I have not been able to post here because of a combination of bronchitis and family schedule. And though while still struggling with bronchitis, I am getting better.
In the meantime, I've read most of the book How White Evangelicals Think: The Psychology Of White Conservative Christians by Dave Verhaagen (click here for info on the book). And while Dr Verhaagen claims that many, but not all, of the problems with white Conservative Christians are due to narcissism, I tend to think that many of our problems have to do more with our passionate embrace of authoritarianism. And our authoritarianism manifests itself primarily through how we so easily discard the views of unbelievers as well as our desire seek a privileged place for religiously conservative Christians in society in terms of making laws and controlling cultural standards.
Before stating why I think that more of our, which is us white Christian Evangelicals, problems are due to authoritarianism, which is also described in Dr. Verhaagen's book. I want to hasten to add that his book is.a very good book and he is writing with expertise that I don't have. On the other hand, I am speaking from what I have observed as a white Christian Evangelical for most of my life.
Dr. Verhaagen is very clear in stating that not all white religiously conservative Christians are narcissists. Bur why I disagree with him is that while all narcissistic white Evangelicals also struggle with being authoritarian, so too do those white Evangelicals who are not narcissistic. And thus it seems to me that authoritarianism is the most prominent problem that we white Evangelicals have.
Dr Verhaagen well describes authoritarianism by focussing on the traits of the authoritarian personality type. Here, Dr. Verhaagen gives a list of traits of the authoritarian personality type. His list is very similar, if not the same, as the list of traits of that personality type can be found in this Psychology reference (click here).
But what Dr. Verhaagen seems to overlook is that his list of traits seem to present a shewed view of the authoritarian personality type as as if conservatives or those who favor the status quo of a given location or nation are the only one who could be authoritarian. In addition, Dr Verhaagen also seems to overlook why us religiously conservative Christian of all shades struggle with authoritarianism. That reason is that authority structures have become so much of the religiously conservative American Christian teaching and culture, that we religiously conservative Christians seem unable to turn off the authority switch in our lives. We seem unable to envision any part of life without seeing hierarchies and we stubbornly refuse to learn from those who have different world views than we have. In fact, when reading many religiously conservative Christian analyses of different theories, ideologies, and isms, too many times have prominent Christian influencers and teachers totally dismissed an observation, theory, or ideology because they have a different worldview than us religiously conservative Christians have.
And thus, though I believe that many of us white Christian Evangelicals do exhibit a significant degree of narcissism, especially collective narcissism, it is authoritarianism that is a more significant driver to our problems in interacting with society and culture than narcissism.
And so here is my proposal for a New Year's resolution for me and my fellow religiously conservative Christians of all shades: rid ourselves as much as we can of our authoritarianism. And we can do that by seeking to work side by side as equals with our fellow citizens who are unbelievers in trying solve our problems. We can also rid ourselves of authoritarianism by no longer discarding everything that a given theory, ideology, or person is saying simply because they have a non-Christian worldview. Instead of discarding everything than an unbeliever or a non-Christian view has to say, we look to rationally examine each claim that an unbeliever or non-Christian theory says to see what we can accept. If we follow through with the above resolution of abandoning our authoritarianism, we very well could not only contribute more to solving societal and the world's problems, we could better advance the Gospel by avoiding hurting the reputation of the Gospel which our authoritarianism tends to do.
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