Yet another gem:
To the extent that our lives do not differ perceptibly from the lives of convinced advocates of U.S. exceptionalism, the rest of the world will justifiably number us among those advocates.
A very Radically Orthodox notion, this “difference” invoking. I have felt for a while now that churches need to REFUSE adulation of America , especially and particularly on those days when everyone is expected to bow down.
In this sense, then, I suggest that we need to take Sacramerica seriously as a cultural system. People really commit themselves to live (and die!) for the American Way. We don’t undermine that whole system of assumptions and the practices that express and reinforce Sacramerican beliefs simply by talking.
It is a cultural system that breeds loyalty from those who refuse to name it. In the spirit of “Naing the Powers” (the Walter Wink study), we must be ready to name them and identify where we see them.
And most of all, and first and foremost, BE that difference so that , as Hauerwas writes “the world might know that it is the world”
