Understanding Ourselves For Religiously Conservative Christians, Part 2

I grew up in a very religious home. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, that most probably meant a conservative Christian home. Mom kind of directed the religion part of the home and her religion spilled into her political views. She was staunchly Republican, as was here twin sister, and it seemed that her political views were conflated with her Christian faith.

Another feature of our home is that we were sheltered--that came from growing up in the suburbs. The only thing I knew about Democrats is that we didn't want them elected. And while protests of the 1960s and 1970s were spreading throughout America, we didn't talk about them at home.

From an early age I learned to conflate conservative politics with my Christian faith too. I was patriotic and believed that America stood for what was good in the world. I believed that Communism was bad without knowing what Communism was. Not knowing what it was didn't stop me from calling people with whom I strongly disagreed a 'Communist.'

And because I was raised a Christian and Republican, I held to conservative politics for much of my life. I was a strong religiously conservative Christian and a Republican voter when I voted. I believed in Capitalism, a militarily strong America, a defender of American Exceptionalism, a hater of Communism, and so forth. And I could be pretty arrogant in expressing either my conservative religious beliefs or my political beliefs.

But I began to change during the summer of 2001. My best friend, who is a nominal Roman Catholic and a registered Democrat, showed an example of caring for others that I had not seen except in one or two of the religiously and political conservative people I knew. So I reckoned, 'reckoned' is a word I learned to use while going to college in Oklahoma, that maybe there are things I can learn from non-conservatives. So on a whim, I picked up two books by two leftists: Noam Chomsky and Martin Luther King Jr.

Chomsky had a passion for fairness. By that I mean that the same standards the US used to judge other nations must be used to judge the US too. Martin Luther King Jr. had a passion for winning people over. Instead of trying to conquer them or defeat them, he wanted to convert them to supporting full equality for people of all races. And as I read their material, I found that their passions were very Biblical. Thus I read more and more people on the Left. I have even read some of Karl Marx's works. And I continued to find more and more Leftist views that I perceived as being Biblical.

However, if, like my mom, I conflated my political views with my Christian faith, what happened to my faith? My religious views stayed the same. But it was a very deep tearing process because the changes in my political views meant that I had to separate my religious views from my political views

Thus, even though I had very much conflated my political views with my religious views, my political disillusionment with conservative political beliefs did not result in a disillusionment with conservative Christian beliefs. However, that has not been the story for many a Christian Millennial. We will have to see if Christian Generation Z and Christian Generation AA believers suffer the same fate.

Going on my own data sample, political disillusionment for Millennials who grew up like I did often leads to religious disillusionment. But why them and not me? I really don't know for sure but I think one possible cause has to do with Post Modernism. Post Modernism is a view that rejects the notion of using the metanarratives, which are systems of beliefs used to interpret the world. Past metanarratives consisted of faith along with science and reason. The reason for Post Modernism's rejection of religion and both science and reason is because Post Modernism has seen the historical failures of religion and both science and reason to work for a just world.

Post Modernism has had a stronger influence on the most recent generations than on the older ones. And thus, the dynamics of religious disillusionment are rather simple. Political disillusionment in a person who has conflated their conservative political views with conservative religious views most often results in a rejection of past religious beliefs as well. After all, if two sets of beliefs are strongly associated with each other, rejection of one set of beliefs can very easily trigger a rejection in the other. And that is the price that many religiously conservative Christian parents are now paying for conflating their conservative political views with their religious views. Post Modernism points out how many of those conservative political views have led to oppression, war, exploitation, marginalization and so forth. And thus rejecting conservative political views often leads to rejecting conservative religious views.

But what about those religiously conservative Christians who have conflated their conservative political views with their faith and who have not been politically disillusioned? They are causing those who disagree with their political views to unnecessarily criticize their Christianity. That criticism is not necessarily a persecution of religiously conservative Christianity per se, it is fallout criticism that stems from a rejection of conservative Christians' political views.

The moral of the story for religiously conservative Christians like myself is this, it's fine to base your politics on your religious beliefs. It is fine to be a political conservative. Just don't conflate the two. Learn how to use your faith to criticize at least some your political positions. Understand that you can learn from political liberals and leftists. Don't shut yourself off from the outside. Church history tells us that we can bring unnecessary shame to and/or persecution of the Gospel when we do that. Remember that the Roman Church, along with Calvin and Luther, use to sharply criticize Galileo for claiming that the sun was the center of our solar system. 




