The late Richard Feynman, one of the great scientists of the 20th century and a notable influence in my physics education, once said “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” Feynman understood what cognitive science later showed that “when it comes to what we believe humans are masters of self-deception…we see what we want to see.”
Julia Galef in her bookThe Scout Mindset, Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t observes that people are motivated to defend their beliefs against evidence or arguments that might threaten them. Julia calls this human tendency a soldier mindset and it stems from a natural human desire to belong, to live in harmony with family, community, and likeminded others. That belonging unleashes a powerful, overriding force where reasoning becomes like defensive combat, ever ready to defend one’s side like a soldier defending hard-fought territory.
As individuals defend their side, picking and choosing evidence in support of that defense, their underlying values change through an identity that side now owns. They think they are objective because they feel objective. They analyze their own logic and find it sound. They call ourselves “rational” which means they like their argument. They see ourselves as fair and unbiased because that’s how motivated reasoning works. But, in the words of Jon Haidt, they become blind and bound to the sensibilities of their groups – and don’t know it.
What if individuals saw things as they are, not as they wish they were? Instead of defending one’s territory, what if they valued accuracy through a practice of being skeptical about what they know as they challenge their assumptions with a willingness to change course? Julia calls this practice a scout mindset where the goal isn’t to defend the existing map of beliefs, but to survey the territory with a goal of making a better map as accurate as possible.
A scout prioritizes curiosity and openness to evidence with a willingness to be wrong. Mistakes are part of the process, seen as corrective rather than feared. A scout embraces incremental change through a process of continual updating. They resist the temptation of certainty, unafraid of evidence contrary to their beliefs and viewpoints. They pay close attention to their analytic methods, relying upon a data driven process that is consistently and comprehensively applied. They resist extrapolating anecdotes. Because accuracy is the goal.
Both the scout and soldier mindset serve as theoretical archetypes as neither can be perfectly followed. People are usually a mixture of both, according to context and issue. But when communities capture one’s identity and turn allegiances towards their cause, their reasonings become more motivated and a permanent soldier mindset sets in. Especially in today’s culture war driven world where the stakes are sky high and outcomes apocalyptic.
You can’t detect motivated reasoning by pure self-examination. Most people see themselves as reasonable, smart and knowledgeable, and aware of motivated reasoning – characteristics which seem like they should produce a scout mindset – yet they still function more like soldiers than scouts.
Each one of us need a healthy skepticism about ourselves and our tribe, mindful of how our need to belong binds us to our groups. We all need an outside perspective, someone on the other side who can point to a different perspective which we cannot see ourselves. And only a few of us have that rare ability to understand the opposing side, able to comprehend each side’s motivations and presuppositions, free from the ever-present influence of tribal sensibilities.
Five discriminating questions about whether we are soldiers or scouts
Are we intellectually honorable, truth seekers through curiosity and an openness to change our views?
What do we find more trustworthy: the opinions of select people or experts who share our values, or an objective, systematic, weighing of valid evidence and expert judgement across the spectrum?
Do we pick and choose facts or is our reasoning consistently applied across all relevant data?
Do we hold our tribal identities loosely, willing to resist defending our side when a belief or argument goes against that of our group?
Are views from outside of our group deemed essential for constructing accurate viewpoints?
Let’s try this out, recognizing that we all are are poor self-assessors, calling ourselves objective, rational, fair, and unbiased when we’re often not. But it’s worth a try and maybe, through thinking about these issues, we will become more self-aware about underlying drivers of our thinking.
For each of five issues or beliefs, what if we score them on a scale of 1 – 5 using the following five questions?
A. Open to change? 1 = certain of our views; 5 = no preconceptions B. Trustworthiness basis? 1 = opinions from those who share our beliefs; 5 = systematic analyses of all data/experts C. Was our analytic process consistent with those used in other, less controversial, issues? 1 = no; 5 = yes D. Do we rush to defend our “side” in this issue? 1 = quick to defend; 5 = not a dog in the fight E. Do we require views outside of our “side” to ensure we find the truth of this issue? 1 = rarely; 5 = usually
For each question, the lower the score, the more the soldier mindset. Hence if we sum across the five questions for each issue, a pure soldier mindset would yield a score of 5 and a pure scout mindset a score of 25.
One issue pertains to a life risk (Round-up) in which the science is mixed, both in the peer reviewed literature and with expert opinion. The otherfourissues address a life risk where there is either a near concordance of findings from peer-reviewed scientific research and/or widespread acceptance by credentialed experts.
Recognizing, at the same time, there are a minority of experts or studies which espouse an alternative point of view for each of these four other issues. For some issues such as smoking, and cancer risk, this alternative view is likewise rejected by the public resulting in public opinion closely matching that of scientific opinion. But for others, such as covid vaccine safety, a sizable portion of the public disagree with the predominant view of the experts.
So here’s the test. Do our truth judgements follow the same process in all five cases? When we encounter differing issues in life, especially those issues that affect our physical health (treatments for disease, use of toxic substances, medication or drugs, etc) does our approach change depending upon the issue? To wit: how do our scout/soldier scores compare across issues that get attached to the culture war – where one or both of the sides acquires a partisan identity?
Again, recognizing of course, that we are often poor self-assessors and the best answers will come from scout-like people outside of our tribal allegiances who know us well enough and who are courageous enough to speak a truth we’re willing to receive.
I’ve been wanting to write about Christian Nationalism for some time, but getting that train out of the station has proved difficult. Competing topics abound, plus spring is around the corner bringing its familiar pressures into focus. Golfing, landscaping, and hiking obligations are again taking their toll with fly-fishing impatiently awaiting in the wings. With first order stuff like friends and family remaining in the front of the line, that old saw about scarce resources pursuing unlimited goods is once again confirmed.
Then a friend of mine on Facebook recently shared a post from Michael Farris, an American constitutional lawyer who is a founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College. He is also CEO and general counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group committed to “change the culture” as they fight for religious liberty issues in the courts.
Entitled “Confusion About Christian Nationalism,” Farris provides a perspective on Christian Nationalism that probably seems obvious to his followers: “Those who are not Christian have nothing to fear from a culture dominated by Christianity. We believe in freedom for all.”
But exactly what Christianity is Farris talking about and what does that look like in practice? [Now that sound you just heard is the train leaving the station.] So, let’s first get started with some definitions, some research results, and then we will return to Farris and more data.
What is Christian Nationalism and What Are Its ‘Fruits” In Society
We start with Russ Vought, Trump’s former Director of OMB and now the President of the Center for American Restoration whose mission is “To restore an American consensus of a nation under God…” In a recent Newsweek article, Russ offered that Christian Nationalism is:
“An orientation for engaging in the public square that recognizes America as a Christian nation, where our rights and duties are understood to come from God and where our primary responsibilities as citizens are for building and preserving the strength, prosperity and health of our own country. It is a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society. It is a belief that our participation in the political system can lead to beneficial outcomes for our own communities, as well as individuals of all faiths.”
Now compare this with the sociologists Perry and Whitehead’s popularly used, but more abstruse, definition: “an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic belonging and participation.” For those from an evangelical background, like me, do those definitions seem right? Are they consistent with what you have always believed or at least been taught? And do they sound dangerous? When you hear that America was built on Christian principles and occupies a special place in God’s economy for the world, doesn’t that seem about right?
But Let’s First Plant Our Feet On The Ground With Some Data
After all, Luke 6: 44-47 tells us that “Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”
Different authors have shown that Americans who embrace Christian Nationalism are more likely to:
Believe in a social pecking order with white Christians at the top: equality is not a priority.
Approve of authoritarian tactics like demanding respect for national symbols and traditions
Fear and distrust refugees, immigrants and religious minorities, while believing racial inequality is due to the personal shortcomings of minority groups.
Condone police violence toward Black Americans and distrust accounts of racial inequality in the criminal justice system
Engage in incautious behavior and take fewer precautions (e.g., mask wearing) during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Prioritize liberty over protecting the vulnerable during the Covid-19 pandemic.
See historical “outsiders” (minorities and immigrants) as culpable and/or less worthy of aid regarding Covid-19 infections.
Hold anti-immigrant views and a consistent predictor of anti-immigrant dehumanization
But That Isn’t About Us; It’s Only A Few Extremists?
Notwithstanding the statistical significance of those associations, many, like Michael Farris continue to assert “this is the few, not us” argument: “While there are a few extremists who fit their fears, the vast majority of evangelicals pose no such threat.”
It’s worth stopping here as we can further test this assertion with Perry and Whitehead’s data based upon surveys I’ve previously written about here and here. As you see in the graph below, using two of six defining questions, Christian Nationalism is simply pervasive across the evangelical landscape.
OK, CN May Be Widespread, But Isn’t This Just A Case of Differing Definitions?
Good question, also posed by Farris: “The chief reason is that most of us understand that there is a difference between our nation and our government. Do I want America to be a Christian nation? Well, that depends entirely on how you define the term.
I steadfastly oppose any effort to have Christianity declared the official religion of the United States. But I would welcome a massive revival…if that revival resulted in a majority of people with a personal relationship with Jesus. I would also welcome a moral revival where our cultural mores were aligned with Biblical values. It would perhaps be more accurate to describe either of these two forms of revival as producing a Christian culture rather than using the term Christian nation.”
Let’s unpack that previous paragraph. Many evangelicals yearn for revival, a renewal of spiritual interest and life. They (we) speak fondly of past revivals and the good they achieved. The Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s for example, led to renewed spirituality, moral and charity reforms, the emancipation of women, and the founding of many colleges in America.
The notion of a moral revival strikes a similar chord in many of the faithful. But here we encounter two significant and highly influential problems that go to heart of the Christian Nationalism problem in America. First, “biblical values” mean different things to different people. To me, it means a love-your-neighbor kingdom ethic, a Micah 6:8 do justly, love mercy and walk humbly orthopraxis. To others, it means religious liberty, binary genders, heterosexual marriage, and anti-abortion. To some it means promoting peace by beating swords into plowshares. To others, it means securing religious liberty through a strong military fighting back communism.
