Democracy Matters (20 page)

The recent controversy over Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ
reveals the nihilistic undercurrents of the conservative coalition and potential rifts within it. The vicious Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism over the past eighteen centuries stem primarily from the wedding of biblical narratives of Jesus’s Crucifixion that highlight Jewish responsibility and Roman innocence to Constantine’s incorporation of Christianity into imperial power. As long as the early Christians—themselves largely Jewish—were a persecuted minority in the Roman empire, their biblical claims about Jewish culpability and Roman indifference regarding
the murder of Jesus were a relatively harmless intra-Jewish debate in the first century AD about a prophetic Jew who challenged the Jewish colonial elites and Roman imperial authorities. For example, when the phrase “the Jews” is used sixteen times in Mark, Luke, and Matthew and seventy-one times in John, these writers of the synoptic Gospels—themselves Jews—were engaged in an intramural debate between themselves and non-Christian Jews. Both groups were persecuted by imperial Roman authorities. And all knew of the thuggery of such authorities—including that of Pontius Pilate fifty years before. With the Roman destruction of the Jewish temple in AD 70, rabbinical Judaism emerged alongside the Jewish-led Christian movement. The Christian and Judaic struggle for the souls of Jews in imperial Rome was intense, yet under oppressive conditions for both groups.

With the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire in the fourth century AD—and the persecution of all other religions—the intramural debate became lethal. And the phrase “the Jews” in the Gospels became the basis of a vicious Christian anti-Judaism and pernicious imperial policy that blamed, attacked, maimed, and murdered Jews of Judaic faith. With the injection of race, Christian anti-Judaism (a religious bigotry) became Christian anti-Semitism (a racist bigotry). Jews who converted to Christianity could avoid the former, but all Jews suffered the latter. And the history of both bigotries is a crime against humanity—then and now.

Mel Gibson’s gory film of Jesus’s murder, which verges on a pornography of violence, resonates deeply with the ignorance and innocence of sincere Constantinian Christians in the American
empire, whose grasp of the source of anti-Semitism is weak and whose complicity with imperial arrogance is ignored. His portrayal of Jewish responsibility and Roman innocence fits the centuries-long pattern of Christian anti-Semitism—in its effect, not in his intention.

Ironically, those Jews who eagerly aligned themselves with Constantinian Christians to defend imperial America and the colonial policies of the Israeli state now see the deep anti-Semitism of their Christian fundamentalist allies. And they are right. But these same Jewish conservatives—Constantinian Jews—fail to see their own complicity with imperial American elites who support and condone colonial policies and racist anti-Arab sentiments of Israeli conservative elites. Democracy matters—promoted by prophetic Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and secular progressives—require moral consistency and ethical integrity. We all fall short yet we must never fail to fight all forms of bigotry, especially when racist propaganda is conjoined to nihilistic quests for power and might. Will the deep dimensions of Christian anti-Semitism shatter the conservative coalition in imperial America? Will Jewish elites in Hollywood begin to question the racist stereotypes of other groups they’ve condoned now that this controversy has turned against them?

I speak as a Christian—one whose commitment to democracy is very deep but whose Christian convictions are even deeper. Democracy is not my faith. And American democracy is not my idol. To see the Gospel of Jesus Christ bastardized by imperial Christians and pulverized by Constantinian believers and then exploited by nihilistic elites of the American empire makes my blood
boil. To be a Christian—a follower of Jesus Christ—is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom. This is the radical love in Christian freedom and the radical freedom in Christian love that embraces Socratic questioning, prophetic witness, and tragicomic hope. If Christians do not exemplify this love and freedom, then we side with the nihilists of the Roman empire (cowardly elite Romans and subjugated Jews) who put Jesus to a humiliating death. Instead of receiving his love in freedom as a life-enhancing gift of grace, we end up believing in the idols of the empire that nailed him to the cross. I do not want to be numbered among those who sold their souls for a mess of pottage—who surrendered their democratic Christian identity for a comfortable place at the table of the American empire while, like Lazarus, the least of these cried out and I was too intoxicated with worldly power and might to hear, beckon, and heed their cries. To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely—to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away. This is the kind of vision and courage required to enable the renewal of prophetic, democratic Christian identity in the age of the American empire.

