How Do I Live As a Christian in America?

This was a first for me: I’ve read hundreds of books in my life, but I’ve never stopped a book halfway through and started back at the beginning. I was so struck by the significance of what I was reading. 

So you could say that Jake Meador’s What Are Christians For? Life Together at the End of the World made a notable impact on me. My husband will probably secretly tell you he’s sick of me talking about it.

First, some background. Until 2020, I hadn’t lived in the United States as an adult for more than a few months at a time. So I’ve had a lot to catch up on these last couple of years. And now that I’ve figured out the basics, like which are the best deals at Costco, how to pay my water bill, and how to navigate media-streaming (okay, well, Gil still has to do this for me), I’m ready to move on to deeper things like, “How do I live as a Christian in America?” 

Maybe this seems like a no-brainer, but I’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time thinking about it. Many missionaries languish back in the States, like life no longer has the meaning and purpose it did overseas. I wrestle with this but keep thinking: If I’m living the gospel anywhere I am, it shouldn’t feel that way.

Also, because I’ve lived out of the country for half of my life, I have the curse (and the blessing) of seeing things about my culture from a different perspective. I can’t listen to the commentary on Christian radio without mulling over how a Tanzanian friend might interpret it. I can’t go grocery shopping without thinking about how an African in poverty might judge what I buy.

In November, I wrote a piece for the EFCA blog called Swimming in the Stuff of America. It’s about my struggle to steward my extraordinary wealth as an American, and in my opinion, it’s one of the most important things I’ve written in 15 years of blogging. Top 5, probably. Yet some of the responses I received puzzled me – people who insinuated that I shouldn’t feel so bad – like I was struggling over nothing. 

Gil and I are co-teaching an adult class at church, and he recently asked the group to list some “acceptable sins” in America. Not a single person mentioned materialism or consumerism, and I just about fell off my chair because for me, that sin is squawking loudly with glaring blinking lights. 

Sometimes I feel like an alien, like I speak a different language that no one understands. And I wonder if I’m just completely crazy.

So as Jake Meador’s book unfolded before me, and I began to catch glimpses of where he was going, it was like puzzle pieces began snapping into place all over my mind, linking together ideas that were floating around loose in there. 

Meador entwines together a study of American history, worldview, and today’s cultural trends to show how the problems we are dealing with in America are not new. In fact, they are woven into the fabric of the foundations of our society. 

He explains how the mindset behind colonialism – going back to the founding of our country – was one of materialism. The goal was conquering, taking, exploiting. There was no reverence for the land God created, only a sense of what to gain from it. 

He writes, “It was colonialism that helped normalize this idea that the people, animals, and plants that I encounter in the world do not contribute to my identity in any way but can be made useful to me as I seek to create my own identity. When the colonialists came to these new lands and uprooted the lives of the Native peoples, an essential bond was broken between people and place, so that human identity had to be refashioned apart from history, culture, and land.”

Colonialists’ view of the land as a means of exploitation closely mirrored their treatment of the people they saw as inferior. Early American Christians syncretized their version of Christianity to make it fit this lens. He quotes Frederick Douglass extensively, explaining, “Douglass argued that American Christianity has almost always been a kind of accommodated Christianity, modified and adapted to suit the economic desires and personal prejudices of many Americans. The moral claims of Christianity…were routinely modified and limited in the United States in ways that protected the interests of the wealthy and threatened the basic dignity of Black and Indigenous people.”

Meador explains that the Industrial Revolution only continued to enforce and expand this worldview. Production above all else. Profit trumps all. He writes, “The machinery of industrialism tended toward efficiency at the expense of virtually all other values and concerns—a tendency that was shared by the owners of the machinery.”

And what was the cost of all this progress? “Material lives were being extended and made more comfortable, but the spiritual needs of the human person were being squelched. They began to wonder whether we were actually acquiring more life or simply continuing to exist.”

Meador explains how industrialism reduced the goal of work to profit alone; work was no longer an end in itself that could bring satisfaction and joy. He describes how industrialism shattered community life. No longer did families and neighbors work together towards common goals, but the men went off to meaningless work in a factory. At the same time, women were relegated to mindless household tasks – alone. 

