If there are imposters on what we call the cultural path, there are no fewer on the countercultural path.  Often it is easy to discern what the claimants mean by appropriating the term: when dissidents like Archbishop Rembert Weakland[1] declare themselves “countercultural” they no doubt mean to identify themselves to some degree with the negative values of the late American counterculture of the 60’s and 70’s: exaggerated individual freedom, anti-authoritarianism, being considered cool by hip people.  Of course, as most of the evil tendencies of the former counterculture are now mainstream values this word is a misnomer.  And most of the good has long since perished or become some form of consumer product.  Think of Jimi Hendrix riffs and ads for health food on the Rush Limbaugh show, or the way the fashion industry cashes in on every new rebellion against the fashion industry, from hippie to punk to grunge.

On the other hand, when millionaire theologian Michael Novak told me to my face that he was “countercultural” I do not for the life of me know what he was talking about.

But again we look to the faithful and the holy to understand this response.  The Christian countercultural way is the way of the radical, and in keeping with the etymology of the word, it is a call to return to the roots of faith (radix: “root”), to live the gospel as we ought in all its purity and simplicity.  While the culturalist may accept the structures of society as a given, something to be infiltrated and influenced, his counterculturalist brother or sister can never make peace with such imperfection.  He or she may attempt at first, in the naïve zeal of youth, to change the world.  This may be reformist or revolutionary, but it is not countercultural until such aims become secondary.  The true counterculturalist is no longer demanding or repairing the house; he is building a new one.  He goes about the business of right living, whether or not he affects the wider world.  And of course he often does, even in spite of himself: the holy man who desires only solitude and ends up with a gang of disciples who initiate a cultural upheaval is a recurring figure in Christian history.

This strain of Christian response is not difficult to trace in our history; indeed it forms the most dramatic and climactic points of it, from the apostolic community in the Book of Acts to the wild saints of the desert to St. Francis’ pure simplicity to the Charles de Foucaulds and Peter Maurins and Catherine de Houck Dougherty of modern times, not to mention the holy fools of every age.  It is the way of the restless and the fiery, the visionary and the desert prophet.  Nor is it a response unique to Catholic and Orthodox Christians.  The monastic, counterculturalist impulse manifests itself among Protestants in such varied groups as the Taize community, the Amish, the Hutterites, the Bruderhof, and the Jesus People USA community of Chicago, who live communally in the inner city and try to reach the ever-shifting secular alternative culture.

 

   St. Thomas More[2]

 

I am the King's good servant, but God's First.

 

The dangers here should be evident.  The desire for purity, however laudable, can easily degenerate into self-righteousness and sectarianism if not accompanied by mercy, and the desire for simplicity can mutate into simplistic fundamentalism.  Holiness of course is the corrective to these faults but obviously more of us qualify as restless and fiery than holy.  The aspiring counterculturalist must strive for humility and self-knowledge, beginning with the question, “Am I prophetic or just pissed off?”  While these are not mutually exclusive modes of being, one must proceed carefully.

Another danger in the countercultural path, is the gradual erosion caused by disappointment and failure.  When one begins with the vision of the Ideal, the “real” can be heartbreaking, particularly when that reality is the revelation of one’s own failures and sins.  And most countercultural projects end in failure, how could they not?  Even the “successful” ones are only fleeting flowers.  Think of Francis, toward the end of his life, heartbroken by what he saw as the laxness of his brothers.  To strive for the ideal without being broken by the failure to reach it is no easy dance.  The countercultural Christian may begin with impatience at man’s fallenness, but if he doesn’t eventually come to terms with it he runs the risk of despair, or – the classic state of the disappointed lover – cynicism.

While the failed culturalist may be lulled to conformity by the promise of comfort, the heartbroken radical, the failed saint, may be tempted by resignation, may simply seek some relief.  To have fought the long battle, mostly to the tune of the world’s mockery, to no effect can wear one out.  But this is precisely the door of grace and purification; this is the dark night of this path.  “Disillusionment,” after all, means freedom from illusion, surely a chance to go deeper.  One may have to lower one’s sights here, but lowliness is holiness, is it not?   The young zealot who thought he was going to be a great saint, who thought holiness, was just around the corner most often has a huge load of pride in his makeup.  He may begin intent on slaying the dragon that devours the world; if he ends up exhausted by the daily battle against the worm that destroys his garden has he not been graced by self-knowledge, by humility?

I am not in any of this attempting to dissuade the reader from pursuing the countercultural way of the prophet and the radical – this journal exists to encourage it – but I am only offering encouragement to the weary and caution to the zealous.  Of course, let us go about building “cells of good living;” let us try to build holy families and Christ-centered communities, to live our faith in a way that is whole and unfragmented, but let us do so without illusions, in mercy and humility and charity.

[3] Reprinted with permission in the September / October issue of The Wild Man's Journal © 2005.