Christianity, Literature, and Cultural Conflict in America

Abstract

The purpose of my paper is to raise and to address this question: What can Americans learn from Christianity and literature about encountering differing cultures and, if something can be learned, how seriously should it be taken? I shall begin by turning attention to an ancient short story, one that has few rivals in terms of the narrative craft it displays, that found its permanent textual home among the many stories that make up the book of Genesis: namely, the story of Joseph. I need not rehearse the story; indeed, one reason for turning to it is that I can count on your acquaintance with it. It is part of American culture. I want to point out a couple of things in it that are relevant to our question and its answer. First, no greater cultural differences could be drawn than those between the sons of Jacob who come to Egypt and the culture that they encounter there. The culture of Jacob and his sons is, among other things, pastoral, migratory, tribal; the culture of Egypt is agricultural, urban, and cosmopolitan. On top of that, of course, are the religious differences between the two cultures, worship of what historians of religion call a sky god and worship of deities associated in Egypt with monarchy and with the cycles of fertility. The spatial contrast that structures the story derives content from these cultural / religious differences. The configuration of the story's events and actions, its plot, gives us the rise of Joseph from captive and slave to a person of prestige and power. What may go unrecognized, in the face of this gripping plot, elaborated as it is by the arrival of Joseph's brothers into Egypt and encountering there a Joseph they do not recognize, is how the story handles the difference, even conflict, between the two cultures that structure the story spatially, namely, the culture of the children of Abraham and the culture of Egypt. There are two responses to cultural conflicts that the story rejects by way of affirming a third response. One rejected option is to have had Joseph respond to his new cultural environment with revulsion and disdain. Recognizing his own culture and religious identity as different from that of his captors, he could have removed himself, if only psychologically, from his environment, identifying himself by means of opposition. The second rejected option would be to have Joseph conclude that life in Egypt offers benefits that make everything back home look grim. These contrary responses are alike in that both solve the problem of difference by rejecting one side or the other, and the story implies that both answers should be avoided. It would, by the way, be a simpler, clearer story if Joseph had chosen one or the other of these options, a rejection of Egyptian culture or a rejection of the religion and culture of his family. The third option is not chosen, then, because it is an easier or clearer answer than the other two. Indeed, it is the most complex and elusive of the three. In his difficult position between two very different cultures, Joseph becomes a good citizen of Egypt. He takes an interest in people he meets, promotes the well-being of the society, and rises within Egypt's political structure to a prestigious office. Indeed, he does this so well and becomes so fully implicated in his cultural, political, and economic context, that he loses much of his identity; his brothers, even in conversation with him, have no clue about who he is. However--and this is just as important--he never forgets, despite his success and the injuries he suffered in his family of origin, that he is a full member of the family. His actions, upon the appearance of his brothers in Egypt, are designed above all to create conditions that allow for reintegration with his family. Joseph thereby becomes what the sociologist Everett Stonequist refers to as a marginal person, a person, that is, who has an identity that combines differing cultures. Fully related to neither culture, Joseph is a product of both. …