Downton Abbey and Cultural Christianity
I love Downton Abbey. (Or at least I did until last night. I’m rather undecided going forward.) I love it for many of the reasons I love Mad Men. In addition to strong characters and the elements of love and betrayal and power and suspense that are part and parcel of good narrative, both shows are also period dramas set at particular times and places which aren’t just interesting in general but are experiencing great tumult and change and so help us understand not just something of where we came from but also who we are and where we are going.
When we watch the debate over the women’s vote in Downton Abbey (or women’s pay in the workplace in Mad Men), for instance, it causes us to think about the place of women in our own culture and evaluate some of the advances and question some of the setbacks women have experienced more lately. When we peer into the Irish uprisings we’re reminded of just how long “the Troubles” have persisted. When we watch the aftermath of war and how that changes everything for the characters, we wonder about our own wars and notice, I hope, how much less present war seems to be in our age of drones and an all volunteer army. And so on.
But I’ve also found Downton Abbey has prompted me to think about the place and nature of the church. There’s been a fair amount written of late about the role of faith – or really the absence of faith – in the show. Apart from the Vicar showing up for baptisms and weddings, or the anti-Catholic sentiments that are stirred up by the prospect of Tom and Sibyl’s baby being baptized Roman Catholic, there is little explicit mention of faith.
Some have found that troubling, even historically inaccurate, but I wonder. I mean, as one historian quoted in an article I read said, upper class British took their membership in the Anglican Church for granted, but that didn’t mean they talked about it.
I realize, of course, that Downton Abbey is a drama (really a lavish soap opera, if I’m to be honest), and I have no idea just how much research went into this aspect of 1920s British culture or if the writer and producers are even particularly interested in religious questions. But I think it nevertheless sheds some light on our own situation of living with what probably is best described as a form of “cultural Christianity.” The Vicar/Pastor is there for weddings, baptisms, funerals, and such. And the faith is a comfort at times – when Cora assures her family that Sibyl is watching her daughter’s baptism, for instance, or when we invoke God’s presence after tragedy – but, by and large, it is assumed rather than confessed.
While I was taught in seminary to critique, if not despise, cultural Christianity, there is something quite comforting about it. I mean, at least it’s there. Can one ever live out the revolutionary impulse of Christianity without it becoming somehow part and parcel of our everyday lives over time? And aren’t there other elements of our lives as well – political, familial, and the rest – that our faith shares, rather than dominates?
Maybe comforting isn’t quite the word. Maybe it’s just realistic. The observation, I mean, that some take to religion more fervently than others, but that on the whole religious faith serves as part of the glue that holds a culture together. Sometimes it does more than that, but at least it does that.
Which is why it’s so hard for the characters then, or we today, when that changes. Robert’s children aren’t concerned that their niece will be baptized Roman Catholic, debating the vicar concerning whether God could really be displeased by all the people living in all the countries outside England. And many of our children take a similarly lackadaisical stance toward participation in a religious faith community today.
When we ache for the church of our youth (or of our parents’ or grandparents’ generation, depending on where we live), are we not aching at least in part for the passing of cultural Christianity? For whatever its shortcomings, we could at least count on the faith as playing some role – even if at times peripheral – in our lives, and I suspect we took some comfort that it was part of the glue that held our lives together.
But it is passing. Not yet passed, but surely moving on. And, as a result, there is little question that the church as we know it will be quite a bit smaller in the years to come than it is today.
The question, however, is will it be more vibrant? Will the passing of our own cultural Christianity yield way to more intentional forms of Christian community, of lives that are more fully – if never completely – shaped by the revolutionary character of, not just Christian faith, but by Christian hope and love as well.
These are questions the characters of Downton Abbey aren’t likely to address in Season Four or probably ever. But we will. And much turns on how we address them.
REALISTIC or COMFORTING?
Like Dr. Lose, I was taught to distrust/despise cultural religion. For me it seems that Church and culture swap back and forth at the lowest common denominator.
” when Cora assures her family that Sibyl is watching her daughter’s baptism, for instance, or when we invoke God’s presence after tragedy – but, by and large, it is assumed rather than confessed.”
Can it be that we spout the unreal when what is called for is a quiet presence. Someone is “looking down” smacks of heresy and insensitivity, not to mention squishy theology. So to, an invoking of God to explain away tragedy. I have experienced it in many gatherings. Even insurance companies have stopped identifying “acts of God”–or they should. Nature and events (natural or unnatural) are not served well when what cannot be understood is blamed/credited for God. In my mind, momentary comfort by invoking God does nothing for one who needs care for having lost someone. And where do we get that the departed dead “are watching?”
