When in Doubt, Plant a Flag

Let’s begin making Christianity the moral standard of our lives instead of making our lives the standard of our Christianity. Then we might truly effect a seismic shift in our culture. Despite all the talk of “secularization,” a clear majority of Americans think of themselves as being “on the spectrum” of Christianity. The so-called “culture wars” are in fact manifestations of deeply held disagreements, not about whether or not we should or even can be Christian, but about what kind of Christian we should or can be.

But there’s more. As long as our political self-image is defined by our opinions (curated by professional media commentators) on the Big Ticket Political Items, we will be victims of politics rather than perpetrators of politics. Having a political opinion is a fine thing indeed, but it can also be a vain thing if we’re not prepared to change our lives in accordance with the implications of our opinions. Politics (like Christianity) is not simply about what we think, how we vote, and the public dem-onstrations we attend. Real political activity is the way we live our lives.

For instance, as important as it is to form our consciences for the voting booth, it is far more important that we live our lives in a Pro-Life manner. We should structure our lives in such a way as to make a Pro-Life culture more comprehensible and accessible to American society. Here’s an example of how that can work. American grocery markets have been evolving for decades through the market influence of what began as a small, creative movement which I’ll simply call “alternative food.” Small groups of people, “creative minorities,” set about to put together alternative networks and supply chains which would facilitate physically, socially, and economically healthier eating and therefore healthier living for themselves and their families and their friends and neighbors. It caught on, becoming a movement, and the economic challenge to the grocery industry became real.

In the same way, Pro-Choice politics is partly fueled by the fear that the oppor-tunity for economic betterment and upward mobility can be threatened by the presence of an unexpected child, the “unplanned” pregnancy. The most effective long-term witness that Pro-Life citizens can make would be to identify themselves with that creative minority endeavoring to “buy down” the cost of Pro-life culture by joyfully accepting a moderated material standard of living that facilitates an increased openness to children. On the one hand, they therefore show up that talk about “economic pressures” can sometimes be a disguised form of materialism. But they also show up that pejoratives like “reduced standard of living” and “inconvenient” are partially determined from the outset by a notion of the “good life” that simply excludes children, that there is a certain cult of lifestyle at work here. Rather than aiming for greater economic independence by trying to earn more money, Pro-Life Christians can therefore witness by their lives to alternative ideals, such as becoming more locally dependent upon one another (e.g. childcare, community gardens, healthcare co-ops). The politically relevant Pro-Life family isn’t the one who has more children because it’s rich, but rather the one for whom a reduced material standard of living is considered a more-than-even trade for the spiritual wealth that accrues to and flows from it.

Here’s another example: Christians in the financial sector can simply refuse to work for the development of a new credit card, say, one marketed to working-class Latinos and with a 35% interest rate (I know a Catholic who quit his lucrative job over this).

Or yet again: Jaron Lanier, the tech-nologist and commentator, said about the poisonous Social Media environment that in order to “effect change in the algorithm” of software which privileges negativity, only ten percent of social media users would have to boycott the virtual environment. This would bring sufficient market pressure to bear, the only pressure that our economic system under-stands. It would be true political activity. Just changing my life by unceremoniously leaving the platform I will have done the right thing, while reclaiming spiritual territory. I will have planted a flag.

It’s important to note that while we can and even should rationally calculate about the cumulative effect of our actions should a critical mass of people adopt them, we don’t have to wait until a mass social movement is underway so that we can join it in order to be assured that we’re “making a difference.” We can begin by realizing what makes for our own spiritual health, for our lives right now, remembering that our lives include the communities that are integral to our total flourishing. Here’s where ideas are really important: we must have at least a vague awareness of the state of unhealth in our souls: where is the problem? How can I change in order to flourish spiritually? That’s what politics is ultimately about.+