Archie Bunker’s god, Part II
Back in 2018, I wrote a blog with the title, “Clinging to Archie Bunker’s God.”
The character masterfully played by the late Carroll O’Conner in the 1970s TV comedy “All in the Family,” Bunker had his own take on traditional Christian doctrines, including that of the inerrancy of the Bible.
“God don’t make no mistakes,” declared Archie. “That’s how he got to be God.”
For those too young to remember Archie, who in 2005 was listed as number 1 on Bravo’s 100 Greatest TV Characters, Wikipedia says Bunker was characterized by his bigotry towards “… blacks, Hispanics, “Commies,” gays, hippies, Jews, Asians, Catholics, “women’s libbers,” and Polish-Americans….”
Bunker was presented as a Christian, however, and “… often misquotes the Bible. He takes pride in being religious, although he rarely attends church services ….”
Poster Boy
Bunker could be the poster boy for today’s pseudo-Christianity, in which so many of us substitute popular “wisdom” – the kind of thing you see on bumper stickers – for the teachings of Jesus.
Popular wisdom likes a Jesus who would confuse religion with a misguided patriotism that proclaims, “America, right or wrong;” who would describe the poor as lazy and interested only in a free ride; who would easily jump to conclusions about the guilt of others with phrases like “lock ‘em up;” who would dare to lump “God, guns and country” in the same phrase.
Popular wisdom likes the plastic Jesus, the one whose countenance is portrayed in countless images as bland and melancholy, who understands and approves of our prejudices, our clinging to popular beliefs instead of his actual teaching.
No Culture Warrior
I’ve become a fan of Tish Harrison Warren, a priest of the Anglican Church in North America, who writes occasional columns in the New York Times. Her God, she writes, is not a “culture warrior.”
“In the news and on social media, God usually shows up when we are fighting about something. The subject of faith seems most often discussed in conversations about voting patterns and campaigning. God appears in our public discourse when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, calls for Christian nationalism. Or in Twitter debates about whether a coach should publicly pray on the 50-yard line. Or when the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor painted “Jesus, Guns, Babies” on the side of her campaign bus.
This sounds a lot like Pope Francis, who has said that instead of being a player in the culture wars, the church should be a “field hospital” where modern people, buffeted by the indifference or outright hostility of various ideologies, philosophies and politics, are treated with the medicine of God’s love.
Harrison Warren believes the way religion is used in the culture wars inevitably shapes, as a culture and as individuals, how we discuss faith. “And that inevitably shapes who we understand God to be.”
Fundamental Issues
Instead, faith is about fundamental issues with which, acknowledged or not, every human being must deal. She calls them “questions that haunt every human life: How does one know what is true and false, right or wrong? Is there a God? If there is, can we interact with him, her or it? If so, how? Can God speak to us? Can God say no to us? What are our obligations to God and to other human beings? How can we have joy? How can we live well? How can we be wise?”
People searching for God must not be distracted by “popular wisdom” or the hot-button issues foisted upon us by the culture wars. The wisdom accumulated by the “cloud of witnesses” – the billions of people who have found God through the ages – shows that the true God can be found by open-mindedness, prayer, silence, reflection and study.
Obviously, that’s not Archie Bunker’s god.
