I remember Justin Webb as a fresh-faced young reporter with a slight lisp. An interesting, well-educated, and articulate man, Webb is employed as a special correspondent by that most venerable of institutions, the British Broadcasting Corporation.
For the last eight years, Justin Webb has been the BBC's North America editor, based in Washington, D.C. Over the summer he is due to return to the United Kingdom to take up a new appointment. Last weekend, on Radio 4, Webb reflected upon his time in the United States, and upon his imminent return to South London, in a broadcast entitled "Checking out of 'Hotel America.'" His words were subsequently posted on the BBC's website (see below).
It's clear that Webb has developed a great affection for the United States, (even though he has to pretend that no one ever lived in his home in order to sell it, and even though many Americans don't understand his humor). Webb admires the unbounded optimism of the American people, and the ability to change one's circumstances. It's not true that America is the only place in the world where a young girl in a Bronx housing project can dream of a career in the Law and end up on the Supreme Court, but that kind of transformation does seem more likely in the US. There is still a 'can do' attitude in America that is, frankly, refreshing to those of us who grew up with the social stratification of Old Europe. Webb admires that attitude. So do I. Webb's young daughter has already announced that, when she is old enough, she's moving back!
Social mobility, though, according to Webb, needs the dark underside of American culture because people need something from which to escape. Without the stark awfulness of some aspects of American life the dream would cease to exist. Webb witnessed the dark side on a trip to South Carolina, to an area be-devilled by tattoo parlors and pawn shops, gun stores and the Piggly-Wiggly (which, he says, "smells almost as odd as it sounds.") For Webb the downside of America is its ugliness - Doric columns made of cheap concrete, "encroaching into palm forests with no hint of apology." It is also to be seen in the hypocritical, small-minded, intellectual ugliness of American religion.
While in South Carolina, Webb met Governor Mark Sanford, with whom he was singularly unimpressed.
According to Webb, Sanford is "another quintessentially American phenomenon. A politician mired in Bible-laced hypocricy." Sanford, a conservative Republican who lived in some sort of Christian felowship house in Washington, disappeared earlier this year. He was in Argentina conducting an affair with a young lady while pretending to be hiking in Appalachia. Some of his trips to that country were, allegedly, paid for by the tax payers of South Carolina.
Exhibit two for Justin Webb is Kara Neumann from Wisconsin, an eleven year old girl suffering from type-one diabetes who, when she was diagnosed with an auto-immune condition, was not taken to the dosctor but to the preacher. Instead of medicine the little girl received prayer. She died. Quite rightly, Webb deplores the unnecessary suffering and loss of life. However, his conclusion extends well beyond a single case. He declares that he also deplores "the Stone Age superstition that stalks the richest and most technologically advanced nation on earth."
It's a shame that Webb's journalistic objectivity (trumpeted by the BBC but so little in evidence in recent years) does not allow him to see the vast amount of social welfare undertaken by the church, the millions of volunteer hours, or the generosity in response to disaster that regularly dwarfs the efforts of the Federal government. Webb plays the old trick - he picks up on isolated incidents and draws conclusions out of all proportion to the evidence. Sanford is a hypocrite, therefore all Christians are hypocrites. Kara Neumann's family does not understand that modern medicine is a gift from God, and that science and faith are not incompatible alternatives, therefore all Christians are mired in ignorance, only one step above the dark ages.
Of course it is nonsense. It is cultural arrogance. It is also poor journalism. Could it not possibly be that there is a link between the social mobility of American society at its best, and a theology that understands us all to have been made in the image of God? And could it not be, also, that as Justin Webb returns to secular England he will encounter a darkness far greater than that to be found in the salt marshes of South Carolina?
Justin Webb's article can be found at:
