On Being Salt and Being American, Transcendence and Situatedness in Our Hybrid Culture

"The empirical research conducted by Ralph Premdas in a number of countries has shown 'that the inter-communal antipathies present in the society at large are "reflected in the attitudes of the churches and their adherents' (Premdas 1994). Though the clergy are often invited to adjudicate, 'the reconciling thrust quickly evaporates after the initial effort'. The most important reasons for failure are the 'interlocking relations of church and cultural section which spill into partisan politics marked by the mobilization of collective hate and cultivated bigotry'.

"At times even a genuine desire for reconciliation is absent. Cultural identity insinuates itself with religious force; Christian and cultural commitments merge. Such sacralization of cultural identity is invaluable for the parties in conflict because it can transmute what is in fact murder into an act of piety...

"Christian communities, which should be the salt of of the culture, are too often as insipid as everything around them.

"'If the salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it?' asked Jesus rhetorically. The feel of doom hangs over the question. Since you cannot season it, tasteless salt 'is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot' (Matthew 5:13). Yet the very warning about being thrown out calls for 'the bitter cry of repentance,' as Niebuhr put it, and invites a turnabout.

"What should be the relation of the churches to the cultures they inhabit? The answer lies in cultivating the proper relation between distance (transcendence) from the culture and belonging (immanence) in it..."
Miroslav Volf, from Exclusion and Embrace

Volf says in post-modernese what Sam Clemens said a hundred years ago: salty truth and moral courage are in short supply in our communities. Speaking truth to power can cost you. My question concerns how it can be encouraged here and now in the context of increasingly authoritarian democracy and plutocratic economy? Salt cannot be manifest without grounded compassion, an underlying, unconditional affirmation of the human dignity of all people, including enemy. This wild existential decision or covenant to live the moral life, to be responsible in spite of our frailty and cowardice, is the first step. I quote Auden's prayer from memory:

May I like them composed of eros and dust,
Beleaguered by the same negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.