A Reason to Leave the PCA — Sociological Differences
I was born in Canada, raised in Canada and now minister in Canada. This makes Canadian culture “water” for me.
What is water?
In David Foster Wallace’s speech “This is Water” he tells the famous anecdote quoted below,
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?””
Water are the cultural conditions that we take for granted.
Until I met and got to know a number of American pastors and elders, I assumed that things like universal health care, strict gun control and parliamentary democracy were good. I knew that the issues were somewhat complicated. Our health care system isn’t perfect.
But as a child, I learned in school that universal health care in Canada came about because of a Protestant minster who wanted to improve the lives of the poor. Strict gun control is supported by a huge margin of Canadians and came about to try and reduce murder. To this Canadian, such issues were barely worth discussing.
Imagine my shock when I met American ministers who thought universal health care was at best ignorant and at worst evil. I met ministers who not only defended owning guns, but resisted any government interventions on who gets to own which guns.
I’m not trying to debate the issues (plenty of other websites for that), just to explain how jarring some of the social differences are between the USA and Canada.
Even our self-perception is quite different. Canadians like to think of ourselves as peacekeepers, humble, friendly and welcoming. We are generally self-deprecating in our speeches. Americans (as far as I can tell) like to think of themselves as leaders, winners and aggressive (in all senses of that word). The self-perception is starkly different.
At our recent General Assembly, multiple speakers referred to the PCA in such glowing terms that the winning/leading self-perception was clearly felt. For instance, I heard statements like
“most other denominations are declining, but we are growing.”
“The PCA is as good as it has ever been.”
As a Canadian, I wouldn’t talk like that. It feels rude and prideful.
I am not attempting to impute motives to any of the speakers, but I am attempting to articulate the sociological distance between our two nations (in general).
Imagine if Eastern Canada presbytery put forward an overture asking our denominational leaders to write to our respective governments to advance the cause of universal health care?
There are rebuttals of course, #notallCanadians or #notallAmericans. Fair enough. There are Canadians who love guns and Americans who want universal health care.
But when the PCA is dominated by the south in general and the southeast in particular, one feels the distance.
Perhaps our continent would be better served by sister denominations that have the same theological grounding and see social issues differently?