Secondly, Farris’ longing for a Christian culture gets the cart before the horse. He decries the few Christian Nationalism extremists saying that the “vast majority of evangelicals pose no threat. But the data tell a different story, of an evangelical culture significantly broken by a pervasive Christian Nationalism with its attending fruit (see data provided earlier and the graph below) infecting the body of Christ. And before we consider moral revivals and promoting societal change, the evangelical house must be set in order and swept clean of the Christian Nationalism infected gospel.
Well Everyone is Flawed, But Our Society Has Nothing to Fear From Christian Nationalism
Back to Farris: “We have limited powers, checks and balances, and federalism because of the Christian view of man. Man is inherently sinful and can never be trusted with too much power. But that same Christian culture produced a government that guaranteed freedom of religion and speech for all because of the belief that the souls of men belong to God and not government…A Christian culture produces a freedom loving government. But a culture that rejects God produces tyranny…Those who are not Christian have nothing to fear from a culture dominated by Christianity. We believe in freedom for all.”
I just wish that was true. “Freedom for all” is, I’m sure, an aspirational goal for many evangelicals. But once again, Perry and Whitehead’s data tell a different story and once again, Christian Nationalism is there in the mix.
Civics-type tests have a long and ugly history in American politics. They were among many Jim Crow Laws used primarily in the South during segregation to intimidate and prevent black citizens from voting. They inevitably favored the powerful and privileged, while assaulting the freedoms of the powerless. They missed the mark, a public outcome of man’s sinful nature.
Citizens of the kingdom seek the flourishing of the city that advances God’s kingdom plan of human restoration. Following in Christ’s footsteps, they are prone to stop and listen as they are moved by people’s longing and heart cries. They lay aside their privilege when they metaphorically pick up a towel and through acts of service wash the feet of the needy. It causes them to advocate, imputing honor without boundaries: whether Jew or Greek, whether educated or marginalized, and whether you pass a civics test or not.
“Beware of Good Intents” – Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
Let’s go back to the essential questions and then briefly explore five lines of thinking. Don’t we need a moral revival aligned with biblical values? And aren’t those values vitally needed in society to produce healthy outcomes? And since a Christian culture produced a freedom loving government, what’s to fear from a culture dominated by Christianity?
An upside-down gospel process. The call of Christianity is a call for transformation, a call that Farris and others get partially right. But the message of Christianity is also a message about gospel process, about the power of the cross to bring about change. This message is all important and it’s what they get wrong when they seek reform from the top down. For when Christ’s “heart transforming” kingdom joins with culture’s “power over” world, it’s like “mixing ice cream with horse manure. It might not harm the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream.”
Identity exchange. That’s exactly what happens when we seek a Christian culture through a political, top-down, imposition of moral reform. By engaging the earthly city and through alliances with its political systems, the law of unintended consequences takes over. The fusion of these two kingdoms creates a synergistic reaction that reshapes our desires and beliefs. That earthly city unleashes the power of tribalism which then spreads throughout the whole,. And when it hijacks our identity and forces us to take sides, we become “bound and blinded’ to our team’s cause.
The divisive power of nostalgia. Through fusing heaven’s kingdom with American civic belonging, Christian Nationalism seems innocuous at first. But a gospel mixed with nationalism to recreate a Christian America, binds the name of Christ to a culturally-centered agenda. It includes a mythic understanding of history that generates a cultural anxiety about a lost American heritage and Christian identity. It creates an extrabiblical narrative about America’s special relationship to God that privileges dominance in the public square. It fosters an us-versus-them world where the ‘them’ become a threat. While the “we” become the sole defenders of a true America that “we” define.
A culture-centric gospel. They say America is on the decline, the fruit of a moral decay, as a circle-the-wagon mindset invariably ensues. Moral reforms are sought in this never-ending war to restore a social order that is culturally ‘Christian.’ A specific cultural template is needed, such as prayer in public schools or enshrining a nostalgic interpretation of American history. Then a political agenda is “fought for” under the banner of Christian power to create a Christian culture that “saves” America.
Apocalyptic authoritarianism. A siege mentality sets in with a sense of victimization acutely felt based on an apocalyptic narrative about the imminent decline of Christian America. It fuels a sense of desperation to preserve America’s Christian heritage. It then creates a moral panic and a willingness to compromise any concerns about the means to accomplish needed ends. Authoritarian rule is welcomed and a strong protector then sought to reclaim that mythic past and restore a moral order.
A Message of Hope
Farris and others are also partially correct when they say America needs to be revived. But it’s not to impose the current understanding of Christian culture widely viewed throughout the evangelical community. We need a revival to stop the culture war which changes the mission of the church. To stop the preaching of “biblical values” made to fit our tribalistic narratives. And to call out Christian Nationalism as a syncretistic faith – a form of idolatry whose fruits of cultural dominion are antithetical to the gospel.
David French: “it’s worth emphasizing that many white Evangelical political positions – on matters of immense importance to many millions of Americans – do not flow naturally from Evangelical biblical orthodoxy…Instead the political gaps between white Evangelicals and the rest of America flow from a series of historical, cultural, and ideological commitments that are contestable at best and unjust at worst”
Back to Luke 6:44 “Each tree is recognized by its own fruit.” When we compare how Christian Nationalism ideology and traditional measures of religious commitment (e.g., worship attendance, prayer, sacred text reading) influence Americans’ political attitudes and behaviors, we find they work in the exact opposite direction.
We need a revival of essential Christianity, a Christlikeness that invades ‘every square inch” of our life. Where cultural change organically occurs through the faithful presence of Christ-like followers in the public square. Full of people who look like Jesus in every walk of life. With biblical values centered in the teachings of Jesus and humbly conveyed through Christ-like servant hearts.
Jesus said “blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” The Apostle Paul said “Christ within us [is] the hope of glory,” at least as long as that gospel stays pure. Such unalloyed Christlikeness is contrary to Christian Nationalism and is demonstrated by the fruits of the Spirit. As His character is formed within us and we become citizens of an undivided kingdom, God’s culture changing kingdom power then becomes unleashed.
After 57 years in Alaska, we pulled up stakes in 2012 and moved to the “lower 48.” It was hard leaving Juneau but easy to live in Seattle as we were closer to our children and Tammy’s family, in a job I loved, and enthralled with Pacific Northwest with all of its outdoor options and beauty. Plus, there were roads to drive and places to go.
Leaving was hard as I had family in Juneau, great friends that we would miss, and a lifetime of memories in the mountains and sea of that Great Land. Plus, there was that identity thing where being from Alaska brings a cachet that’s pretty unique and special.
Fortunately, my new job included trips to Alaska and every trip had a set routine. Outside of the workplace, I would stay with my dad, visit a favorite restaurant, hike at least one trail, and visit one friend. My restaurant circuit included Peter’s Oriental, a tiny unassuming part of the Nugget Mall just behind the airport. Their spring rolls were addictive along with the sauce they liberally poured over. Most people ordered the Teriyaki chicken or L4, but I always got a “L2 spicy level two.” Full of vegetables and with plenty of pork, its sauce was the highlight that kept me coming back again and again.
We knew the family behind Peter’s Oriental from the time they first arrived in Juneau. They had fled Vietnam as refugees once the U.S. backed out. Our church sponsored them and it didn’t take long before they became a flourishing part of our larger church family and our community as a whole.
Many churches across the country have similar stories to tell. Stories about refugees or immigrants they took in, nurtured, and helped get established in this new, strange land called America. Stories of virtue and of sacrifice, about followers of Jesus faithful to His words in Matthew 25:35: “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
Then There’s the Data Today, white evangelicals are the religious group with the highest belief that immigrants threaten society (57%). Moreover, as the graph below shows, white evangelical Protestants are the least likely among all religious groups to say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees (only 25%). All other groups more faithfully heed the biblical injunction to “welcome the stranger” with the religiously unaffiliated showing the highest level of commitment.
It Hasn’t Always Been This Way America has a long history of populist and nativist tendencies and the protestant church’s participation in this history has been a mixed bag. European immigrants arriving in the 18th and 19th centuries encountered a severe backlash that was Protestant-infused. Their nativist fears included anyone Catholic and led to the formation of the populist and anti-immigration Know-Nothing Party. Immigrants that followed, often from China and other far east locales, continued to face opposition upon arrival. But this time was different with many evangelical leaders becoming immigration advocates as they pushed back on nativist fears.
This good news story of an immigrant friendly church continued into the 20th century. Protestant support for the large influx of refugees following World War 2 became instrumental to America’s cold war strategy. The church played a prominent role in helping refugee resettlement for those fleeing Cuba in the 1960s. They supported resettlement of immigrants from Southeast Asia in the 1970s and 1980s. When opportunities arose in the late 1980s to help undocumented immigrants become permanent citizens, evangelical churches led the way, drawing on scriptural commands to show hospitality and “welcome the stranger.” Such helping hands were seen as an imperative of the gospel’s call to help “the least of these my brethren.”
This support wasn’t just confined to “legal immigration” either. Evangelical writings in the 1980s didn’t address illegal status in a negative way. The Southern Baptist position in 1986, as given in their publication MissionsUSA, supported those sentiments by saying: “people in need should be shown the love of Christ, whatever their ‘legal’ status.”
Then Came The Culture War The Apostle Paul wrote about the “war within” as a struggle between grace and our fallen nature. It’s an age-old struggle with a constant ebb and flow that is documented in the pages of history. A Christ-centric church can make a profound difference such as MLK’s advocacy of civil rights. But when the church loses that focus, like the Apostle Peter walking on water, it sinks into the abyss of that fallen nature.
The emergence of today’s culture war is destructive to the church because it takes our eyes off of Jesus. It changes deeply held values as it reshapes our identity into a syncretistic mixture of two kingdoms. It then brings new sensibilities through opening new doors that had previously held back that fallen nature.
