What frames what?

During an academic career, some of us (and hopefully most of us) have had those very brief moments where our teacher hits on the right thing at the right time with lasting consequences. Such a thing happened to me at the start of my final semester at seminary this past spring. Richard Horner, who studied under Rorty at UVA, came into our Church & the World class and wrote two questions on the board. He said that these two questions would dominate the rest of the class, and that it was his hope that these two questions would really guide all of us long after the class was over. The first of those questions was, "What frames what?" By this, Horner was essentially asking what our true starting points were for shaping our view of the world around us. Is it our faith? Most Christians would profess this, but as Horner regularly pointed out, not only does our faith tend not to frame our view of everything else, but other things actually tend to frame our faith.

As we approach July 4, I can't really think of a more relevant question for Christians to be asking and wrestling with than "what frames what?" Does Christianity frame our view of America, or does America frame our view of Christianity? To what degree is our Christianity a uniquely American Christianity, and to what degree is this good or problematic? Is Christianity driven by our politics, or are our politics driven by our Christianity? These are extraordinarily difficult questions to ask, because answers that are not superficial or reflexive in nature will often be unsettling.

It is often noted that a fish doesn't know he's wet, because he lives in the ocean and being wet is all he knows and is second nature to him. The same can be true of us as Christians in our relationship to America. We often assume that our expression of Christianity is universal and fairly pure, because we assume that American Christianity is the best thing going. But in doing this, we rarely ask to what degree our Christianity has been contextualized to fit the American experience, so that our Christianity becomes far more 'localized' in terms of its cultural influences than we'd like to think. To ponder the extent to which our expression of Christianity is tied to, and shaped by, the broader American experience is to ask "what frames what?" Are we bringing our Christianity to bear upon the culture, or are we bringing our American cultural expression to bear upon our Christianity? Could it be both?

I fear that the American church has allowed its expression of Christianity to be framed by the American experience far more than it would ever want to admit. With increasing numbers of evangelicals in particular unable to tell the difference between Christianity and America, or Christianity and a particular political party or leader, we have become blind to what is framing what. We must always remember that while it's good and right to love our country and fight for its improvement, our worship must be reserved for Jesus Christ alone. We don't go to church, even on July 4, to worship the United States, or our current president. We worship the risen Savior who is our only hope. There's a world of difference between the two, and asking 'what frames what' will help us to clearly see this. In our day, such self-examination is desperately needed, because it has become entirely too acceptable to allow our Christianity to be framed by our patriotism, political beliefs, sexuality, and a whole host of other idols that have become accepted idols in the church.