 

Are We Christians Trying Too Hard To Fit A Stereotype? Part III

For the near future, the articles posted on Fridays will consist of reviews of Christian writings from 2 perspectives. The first perspective will be that of the view of the role of the Church in America as described by the report, The Crisis Of Democracy. This report is a view of the role of the Church from a liberal viewpoint. This perspective is an observation of the past which was interrupted during the protest years of the 1960s. That time was described by the report as having an 'excess of democracy.' And that view says the following (click here for the source):

In the past, those institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of the young in their rights and obligations as members of society have been the family, the church, the school, and the army. The effectiveness of all these institutions as a means of socialization has declined severely. The stress has been increasingly on individuals and their rights, interests, and needs, and not on the community and its rights, interests, and needs.

 The second perspective is an observation, not an ideological declaration, about the Church made from the Left in Russia prior to its October, 1917 Revolution--we should note that Russia also underwent a February, 1917 Revolution. This perspective was written by Vlad (a.k.a., Vladimir Lenin) and it went like this (click here for the source):

Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze,   in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.

The reason for reviewing Christian writings from these two perspectives is to determine whether today's writings show that the Church has changed since the times in which those observations were made. And for the record, I just want to say that I am not a fan of Lenin regardless of how I refer to him.

Today's review will be of an audio blog show run by Aimee Byrd, Carl Trueman, and Todd Pruitt (click here for bios). The subject for this particular show dealt with the question of whether the election of Donald Trump was part of God's plan (click here for the show). 

If we go outside the purpose of this particular series, there is a lot good discussion with some sound points made by the 3. In fact, I would recommend that people, especially Christians, listen to this particular show. One of the reasons for recommending this show is the post election division that certainly exists both in our nation and the Church.

But the purpose of this series is to review the content of what Christians are saying in the light of the two quotes listed above. And here, there isn't much content to review. What this series could comment on are the statements made that the best that Christians could hope for from a Trump Presidency are a governmental restraint on the progress of the new sexual revolution and that the religious liberties of religiously conservative Christians will not be infringed on. Note that these are hopes, not necessarily expectations.

Thus, what is not mentioned, which happens to be Vlad's concern, is the exploitation of workers. That concern is not even on the radar in this show. And thus, what we see is another instance where Vlad's concerns that workers are not being challenged to free themselves and owners are not being challenged to end their oppression. With many of American workers living on government assistance programs in order to make ends meet with their wages while many workers from nations, particularly 3rd world nations, are trafficked and/or work in sweatshop conditions, one would think that these concerns would be mentioned especially when one of the hosts, Carl Trueman, describes himself as a hybrid of both liberalism and conservatism. But they are not.

Rather, American Christians are told to care about their purity by hoping that society changes course while not addressing these issues. It is as if individual sins are the only sins that some Christians see. Thus, societal and system sins are to be endured because they are a part of the territory. Note that that was not said during the show. But one has to wonder whether it is being suggested when the exploitation of workers was not relevant enough of an issue to be discussed. Also note that Trump was the President-elect at the time of the airing of this show.

Is Political Conservatism Hurting Conservative Christianity

Ross Douthat (click here for a bio) recently wrote an op-ed article for the New York times in an attempt to defend the Religious Right (click here for the article). His way of defending the Religious Right is to propose that we need a new Religious Right that is unlike the Religious Right of today. Because it is the Religious Right that, according to Douthat, made the GOP act compassionately such as reaching out to minorities and attempting to fight AIDS in Africa in the past during the George W. Bush's Administration, the Religious Right is worthy of being restored.

What prompted Douthat's article? It was the result of our current choice for president from the two major parties. Trump's character should disqualify him for the vote or support from any real religious conservative. Unfortunately, the GOP's nomination of Trump for  President has caused some religious conservatives to compromise their standards in order to stand with him--we should also note that there are many religious conservatives who oppose Trump's candidacy. And voting for Hillary is a complete nonstarter because of her support for abortion and Douthat's allegations about the kind of government regulations Christians would have to face under a Hillary presidency.

Thus, Douthat sees the urgent need for the Religious Right to rise from the moral ashes that it has become from supporting Trump. For according to Douthat, Trump is the result of the dechristianization of conservative politics and thus supporting him should contradict what it means to be a conservative Christian. And so political conservatism needs a new Religious Right in order to have its moral standards restored. And it appears that Douthat thinks that our nation, especially its Christian citizens, need that political conservatism to protect them from the certain doom posed by Hillary and her political liberalism.

But there is a question Douthat and others who are loyal to conservative brand of politics have not considered. If Trump is the result of Christianity having left political conservatism, then doesn't that same political conservatism pose a threat to compromise the faith of any religious conservative who would be a member? For how horrible is political conservatism without Christianity if Trump is its poster child? Past and current critics of the Religious Right have been trying to say for a while only those from the Religious Right have not been listening.