It's a modern day Romeo and Juliet. It's one of the most important tv shows of the last decade. And it completely explains what we're seeing these two weeks at General Conference. And I don't blame you for not watching it. No one did. Which is why it was canceled after just one season.
People who know me will not be surprised to hear its an Aaron Sorkin show: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. While many would be right to suggest I overhype anything done by Aaron Sorkin, I truly think this one season of television was incredibly important for its portrayal of the culture wars. While the show is about a late night sketch comedy show, the real focus of the show is the divide between different segments of culture told through both personal and corporate levels. The corporate level looks at the president of the network's dealings with the chairman and the board as her less than saintly life is paraded through the press. The personal level is two-fold: both in the love story between the conservative-evangelical cast member, and the liberal-agnostic head writer, and in the story of the head writer and head producer's firing years before told in reverse. Initially the show presents the cultural problem and deep divide facing our country, particularly on religious and political fronts. It ultimately asks the question: can these divides be bridged? On a personal level it seems to answer yes, with the cast member and head writer coming together and love conquering all. On a corporate level the answer is much more ambiguous.
As I watched General Conference this year, I was struck by how the culture wars have not stopped in the years since Studio 60 or the years since Bush left office. Instead, I think they've only gotten worse. Studio 60 cast part if not all of the culture wars as being shaped by religion. Can evangelicals in this country talk to people who could care less about religion? But even in a room full of Christians, it seemed as if we couldn't talk to each other. In the last five years, we have become even more segmented, even more entrenched in the culture and viewpoints of our little corner of the world.
Young and old. Male and female. American and international. Liberal and conservative. Protestant liberal and evangelical (fundamentalist). Southern and northern. Eastern and western. South east Jurisdiction and everyone else. The culture wars are no longer fought on one battlefield. Instead, we have countless skirmishes on any issue we can. We have countless alliances between different demographic groups. But those alliances are as tenuous as the chord keeping us all together. As I watched General Conference I felt sad that the more we talk about things, the farther and farther we seem to get. As I watched General Conference I was depressed that as the demographic distinctions grow, so does the mistrust.
At the end of his documentary on the Allen Iverson Trial, Steve James says, "Maybe Allen Iverson's troubled life also holds a mirror up to us: when it comes to our own complicated struggles over race and class, justice and injustice, retribution and redemption, what do we want our children to see?" To that end, maybe General Conference is holding a mirror up to us. And maybe the general discomfort we are all feeling is that we do not like the church we are showing our children, the church we are showing our congregants, the church we are showing the world. Maybe we don't like the culture wars to which we feel ourselves becoming submissive. Maybe we don't like the trenches in which we find ourselves living and for which we find ourselves fighting. Maybe we don't like what we see.
At the end of the day I think Aaron Sorkin wrote Studio 60 for two reasons. I think Steve James made a documentary on the Allen Iverson trial, a trial that's almost twenty years old at this point, for two reasons. I think both of these men wanted to dramatize the situation, to dramatize reality, to present reality to us in no uncertain terms. But I also think these men did this because there is something about naming that allows situations to move forward. There is something about naming a political, religious, or racial divide that provides a future for us to bridge the divide. There is something about naming the problem that allows for hope.
We need to name our differences. We need to name our divides. We need to name our mistrusts and our fears and our anxieties. We need to be able to name the assumptions we carry. We need to be able to name our concerns. We need to be able to name the elephant in the room because that is the only way forward.
I don't know what it would look like to name who we are, where we come from, and what we really care about at General Conference. But I believe that the only way for us to grow as a healthy community and to begin to cross some of these divides it to name our disagreements. Let's create a healthier church, because I'm tired of what this mirror is showing me.
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