In past moments of national division, young people have played a disproportionate role in deepening the American democratic experiment. The black freedom struggle and the antiwar movement in the 1960s were largely sustained owing to their vision and courage. As older folk become jaded, disillusioned, and weary, the lively moral energy of reflective and compassionate young people can play a vital role in pushing democratic momentum.
Yet one of the most effective strategies of corporate marketeers has been to target the youth market with distractive amusement and saturate them with pleasurable sedatives that steer them away from engagement with issues of peace and justice. The incessant media bombardment of images (of salacious bodies and mindless violence) on TV and in movies and music convinces many young people that the culture of gratification—a quest for insatiable pleasure, endless titillation, and sexual stimulation—is the only way of being human. Hedonistic values and narcissistic identities produce emotionally stunted young people unable to grow up and unwilling to be responsible democratic citizens. The market-driven media lead many young people to think that life is basically about material toys and social status. Democratic ideas of making the world more just, or striving to be a decent and compassionate person, are easily lost or overlooked.

This media bombardment not only robs young people of their right to struggle for maturity—by glamorizing possessive individualism at the expense of democratic individuality—but also leaves them ill equipped to deal with the spiritual malnutrition that awaits them after their endless pursuit of pleasure. This sense of emptiness of the soul holds for wealthy kids in the vanilla suburbs and poor kids in the chocolate cities. Neither the possession of commodities nor the fetishizing of commodities satisfies young people’s need for love and self-confidence. Instead we witness personal depression, psychic pain, and individual loneliness fueling media-influenced modes of escapism. These include the high use of drugs like cocaine and Ecstasy; the growing popularity of performing sex acts at incredibly young ages, such as middle-school-age
girls giving boys blow jobs because it will make them “cool”; and the way in which so many kids have become addicted to going online and instant messaging or creating Weblogs in which they assume an alternate personality. This disgraceful numbing of the senses, dulling of the mind, and confining of life to an eternal present—with a lack of connection to the past and no vision for a different future—is an insidious form of soul murder. And we wonder why depression escalates and suicides increase among our precious children.

The most dangerous mode of dealing with this bombardment is addiction—to drugs, alcohol, sex, or narrow forms of popularity or success. These addictions leave little room or time for democratic efforts to become mature, concerned about others, or politically engaged in social change. The popular way of escaping from the pain and emptiness is self-medication—the first step toward self-violation and self-destruction. This is why so many—too many—of the youth of America are drifting, rootless, deracinated, and denuded. They have hardly a sense of their history, little grasp of what shapes them, and no vital vision of their human potential. Many have been reduced to a bundle of desires targeted by corporate America for consumption. Their armor of life is often too feeble to enable them to withstand the emotional trauma generated, in part, by the fast-paced capitalist culture of consumption that confronts them. In short, many lack the necessary navigational skills to cope with the challenges and crises in life—disappointment, disease, death. This is why so many are enacting the nihilism of meaninglessness and hopelessness in their lives that mirrors the nihilism of the adult world—often they are so disillusioned in large
part because they can see that the adult world itself is so bereft of morality.

Yet some young folk do persevere and prevail: those who are dissatisfied with mere material toys and illusions of security. They hunger for something more, thirst for something deeper. They want caring attention, wise guidance, and compassionate counsel. They desire democratic individuality, community, and society. They know something is wrong with America and something is missing in their lives. They long for energizing visions worthy of pursuit and sacrifice that will situate their emaciated souls in a story bigger than themselves and locate their inflated egos (that only conceal deep insecurities and anxieties) in a narrative grander than themselves. Their emaciated souls contain a rage that often strikes out at the world; their inflated egos yield a cocky pose and posture that defies authority, whether legitimate or illegitimate. A grand story and a large narrative—especially democratic ones—can channel their longings into mature efforts to contribute in a meaningful way to making the world a better place. This longing is the raw stuff of democracy matters.

Like every younger generation, our kids today see clearly the hypocrisies and mendacities of our society, and as they grow up they begin to question in a fundamental way some of the lies that they’ve received from society. They also begin to see that their education has been distorted and sugarcoated and has sidestepped so many uncomfortable truths. This often leads to an ardent disappointment, and even anger, about the failures of our society to consistently uphold the democratic and humanitarian values that can be born in youths in this phase of their life. This new sense of conscience
in young people is a profound force that adult society should take much more seriously. In fact, we should understand the expressions of this moral outrage as having a profound kind of wisdom, even as we must also help to channel that outrage into a more productive sense of commitment to find a positive way forward.