I consider myself fortunate beyond words to have been mentored by Andrew Bacevich when I was a part-time graduate student at Boston University from 1999-2002. The masters I received in international relations was an honor, but the highest honor of my time there was working as Dr. Bacevich’s graduate assistant while he was working on his landmark book American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of American Power. I believe that book, and others by him since, are necessary and urgent correctives to American culture. His 2008 book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism is as genuinely prophetic and insightful a book as has been written in the post Cold War world. Though written before the financial crisis of August 2008, it remains the best explanation for that crisis and the resulting political and economic convulsions that have come in its wake.
Having said all of that, I must agree with the criticism of Robert Imbelli and ask Dr. Bacevich to consider whether or not his prophetic voice in laying bear American idolatry and America’s all too visible embrace of power at the expense of principle has limited his sense of what God is doing in the global Christian community. In other words, I affirm Bacevich’s insight into the judgment that American culture may be said to be under by God, but I am concerned that he is confusing that judgment with the whole of God’s actions in this time. When he says that Christianity “survives in the so-called West…[only] on the margins, having long since been supplanted by more alluring forces” he is right, but when he equates that with evidence that “the Christian enterprise has failed” I fear he falls into the same American-centric attitude that he so regularly exposes in others.
The Holy Spirit is at work in the Church, a Church far wider and deeper than the cultural calamity that is the American Catholic Church. As he continues to cry out as a voice in the wilderness of America, I hope Dr. Bacevich will see that the Christianity he longs to see here is coming alive in places around the world. I think for instance of the extraordinary witness of Ryan Boyette and the Nuba Mountain Christians in Sudan, whose story Nicholas Kristof so eloquently told in the New York Times last Sunday. In these people and countless others around the global South we see not “a path of accommodation and compromise”, but rather the life of a Church that is always “ever young” and coming alive to a “new evangelization”. Its leading edge is not in the so-called West, but where it is flourishing and finding cultural and institutional expression it is anything but a Christianity that “has become largely ornamental”. For those who have eyes to see, stories like Ryan’s are the Church as sacrament, the Church in whom “the crucified and risen Savior has won the victory and led death itself captive.” We can not let the corruption and cowardice of American Christianity blind us to that enduring truth.
Sincerely,
Greg Metzger
Thanks to Commonweal for continuing the conversation on Bracevich's excellent essay Selling Our Souls. It's impossible to understand the slipping away of our centuries of Christian morality without facing historical reality. That is, Christianity is a non significant factor in today's consumerist society where the bottom line is things not people.
It's just not rational to deny Bracevich's position on the reality of western morality. It's long since been given over to political spin and corporate bottom line ideology. How can any American not choke when the person navagating the entire Western economy, Alan Greenspan, proudly admits that he has been totally inebriated by the philosophy of Ayn Rand? Do we ever ask what is ment when our top statesman, Henry Kissinger, promotes not America but American interests. Do we wonder why six Jesuits are assinated in El Salvadore? Do we question the assination of Chilie's democratically elected president, Allende? Nope, such criminality is legitimatized by being in America's interests. Morality is not the least bit part of the decision making process. In fact, morality isn't even in the textbooks of American politics.
As insignificant as Christian morality is in the actions of government and corporations, let's not give up the struggle. Morality has to be flounted in the face of politicians and corporate officers. There is a right and wrong that cannot be redefined by them. When we hear the worn out phrase ' it's the right thing to do' be on guard for a cover up of a shameful political position.
Commonweal can contribute with such awareness among Catholics by publishing more essays such as Selling Our Souls. Personally, I'd like to see more coverage of Alexander Solzgebitsyn in Commonweal.
William Sublette
I consider myself fortunate beyond words to have been mentored by Andrew Bacevich when I was a part-time graduate student at Boston University from 1999-2002. The masters I received in international relations was an honor, but the highest honor of my time there was working as Dr. Bacevich’s graduate assistant while he was working on his landmark book American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of American Power. I believe that book, and others by him since, are necessary and urgent correctives to American culture. His 2008 book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism is as genuinely prophetic and insightful a book as has been written in the post Cold War world. Though written before the financial crisis of August 2008, it remains the best explanation for that crisis and the resulting political and economic convulsions that have come in its wake.
Having said all of that, I must agree with the criticism of Robert Imbelli and ask Dr. Bacevich to consider whether or not his prophetic voice in laying bear American idolatry and America’s all too visible embrace of power at the expense of principle has limited his sense of what God is doing in the global Christian community. In other words, I affirm Bacevich’s insight into the judgment that American culture may be said to be under by God, but I am concerned that he is confusing that judgment with the whole of God’s actions in this time. When he says that Christianity “survives in the so-called West…[only] on the margins, having long since been supplanted by more alluring forces” he is right, but when he equates that with evidence that “the Christian enterprise has failed” I fear he falls into the same American-centric attitude that he so regularly exposes in others.
The Holy Spirit is at work in the Church, a Church far wider and deeper than the cultural calamity that is the American Catholic Church. As he continues to cry out as a voice in the wilderness of America, I hope Dr. Bacevich will see that the Christianity he longs to see here is coming alive in places around the world. I think for instance of the extraordinary witness of Ryan Boyette and the Nuba Mountain Christians in Sudan, whose story Nicholas Kristof so eloquently told in the New York Times last Sunday. In these people and countless others around the global South we see not “a path of accommodation and compromise”, but rather the life of a Church that is always “ever young” and coming alive to a “new evangelization”. Its leading edge is not in the so-called West, but where it is flourishing and finding cultural and institutional expression it is anything but a Christianity that “has become largely ornamental”. For those who have eyes to see, stories like Ryan’s are the Church as sacrament, the Church in whom “the crucified and risen Savior has won the victory and led death itself captive.” We can not let the corruption and cowardice of American Christianity blind us to that enduring truth.
Sincerely,
Greg Metzger