Those new sensibilities transformed the gospel ethic of the church. By the 1990s a new vocabulary arose, peppered with phrases such as ‘rule of law’ and ‘law-breakers.’ Restrictionist voices grew loud. First Corinthians 13 became replaced by Romans 13. Calls to love your neighbor (of which “there is no other commandment greater”) bowed before calls of being tough. Nativism now formed the new moral high ground with the distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ all important.
Evangelicals became the core base of a re-emergent American populism. But this was a different populism, not driven by economic factors as one would assume, but by anti-immigration attitudes, opposition to affirmative action, Islamophobia, and preference for rough politics (as I have previously written about here).
What Went Wrong: Four Fatal Factors The problem isn’t Christianity. It’s that other stuff, cultural stuff, we add to our faith. It changes its beliefs, changes its practice, and changes our gospel sensibilities. As Michael Gerson recently said in a meeting at evangelical Wheaton College, “People’s views on, say, immigration are not shaped by their theology, but by their class, their politics and their tribe.”
Moral Man Immoral Society Reinhold Niebuhr in his iconic book Moral Man and Immoral Society observes that we are complex people, endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish urges. We yearn to belong, to connect with family, community, and likeminded others. Through that belonging, a “love your neighbor” ethic flows easily and we’ll give the shirt off our back to people in our group, even if we don’t know them that well.
But the mere nature of our societies will effect a change in our underlying values, opening the door to our fallen nature. They arrogate social privilege, putting the thumb on the selfish side of the scale. We develop intolerance and prejudice against the other side. We tolerate inequality and deny civil liberties to those without power. Our tribalism then ‘binds and blinds’ as our fallen, xenophobic, nature takes over.
Social Dominance Orientation and Right-wing Authoritarianism The open doors of the culture war bring two of our innate tendencies into prominence. Those exhibiting Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) see the world competitively, a zero-sum world of winners and losers. Societal stratification is inevitable as neutrality is not an option. Power belongs to the victor, privileged through a profound struggle for dominance. And the world will find its rightful balance as long as “they the strong” take their rightful place at the top of the social ladder.
People oriented towards right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) crave social order and cohesion. They are hostile to change. They see outside social groups bringing instability and unpredictability, threatening the nature of society. They crave social stability through adhering to societal conventions and norms. They willingly submit to authorities they see as legitimate and favoring of traditional social norms and values, while sharing a common hostility towards those outsiders (e.g., immigrants) who are different.
Both innate tendencies provide an accelerant to harmful in-group/out-group behaviors but attack immigration differently. Those exhibiting social dominant orientation are provoked by successful assimilation as it threatens their dominant role. Right-wing authoritarians are provoked when immigrants don’t assimilate into the dominant culture thereby violating in-group norms and conformity.
Christian Nationalism In a recent Christianity Today article, Paul Miller describes Christian nationalism as “the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists (CNs) assert that America is and must remain a “Christian nation”—not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.”
To some, this might sound like one of those “self-evident” truths our country was founded on. But embedded in this political/theological/cultural framework are some dark underlying assumptions about race, nativism, and an ordering of society. I’ll be writing more about this in future blog posts but for now, let’s briefly look at some data.
CNs score high in SDO and 2.5 times that of someone who rejects CN. CN and RWA go hand in hand with CN as the dominant factor in predicting agreement with “People should be made to show respect for America’s traditions.” Collectively, these sensibilities drive consistent findings that show CN to be a significant predictor of anti-immigrant stereotypes, prejudice, dehumanization, support for anti-immigration policies, and belief that immigrants undermine American culture.
Yet, The Bible Says… Even a cursory reading of scripture challenges the current anti-immigration views by many Christians today. The biblical call of ‘welcoming the stranger’ flows from a Micah 6:8 “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God” lifestyle. Seeing others as made in the image of God removes all racial and ethnic barriers. A clear understanding of the cross compels us to see the Christ in our neighbor, whether in or out of our tribe. Recognizing that we too are “foreigners and strangers,” pilgrims on a journey to a heavenly city, we welcome the immigrant as fellow sojourners on this quest. For we are citizens of the kingdom first. That is our identity.
For if the God of the Bible shows particular compassion for the immigrant, even equating them with the orphan and the widow, and if the cross of Christ is designed to compel outreach across all peoples, then how much more should we as the people of God care for immigrants from other countries in our midst?
Faithfully Christian
Church Leaders Need to Lead. To wit: church attenders, according to Pew and PRRI surveys, report that less than 1/6th of their clergy ever openly discuss the subject of immigration in the church. The Apostle Paul didn’t shy away from addressing scriptural unfaithfulness in his letters and American clergy shouldn’t either.
Heed the plea of evangelical scholar Ruth Melkonian-Hoover: “there is an urgent need for evangelicals—leaders and laity alike—to fully apprehend the “moral components of the immigration issue—honoring the Biblical values of ‘welcoming the stranger,’ keeping the families together, considering the justice implications of migration nationally and globally, and acknowledging the conditions in other societies that lead to immigration in the first place,” as has been done before.”
Become citizens of Christ’s kingdom, and His kingdom only, mindful each day that our calling is “at the heart of the biblical narrative is the story of God bringing humankind to be the imago dei, that is, to be the reflection of the divine character, love, where we show the world what our God is like.”
Test yourself (2 Cor 13:5) for such attitudes as right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, populism, negative attitudes toward out-groups such as Muslims and immigrants. Better yet, develop friendships across tribal divisions and become accountable to them about such attitudes.
Test yourself on your theology, carefully considering the underlying tenets of Christian Nationalism. Recognize that CN is, in the words of Tim Keller, idolatrous, and its ethos means the death of Christian witness.
Take practical steps to close doors that distort our focus. Like unplugging from partisan media and other amplifiers of the culture war, following my mother’s constant admonition of Philippians 4:8 – “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
I recently wrote a letter to one of the pastors we have been watching during this pandemic season. I thought it might be of interest so here is the letter reproduced in full.
I have been enjoying your messages, especially in the last two weeks where you have addressed the importance of restoring relationships during these contentious times. Truth, listening, patience, and humility do indeed go a long way to show the world what our God is like. Choosing the way of Christ’s Kingdom rather than choosing to win honors the gospel. Adopting a posture of Christ-like influence rather than a posture of partisan reactance honors His mission.
The truth imperative, the first and essential part of the armor of God, is tricky business and a most difficult hill to climb. It’s tricky because we live in post-truth age where the refrain “but I don’t know what to believe” is commonly heard – especially from my evangelical friends. It’s difficult because we get in the way, reminiscent of the story reputedly told about G. K. Chesterton when a newspaper asked him, ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ The Catholic thinker’s response was brief and to the point: ‘Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.’
We assert that the Word says…and the Word is truth. Or that the Spirit says…who guides us into all truth. And if you say otherwise, we’ll say biblical worldview. And if you ask again, we’ll say the Bible says. But all along the “I am” stands in the corner, unknown to us, but with enormous power to shape our identity, colorize the “other,” change our loves, and filter our world. Like a Trojan Horse, it takes over our understandings, shaping our “biblical” assertions. And like an Oculus headset, we become immersed in a new reality that’s created and fashioned by the “I am.”
Founding father John Adams once said “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” That’s probably a minority opinion today, yet I thought it would helpful to throw out some data with minimal commentary to show the daunting length of this truth hill we face along with its intense steepness in parts.
1. Truth assessment is difficult, but not impossible. Many of our truth issues lack baselines, reference points where we can all agree what is true. Its science v science or expert v expert and in today’s post-truth world, finding agreement is difficult even when credentials are lopsided. But sometimes we find issues where baselines are known or where the probability of knowing is very high. Consider the next three graphs which compare actual data
with perceptions of that data first from one conservative-liberal ideology and second from the perspective of trusted news sources.
Now the preceding data focused on political ideology but I’m more interested in how truth is handled by people in our tradition which is predominately white evangelicals. So here are some survey results regarding recent events where Republicans are split into two groups: evangelicals and non-evangelicals.
Note that for three of the four questions we have baseline truth or a very high probability thereof: A. Widespread voter fraud: Those in authority, from election officials, to secretaries of state to governors to Trump’s attorney general, to 90 judicial appointments including the Supreme Court of which many were Trump appointed has said Biden was legitimately elected. I’ve read a number of the 61 court cases Trump lost. There is a 0% chance otherwise. B. Deep State undermining the Trump administration: Likely not, but still an uncertain proposition C. Antifa responsible for the capitol attack: Trump’s DOJ investigated the claim and found it baseless. D. Trump secretly fighting a group of sex traffickers: that’s QAnon – enough said.
2. Partisanship = hate your enemies and the other side is the enemy. Full stop. The partisan divide is deep with distrust on both sides. Assignments of “they the enemy” are normative as extremists on both sides cancel the other. Such canceling, of course, is nothing new, long seen in American history: e.g., Nathaniel Whitaker, the Massachusetts minister, who spoke the “curse of Meroz” in 1775 to anyone loyal to the crown.
3. White Evangelicals almost equal the mirror image of the republican party. Here are some data from pastor and sociologist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University (and, to be fair, black protestants approximately mirror the democratic party). He has data on other types of questions, but I found these interesting due to their long history in public opinion research gauging animus and prejudice toward minority groups.
4. Polarization R us. Increased devotion, as measured by church attendance, doesn’t move the needle on partisan polarization. And the more one believes in an “American is a Christian nation” type of Christian nationalism the less open they are to changing their opinion or to consider alternative opinions given new information.
5. Peculiar people. Here is a graph about Christian Nationalist’ endorsement of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy ideology.
