"What Life Have You....?"

via @NYTOpinion. This is a brilliantly on-point piece by ⁦⁦@michelleinbklyn⁩. Lonely, disconnected Americans, unmoored from community, family or even faith, are ripe for authoritarian leaders such as #Trump. Must read. https://t.co/9fmveoWooy

— howardfineman (@howardfineman) July 20, 2021

I haven't read this column, but I don't feel like I have to. And I don't slight the thesis by saying we continue to "discover" problems that have been "discovered" before. By "before" I don't mean by Socrates or the early Church; I mean within the last 50 years.

When I was in seminary the problem du jour (complete with solution, else why have a problem?  Problems must always have possible solutions, otherwise they are not problems, you're just bitching.) was community. It was already cliche, it seems, although it was new to me at the time.  But I discussed the matter with pastors long in the pulpit, and they assured me it was just the newest, and already fading, "solution" to our problems.

So I set it aside, to examine it more critically later.  But I never doubted there was something to it.  We are, after all, social animals.  We had our spate of "loner" heroes, the Dirty Harry's (only a notable version of the extreme example), in American popular culture, the brave individuals (Davey Crockett, whose legend is almost purely the invention of Walt Disney.  Almost everything you think you know about the historical person is from Disney's TV show, not history.) who alone shaped America (and yet we despise Ayn Rand?  Yeah, she was a barmpot, but her ideas were quintessentially 20th century American).  Now our heroes are "family," or make a family, a community, of themselves; and their concerns are other people, not abstract concepts like "evil" and "justice."  There's a reason groups of heroes (Avengers; soon "the Eternals," etc.) are all the rage in blockbuster movies.  Even "Black Widow" was about family (of a sort), not about the singular exploits of the titular character.  This is not to argue for "progress" so much as change. We got tired of Dirty Harry standing alone.  The nadir of that thinking was reached with Margaret Thatcher:

"They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." 

That's really no better nor insightful than Brian Kilmeade's recent declaration about government:

"That's not their (the government's) job. It's not their job to protect anybody."

One is left wondering, in the first case, what families living together in social groups are if not society; and in the second case, just what government is for, if not to protect its citizens.  We can argue about whether or not it is our duty to take care of ourselves first, and our neighbors only secondarily, later. The pendulum, for want of a better metaphor, has swung towards community.

Frankly, 'twas ever thus:

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

The "I" there is Alexis de Tocqueville, who probably needs no further introduction. Be honest:  if you don't see Donald Trump outlined in those lines, you are trying not to.  And yet we eagerly set Trump apart as an aberration, as a product of "pathological narcissism," and so as "other" to the American character. But what if he is, in this sense, quintessentially American?  What then?  What if that is the source of his appeal in this country, but not elsewhere in the world?  Indeed, in what other country or culture could he exist?

But note Tocqueville is not describing the American character; he is describing the character of despotism.  And despotism, in Tocqueville's description, arises primarily from the desert of the denial of society (which puts Thatcher's comments in the proper perspective, IMHO).  The springs in that desert are when strangers actually help each other just because they are fellow humans.  The false stories coming out of the Superdome in New Orleans after Katrina were of anarchy and, well, despotism.  The true stories were of the instant community that sprang up there as human beings reduced to common conditions worked to help each other until help could come.  After Hurricane Harvey the idea was floated that a memorial should be erected in Houston, in the form of two men in a bass boat helping strangers escape their flooded houses.  The source for that image was the "Cajun Navy" of individuals who came from Louisiana to help people in Texas.  If that isn't society, what is?

We need community.  "What life have we," Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked, "if we have not life together?"  Even the famous ascetics of the fourth century who fled to the deserts to find God alone in their cells lived in community with each other.  They weren't misanthropes escaping humanity; they were seeking their own humanity.  Anchorites like Julian of Norwich filled a particular niche in medieval Europe, when the church (building and people) was truly the centerpoint of social life.  The anchorite was "dead," living in a cell so placed that she (it was usually women) could participate in the Mass, and also communicate with the parishioners, giving spiritual counseling from the perspectie of one whose life was devoted to seeking God.  They were not in isolation, they were in the heart of their communities.  And their responsibility was to others, not to themselves.  The church members supported them materially, as they supported the members spiritually.

Now stop and add this to the mix:

How evangelicals gradually replaced Jesus Christ with right-wing ideology https://t.co/8a6HpSRWPk

— Raw Story (@RawStory) July 20, 2021

True reform of the evangelical political machine will never happen, however, as long as the current evangelical leadership holds the reins. Understand that the leaders who have recently been fighting for control of the Southern Baptist Convention are no different than Jerry Falwell Sr. or Pat Robertson in the past, or Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham today. These new evangelicals feel the need to be more discreet about their homophobia and anti-equality agenda. Perhaps they will even reject Trump now that he's no longer president, but do not expect them to show up at the next Pride rally or Black Lives Matter march. The problem here is that this relationship between the evangelical leadership and the Republican Party has become what Christians call a covenant.