He explains, “[W]hen nature and neighbor are transformed into ‘things,’ all that’s left to define ourselves is our material body.” And thus, just like the land, our bodies must be carved up to match whatever identity we have chosen for ourselves. “If industrialism was an unmaking of the land, what came next was the unmaking of human bodies…[T]he sexual revolution came after the rise of the idea that it was right and good for people to be able to create their own identities, regardless of how that affects neighbor or nature.” He makes a strong connection between colonialism, industrialism, and the sexual revolution. It’s compelling. 

Materialism dehumanizes us, which helped confirm to me why missionary life was so fulfilling. I’ve written before about how missionary life gave me a unique view of work. The stipend we received met all of our needs but was not tied to our work. There was no sense of needing to climb the corporate ladder or fight to increase our standard of living. We were free to live out our calling without the pressure or lure of making more money. It was a tremendously liberating way to live. Can I translate that mindset here? 

Meador stresses the importance of regaining community life destroyed by industrialism. In Tanzania, we also had a remarkable community. Living in a foreign country forced our dependence on others – primarily others who were very different from us. That interdependence led to a vibrant sense of community. This description resonated deeply with me: “[A] large part of successful communal life is a sort of incidental community, the sort that arises when, as I once heard someone say, ‘we have friends that we do boring things with.’ Anne Helen Petersen has written about what she calls ‘errand friends,’ which are, as the name suggests, the sort of friends you do banal, everyday things with, such as picking up dry cleaning, helping address wedding invitations, getting your car’s oil changed, or making a quick run to the bank. ‘It’s unremarkable,’ Petersen writes. ‘It’s just life, but with another person there.’” Tanzania gave me an  infinite number of ‘errand friends’– the kind that are noticeably absent in my life in America.

Too often, American Christians define themselves by what they don’t do – don’t cuss, don’t smoke, don’t wear bikinis. We have become known for our restrictions. But is that really all the Christian life looks like? A set of moral standards – while still living life exactly the same as everyone else? No wonder we are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the world. 

Meador writes, “The American church is filled with ordinary people who love Jesus and seek to serve him and their neighbors in their daily lives. I have benefited from their kindness and generosity on many occasions. The problem is much more complex than that. It’s the way our vision of the Christian life has too often been implicitly conditioned and defined to leave the characteristic idols of the Western world untouched, unscathed, and unchallenged.”

Probably the most brilliant moment in What Are Christians For? (and this is likely a spoiler alert) comes towards the end when Meador asks: “How can we speak about the gospel and live as Christians in a society that thinks it is post-Christian but was never actually all that Christian to begin with?” 

Unfortunately, I was on my Kindle, otherwise I would not have just underlined that quote but drew circles and stars around it. Maybe the problem isn’t that we need to “go back” to some elusive Christian era in our nation’s history. Maybe we need to go back to the beginning of the very foundations of our country’s values, evaluate them in light of Scripture, and examine how we have unintentionally syncretized them with our faith. 

I know this may sound like some sort of scary “burn down the establishment” kind of book. It’s not. It’s refreshingly unpolitical. Both sides of the political spectrum will cheer at some parts and wince at others. This is about standing outside of politics and asking, “How should Christians live? How should we look different? How should that impact how we see work, money, community, our physical bodies, and the land we live on?” 

This is convicting: “Much Christian discipleship in American churches has been based on the assumption that whatever discipleship looks like, it won’t look like something that disrupts America’s business and financial life. Whatever discipleship looks like, it can’t be something that disrupts a comfortable privatized existence full of personal amusements and hobbies. Whatever discipleship looks like, it can’t be something that would cost us the personal peace and affluence that we assume is our birthright as Americans.” 

Meador paints a broad picture, but doesn’t give too many details about what exactly the American Christian life should look like – he leaves that up to us. But I finished the book with my mind brimming with ideas. How can I better steward the physical earth? How can I work to create authentic community? How can I use technology without allowing it to use me? How can I keep money and possessions from controlling me? How can I spend my money in a way that vulnerable people are not exploited? 

After all, isn’t that what Christians are for? Join me in finding this life together.