These four categories, which you saw in a previous graph, are derived from combining responses to six questions, each scaled from 1-5: (1) “strongly disagree” to (5) “strongly agree” with (3) “Undecided” in the middle. This index ranges from 6 to 30 and has a Cronbach’s α = 0.86, which means that these questions yield consistent results when repeated. Index values are then separated into four types of responses to the questions with those at the low end of the scale called Resistors and those at the top end Ambassadors. A. “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation,” B. “The federal government should advocate Christian values,” C. “The federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state” (reverse coded), D. “The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces,” E. “The success of the United States is part of God’s plan,” and F. “The federal government should allow prayer in public schools.”
In the graph below, the column on the left has 10 discrimination categories and the different colored dots are the six different demographic groups for which their perception of the discrimination categories is provided. Here we see 59% of white evangelicals think there’s more societal discrimination against Christians than transgender people (52%) or Muslim people (49%). Note also the spread in discrimination perception. White evangelical perception of marginalized groups such as Muslims, LGBTQ, black, and transgender people are much different than the perceptions of other Americans.
Note that unless cited, all graphs are from Twitter posts with the source provided on most graphs. Those without source information but labeled “PDES” are from Whitehead and Perry, of which some can be found here. Also note that these data are statistically derived from scientific surveys. What you see are mean values. What you don’t see is the dispersal of the underlying data. For example, although 59% percent of white evangelicals may believe that Christians experience a lot of discrimination, there are some that think otherwise (e.g., me) and hence pull the mean value down. Nonetheless, through these statistical surveys/analyses (instead of anecdotal perspectives), we gain important insight into the underlying beliefs, attitudes, and behavior which are driving America’s faith and social communities.
I will stay true to my promise of minimizing commentary on the foregoing graphs. I primarily focused on white evangelicals for three reasons: (1) that is my background and hence what I understand, (2) they make up the majority of our congregation, and (3) they are the largest segment of Christianity in America. Given that change must start at home, if we are going to deal with truth in the body of Christ, it seems like we will need to deal with, inter alia:
a) strong partisanship on both sides that sees the other side as the enemy b) white evangelicals are highly partisan, nearly the mirror image of the Republican party. c) highly resistant polarization within white evangelicals, no matter how devoted they are to their faith d) an increasing unwillingness to change one’s opinion or consider new information the stronger the belief in a Christian Nation (78% of evangelicals are in the top two Christian Nationalism categories) e) white evangelical perceptions markedly different than the rest of American, especially when it comes to having empathy for people not like them. f) An appetite among many Christians for disinformation and conspiracy theories (although for brevity sake, I’ve only given a couple examples and haven’t shown the breadth and depth of that appetite).
There are many additional graphs I could provide that would be helpful, showing many additional dimensions generally consistent with those provided. But first of all, I’m interested in what you see. And then if you have any thoughts about the sort of steps needed to meet our calling, which is, as Stanley Grenz once said, “at the heart of the biblical narrative is the story of God bringing humankind to be the imago dei, that is, to be the reflection of the divine character, love, where we show the world what our God is like.”
“Fear’s a dangerous thing, it can turn your heart black, you can trust. It’ll take your God-filled soul and fill it with devils and dust.” – Bruce Springsteen
I can still vividly remember sitting at the front of church Sunday after Sunday silently weeping, relentlessly tormented as I listened to sermon after sermon. It felt like I was in a vise that was slowly closing, crushing all hope from this six-year-old kid. Or this 10-year-old kid. The worst of all fears, hell damnation, covered me like a suffocating blanket. There was nothing I could do.
I acutely felt this hopelessness because I inherently understood probability. I knew that if I had unforgiven sins the second before Jesus came, I would go to hell. It was as simple as that and here was my despair: since we didn’t know when Jesus was coming (as a thief in the night), and since sin was unavoidable, often outside our control and even awareness (e.g., sins of omission), there was a substantial probability that I would have sin in my life whenever Jesus came back. I was screwed, hence the tormenting fear, and it wasn’t until college that I learned about grace, bringing hope once again to my future.
As bad as that was, however, it was just the tip of the iceberg. There was an unpardonable sin, a sin with no possible forgiveness, for those who blasphemed the Holy Spirit. And we, because we didn’t fully understand it, as every preacher defined it differently, it brought a new dimension of uncertainty to my future.
Although those may have been my biggest fears, whole additional genres of fear remained in play. We played a “who’s that Antichrist” game with a revolving door of candidates, each biblically supported and to be feared. For those who missed the rapture, there was still a tiny sliver of hope, but it meant going through the tribulation for which only 144,000 would be saved. The Mark of the Beast was another formidable fear, with bearers of that mark forever condemned. And because we didn’t know when or how that mark would be applied (a computer in Brussels, bar codes, social security plus zip codes), the missing-the-rapture needle never went above Defcon 3.
Now it might seem that I’m being awfully hard on my past, but I’m just calling balls and strikes. All those fears felt real and they were backed up by simple math which could be intuitively understood or easily calculated. Say the likelihood of going to hell was 20% for each independent event (unconfessed sin at time of rapture, unwittingly taking on the mark of the beast, and committing the unpardonable sin), values that seemed pretty reasonable as a kid. Then the overall probability can be computed as (1 – product of each probability of not going to hell) = (1 – (0.80*.80.*80)) = 0.488. So it’s no wonder I felt such acute helplessness and despair as I was just one coin flip away (48.8%) from the eternal lake of fire.
Fear: Yesterday, Today, and Forever My encounters with fear were just par for the course given how evangelicals have traditionally engaged culture. Like a river running through it, fear is an evangelical constant ever since the Puritans first landed in America. The threat of an erroneous theology in 17th century American led the Puritans to hang four Quaker “Boston martyrs.” Then the threat of moral decline led to another Puritan hanging over accusations of witchcraft which proved false. The 18th century ushered in a new set of fears targeting immigrants and anyone Catholic. These prejudicial fears become entrenched within American society inspiring 19th century Protestants to help form the nativist Know-Nothing Party. A whole new set of fears rose to prominence in the 20th century led by modernism, secular humanism, and cultural change. The backlash to those fears drove evangelicals back into politics over the fear of losing “Christian America.”
Scripture tells a much different story of “Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Don’t tremble with fear. I am your God. I will make you strong.” So why does fear occupy such a prominent place in evangelical language and belief? There are a number of plausible answers but let’s start with two important ones because of their ability to reinforce the fear messages in our lives.
Our Neurology Amplifies Our Fears Brain imaging studies show there’s a region of our brain which is used to detect threats and is reactive to fear. The same part of the brain shows a heighten resistance to change when confronted with evidence countering one’s beliefs. This fear enhanced threat detection creates a tight social connectedness which focuses on family and country. The size of this region and its importance to life functions varies from person to person. It’s also a key area where moral information is processed and moral/political judgements developed.
Our brain is plastic until later in life and repeated usage of one region changes its capability. We know, for example, that a London cab driver’s brain adjusts over time to better store a mental map of the city. In a similar manner we know that the fear-based part of our brain adjusts in response to repeated messages of fear.
Our Cognitive Biases Amplify Our Fears We all routinely deviate from a practice of rationality because the need for simplicity and coherence in our stories supersede truth. Through probability neglect we mischaracterize dire risks by creating imaginary scenarios from thoughts of danger and fear. The affect heuristic occurs when people make judgements by consulting their emotions rather than the facts, substituting the easier question “what do I feel about it” for the harder question “what do I think about it:” The availability heuristic leads to bias in our perceptions according to the vividness, prevalence, and emotional intensity of the messages we encounter.
Media coverage plays a significant role in amplifying cognitive biases as our assessments of risk are directly influenced by our exposure to repeated messages that engage our emotions.
The Manipulation of Fear Amplifies That Fear In the late 1970s, Jerry Falwell Sr. and other conservative evangelicals formed a political coalition to fight against moral decay. Forty years later the same moral issues remain with the goal of “Christian America” still unmet. Yet they have been phenomenally successful in enlisting white evangelicals as a force in today’s cultural war.
Cal Thomas, once a leader of Falwell’s coalition, describes how this enlistment relies upon fear. “First, they identify an enemy: homosexuals, abortionists, Democrats, or ‘liberals’ in general. Second, the enemies are accused of being out to ‘get us’ or to impose their morality on the rest of the country. Third, the letter assures the reader that something will be done…Fourth, to get this job done, please send money.”
That playbook of fear amplifies concerns into threats so they can whip up a state of alarm. Those threats are then woven into partisan stories that are repeated again and again: e.g., Democrats are evil socialists trying to take your guns, bibles and liberty away, Muslims are terrorists, and immigrants are “animals” bringing drugs and crime to ruin our land. And if you repeat any story often enough people will eventually accept it as true.
As David French recently wrote: “the religious right has already been conditioned by decades of conservative media telling them that the godless left wants to destroy their way of life. They’ve been told for 20 years that the left hates them and wants them dead. They’ve been told the Democratic Party wants to kill the church.”
Perfect Fear Drives Out Love Those fear-induced beliefs create an alternative world of facts while inflaming a fallen nature called to die. The fruits of the Spirit then yield to the works of the flesh from which arise a political quest for power. In the heat of the battle, we become different people through unleashing those desires “that war within us.” And it doesn’t take long until “in time we hate that which we often fear” (Shakespeare) and where the oppressed can become the oppressor.
We see this in surveys where white evangelicals are resistant to extend civil rights to the other side. Since there’s a concern that the left will oppress their Christian faith, they turn the Golden Rule upside down: do unto others before they get the chance to do that unto you.
White evangelicals are also more likely than any other religious demographic to see immigrants threatening traditional American values. Over half of white evangelicals believe Muslims want to limit their freedom and nearly half believe Muslims threaten their safety (again, greater than any other demographic). Yet white evangelicals see themselves as persecuted victims exceeding even that of their Muslim “enemy.” (Notwithstanding the fact that Muslims experience dehumanization greater than any other group in America).
