in common with it's red state neighbors. The area I grew up in is pretty cosmopolitan, what with our international sports academies, international tourism, and heavy dose of the arts (and even more art posers, but that's a story for another day). Anyway, when I went off to school at Covenant, despite the fact that Chattanooga is pretty up and coming, I went through some pretty major culture shock. The South (and much of the rest of flyover country) is a very different place, and if you aren't from there, you aren't going to instantaneously understand their outlook, even if you come from the same broadly evangelical tradition, much less if you're from New York or LA and have no religious background. A Massachussetts, New York or Southern California liberal comes from such a different world than a flyover country conservative that even with common religious ties, there's still going to be a huge communication gap. I can even understand why folks like that can identify more with Europeans than they can with red state conservatives, heck, I experienced less culture shock in the week I spent in Spain than I did in my first week at Covenant. The solution to the divide? I'm not entirely sure, but one big step would be if folks on both sides of the divide stopped throwing around buzz words and catch phrases and actually tried to sit down and define their terms so that this country could undergo meaningful dialogue rather than the current state of affairs where both sides are supposedly speaking the same language but it's so different that neither side has a clue what the other is saying. In any case, shows like Hannity and Colmes or Crossfire aren't doing anybody a service, they just contribute to the noise level without any meaningful dialogue taking place.