Is it a wonder that informed people sometimes cannot take the church seriously?
Thanks for your comments, Tom. I think I’m trying to say much the same thing. As much as we think we don’t want cultural Christianity, it’s easier. And we got used to it and, in this sense, it’s a realistic picture of what Church is for a lot of people. Part of their culture. Except that’s the problem – it’s not an important part of the culture for a whole generation who’s discovered it’s also not that important to them. Cultural Christianity may actually have worked for some generations – the two went somewhat hand in hand for my grandparents, for instance. But today, I think, the Church needs to be more. The Church has been called to be more. Will we respond?
Thanks, again, for writing.
Thank you, David.
How should the church respond? One way is to become honest with ourselves and with those inside and outside our CHristian culture. Dare we acknowledge that our myths are not historical? Can we admit that what we espouse gets farther and farther away from the reality we live in. Our life inherited from the first century cannot wedge itself into realities.
Sunday a dear friend asked me, “Wasn’t satan once a good angel who fell?
THere is no twenty-first century answer to that. Even by asking the question we alienate non-church folk with IQs in triple figures.
Within the myth is a kernel that helps us understand ourselves and our relationship with our universe. Admit the things we know to be unreal (dare I say unscientific?).
Folks will be drawn to communities that see themselves modeled on doing and giving as our stories of Jesus. But only if we come clean about ourselves and our claims.
What’s not to like about that?
Another take on what we, the church need to do:
I read today of one who found his new-life-rescue through AA.
Follow up at churches, he found them shallow, uncaring, etc
Perhaps our model is to take ourselves seriously, not surface-bound and ready to offer/be ministering at several levels, ready to do as Jesus did at whatever level is sought/neede.
So glad to find another Downton Abbey fan — If Christians of the “Downton Abbey generation” seem to be merely “cultural Christians” it is because they lived in a culture and social structure with it’s roots embedded (sometimes twisted) in a faithful world view.
I often think of my grandmother when I watch the show. Grandma was born in 1890 and died in 1996, one month after her 106th birthday. She had been “in-service” to Mary Hill, daughter of James J Hill, been widowed by the Spanish flu and left with two children. After several years of widowhood she answered a newspaper ad for a housekeeper, left her two children with her parents in Wisconsin and traveled by train to St Paul to meet the widower-farmer with 4 children whom would eventually become her second husband (and my grandfather.) It was a leap of faith. When she discerned that my grandfather was a decent man, she sent for her children and the two families were united.
The last time my grandmother and I were in church together was on her 106th birthday. It was world communion Sunday — Oct 6th, 1996. There was no question for her where she wanted her extensive family to celebrate the day. For my grandmother being Christian was both a cultural identity and a personal identity. Grandma was quiet about her faith, she lived it (and sang it, and knitted it– 15 pairs of mittens for her churches mitten tree the summer before she died)all without saying about it much. But what she did say was memorable: I was sitting next to her when she was served communion that day and she pulled me over and whispered in my ear that this was her best birthday ever because she was having communion with the whole world.
Perhaps we have to be more consciously Christian than my grandmother’s generation. But we cannot criticize her generation, they had their challenges to live faithful lives, we have ours. Which is why I appreciate how you framed you question, “…aren’t there other elements of our lives as well – political, familial, and the rest – that our faith shares, rather than dominates?”
As for the show itself, I too feel let down. Dead or alive, I hope they begin the next season with the words “One year later.”
Peace.
That’s a wonderful story, Tom, and I appreciate you sharing it.
You’ve named my ambivalence about cultural Christianity very well. It was part of the culture. It did share a place with other elements of our lives. It was the faith of my grandparents – missionaries for 30 years – who also lived in a culture that assumed a certain pattern of church-going. They were intentional Christians and yet that was very much assumed rather than intentional as we might mean it today. Yet we live at this different time and are understandably restless about what we’re being called to. I don’t think it’s too the kind of church our grandparents inhabited, but it is to a similar faithfulness.
On the show: reading that the story was written as it was in part in response to contract disputes and the actor wanting out of the show helped, oddly enough. But I was still pretty bummed out for a while. 🙂
You are on to something about the kind of church we are called to inhabit. It isn’t my grandma’s church or possibly even my mom’s. Mom and I get into hot debates in part because so much of our personal efforts go into a couple of hours of worship once a week. They are beautiful and relevant hours that require thought, care coordination and planning. But in today’s culture, the world needs God’s church (and our faith) to share in more of our lives than a couple of hours spent in the safety of our sanctuaries.