Yet white Christians have no peer when it comes to disregarding African Americans fears (the most Christianized ethnoreligious group in America and hence, in the vernacular of my religious past, their “brothers and sisters”). Whereas 82% of black Christians believe police-involved killings are part of a larger pattern, 72% of white evangelicals believe the opposite. Most (70%) white evangelicals see the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride, whereas 76% of black protestants set it as a symbol of racism.
Perfect Fear Drives Out Unity Francis Schaeffer once said: “Love–and the unity it attests to–is the Mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father.”
But when you: -Unite yourself with theological/political communities that promote constant messages of fear; -Embrace a populism which turns a fear-based world into “we the good” and “they the enemy;” -Get sucked into a tribalism that binds and blinds us away from the other side; -Live 24/7 in media echo chambers which deeply embed false narratives and alternative facts; And then when our neurology along with the practice of cognitive biases, amplify those fears even more, it’s no wonder we become trapped in a fear-based feedback loop as we spiral downward into rabbit holes of tribal division.
The Choice Before Us As I write today, America is divided with levels of enmity I’ve never seen before. There’s a palpable feeling of disgust for the opposite side, who are no long seen as the imago dei. There’s also a sense of hopelessness which is crushing to our spirit as our nation continues to divide.
There’s a calling on God’s people to be ministers of reconciliation so you would think that if anyone could unite it should be them. But scientific studies show that in today’s hyper partisan American, God’s people are among the most divisive of them all. There’s got to be a change but any change cannot happen until we break free from this fear induced, echo chamber reinforced, and demonizing spirit of partisan bondage.
“But when he saw the wind, he [Peter] was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” The fear Peter experienced when he took his eyes off Jesus is a natural response to the storms that encircle our lives. He chose correctly the first time, but chose poorly the second time, when confronted by the soldiers arresting Jesus.
Peter’s two choices are set before us in how we reconcile the endless cultural war with Christ’s mission. Will we respond to our fears by turning back to the One who changes us from the inside out? Or will we keep swinging the sword while cutting asunder our witness of love and unity – the two attributes of a Christian which Christ called the proof of His reconciliation mission to this world.
I grew up memorizing scripture, lots of scripture in fact. Mom had her favorite verses and many of those were of the “two birds with one stone” type. We learned scripture but with a learning that was purpose driven, attending to some need for behavioral formation in our youth.
We learned to “be ye kind to one another” in the hope of keeping the peace amongst us kids. We learned about coming judgment for “every idle word that men shall speak” in the hope of keeping our speech pure. We learned to think about “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy” as one more requirement of being holy.
Of course, mom had a backup plan if the desired outcome wasn’t immediately forthcoming. If the “be ye kind” didn’t work, the “rod of correction” was kept nearby. If an idle word slipped out, soap was just one bathroom away. And if the “whatever is pure” fell short, a lecture on hell fire could be readily brought to bear.
We were called to be a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” and mom knew how to get there. Christian formation was kindness, self-control in speech and thought, abstaining from immorality, temperance, and the shunning of bad habits. All were typical holiness moves back then, a witness to the deep holiness and fundamentalist roots in our Pentecostal movement. Of course, there was prayer, reading the bible and swinging from the chandeliers (just kidding). But that holiness stuff was king.
It’s all about the fight Fast forward 60 years to last January when Rodney Howard-Browne, an evangelist who once frequented our church in Alaska, lashed out at John Bolton over the news that the former national security adviser had written a book that might confirm the existence of a quid pro quo between Trump and Ukraine, an allegation that had been made by House Democrats leading up to Trump’s impeachment.
“You are a slime ball of the highest order,” Howard-Browne said. “I should have knocked your sorry butt through the door of the Oval Office into the rose garden when I saw you. I would have gladly been arrested.”
A few months ago, Eric Metaxas, one of Trump’s court evangelicals sucker punched a protester on a bicycle from behind. Metaxas claimed that it was self-defense, but the video of the incident clearly shows otherwise as Metaxas had to step out of his way to punch the biker as he passed.
Trump’s term may be over, but the culture wars live on. As Peter Wehner in the Atlantic tells of a colleague who, after interviewing a number of evangelicals said: “I have never witnessed the kind of excitement and enthusiasm for a political figure in my life,” he told me. “I honestly couldn’t believe the unwavering support they have [for Trump]. And to a person, it was all about ‘the fight.”
Wehner opines: “Part of the answer is their belief that they are engaged in an existential struggle against a wicked enemy—not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, but rather American liberals and the left. If you listen to Trump supporters who are evangelical you will hear adjectives applied to those on the left that could easily be used to describe a Stalinist regime…For them, Trump is a man who will not only push their agenda on issues such as the courts and abortion; he will be ruthless against those they view as threats to all they know and love. For a growing number of evangelicals, Trump’s dehumanizing tactics and cruelty aren’t a bug; they are a feature. Trump “owns the libs,” and they love it. He’ll bring a Glock to a cultural knife fight, and they relish that.”
Wehner is a longtime Republican operative with fellowships at conservative and faith organizations. Hence, his observations cannot be discounted as another partisan attack against the church. Particularly since they are backed by the results of the 2016 American National Election Survey (ANES). Called the “gold standard” of political surveys, ANES data show white evangelicals as the ethnoreligious group with the strongest support for “rough politics” in the public sphere.
Jesus Brought Something New We live in a fallen world. A world marked by self-interest that inevitably leads to strife and conflict. A world marked by incredible beauty, but also by genuine evil as the ages will attest. And a world which too oft seems like Joseph Conrad’s moral abyss – covered over by a civilized thin veneer with an underlying barbarism ever ready to break through and expose the black cauldron below.
Jesus came to earth to bring something new, through the launch of a kingdom that was not of this world. As citizens of that kingdom, we are to be instruments of God’s new creation, planting signposts in hostile soil that show a different way to be human. Our task – then as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-imitating, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world – is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to bring healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion.
So how can that be? To wit: how can image-bearing, Christ-imitating, Spirit-filled Christians, called to show the world a different way to be human, not only want to live for the “fight” but be excited about it, to the extent they surpass all other groups in embracing “rough politics?” And how can such cruelty be even possible for those destined to be “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works?” Especially given the injunction in Colossians to “clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,” another verse mom had us memorize, which scripture calls an outgrowth of being God’s “holy people.”
You Are What You Love What we say, act and think provide a window into our heart, for “out of the abundance of our heart a man speaketh.” Although who and what we worship ends up fundamentally shaping our heart, our awareness of what we worship is often lacking. There are drives deep within us and often at a subconscious level but then life’s pressures incite our passions and we find out who we really are as that thin veneer gives way to expose what lies below.
The pressure cooker of politics provides the ultimate heart truth tester. Its influence over our heart is a primary theme of James KA Smith” book “You Are What You Love.” Smith shows that the harmful outcome of this political influence is a repeated refrain throughout history. Earthly power is assimilative and through that assimilation our loves become distorted, away from the mission of the kingdom. Although we desire to shape culture, culture ends up shaping us; rather than witnessing the transforming power of the gospel, the gospel instead becomes transformed. It’s because our loves are informed by what we are devoted to and our devotions are drawn to the battle.
There’s a battle which lives loudly within today’s white evangelical church and our preoccupation with this culture war may be the biggest hinderance to the gospel. This battle acts like a Star Wars tractor beam, assimilating us into a partisan tribal collective – an assimilation with far reaching tentacles that invade every part of our life. It changes deeply held values as it reshapes our identity into a syncretistic mixture of two kingdoms. The transformation becomes complete through our passion to defend our new identity. Hence, we become what we love and our loves tell a new story of a devotion no longer solely focused on Jesus.
Once the dogs of war have been unleashed, it’s hard to call them back. Those dogs of war, which are fed by fear, crowd out the priority of love. Those dogs of war, fed by a populism-inspired “they the enemy,” are at odds with teachings of Christ. And the dogs of war, which bind and blind us to the tribe, changes our gospel witness of a God “who so loved the world.”
Jonah Goldberg said: “if you see yourself in a Manichean existential battle with the unholy Forces of Darkness, it’s much easier to overlook the adultery, greed, deceit, and corruption of your anointed champion.” Especially when that battle opens up a pandora box to a host of ungodly sensibilities, from the black cauldron of our human and fallen nature of which the cruelty is just one visible symptom.
The Upside-Down Exchange Calvin spoke about a “wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God…Having undertaken our weakness, he has made us strong in his strength.”
The preoccupation with the culture war turns this wondrous exchange upside down when we rely upon our political muscles in a battle for the soul of the nation. Of course, there are many calls for prayer, but our actions speak louder than words. Those actions choose the coercive force of political power rather than the “foolishness” of the cross. Those actions choose the a top-down cultural pressure, rather the power of Spirit-led influence. And those actions are confirmed when a “love one another” faithfulness becomes exchanged for rough politics in the public square because of the “righteousness” of “owning the libs.”
They say this exchange is needed because Christian identities and norms hang in the balance with the rules of engagement governed by the terms of the state. Success belongs to the victor, with the cosmic ends of this struggle justifying any means. Religious behavior is desirable, but no longer a first order goal. Our Christianity must be saved and our Christian nation restored to greatness too.
Jesus never engaged in political debates but focused instead on ushering in God’s Kingdom. Christ within us is the hope of the gospel, as long as that gospel stays true and as His character is formed within us, God’s culture changing kingdom power becomes unleashed.
We are called to be the shadow Jesus casts as we imitate the King. We are called to love our enemies through an unconditional love without borders. We are called to demonstrate his Kingdom for we are His ‘workmanship” in this world. As citizens of that kingdom, we choose the cross instead of the sword. By an ethic of serving others, we choose a power submissive to others rather than a power coercive over others. And as we enlist in God’s kingdom’s plan to transform society from within, we bring Calvary’s radical countercultural love – a love that’s removed “as far as the east is from the west” from today’s cultural “knife” fight.
