{"id":35797,"date":"2026-06-26T12:55:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=35797"},"modified":"2026-06-26T12:55:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:55:43","slug":"honor-shame-and-southern-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=35797","title":{"rendered":"honor, shame and Southern Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 1946, the pioneering anthropologist Ruth Benedict introduced a distinction between guilt cultures and honor-shame cultures in her book about Japan, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword<\/em>, which was based on research that she had conducted for the U.S.\u00a0Office of War Information during WWII. I have no basis for assessing whether she was insightful about Japan. However, the distinction has been applied in other settings: for example, to characterize the US South. I will return to that application shortly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A key passage is on p. 222:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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True shame cultures rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not, as true guilt cultures do, on an internalized conviction of sin. Shame is a reaction to other people\u2019s criticism. A man is shamed either by being openly ridiculed and rejected or by fantasying to himself that he has been made ridiculous. In either case it is a potent sanction. But it requires an audience or at least a man\u2019s fantasy of an audience. Guilt does not.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

People constrained by guilt ask whether they are violating a rule or principle. This makes them inflexible but also self-regulating. People constrained by shame measure their worth according to current prevailing norms, which can change (p. 170). Benedict adds that early American (Puritan) morality was all about guilt. The only observer who ultimately mattered was God. “But shame is an increasingly heavy burden in the United States and guilt is less extremely felt than in earlier generations” (p. 223).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For what it’s worth, I would resist reifying any culture–treating it as an entity that causes people to think and act in certain ways. I would rather define cultures as networks of ideas and practices. Each person’s network is unique, but we can statistically generalize about the ideas and behaviors of populations. Then we would not see shame-honor as something that affects people, but as one way of generalizing about populations. A norm may prevail in a population because many individuals actively teach and model it, but there will usually be exceptions to any view, and the causal pathways go from persons to persons (e.g., from parents to children), not from a culture to many people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David French is a Southern Christian with center-right political credentials who is concerned about the far right in the South. He applies Ruth Benedict’s notion of honor-shame cultures to his own region and faith tradition to explain the rise of MAGA<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get a flavor of this analysis, consider the vast torrent of opinion online. There are always examples of Northern or Coastal liberals who make demeaning remarks about Southerners, Christians, or Trump and his supporters. For someone who identifies with any of those categories and who uses an honor-shame framework, any statement of this kind brings shame. It doesn’t work to say that the offended person holds a secure (or even favored) social position, that the insult is unrepresentative, or that a good person turns the other cheek. Those responses imply a guilt framework instead of honor-shame. Honor-shame demands revenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can imagine that someone who identifies with MAGA might be insulted by my use of this framework to characterize him. But it’s not coming from me. I learned it first from David French. Then I used Google, Google Scholar, and DuckDuckGo to search for “shame honor” and “southern.” I found a rich and thoughtful conversation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This discussion is not taking place in academia or in secular circles. Even the general concept of “honor shame culture” yields strikingly few recent references on Google Scholar, suggesting that it is not much used by academic anthropologists nowadays. The people who use it are evangelical Christian pastors and missionaries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They write thoughtful essays criticizing honor-shame as an obstacle to Christian ethics and belief. I find it plausible that New Testament Christianity makes explicit arguments for guilt instead of honor. (In that case, Ruth Benedict’s analysis of Japan may have been rooted in Christian thought.) One of many relevant Biblical texts is Galatians 1:10: “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It appears that the recent discussion was instigated by Jayson Georges’s 2016 book,\u00a0The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures<\/em>, which I have not read. Google Scholar finds citations to this book in 157 publications. They are definitely scholarly, but not what I would call (acknowledging my own bias) “mainstream.” Instead, almost all of the citations are in missionary studies or Christian education journals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For what it’s worth: I would not treat honor-shame as an underlying causal factor that explains Southern Christian culture or MAGA (because I would not interpret any cultural phenomena as causal in that way). But I can believe that honor-shame notions are relatively prevalent in the US South, drawing on old traditions yet coexisting and conflicting with other ideas and impulses. I would also explore how whites’ honor-shame is connected to racism throughout the USA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further, I do not like honor-shame. Although guilt has its own problems, it is better to try to live according to principles than to feel shame and a need to respond whenever others criticize you. Although not a Christian, I can see a principled and attractive Christian theological argument against honor-shame. After all, it really is better to turn the other cheek. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, people who criticize White Southern Evangelical politics from within–from a principled, theologically based position–may be well placed to combat tendencies that are causing trouble for the rest of us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one of many examples of how actual participation in White Evangelical Christianity can promote challenging moral conversations that yield nuance and self-reflection,<\/a> whereas merely identifying as a White Christian without seriously participating in the religion is related to antidemocratic and illiberal tendencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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See also: individuals in cultures: the concept of an idiodictuon<\/a>; the prospects for an evangelical turn against Trump<\/a>; active church membership may counteract problematic religious messages<\/a>; church attendance, religious identity, and politics (revisited)<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1946, the pioneering anthropologist Ruth Benedict introduced a distinction between guilt cultures and honor-shame cultures in her book about Japan, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, which was based on research that she had conducted for the U.S.\u00a0Office of War Information during WWII. I have no basis for assessing whether she was insightful about Japan. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35797"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35805,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35797\/revisions\/35805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}