The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality - International Voices in ...

142 The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality
here an interpretation that is as informed and even-handed as
possible, though clearly still a personal one. 7
2. An Aspect of Cultural Conflict within the United States
of America
Complex and diverse as the North American religio-politicocultural
(RPC 8 ) scene is, it remains interesting to observe how
American Christianity (and wider, for it certainly affects at least
the Jewish scene too) persists in continually dividing itself into two
camps: “liberal” and “conservative.” 9 Church denominations,
7 Cf., however, M. E. Marty, Modern American Religion, Volume 2: The Noise
of Conflict, 1919–1941 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 7–10.
8 Intellectually to separate religion, politics, and cultural aspects of personal and
group identities is possible, as the modernist project in the West has shown;
however, as postmodernism has had to teach us again, such divisions remain
rather artificial. When it comes to the natural business of living, rather than
socio-philosophical analyses of life, religio-politico-cultural (RPC) impulses
mix inextricably in the psyches of individuals, in the senses of identities of
groups, and in the vague self-awarenesses of societies and their cultural streams.
9 For a reaction against how the moral relativism implied by this kind of
“dualism” is played out in United States politics, see A. Huffington, “The
Torture Moment,” The Huffington Post, 24 April 2009. Online:
www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-torture-moment_b_190687.
html; cf. C. J. S. Lombaard, “Report: Mission to the USA (April-May 1999)”
(Presbyterian Church USA, 1999); so too R. Wuthnow, “Old Fissures and New
Fractures in American Religious Life,” in Religion and American Culture. A
Reader (ed. D. G. Hackett. 2d ed.; Routledge: New York, 2003), 361–63.
For fuller descriptions of the complexities running across the United
States religious sphere, cf. e.g., W. H. Conser, “Mainstream or Any Streams?
Diversity and Its Limits,” in Religion in America. European and American
Perspectives (ed. H. Krabbendam and D. Rubin; Amsterdam: VU University
Press, 2004), 19–28; P. Jenkins, “The Center and the Fringe: America’s
Religious Futures,” in Religion in America. European and American
Perspectives (ed. H. Krabbendam and D. Rubin; Amsterdam: VU University
Press, 2004), 51–66; Wuthnow, “Old Fissures and New Fractures,” 363–71; P.
Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs. Cult and New Religions in American History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 227–39.