Another perspective on this, but from a British Anglican clergy perspective;
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/religion-and-downton-abbey/14519/
I wonder if Downton might be more of a parable rather than an expository comment on religion and spirituality. And the feminine voices are often the prophetic voices. Mrs. Hughes in particular brings faith into play on more than one occasion (e.g. dealing with the “fallen” housemaid, Ethel, gently reminding Carson about Christian values of love and justice, supporting Tom in his new life). Sybil talks about her beliefs with Mary before she dies. Bates struggles, knowing he does not believe in God but having to wonder about his experiences of faith. The turn of the century was a time of great questioning in Great Britain, just as it is now in the US. I think that spiritual, unnamed current running through the series is one reason it is so appealing…
As to the deaths of Sybil and Matthew…people did die young at that time. Childbirth was still dangerous. Automobiles as well. I think both deaths, hard as they were, fit the story.
Cultural Christianity? Have you heard that the Catholic Church is growing by leaps and bounds in the U.S.? And if Obama gets his way, even more Latin American Catholics will be pouring across our borders, bringing their “Cultural Christianity.”
I believe that this blog post is referencing more the passive association to Christianity than anything else, Kathy, and how that may well be on its way out the door. Whether it is a person who drives by a church often enough, yet never sets foot in a door, that says, “Yeah, that’s my church” or someone who leaves a church, any church, because of the inadequacies of the church community to engage real questions which occur in life in open, honest, and real ways while uplifting the brokenness that exists, church is no longer an assumed part of the culture for everyone.
Yes, there may be cultures that do have church still as a part of their makeup, yet look at the rise of non-affiliation in religious surveys- there is a rapidly rising reality there that does not have that as a part of their makeup.
Cultural Christianity is like having something in your pocket that when you need it, you can reach into that pocket, pull it out, and have it give you answers, usually in the form of pie-in-the-sky theological cliches. Much like what Tomschomaker talked about in the first comments.
It is also well past the time when the reality of ‘having faith makes you a better person or a better citizen’ is the prevailing theory as part of a huge chunk of the American culture. Again, looking at the rise of the nones- people in my generation are not only avoiding institutions like religions, but are realizing that in fact you can be a well-meaning, engaged, and involved person and citizen outside of a faith community.
So my friends, many of whom are disengaged from a faith community ask me questions like: Whether the pews are full or empty, if they leave the faith at the door when they walk out, only to come back to it when they ‘need it’, what has been changed?
In fact, culture is continually saying/showing that religion is flawed and full of inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and broken people.
Cultural Christianity in this way is on its way out, I believe, and I am glad for it. I don’t believe that these issues have been overcome- we only have to look into our world and culture to see that the ‘church’ hasn’t done a great job of bearing Christ to our neighbor.
And I don’t have to look into any catechism to see that, because it is, in fact, smeared all over the news website across the world.
Cultural Christianity has enabled Christianity to exist in a way that doesn’t cost us anything. Someone can pick it up and drop it off whenever they feel like it, and we all have to do a better job at engaging faith’s living reality every hour of the week, not just the 1 they are in the brick and mortar church for. Christ is more than that, more than doctrine, more than a building- living, breathing, and in each speck of creation, and we must help ourselves understand and see ways of engaging that reality.
My $0.02
I appreciate this post very much. I recently attended a funeral for a man who lived his whole life in a small town in Iowa. I was amazed at the culture I was observing/participating in. The whole town (it seemed) attended the service, a long line of cars followed us to the graveside service, and everyone ate lunch in the basement downstairs afterward. No one asked questions, at least out loud, about what the pastor had said and there was no problem saying grace over the meal. For me, coming from the pacific Northwest that is infamously “spiritual but not religious”, a funeral is respectful of the beliefs of the one that has died, but also that not everyone will share those. I have never seen a service or community come together at the church in this way, and I thought of the cultural Christianity imbedded in their lives.
Often an example of cultural Christianity that I’ve heard is the numbers of members vs. numbers in the pews, and even on this coast, there’s always discrepancy. But are we talking about intentionality or getting people in the pews every Sunday? I believe we have a long way to go in education and being able to own our faith in this changing culture. Despite the struggles that come from not assuming value in church community, we also cannot assume any knowledge or belief: and this can be a great thing! With the passing of an era and a country that may no longer be majority professed Christian (any stats on that to share?) we could grow into an age where we have to teach to everyone, and we cannot assume understanding of “insider language” or even basic knowledge of stories, traditions or belief. It could just result in a deeper knowledge, belief and ability to articulate in a completely different way. I pray for that change to come: is the death of cultural Christianity the catalyst to bring it?