This will be a pretty biased entry, but that's what blogs are for.
The French and the Americans accuse each other of acedia regarding different things.
The French often are disgusted by Americans' acedia about foreign affairs. We have a reputation of pushing our military weight around when it suits us and ignoring countries that desperately need our help. I was in France in 2003 and I had to explain to many, many people that, no, I didn't think the U.S. should have invaded Iraq, that yes, I did think our president was a pushy moron, and that yah, it probably would have been better to spend all of that military money stopping the tribal genocide in Africa and feeding starving children. I tried my best to show that not all Americans were apathetic about the rest of the world, but my French acquaintances still used me as a focal point for their frustrations toward the West. Their argument was that if Americans could get off their couch-potato bottoms, shed some of their acedia, and challenge the president, then maybe we could enact change. I didn't have an answer for them there.
So how do Americans accuse the French of acedia with all of their strikes, rallies, social unrest, and heated debates? Religion. When I started to look for a church to attend in Pau in 2003, I was surprised at how far I had to walk from my host home to find a protestant church. In NW Arkansas, there's just about one on every corner. I was also surprised at the selection. My options as a Christian were to attend the Catholic church or the one Protestant church. Baptist? Methodist? Pentacostal? According to Pau, France, they are all just Protestant. Once I got inside, I was surprised again to find that the one Protestant church in town was not even full on Sunday mornings, and they only had one service! What, I wondered, could have driven this country, with all of its beautiful cathedrals, hundreds of relics, and a strong history of evangelism, what could have driven them away from their religious heritage? The more I studied history, the more I learned about the religious wars where people murdered one another for minor doctrinal differences, about the Crusades where "Christian knights" killed people in their own countries if they didn't convert, and then about "la laïcité" which forbids public school students to show outward signs of their religion, and in effect, even forbids them to talk or write about their religion in school. In trying to solve one problem, the French went to the other extreme. This page gives more (also biased) specifics: "(A) poll indicated that only 10 percent of the French population attends church regularly and of the 51 percent who call themselves Catholics, only half said they believed in God. Those that don’t believe in God said they called themselves Catholic because it was a family tradition."We all have acedia about something. When is it good? When is it bad? I welcome your comments.
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Excellent views on acedia...really tough points! And painful points, I might add...bring to mind all sorts of things, especially in terms of religion, which is, of course, where acedia is typically applied... In talking about empty churches, Cleveland is struggling with closing and merging churches in the Catholic diocese: http://www.cleveland.com/religion/index.ssf/2008/09/voice_of_opposition_to_clevela.html. The Anglican church in England, THE Church of England which is the mother of the Episocopal Church of the US is horribly unattended, just like in France, with many small churches abandoned... And so on...and yet, the flip side to acedia... is it not dangerous as well???
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think??
Western Europe is considered a "post-Christian culture."
ReplyDeleteRe Linda's comment about acedia being dangerous "and yet the flip side, is it not dangerous as well?" One of the wisest Christians I ever knew said the two hardest things in the life of faith are balance and consistency. As long as we occupy human bodies we will struggle in both of those areas.
This has turned to a rather profound discussion. But to go on your comment when you said that you had to walk quite a bit to find a protestant church .... I think that as opposed to the U.S where we are just a large mass of different cultures and where it is rather normal to see all the different cultural outlets; when you go abroad everything (in my opinion) seems more siglefied (p.s thats not a word I know but you get my pt) and unified. So the fact that there weren't that many protestant outlets doesn't seem that odd to me.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit the nail on the head concerning when acedia is bad by saying they went to another extreme. When anything becomes extreme it typically goes bad. I won't say "always" because that would be extreme :). However, everything needs balance. If religion interferes with allowing others to live, it's bad. If the lack of religion leads to people hurting others, it's bad. Extremism just isn't a progressive state of being.
ReplyDeleteWhen I thought about acedia I also thought about the differences between how the US views the world and how France views the world. Here we seem to mostly hear about other countries in relation to us (who's talking smack about us, where we have sent armies, who our allies or enemies are, etc.). There are citizens who seek out the other kinds of stories but I always find it sad that interest in a bad situation in a third-world country spikes the minute a celebrity visits it and talks about it and then immediately goes back down.
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