The social dynamics of our modern culture often feel like a strange new game with new rules that often invoke odd behaviors. I have heard many people lament things like our culture’s victim mentality, the weakness of our generation’s men, fragility of young people in general, and how lazy and unintellectual our culture is. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has studied cultural phenomena like these and does an excellent job of identifying and describing our modern cultural habits. He has terms to describe behavior that we typically only know when we see them.

Haidt laments with many of us over the state of fragile young people and blames a mixture of what he calls “Call-Out Culture” and “Prestige Economy“. I find his description to be the closest to reality that I have heard, but what is unfortunate is that his description of our culture includes some of the foremost in church authority.

First, his description: he says that with the rise of technology, social media, and over-protected children, it birthed a phenomenon he named “Call-Out Culture”. This is a generation who has been raised to feel rewarded for “calling out” others; that is publicly looking for, identifying, and bringing great attention to the moral and ethical failings of another person. In other words, this describes the iPhone justice we see so much of, where one person captures video of another in the act of some malicious behavior, broadcasts it to the world, and the malicious person receives the scowl of social media. And our culture has learned this behavior because we have, what Haidt calls, a “prestige economy”. This means that since our basic needs are typically met (food, clothing, shelter, etc.) the only thing we are in want of is prestige; recognition or notoriety. We get it from accomplishments and relationships, but also from public acknowledgement for acts such calling someone out on their failures. Many people enjoy the recognition of being a social justice warrior and like the feeling of defending the “oppressed” or “marginalized”. But we have created a culture that enjoys the means more than the ends.

This is why many people in public eye (or people who think they are) are so quick to publicly condemn immoral behavior. You can see it any time some story hits the national level, and it plays out like a script. Mass shooting — the senators, and principals, and pastors, and twitterers say “we condemn violence”. Sexual misconduct — “we condemn taking advantage of women”. Any story involving race — “we condemn racism”. “Virtue Signaling” or “Grandstanding” are more terms to describe this behavior. Its simply waving the banner of the correct ethical position in order to receive the prestige a person, or an institution, needs to maintain a healthy account in the prestige economy. It should be obvious, by this point, that the goal of prestige and recognition have no place in the Church and its people.

The recent story of students from Covington High School humiliating an elderly Native American tells the sad tale of when “Call-Out Culture” hits the Church. I won’t recount all the details, you can read a very detailed collection of accounts in this Atlantic article, but what seemed to be a video showing young men racially mocking an elderly man, became much more complicated. There were multiple parties involved,