More than a little church history needs to added to this, including the fact the Pentecostal church (an "evangelical" church under the broadest reach of the term) began as a multi-racial and even multi-cultural (remember that term?) church where all were one in the Spirit.  The Southern Baptist Convention, on the other hand, began life as the Baptists loyal to the Confederacy and what it stood for, including slavery.  Not that they are unique in that; the Presbyterian denomination I grew up in was the "southern" branch of a larger denomination, broken again by secession of the southern states.  When they rejoined in my adolescence, a distaff group broke off, insisting the "northern" church was "too liberal."  I took that as theologically liberal at the time; it never occurred to me to question if it had anything to do with racism.  But given the "genetic" nature of institutions, I have to ask the question now.  Where your institution begins has a great deal to do with how it continues.

Which is a digressive way of saying that the "evangelical leadership" that is beholden to American politics didn't begin with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.  They were no more sui generis than Donald Trump.  I don't remember too many denominations, north or south, evangelical or mainstream, that were all that supportive of Dr. King and his movement, or who escaped censure in his famous Letter.  We have not recently fallen from an ideal and shining past perfection.  Not by a long shot.

Over the last 70 years, Christian theology has been steadily replaced, within the evangelical world, by Republican or "conservative" ideology. I noticed this in my time at an evangelical seminary and during my years in ministry, whenever political discussion would go beyond abortion and gay rights. When the conversation turned towards gun rights, immigration, taxing the wealthy, education or health care, the tenets of Christian theology disappeared behind Republican talking points.

The evangelical political message was that the Bible should be used in politics to attack certain people, but never to question oneself. That's how you get people to donate: Make the enemy clearly visible and easily definable. That's why the Bible is almost never used in politics as a justification for serving the poor, welcoming the foreigner, healing the sick or promoting equality. That agenda is not likely to motivate donations from wealthy white heterosexual men. Therefore, over time the evangelical message became that "American" and "Republican" were more important labels than "Christian" — or that they were effectively the same thing.

True; but it's always been easy to use Christianity as a tool of power.  As Leonard Bernstein wrote for his "Mass:"

God made us the boss!

God gave us the cross!

We turned it into a sword!

To spread the word of the Lord!

We use His holy decrees,

To do whatever we please!

And it was good, brother!

(and it was good, brother!)

And it was goddamned good!

That was in 1971 (when the work premiered).  Falwell wouldn't found the Moral Majority until the '80's.  He opposed integration and civil rights, founding a "segregation academy" in 1966.  But most of us know him for Liberty University (founded in '71, too) and the Moral Majority. Bernstein was writing about history; but it might as well be the present day.  Same as it ever was, in other words.

Before Falwell, it was "In God We Trust" (actually dates back to the 19th century, but it reached the coinage in the 1950's) and adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance.  Precious little in the slogan or the altered Pledge that leads one to "serving the poor, welcoming the foreigner, healing the sick or promoting equality."  That should be the focus; but when the purpose is temporal power, that focus is alway, even necessarily, lost.

Evangelical leaders have focused their agenda on protecting things they feel entitled to, while focusing the attention of their followers on what they define as the enemies of God. That fear of God's enemies has allowed billions of dollars of donations to flow into the hands of religious hypocrites. They have convinced millions of Christians that the enemies of God are people who live south of the border, who are coming for their guns, their jobs, their property, their health insurance, their taxes and even their families. Trump tapped masterfully into the fear planted by evangelical leaders in the hearts of their followers. In the end, millions of Christians have abandoned their faith for a narrow-minded political ideology.

True Christian theology commands quite the opposite. A person of faith is not driven by fear, but by love. Grace is extended to the foreigner, forgiveness is offered to the prisoner, health care is offered to the sick, food is offered to the hungry and equality is offered to all.

The whole point of loving your enemy, of turning the other cheek, is that it is an expression of faith in God, and expression as concrete as the widow's when she fed Elijah:

After a while the stream dried up, for there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go now to Zarephath, a village of Sidon, and stay there; I have commanded a widow there to feed you.’ He went off to Zarephath, and when he reached the entrance to the village, he saw a widow gathering sticks. He called to her, ‘Please bring me a little water in a pitcher to drink.’ As she went to fetch it, he called after her, ‘Bring me, please, a piece of bread as well.’ But she answered, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no food baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a flask. I am just gathering two or three sticks to go and cook it for my son and myself before we die.’ ‘Have no fear,’ Elijah said, ‘go and do as you have said. But first make me a small cake from what you have and bring it out to me, and after that make something for your son and yourself. For this is the word of the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of flour will not give out, nor the flask of oil fail, until the Lord sends rain on the land.’ She went and did as Elijah had said, and there was food for him and for her family for a long time. The jar of flour did not give out, nor did the flask of oil, as the word of the Lord foretold through Elijah. 1 Kings 17:7-16 (REB)

Faith in God, which is simply to say trust in God, is only made concrete when you extend your trust out to others.  It is not manifest when you store up wealth for yourself and pride yourself on what God has given you.  There is a theology of scarcity, and a theology of the basilea tou theou.  To say one is right, and one is wrong, is to already draw a line and push people to the other side.  But the basiliea tou theou invites everyone in; that's the only way it's the "kingdom of God."  Perhaps it's better to say one theology is wise, and one is not.  Wisdom is always the harder way; and those who try that way always learn humility is necessary just to say on the right path. If you emphasize humility you can't put yourself apart from, or above, others. 

That could certainly be the basis of a healing community.