The first Bible verse I ever learned as a kid was Ephesians 4:32 – “and be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ sake has forgiven you.” In fact, I just wrote that perfectly from memory, in King James Version no less, as it’s still indelibly imprinted on my mind. I’m sure my mother’s goal for this memorization was all about sibling relations. Especially with my sister who would repeatedly remind me that she was 2 years, 6 months and 25 days older than me! Of course, she had to memorize it too as kindness was a first order issue, faithful to the priority of scripture and very much needed between us siblings!
Mom’s priority of character development was ably matched by mom’s rod of correction, one of the many wooden spoons lurking in a kitchen drawer every ready to justify its existence. There were always multiple backups too as redundancy was a critical value in mom’s universe of wooden spoons. Not so much for cooking, as one would surmise, but to ensure ready replacements when the biblically inspired rod broke in half.
Resistance was always futile, a timeless outcome which never changed. Arguments were futile too and likely to make the punishment worse. Character development meant owning the crime, learning to take personal responsibility. Its goal was moral development, transforming self-centered kids into virtuous adults. I learned quickly that the outcome of a “but Sheryl” argument was statistically 2.3 additional swats more. Hence, any whataboutism was shunned, even punished as it was deemed incompatible with Godly moral formation.
The term whataboutism first surfaced in northern Ireland in the 1970s and used by both sides of that sectarian conflict to up the ante of moral indignation when confronted with an accusation. It found a second home during the cold war for a kind of Russian argumentation intended to match “every Soviet crime with a real or imagined western one.” But it wasn’t until the election of 2016 that it became a household term, increasing in use nearly 100-fold by late 2017 through its incorporation into our media discourse and by the call-out culture of social media. And its sustained popularity means that its here to stay as measure to the degree in which American identities have become politically tribalized.
Wide is the Gate…To Hackery Whataboutism is a logical fallacy (“tu quoque,” Latin for you also) used to avoid the issue while counter-attacking through an accusation of hypocrisy. It acts like a mirror keeping the spotlight on the other while avoiding accountability for one’s beliefs or actions. It amplifies the power of populism by fostering a binary worldview of “we the good” vs “they the enemy.” It’s a force multiplier for echo chambers through its avoidance of any honest engagement with an opposing view. And it’s an effective tool of tribalism because it’s always pointing at the other while being uninterested in the truth.
It simplifies political life because, as Andrew Sullivan once said: “One of the great attractions of tribalism is that you don’t actually have to think very much. All you need to know on any given subject is which side you’re on…When criticized by a member of a rival tribe, a tribalism will not reflect on his/her own actions or assumptions, but instantly point to the same flaw in his enemy”
Alan Dykstra in “The Rhetoric of “Whataboutism” in American Journalism and Political Identity” says: whataboutism rhetoric appears to be truth-seeking under the guise of engaging in a debate. But it is a relatively empty exercise, unmoored from a common understanding of truth. He concludes by saying whataboutism is a sign of “group division, polarization and tribalization of political identity in American Society…In such a mode, insulated knowledge spaces and tribal conceptions of social reality develop.”
I think mom knew instinctively what political scientists have found empirically. Whataboutism incites division, a sin that strikes at the heart of Christianity’s core. It undercuts the formation of character through the avoidance of personal responsibility. It removes the spotlight from right and wrong. It’s a violation of 1 Peter 3:9 who enjoins us to not repay “insult with insult.” And it contaminates our gospel witness through its reliance on tribal sensibilities.
As Jonah Goldberg, the long-time conservative pundit recently tweeted in response to what he said was the “5,000th Trump apologist pundit make the same argument…Conservatism claims to believe in serious notions of right & wrong. We (claim to) champion moral clarity. If your first response to every misdeed of your side is to criticize the other side for condemning it. That’s not principled conservatism, it’s hackery.”
Jonah again: “I’m not an expert on Christianity. But my understanding is that if you sin and are called to account for it, replying “Yeah, but look at what the Muslims do” is not a defense. Again, no expert so I’m open to correction.”
What if we quit worrying about whether people are on the ‘left’ or ‘right’ and just viewed our own actions in the context of right vs. wrong? What if we cared more about the factual basis of an issue, rather than finding refuge in a rhetorical tool meant to deflect? What if we adopted a many-sided perspective, evaluating truth claims according to their individual merits rather than through a false binary responsive to a tribalistic narrative. Then if an appeal to fairness seems meritorious, at least it should follow some form of honest evaluation of the levied charge.
Whataboutism as a Metric of Division Many drivers of disunity (e.g., populism) are difficult to quantitively pin down. Whataboutism, however, is easy to discern which makes it an ideal candidate to measure. Simply count the number of whataboutisms someone uses when engaging an opposing view. And then normalize it by some standardizing measure (e.g., total number of arguments) and voila, you have a whataboutism indicator of the percentage of arguments one avoids through a whatabout deflection.
It may be simple to measure, but its meaning is a bit more unclear. Does someone’s frequent use of whataboutisms just measure someone’s laziness, an unwillingness to seriously engage? Or does it measure someone’s underlying character, one’s commitment to truth and avoidance of hypocrisy? (I know that mom would surely vote for that.) Yet for many, it’s clearly the argument of choice. An instinctive response centered around the defense of their tribe. Yes, I believe this meaning is most common for that’s how this fallacy is defined. A divisive measure through a “but you” response which is really a measure of one’s fealty to a tribe.
Metanoeo – Changing Our Mind We are called to citizens of His kingdom, to be agents of reconciliation as the Apostle Paul enjoined. But as Steve Pecota, my former pastor, recently wrote in his excellent blog, “there can be no reconciliation without forgiveness. And forgiveness requires repentance.”
Repentance in scripture (from the Greek word metanoeo) means to have a change of mind. It’s demonstrated by a complete change of direction; a 180 degree turn from the past. But repentance must start with a reckoning, by acknowledging how we have “missed the mark.” And without that initial acknowledging, it’s like sewing up a wound without first cleaning out the debris.
Peter Wehner, the long-time Republican speechwriter, wrote today that “President Biden inherits a nation sicker, weaker, angrier, more divided and more violent than it has been in living memory.” Our nation needs to heal and the renewed cries for unity have never been more important. But unity without repentance leaves the wound within our nation unclean. For you just can’t post an image of Lincoln with the message of “A house divided against itself cannot stand” while continuing to post whataboutisms based on a divisive populist message. Nor will calls for God‘s healing and God’s help, made from evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham, sooth a nation made more divisive from their endorsements of partisan conspiracy theories. And to quote Steve again in regard to the baseless assertion of election fraud: “Our calls for unity within our nation will ring as hollow as empty soda cans if they are not accompanied by genuine, sorrowful repentance for the harm we have done. We must repent for helping to propagate a lie.”
Isn’t it time we heed Haggai’s admonition to first “consider our ways” as we “leave behind every weight, those sins that so easily beset us?” Then, as a prelude to unity: • shouldn’t we acknowledge the sin of demonizing the other as we repent of a populistic world view that labels other tribes to be the enemy; • shouldn’t we acknowledge the sin of a tribalistic identity as we repent of inhabiting echo chambers so that we can be set free from the syncretism (idolatry) those partisan bubbles impose; and • shouldn’t we acknowledge our sin of hypocrisy as we repent of an instinctive whataboutism mindset thereby canceling one of the most effective partisan tools that divides our nation in half?
Then perhaps with these 180-degree turns, through a repentance based on honest reckonings, together we make some progress towards the much-needed healing our land.
“Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it!” Those words, sung decades ago about a man apparently caught in a lie by his girlfriend is something we’ve all said at one time or another. That’s because sticking to our story is part of the human experience according to Jerome Bruner, a pioneer in the study of human cognition. Our brains are hardwired for Story, to organize everything we experience and understand through this filter called “Our Story” so that we can “make sense” of the world around us.
Upon my retirement over three years ago, I fulfilled a promise I had made to my dad some years earlier. We went on a “memory” trip, back to the Midwest to visit old friends and relatives as well as familiar places of his youth. Every part of the trip was enjoyable and exceedingly memorable. We saw familiar faces and reconnected with long-lost friends. We visited the farmland of Wisconsin where dad spent his summers. We visited the hospital in Chippewa Falls, a memorial of God’s grace where mom and dad barely escaped death by legionnaires disease.
Storytellers R Us Several of the renewed friendships continue to flourish, bonded through common interests and kindred spirits. Through these friendships, I was introduced to Bruner and Jonathan Gottschall who, in his book “The Storytelling Animal,” observes that we humans are wired for story, with a deep hunger for story hearing and story creating arising from an innate and universal part of our nature. Through stories we better navigate life’s complex social problems, as they prepare us for real events, like a flight simulator for a pilot learning to fly. Our “storytelling mind,” according to Gottschall, is “a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can’t.”
I introduced my friends to Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow whose research revealed the shortcuts our brain must use to mentally survive each day. The alternative – to carefully think through everything – just takes too much time and energy. Those shortcuts work by taking literally any available information and creating a compelling but simplified story. The quality or quantity of the information isn’t relevant as the measure of how “good” a story is—how confident we are in its accuracy—is not a function of data quality, but of the coherence of the story.
Its all about coherence but that cannot be achieved without cost. We make predictable errors in judgement which are very difficult to anticipate and overcome. We adopt a what-you-see-is-all-there-is (WYSIATI) mindset which leads us to choose intuition over external knowledge. We routinely employ confirmation bias, picking and choosing to support our preconceived beliefs. And we even make up data (lie!) so that we can impute causality with impunity, just so long as our stories remain coherent and consistent. And all of this is unknown, done outside of our consciousness.
Sowing the Lie, Reaping the Whirlwind Last Wednesday, insurrectionists built gallows in front of the Capitol. They kicked in the doors and broke the windows of this most sacred home of our democracy. Many were people with a plan, replete with zip-ties, flash-bangs, radios, earpieces, guns, and pipe bombs. Cries of “burn it down,” “Pence is a Traitor,” and “Hang Mike Pence” echoed those hallowed halls while they spread out and hunted for targets, the capitol’s first hostile breach since 1814 by the British. A police officer was dragged down steps, facedown, and beaten with an American flag. Another officer was killed. Confederate flags violated those halls while an American flag was torn down in an effort to replace it with a Trump-adorned flag. Halls were garnished with smeared feces to complete democracy’s desecration.
