Moral behavior was readily
defined, and good and evil were clearly separable. Strong consensus developed as
moral definitions were accepted and supported by the community. Much of the
crisis of culture today results from the forces of modernity that have redefined
traditional meanings for many evangelicals. Gambling and divorce, for example,
are often seen as less worldly than they were 30 years ago. Other changes such
as the definition of biological life in terms of brain wave patterns or poverty
in terms of statistical indices, are now open to personal interpretations that
may challenge the traditional culture. In each case, modernity has abstracted
traditional meanings or activities in ways that some believers accept and others
oppose with equally good consciences. How to interpret these formerly shared
meanings now becomes problematic. The Assumption of Prioritization One of the
assumptions of modern evangelicals is that their decision-making is based on
values derived from more ultimate and often traditional value commitments. They
assume that decisions are largely principial, rather than pragmatic, and guided
by cultural values that all agree upon. In fact values are not necessarily given
priority in the evangelical community. They may be just as problematic for
believers as non-believers when they are too abstract or remote from everyday
life. Modernity has eroded much of the influence that values have traditionally
had on the decision-making of evangelicals. Although culture as values has been
considered an integral part of the Christian heritage, Swidler argues that
people give more priority to strategies of action than to the values guiding
that action. 4 She suggests that all real cultures contain diverse, often
conflicting symbols, rituals, stories, and guides to action. The reader of the
Bible can find a passage to justify almost any act, and traditional wisdom
usually comes in paired adages counseling opposite behaviors. A culture is not a
unified system that pushes action in a consistent direction. Rather, it is more
like a tool kit or reper- toire from which actors select differing pieces for
con- structing lines of action. 5 Evangelicals are not immune to such a tool kit
approach to culture. Like everyone else, they experience the discontinuities
caused by the inability to maintain traditional lifestyle patterns. They may
also choose among a host of new options for behavior. Swidler refers to such
persons as those with unsettled lives - those involved in constructing new
strategies of action - and suggests they are unlikely to depend on values for
decision-making. Only those with settled lives - those for whom culture is
intimately integrated with action - will depend more on values for deciding
actions.
The Christian ideal of settled lives, as Swidler describes it, is
weakening. The trends to increased divorce and dysfunctional families in the
evangelical community, for example, suggest the increase in unsettled lives
there. The trend is also seen in Hunter's data on evangelical students which
suggest there is a drift toward androgyny as students question traditional roles
of men and women. Singleness as a life-style option for women has then become
increasingly legitimate not only for the larger population of Americans but for
Evangelicals as well. 7 Modernity offers a plethora of new and attractive
options for old behaviors. Priority is now often given to these options instead
of traditionally agreed upon values. Increasingly, believers shop on Sunday and
replace evening services with the Super Bowl. The priority given to the
traditional meaning of the Sabbath as a day of rest is now open to
interpretation. The Assumption of Integrity Another cultural problem in the
evangelical community involves the assumption that a fundamental integrity in
the Christian culture assures a lifestyle that is consistent and unified. It
centers in the belief that orthodoxy provides a shield against worldly choices
and that Christian culture, by definition, stands above the world's. Moberg
suggests that such integrity cannot be taken for granted: Many Christian group
tolerate internal sins...even while they condemn similar failings of others as
'dirty sins'. 8 Swidler implies that cultural integrity weakens as diverse and
conflicting symbols become more influential in rapidly changing cultures. 9
Suggesting that specific cultural symbols can be understood only in relation to
the strategies of action they sustain, Swidler argues that old belief systems
break down and are replaced by new. l0 In the case of young women today, they
are not driven by their values, but by what they find they have become good at,
or at least accustomed to. ll This same tendency to rely on personal
interpretations of conflicting current symbols is also seen in Hunter's data on
attitudes of evangelicals toward traditional parenting roles. l2 He argues that
although evangelicals maintain more traditional views of parenting than the
majority of society, these views are changing. While supporting the value of
traditional familism, evangelicals are less supportive of traditional parenting
skills. This is especially true of younger evangelicals, for example, who tend
to share society's view that a working mother can have just as secure a
relationship with a child as a mother who does not work. A culture of
traditional, shared meanings is strained by the explosion of new symbols
generated by modernity and supported by the mass media.
