SOUTHERNNESS VS. CHRISTIANITY:

I'm going to talk about something that's crucial to understanding race in the South but also transcends race. That "something" is southern shame/honor culture. And I submit that what we're watching right now in much of our nation's Christian politics is an explosion not of godly Christian passion, but rather of ancient southern shame/honor rage.

There's an enormous amount of literature describing shame/honor culture in the South and shame/honor culture generally, but I like this succinct description from David Brooks:

In a guilt culture you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honors or excludes you. In a guilt culture people sometimes feel they do bad things; in a shame culture social exclusion makes people feel they are bad.

Shame/honor cultures are very focused on group reputation and group identity. Again, here's Brooks:

People are extremely anxious that their group might be condemned or denigrated. They demand instant respect and recognition for their group. They feel some moral wrong has been perpetrated when their group has been disrespected, and react with the most violent intensity.

Brooks was writing about the general growth of shame culture in America, including in left-wing circles on campus. But doesn't this sound familiar on the right? Have you noticed how much of the GOP, the party of white Evangelicals, is often positively obsessed with grievance, how it marinates in anger at the insults of the "elite" or the "ruling class"?

We experience this reality constantly. It sometimes appears as if the bulk of the conservative media economy is built around finding and highlighting leftist insults, leftist disrespect, and leftist contempt. And yes, it exists, but there is a difference between highlighting a problem and marinating in grievance over the rejection of the left.

This has old, old roots. In his book Desire, Violence, and Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction, Kent State professor Gary Ciuba writes that "honor meant that southerners beheld themselves as others beheld them," and that meant that "their self-worth lived in the look of the other."

I found that quote in an illuminating essay by Jody Howard, writing in Covenant. Howard amplifies Ciuba's point:

In the honor-shame culture of the South, allowing a perceived inferior to best or embarrass you was to experience more than personal insult. It was to witness a hole punched in the myth that undergirded antebellum and segregationist society. Maintenance of the myth was paramount: face had to be saved and respect salvaged through the use of violence and intimidation, or else one risked becoming the subject of societal violence in turn, as neighbors sought to reestablish the equilibrium, to save the myth.

This approach represents a dramatic contrast with biblical commands to "turn the other cheek" or to "bless those who persecute." Instead, the shame/honor imperative is to punch back, hard. Any other approach isn't just weakness. It risks the well-being of the community.

Make no mistake: The South is better than it was on this score. But the influence remains. For example, in a famous 1996 examination of honor in the South, researchers Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen found that southern male students experienced higher levels of testosterone and cortisol when "bumped into or sworn at in a hallway." It's a small data point, but it's interesting when connected both with history and with contrasting contemporary cultures in North and South.

So, why is all this so relevant to the present day? And what does it have to do with Christianity? Because when we talk about American Evangelicalism in a secularizing world, we're increasingly talking about southern Evangelicalism.

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