Not everyone in the crowd came to revolt and I’m sure the majority were peace-loving. But what began as a diverse group of people with differing motives, evolved into a flat-out insurrection, led by the faction with premediated violence in mind.
Many Trump supporters have objected to being lumped with the insurrectionists, wanting nothing to do with this chaos. Yet those premeditated actors could not have succeeded without the presence and partial support of the crowd. And the crowd could not have given cover to the storming of the capitol without the moral support from 75% of the 74 million Trump voters who continue to assert the post-election lies.
In The Grip of a Lie This week David French said: “The problem is that all too many Christians are in the grips of two sets of lies. We call them enabling lies and the activating lies.” Activating lies are those most easily visible: lies such as Pizzagate, that Biden is a pedophile, and 2020 election fraud. Enabling lies reside in the background and are ideological in nature. To wit: Democrats are evil, the main street media (MSM) is all about fake news, and if Biden is elected, America will become godless, Marxist, and destroyed as a country.
However, its these enabling lies that ultimately matter, tilling the ground for the activating lies. French again: “They poison hearts. They poison minds. They fill you with rage and hate, until comes the activating lie, the dangerous falsehood that pushes a person towards true radicalism.” And until you deal with the enabling lies, the activating lies will continue like a whack-a-mole, constantly bringing harm to our nation.
Deja Vu These past two months have shown the enduring power of the activating lie, canceling (for most Republicans) the truthful testimony of multiple and diverse local election officials, state leaders, Trump’s Attorney General and 62 court opinions involving over 90 judges of whom a third were appointed by Trump. We’ve seen the malignant power of this activating lie where the more those claims are debunked, the more the true believers double down on their assertions, diving even further into the rabbit hole of the lie’s alternative reality.
Just minutes into the capitol breach another activating lie was hatched. Franklin Graham, Newsmax, Fox News and others suggested “antifa” was there, a “story” that became easily and quickly believed. The Washington Times found the smoking gun when they published supposed facial recognition “proof” of Antifa involvement. Then like a wind-blown wildfire, the Antifa story spread throughout right wing media resulting in 68% of Republicans believing Antifa was “very much” or “somewhat” to blame for inciting the violence despite contrary findings by a number of fact checkers and the FBI and even a retraction by the Washington Times.
Now here’s the interesting part. Despite the widespread adherence to the Antifa lie narrative, polls also show 45% of Republicans approving of the capitol storming. Some invoke both-siderism as a justification to their support, holding up this summer’s protests [of an unjustifiable killing of a black man] as a defense of a protest turned insurrection against the nation’s capitol [based on an easily provable lie]. Many, however, approve in silence while keeping a firm hand firm on the tiller, as they sustain their attacks against the “real” enemy, the Democrats.
Enabling Lies, Destructive Stories Now that’s one of the enabling lies that make all of this happen. As I’ve previously said, populism’s tremendous influence comes by creating a binary worldview where “we the good” comes against “they the enemy” creates a highly divisive lens through which those outside of our group are seen, judged and convicted. It opens the door to the lies of conspiracy theories and amplifies people’s fears.
Another enabling lie is the fear-inducing apocalyptic lie such as that said by Eric Metaxas about the election: “It’s like stealing the heart and soul of America.” “This is trying to kill the American people.” “It’s like somebody has been raped or murdered. … This is like that times a thousand.” To believe otherwise, according to Eric, is to listen to “the voice of the Devil” “It’s like holding a rusty knife to the throat of Lady Liberty,” Eric says, of the election.”
Just stop and ponder that. An Evangelical leader says that Donald Trump’s election loss is a thousand times worse than rape and murder. If you don’t believe this lie, then you are in cahoots with the Devil. Conversely, if you do believe the lie, shouldn’t that be a call to action?
A third enabling lie invokes a negative version of Kahneman’s Halo Effect where we take one data point, just one piece of information from “they the enemy,” and then extrapolate it to the group as a whole. It’s an extreme and pervasive form a confirmation bias and commonly shapes our understandings of truth, picking away at truth’s institutional guardrails while establishing the echo chambers in our lives.
Our mind yearns for coherence, coherence, and coherence. Such coherence not only helps us to understand the world, but it allows us to function efficiently and effectively in the midst of a complex world. Yet truth too often bows before coherence as lies become useful shortcuts to coherent stories.
That’s why echo chambers are coherence’s best friend. By filtering out alternative facts, we hop on the tractor beam of coherence which takes us into the mothership of belief perseverance. This is the final destination of confirmation bias as we will now cling to those beliefs even when receiving new information that contradicts or disconfirms the basis of them.
This past week we saw how destructive just one activating lie can inflict on the nation, a destruction that took a village through a widespread adherence to a set of tribally-based enabling lies that first built the superstructure for this chaos and then made it happen. For when you demonize your political opponent, connecting their success to the end of the world, when you ramp up people’s fear through repeated assertions of godless Marxism, and when you remove truth’s guardrails allowing people to plummet into the abyss of echo chambers, you can’t really be surprised when the sowing of these lies yields the reaping of last week’s whirlwind.
Isn’t it Time We Change Our Stories? Isn’t it time as Christ-followers, to go back to the basics and the question Rick Warren asked in his book “The Purpose Driven Life:” What on earth am I here for?
I like the theologian Stanley Grenz’s response: “at the heart of the biblical narrative is the story of God bringing humankind to be the imago dei, that is, to be the reflection of the divine character, love, where we show the world what our God is like.” The Westminster Shorter Catechism also rings true – that our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
Shouldn’t our stories mirror that purpose and isn’t that purpose incompatible with the enabling lies that undergird our tribally-created partisan stories? Then isn’t it time to heed Haggai 1:7’s admonition to first “consider our ways” and then to repent of any stories that aren’t glorifying to Him?
Shouldn’t then our stories be inclusive, absent of partisan or ethnic division where there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave or free, nor male or female?
Shouldn’t then our stories refuse any involvement with tribal echo chambers as we affirm our calling to be agents of reconciliation, being “Christ’s Ambassadors as we become peacemakers, living out the gospel through our words, actions, and attitudes?
Shouldn’t then our stories be faithful to Micah 6:8 which is to do justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with our God?
And shouldn’t then our stories be centered on Jesus, the beginning and end of our faith where “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit?
Yes! And then let the coherence, coherence, and coherence begin.
There’s a story about a building manager who once asked his architect to meet him on the 42nd floor. A set of cracks had suddenly appeared and he couldn’t figure out why. After waiting several hours, the manager found the architect in the basement. He had been there all along and had discovered material deficiencies in the building’s foundation, the source for the formation of cracks in the upper floor. Further investigation revealed that over the course of several years, one of the security staff had been removing the foundation’s bricks, taking them home to build a garage. The constant weakening of the foundation eventually became visible to the building’s occupants, but in an area far removed from its source. For those cracks in the upper floors were just symptoms of a critical weakness that had developed in the building’s foundation.
“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
Those words, penned by the Psalmist long ago, spoke of the foundational importance of truth, justice, and character – things which underpin a society’s moral order. Those foundations were the guardrails which kept society safe, protecting society from existential harm.
Public surveys back up what Tim Alberta, the chief political correspondent for Politico, recently said: “we no longer have societal pillars able to hold up the rest of the building when the floor starts caving in.” Justice is situational, character has been devalued, and truth has been set adrift from its traditional moorings. Confidence in essential institutions – the ballot box, government at all levels, media, law enforcement, public education, and organized religion – is at a historic low. And a common understanding and loyalty to these institutions is long gone.
The recent report entitled “Democracy in Dark Times,” concluded that our public culture is not defined by the things we hold in common, but by the absence of shared understandings. It’s a sobering perspective with the logical outcome, according to David French: “for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality, the continued unity of the United States of America cannot be guaranteed.”
“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
Lest we be quick to speak and slow to listen, consider the following. America’s growing divide is nowhere more pronounced than within the community of the “righteous,” with discordant sensibilities nowhere more visible than during the current election and pandemic crisis. Evangelicals who voted for Trump are either the leading or second leading group across America to distrust the 2020 election, believe the coronavirus threat is blown out of proportion, reject an offer of vaccination, participate in large gatherings, and believe the government has provided enough economic relief during this crisis. And the higher the density of evangelicals, the greater the partisan difference in social distancing, especially when covid cases are on the increase.
For many, however, the sharpness of that divide just confirms the truth about their convictions. When you’re not “of the world,” shouldn’t we expect a “biblically-based” community to have beliefs different from the “secular” world?
Yet, as I’ve said before, just read the judicial opinions. The court decisions easily debunk those fraudulent election claims– as long as you’re not stuck in an echo chamber. Plus, you don’t pick and choose aerospace engineering claims when boarding an aircraft so why pick and choose coronavirus scientific findings when our community’s health is at stake. And, more importantly, shouldn’t any coronavirus response, as with any of our actions, be subjected to the law of love? Live free or die is not a biblical verity and precautionary covid-related behavior is a WWJD move – a love your neighbor second commandment act of obedience that’s like unto the first.
Yes, those sharp differences have nothing to do with our faith. They are a product of cultural, political, and ideological sensibilities that have hijacked our identity and displaced our Kingdom ethics.
What should the righteous do, especially when their own foundations are crumbling too?
Haggai 1:7 “consider your ways” followed by 1 Tim 3:18 “be sober be alert” is our starting point for change. We focus on the heart as its “those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart…defile a man” (Matt 15:18). We then humble ourselves, recognizing God’s call to repentance literally means to change our minds. It changes our direction too as we are restored to God’s plan for us to be His image bearers, to reflect His glory and his rescuing nature to the world around us. Our work is cut out for us knowing that this change requires a “putting off” before the “putting on” can begin.
