Princeton Professor Robert P. George recently drew my attention to a trivial but emblematic incident in which a flight attendant wished a passenger a “blessed” night. Unfortunately, the recipient of these kind words was a member of America’s progressive officer class who responded with predictable outrage. Clara Jeffery, editor of the progressive magazine Mother Jones, was so traumatized by this verbal assault, she took to X to express her splenetic indignation at the “creeping Christian nationalism” this unwanted benediction displayed.
She has since deleted the post and been both derided and defended online. While Professor George saw in the tantrum yet more evidence of progressive condescension and scorn for the working class, others have resorted to the incantatory clichés of critical theory that magically render superfluous the need for thoughtful engagement with anything outside of the acceptable progressive frame of reference. One simply cannot dialogue with such people because any attempt to do so is regarded as a manipulative (even if unwitting) attempt to reinforce the values of an intrinsically unjust system. “Shut up and listen!” is the progressive default response.
What is fascinating is that the incident does point to a real danger to society. But it is not the one Jeffery identified. The threat is not Christian nationalism or Christian privilege. Rather, it is the cynicism that increasingly characterizes American culture. Expressive individualism places the individual with his desires at the center of life. It therefore contains at its core a tendency toward seeing others in instrumental terms: Will this person help or hinder my personal happiness? And over time that tilts toward seeing others in adversarial terms: This person is first and foremost a potential problem, an oppressor until he proves otherwise.
This is in large part why the various iterations of critical theory have found such a positive reception among those who have never read a page of the books that provide its intellectual architecture. It is not the arguments but the ethos of critical theory that makes it so powerful. An age that has basted in the cynicism that is the existential end-term of expressive individualism finds it easy to believe that power and manipulation lie behind everything, even the most innocuous and well-intentioned greeting. And when some of the primary means of human interaction—for example, X—incentivize invective and normalize insults as the default setting, they thereby reinforce such cynicism. There is a warning here for Christians: To use media that tend toward objectifying others is to risk conceding a vision of humanity that is profoundly unchristian.
Left unchecked, the situation can only degenerate further. And that raises the question: Can society survive such a cynical understanding of human interaction? When kind words that acknowledge the humanity of another can be dismissed as part of an evil and manipulative power structure, one must wonder whether we’re trapped in a world so cynical that we have no vocabulary or speech acts that might allow us to treat others as human.
The London Review of Books offers another expression of cynicism toward human interaction, though in a considerably more sophisticated manner than Jeffery and her allies. In a recent review of Jacques Derrida’s work on hospitality, Jonathan Rée summarizes part of the argument as follows:
Consider the classic scene of welcome, in which a host invites you in with greetings, smiles and open arms. The gestures may be a sincere expression of friendship, but they are also, unavoidably, a sly assertion of privilege: this is my place, they say, and even if I tell you to ‘make yourself at home,’ you must remember that you are here on my sufferance.
Here is the cynicism of the postmodern condition on display. Kindness to others in the form of hospitality becomes yet another power play, another way of putting somebody else beneath us in the hierarchy, of asserting superiority. Nietzsche for the win.
That is not only a deeply cynical view of hospitality; it is also one that denies human experience. Anyone who has ever been alone in a new city and has found himself invited to someone’s home for a meal will likely not have experienced it as manipulative but as liberating. The reason is simple: The reality of being treated as a person, not as a thing, is always liberating. It is surely why hospitality is a key element of numerous religions. When I invite people to my home, I acknowledge their humanity and personhood. In the same way, when I wish them a blessed day, I do much the same.
My own religious tradition, Reformed Protestantism, infamously holds to the doctrine of total depravity, which affirms that no aspect of human nature is untouched by sin. This is often misconstrued as seeing all human beings as utterly wicked. In fact, it makes a much more modest claim: that all our deeds fall somewhat short of what they should be, tainted by selfishness. Even hospitality. And so I would acknowledge some truth to Derrida’s claims. But here is the difference with Derrida and his ilk: So mesmerized are they by manipulative discourse, they give little to no room for the humanity of hospitality. It is just one more cynical gesture. By contrast, Christianity gives hospitality a place of honor, for it is a practical realization of the character of God and a practical acknowledgment of the humanity of others. That is one reason why Paul makes it a qualification for eldership in the church. Christians are to treat others as persons, as subjects, not as things or objects. And hospitality is one obvious way of doing that.
The infantile rants of Clara Jeffery and others reveal the deep commitment to a dehumanized view of humanity and human interaction that pervades much of contemporary society. That is the real existential threat to civilization, not flight attendants who acknowledge the humanity of passengers by wishing them well using the language of blessing. First-world tantrums about such things merely reveal how low the bar for claiming victimhood has sunk in our society. But this presents Christians with a twofold challenge. First, we must not play by the rules of the postmodern game, where everything is reduced to power and manipulation. Second, we can do this by showing hospitality to others. Cynicism cannot be defeated by argument, let alone by more cynicism. It can only be defeated by action, action that honors what it means to be human, of which hospitality is a beautiful example.
Carl Trueman is a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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Image courtesy Valentin Angel Fernandez. Image cropped.
