Why is the Episcopal Church participating in the severe and demonstrable downward spiral of American life and culture known as "dumbing down"?

By "dumbing down" I mean the widespread practice in the entertainment and political worlds, among other places, of making any discourse or communication, visual or written, so simplified that it is comprehensible readily to the least educated and least sophisticated members of the audience. I also mean the widespread practice in academic life of making one's intellectual wares glitter with vulgarity, cheap relevance and non-threatening familiarity, as if any language that is elevated or smacking of canon-approved privilege must be avoided as undemocratic or elitist.

The issues of multiculturalism and the role of the media, of educational institutions, and of democracy itself which these questions raise have often been discussed (see, for instance, Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip-mining of American Culture edited by Katharine Washburn and John F. Thornton, the impetus for my present question). But no one seems to be asking how and why the church, specifically our province of the Anglican Communion, is meshing with this cultural phenomenon of the post-modern age. Is it intentional or inadvertent?

In the not-too-distant past, the church sought to bring all its members to their full human potential. Hence programs of literacy in the slums of 19th-century America. Hence the wonderful and spirit-filled social justice movements from the 1950s on. And hence the according of full status to women, in ordained and lay ministry. The church sought to intensify not only the social equality but also the intellectual gifts of all its members. The most ordinary intelligence, clerical or lay, could be stimulated toward historical knowledge and to critical modes of thinking as foundations for coherent work toward the kingdom of God in this world.

Things seem to be different now. The church seems to have bought into the values of current American mega-corporate society as it sets about purveying to consumers a watered-down American culture severed from its historical roots and confined therefore to a cartoon-like present.

Liturgy in a good many places is likewise made shallow and unchallenging. If the church has a role to play in commenting on how we think about and live out our private and public lives, and how we govern our private and public selves, then the church, when it makes its sorely needed pronouncements about decades of evangelism and its necessary calls for an end to racism, might upgrade the discussions by seeking to educate a broader spectrum of its audience's intellects. Instead, being driven by single issues, such pronouncements are often foreshortened into the printed equivalents of sound bites, unsupported by a broader context of historical and theological examination.

Perhaps the church could think about how hungry the world is for a different message in a different medium, particularly now that American society is unremittingly battered by vulgarity and perversity masked in pseudosophistication in almost all verbal and visual communications. Perhaps the church, the most radical multicultural institution ever seen on earth, could regain contact with its teaching mission and its past and speak to the present with authority once again.

Of course, the church can't do this if "authority" is perceived as something repressive, elitist or basically unfair for some people. Of course the church won't do this if the past is seen as a construct of which the proprietors and apologists are somehow elitists themselves.

And so, it probably won't happen any time soon that the church will cast the light of clear thought and effective reasoning over the ground of American life. To do that might threaten those who confuse self-esteem with achievement, and equate excellence and clear thinking, even when linked to holy living and humble service, with intellectual and social snobbery.

Three areas in which the church has failed to do its homework while dumbing down can be seen in the Lutheran-Episcopal rapprochement; the waning of confirmation as a sacramental act; and the considerable confusion on such theological questions as who gets saved and what that means. While a great deal can and should be written on the intellectual and theological ramifications of these issues (and many more besides), I offer only these observations.

First, in regard to the arrangements with the ELCA, has anyone noticed how the intellectual level and tone of our discussions in both popular and learned venues is markedly different from the discussions surrounding the inauguration of the Church of South India 50 years ago? Those documents make interesting reading today, but who reads them? Second, in regard to confirmation, while it was of signal importance to re-establish this rite as the sign of a mature commitment of faith, why did discussions of its implementation under the new rubrics largely fail to take into account such excellent theological resources as Lionel Thornton's Confirmation: Its Place in the Baptismal Mystery, a basic resource in this matter since 1954? Is it because sociology was much more "with it" than theology, or was it just another instance of dumbing down?

Finally, one can only note that the American province of the Anglican Communion, currently driven by a rejection of its teaching charism, has heeded little or nothing of the Church of England's remarkable achievements in the area of theological writing on profound subjects made accessible to any reader who gets the very easily obtained books and makes a bit of an effort to understand. We must bear in mind that presenting a person with something not previously understood is not everywhere an antisocial act. But in our present office lectionary we often make optional those portions of the Psalter which present seemingly violent images, as if God and we could have no enemies in these bland times, or as if the violence needs to be understood literally, and not in terms of systemic hostility to the kingdom coming from societal and spiritual forces.

Why is the Episcopal Church participating in the dumbing down of our society? There are many reasons. Buying into the secular values that come with the secular gimmicks of consumerist America may be one. Thinking that intellectual thoroughness and historical awareness are elitist may be another. Being faced with wide-ranging and complex sets of questions in a time of societal stress and major shifts in the way we use our minds can, however, lead to more than throwing away the past in order to look post-modern. It can be beneficial to take stock of where we have come from and why we are allowing important questions to be discussed in oversimplified, one-dimensional ways. But one is grateful that the church (even if some of her shepherds sometimes appear not to think so) is after all a divine institution, and that in some mysterious way, even now, "all things are returning to their perfection through him from whom they took their origin." o

The Rev. Charles Witke is professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan. He assists at St. Andrew's Church, Ann Arbor.