Let us therefore put off… Of all the things to “put off,” or, as the writer of Hebrews writes, “[to] throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,” few cultural sensibilities are more divisive – more missing the mark – than a populism amplified through non-intersecting media echo chambers.
Populism is a binary worldview which pits “the people” against the perception of a corrupt and self-serving “elite.” Its simplifying ethic of “we the good,” and “they the enemy” creates a highly divisive lens through which the world is seen, judged, and convicted. It opens the door to conspiracy theories and extreme motivated reasoning through a play on people’s fears. And when historic institutions of societal truth, like experts, the media, or judiciary, become the enemy of “the good,” our societal foundations get picked apart as the traditional guardrails of truth are removed.
Challenging the main street media (MSN) is one of populism’s noble causes with exposing MSM fake news as today’s marquee battle. Of course, the MSM is not without fault and their power deserves to be challenged. By monetizing the sensational, the MSM distorts our perception of the mean. And despite their best intentions, human nature is just too strong and institutional truth guardrails too weak to indemnify the news against all personal and editorial bias.
Yet people with a populist worldview cannot provide MSM’s much-needed honest critique. You just can’t be constructive nor even handed when you split the world into two hostile sides. Especially when our echo chambers supersize our enemies as we dig our trenches even deeper with a new resolve for the battle.
So we divide. And divide and divide. Nearly all Republicans (80%) and Fox News viewers (83%) believe the MSM exaggerated the coronavirus to take down Trump. Only 9% of either Democrats or PBS viewers find that claim to be true. Ninety percent of right-wing media consumers say the U.S. has done all it can to control the coronavirus; only three percent of MSM media consumers say yes.
Of Motes and Beams Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the legendary Reagan Ambassador to the UN once said: “to destroy society, it is first necessary to delegitimize its basic institutions.”
She goes on: “If practices are measured by abstract, absolute standards, practices are always found wanting. The communists who criticize liberal democratic societies measure our practices by our standards and deny the relevance of their practices to judgments concerning the moral worth of our own society.” In sum: “Our flaws are exaggerated, theirs are simply denied.”
Populism’s delegitimization of societal institutions follows the same Soviet playbook: it puts a microscope on “they the enemy” whilst “we the good” get a pass. It’s a pervasive phenomenon that occurs across the political spectrum, but particularly within my evangelical tradition – the most populist and often one of the most divisive of any demographic group in America.
With their sights set on the MSM, they’re on a holy mission to expose MSM’s bias and fake news. Yet none of their “truth” posts address conservative icons like Rush Limbaugh of “The coronavirus is the common cold, folks” fame or Sean Hannity of the Seth Rich conspiracy fame. Nor do they address right wing media influencers like Fox News, or any other likeminded publications outside of the MSM realm. Even a few of their posts about MSM falsehoods have themselves even been fake news! And, of course, they’ve never called out any of Trumps 23,000 lies, or pushed back against conservative media’s election conspiracy theories and misinformation which have been thoroughly debunked by over 56 court opinions.
I know they want to do the right thing and I’m sure they think they’re on the right course. But the “beam” of a one-sided tribal perspective prevents them from fairly evaluating the missteps of “the other side.” Their use of two disparate standards, selectively applied, adds to the partisan divide. With their exaggerated pursuit of fake news, they delegitimize, brick by brick, the very institutions needed to underpin a society’s moral order. And although called to “correctly handle the word of truth,” their populist-driven binary worldview weakens truth’s guardrails as they contribute to the post-truth spirit of the age.
Repairers of Broken Walls I’m reminded of the passage in Isaiah 58 where God takes issue with the children of Israel. The Israelites thought they were doing the right thing through their desire to seek God, know His ways, and faithfully fast. Yet God calls them out for their practice of oppression and strife. True worship, God says, means loving your neighbor, undoing the thongs of their yoke, and removing the pointing finger. True worship will unleash God’s hand of blessing with the promise that: “they will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”
Populism’s fruit of partisan finger pointing is like an oppressive yoke around our nation’s neck as the divide between we the good and they the enemy gets deeper each day. Our response – a Christian response – must begin with a clear theological anthropology: human beings are made in the image of God. The populist assignment of “we the good” lacks an awareness of our sinful human nature. Its scapegoating tendency – assigning blame to those who are different – rejects Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. The creation of a “they the enemy” class of people goes against the gospel mandate of “love thy neighbor.” Since there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave or free, nor male or female, populism’s requirement for categorization is not a Christian value.
Repairers of broken walls are brick builders who bring Godly values into the public square. They show through their worship they are a community set apart as they show through word and deed a different way to be human. Their spiritual formation introduces a kingdom ethic which shows off God’s workmanship and gives “glory to Him who is heaven.
Repairers of broken walls refuse to fight the wrong battles, avoiding imaginary or second-order issues that divert our focus from the first order issues of Christ’s two greatest commandments and mission.
Repairers of broken walls choose hope instead of fear, resisting those who offer simplistic answers to life’s complex questions.
Repairers of the broken walls wear the lens of imago dei, seeing others as the Creator’s image bearers instead of through categories labeled as good and bad.
Repairers of the broken walls “put off” division as they “put on” Christ. The only type of bricks they remove are divisive attitudes like populism and the truth-distorting bondage of echo chambers, each which hold remarkable power to infect the body of Christ just like the leaven of the Pharisees of old.
Repairers of broken walls heed the call of the Psalmist as they work to constructively rebuild broken down walls of truth, justice, and character by being, in the words of Tim Keller, “a community radically committed to the good of the city as a whole.”
Not long ago, I attended a funeral celebrating the life of Eva Wangen, an elderly lady in our church whom my wife had known. She had lived a full, engaged, life, marked by a purity in heart and a love for people.
One by one, family and friends came up and spoke of her impact on their lives. She had a passion for Jesus and lived out that passion through loving others. Anyone who crossed her path automatically became a target for love. Although part of a conservative fundamentalist church, she loved everyone including her LGBTQ neighbors across the street. Loved them especially, I am told.
Eva mixed her passion for Jesus with a practice of love and a lifestyle of engagement. Her connections were wide ranging, inclusive of her family, church, and neighbors to a variety of organizations and institutions she belonged to. A bearer of salt and light, even as she aged gracefully into her 90s, she brought about change through reflecting His glory into the lives of those around her. No matter what group or tribe she was a part of, her identity remained pure with her heart solely fixed upon Jesus, unmixed and uncontaminated from the polarizing culture around her.
Eva left a remarkable legacy, a testimony of what a 2 Cor 3:18 witness looks like in today’s partisan, culture war-driven, world: “and we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. … And the Lord–who is the Spirit–makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.”
Here’s the Good News If everyone lived like Eva Wagner, then you would look with incredulity on the many rigorous studies showing the fundamentalist and evangelical tradition to be, statistically speaking, the most likely of all ethnoreligious groups in America to discount stories of both domestic violence and rape and in doing so rationalize or perpetuate men’s violence against women, to exhibit a hostility that morally impugns or wishes persecution on members of other groups different than us, and to exhibit harmful prejudicial views towards racial and ethnic out-groups, Muslims, and those with alternative sexual orientations.
Yet the same scientific studies show the opposite to be true when our faith is pure. When you remove influences such as fundamentalism, right wing authoritarianism, populism, and Christian nationalism from the data, leaving people with a faith that’s unmixed and uncontaminated and hence “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God,” then the data show that they truly love their neighbor, even when those neighbors differ greatly from them.
Some of the upcoming posts will explore how these influences, which encumber and contaminate the heart, lead to a syncretistic or mixed gospel that often becomes unrecognizable to the watching world. Some findings will be troublesome, perhaps even dark for a church called to reflect the “light of the world.” Hence it will be important to keep this post in mind. For there are other Christ-followers, in addition to Eva, who have avoided those influences, through eyes steadfastly fixed upon Jesus in the midst of the partisan storm. Others, like Eva, remain citizens of the Kingdom, refusing to turn scripture into a proof text to promote values and beliefs of a different, tribally-based, kingdom. Others, like Eva, pursue the mission of the church rather than the culture wars that are dividing our nation. And others, like Eva, prioritize love and unity as guardrails of the faith, indemnifying themselves against echo chambers of beliefs as well as perversion in attitudes and behavior.
Beautiful Orthodoxy The Greek word for orthodoxy can also mean true worship, behavior or inward belief. We see that through the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament which used the Greek word “doxia” for the Hebrew word “gloria.”
Doesn’t that resonate, especially given our calling to be unveiled as Christ-followers so that we can “see and reflect the glory of the Lord?” Couldn’t orthodox Christianity be first and foremostly considered as denoting the glorification of God through the praise, attitudes, and behavior of Christ followers?
Yes, we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works! Imagine a church that truly believes and then lives that, pursuing orthodoxy through a relentless, all hands-on-deck, attention to attitudes and behavior. Where those attitudes and behavior become the gospel metrics of good works! Where truth is first seen as an outward expression of our “inward parts,” testified by love and unity. Where the injunction to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God is cemented into the church. Where the fruits of the Spirit are the primary witness of a Spirit-led life committed to mirroring the life and teachings of Christ. Where our attitudes become first order issues of the gospel as humility trumps certainty and repentance ends privilege. Where the beliefs outside of the creeds become secondary to the true practice of Christianity as seen by our world, by an ekklesia united through the living presence of Christ.
Perhaps we can call this practice of “Beautiful Orthodoxy,” a living demonstration of an unmixed and uncontaminated Christianity, as the “The Eva Wangen Way” (which is really just the reflecting Jesus way), as we begin to explore foundational issues which mar the witness of the white evangelical church – the least of all ethnoreligious groups to demonstrate a “love thy neighbor” practice in America today.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Eph 2:10
