I find it amusing that Peter, who so vigorously abhors what he calls “identity politics” seems to embrace “culture politics” in these postings.
It sounds as if he is dismissive of the “cultures” which he contends do not have a direct, historic connection to ours. He says “In ‘Western Civ’ we are plagued by having to answer for people who lived long ago because we claim to have uninterrupted cultural connection to them.” (I would first claim that it is not a “plague” to have to answer for the errors of our ancestors when we have based our society on their errors, but that is another question.)
It may be that we have – in ways we have not yet seriously explored – certain kinds of “uninterrupted cultural connection” to cultures not part of “Western Civ,” not because they do not exist, but because we were kept from knowing they existed and how they might have influenced our culture.
Peter writes: “If it turned out that we discover an ancient biplane frozen in Siberia that proves someone else invented air travel long before the Wright brothers, that would be an interesting curiosity.” No, that would be an indication that certain things we have said about “our” culture and that other culture have turned out not to be true.
In the Netflix movie, "The Dig", based on real events, in 1939 an amateur archeologist discovers in England a “burial ship” dating back to the 7th century and with artifacts blowing away the “standard” myths about what people of that period were like. A portion of English history had to be written because of that find, and the artifacts are now a prominent exhibit in the British Museum.
Peter writes: “But there is a sense in which the study of other cultures is not the same thing as the study of one’s own culture.”
I ponder: Why? How?
Peter writes: “The move toward teaching World History instead of Western Civ is an effort to erase that distinction. But that is like studying heritage as a concept instead of one’s own heritage. There is no sense in which ancient Japan led to the formation of our nation.”
I ponder again: Are we sure? Ancient Japan led to a culture which we encountered and evaluated, as contact with that land began to exist in “The West,” and began basing our response to "The East" on our conclusions.
I think of the Jesuit missionaries of 400 years ago, for example, and maybe even Marco polo. Would there have been pasta in Italy today without his travel to the East? Our views of Japan and Asia were shaped by those experiences with their cultures and our ignorance (or misinterpretation) of those cultures. In intellectual life, in politics and in our understanding of who we are, we paid no attention to anything outside that “Western Civ” framework, except to extol our “Western Civ” as preeminent and “right.”
Then there is today’s global “culture” which exists due to massive immigration (schools in some places must accommodate Muslim, Hindu and Sikh holidays), the global economy and global politics. The Academy Award-winning documentary, “American Factory,” shows what happens when a Chinese company takes over and rebuilds an auto parts plant in Ohio. African Americans are finding respect for and being influenced by aspects of the cultures of the lands from which their ancestors were taken centuries ago. And they may be less inclined to find all the "glory" in the "Classic" cultures we lift so highly. Hence the Padilla approach, I think.
We have let what we have known as “Western Civ” be our world view, our identity. To fail to see the errors in that and cling to it becomes “identity politics” on a global scale.
In Tanzania years ago I was in one church which could have been lifted out of any small town in Germany and set down in a suburb of Dar Es Salaam. And I was at other services, in a sports stadium, in an open field, and under a grass roof, which - while they had the same theology and expression of the Gospel as that "German" church - were not based on the "culture" which designed that steepled edifice.
Furthermore, as Tanzanians, Ethiopians, Liberians, Namibians and other Lutheran Africans, not to mention Chinese and Indonesians, took their place in world Lutheranism, their cultures became part of "Western Civ."
