It started with me listening to James B. Jordan speak about the differences between folk and city culture. The city—and all Americans, including those outside official city limits, partake of city culture—is a place where many hands are constantly bringing us all that we need and want for life. Our food is grown and harvested, transported and prepared by many people we have never met. Our homes are built for us, streets paved, newspapers printed, and, not to mention, our sewage is removed, a very essential service without which we could not long live in the city. And all that is asked of us to partake of these amazing benefits is that we ourselves serve in some unique way. So when we think of people cooperating and serving each other, perhaps there is no better example than people living in a city. Yet there is something lost in the transition from agrarian to city culture as well.
Whereas in the city, people are constantly doing things for one another by mutual consent, in agrarian culture they often do things with one another out of necessity. People bake all their bread at one time in the fall in a common oven, or they raise a barn together or share harvesting equipment and the traditions of harvest. In agrarian culture people go to the market and market day and its accompanying traditions become unifying aspects of their lives, creating community. But in the city we don’t have markets. We have supermarkets. And these do indeed have distinct advantages. We save time by not having to negotiate prices for each item that we buy. And this creates more time for cultural activities, dominion activities, such as building great architecture or sending a man to the moon. But something is lost as well. We are not likely to get to know one another by going to the supermarket. Someone might help you bring your groceries to your car, but that’s about it.
And so there has to be a new way of creating community in the city and Jordan says that the solution, believe it or not, is the Church, the body of Christ, and specifically singing in the church. If you’ve ever been to a charismatic church where they sing enthusiastically for prolonged periods, you know that these are often more racially and economically diverse and one reason for that is that singing breaks down barriers. In the Mosaic covenant, worship was silent, but when we get to the point that Israel is no longer a tribe, but a nation with its own capital city, then there is singing in the temple. And Paul says that our worship in the new covenant is to be like that, with “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” in other words with instrumental music and singing as it was in the temple, only more and more glorious.
So all this is what Jordan says about cities and church music. That is to say, in the city, community has to be at least somewhat deliberate. I can choose whether or not to go to church and whether or not to open my mouth in praise to God when I get there; whereas in agrarian culture for your own survival you really didn’t have a choice weather to live alongside others. In the city we can choose whether to be hermits or to live incredibly rich lives partaking not only of others services but of their fellowship as well. Community dies, but it comes back in more glorious form. Sound familiar? No that doesn't just happen to Gandalf.
As a conservative, I’ve often heard my counterparts decrying the other half as those who live in cities and wouldn’t it be nice if global warming would happen and all of the coastal cities would be drowned by glacial melt; then they really would be the blue voter blocks. But the truth is that the New Covenant really is for cities. The New Covenant was inaugurated in a city, in Jerusalem, and it spread primarily by cities, the great city of Antioch being an early center of Christianity. And eventually the people of the New Covenant overwhelmed and occupied the greatest city of the classical world, all by peaceful means. In fact, the word pagan is derived from the Latin pagus, meaning "country district." Historically, those without faith in God were more likely the villagers, the rustic people, and, if you wanted to find Christians, you went to the city.
The interesting thing about the city though is that it does have potential for greater evil or greater good than an agrarian situation. A dog doesn’t have much capacity for great evil or great good. A child can be much worse and much better, a wayward teenager worse still, but not so capable of both evil and good as a person of great cunning and intelligence, such as Tolkien’s Saruman. Likewise, in the city the avenues of evil are so readily available to us that we are required to possess more heart religion than was necessary back on the farm.
Consider the credit card. Recently I began working, rather by accident, in the payment card industry. People today have the ability to either use a credit card wisely, continuing to budget, and keeping track of transactions while earning "rewards," or, at their whim, they can take home lots of things that they haven’t earned yet. I’m not saying that people should use credit cards. It would probably be better if everyone had enough financial discipline to use only debit cards, but even if you don’t have a credit card in your wallet, you can apply for a one anytime, anywhere, such as at the same counter where you are purchasing your new refrigerator, which costs $75 more than you have on hand. The credit card is both a convenience that about 80 percent of American households have chosen to use and a prison you if you’re not careful. In the same way, thanks to the Internet, we can sit in our home office, working with business people all over the world, providing for our family, or we can use that same home office and computer to gamble all our money away, thanks also to the clever payment card. Great fortune or ruin is a click away, in more ways than one I might add. That is the modern city for good or for ill. So why does God put such dangers in our playpen? Well the answer is that this is no longer the playpen. This is the New Covenant and we are expected to behave like spiritual grownups, having received the Word. “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”
Some people have argued that paying for consumer items in installments can only lead to irresponsibility, that it is a sin, a violation of the puritan ethic. But others have argued that it has the ability to teach people greater financial responsibility, learning to calculate and to budget in order to meet monthly payments and eventually make them go away. Whatever the case, it is certain that the ever present ability to spend beyond one’s means requires people to be made of a new kind of material. In the city, we simply cannot survive without heart religion or at least the residual benefits of it, which is what we may have today. But this just goes to show what fertile soil for the gospel are these paved streets. Look around. One day by God’s grace, through the Holy Spirit, and the sovereign rule of our Lord and Savior, we will live in a city paved with gold where everyone will worship the Son. And we will sing His praises in huge choirs accompanied by some epic orchestras. That’s the future of the city. As for the future of credit cards, well, they are made of plastic.
(About the photo: The big city that I have lived in the longest is Washington D.C. Actually, I didn't live in the city itself, but in Fairfax, Virginia. Wouldn't it be nice if the city planners had put a church at the center instead of the Washington Monument and made it taller than the capital? Your answer to that question will tell you a lot about yourself. A church instead of the Washington Monument? That would never happen in America!)
