The pulpit has been used to sway the public to take positions diametrically opposed to the intent of its Christian doctrine. This is pathological morality. Can the ironies go unnoticed by its initiates? Our dowry for future generations is exploited resources, chemical waste and nuclear proliferation. What is to prevent misguided moralists from pursuing agendas that decimate the planet and oppress the rights of others?
America has always dominated others to ensure social cohesion. While paying lip service to a church driven religious ethic, America pursues political policies offering economic stability, not salvation. Softening resistance with missionaries and Coca-Cola, Western interests exploit cheap labor sources in the name of God and the American way.
While the cold war is over and America no longer shadowboxes with the communist threat, the proliferation of third world countries having nuclear weapons has created an equally dangerous situation. The new nuclear menace makes political oppression of non-Western nations a particularly hazardous means for maintaining global economic hierarchies. Nuclear proliferation and the indiscriminate threats of radioactive pollution, global warming and nuclear winter have created new equality at an international level.
Will the fear of self-annihilation prove to be sufficient common ground for developing ecologically sensitive and humanitarian compromises in the world community in the future? Unfortunately, the likely answer is this tenuous ground of equal insecurity will be aggravated by the controlling hierarchy into justification for continued oppression. Monopolistic capitalism will continue to suppress the rights of non-Western countries and allow big business to ravage the environment under the guise of free trade and Christian morality. Society seems unable to see through misdirection and propaganda to realize the motives of a political system controlled by corporate interests. Whatever the course of international policy, as long as it fills America's breadbaskets and gas tanks, it will probably be seen as morally responsible and necessary by the God-fearing public.
The flaw in the psychology of Christianity is rancor. (Nietzsche) And more broadly stated: the inherent flaw in every code of ethics is there must be a wrong which is left out of the system. If there is no enemy we will make one up: someone must be made responsible for the suffering endured.
Much of what goes on in the name of Christianity today is retrogressive. It is a reaction to the nihilism confronting postmodern America. Blind loyalty to allegorical Christian dogma is a measure of the desperation and helplessness people feel as their convictions are nullified by reductionism. As Christian doctrine succumbs to reason, can America develop an ethical posture of coexistence without rancor? And to the point: can it develop an ideology where the rich do not oppress the poor?
Although America professes a belief in God and claims allegiance to the Christian ethic, we no longer discover the world through a religious perspective. Religious symbols no longer inspire ontological truths that give meaning to life. The breakdown of traditional transcendent methods for attaining moral directives has produced a situation where personal choice reflects self-interest with little regard for the needs of the collective. In response, America overcrowds her prisons. Social compatibility in the future will be determined by how well alternatives for self-actualization provide for integration into a culture with humanitarian values.
The decline of the Christian tradition has allowed for the assimilation of a previously unknown self. The philosophic negation of oppressive religious dogma has released repressed (unconscious) content from the collective psyche. In a process of desublimation, acceptable cultural values have expanded to include what was previously considered deviant. In the wake of Christianity, society continues to have a strong sense of right and wrong, but these values are in a state of change as religious symbols and doctrines lose their authority to shape our lives.
The trick for developing a successful society is for personal values to be socially responsible -- for duty and pleasure (altruism and hedonism) to become one. When personal values successfully reflect social morality, individual expression is transpersonalized and common bonds of trust are established. This suggests the possibility of an ideal model, but there can be no ideal solutions. There is no utopia. Ethical choice reflects the socialization of the self and not universal ideals.
The arts, humanities and sciences provide integrating experiences and belief systems for developing out of the Christian mindset. They actualize a greater range of experience through democratic strategies. The potential exists for a more fully actualized and socially integrated personality with humanitarian values of coexistence and codependence based on common interests at a global level. There is reason for guarded optimism, but only following a cultural revolution putting to an end to the misconception that Christian ethical imperatives are served by America's corporate funded political system.
R. Cronk, 2004