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<\/a>I must begin this post with a confession. The first thing I often do when I wake up is read the politics section of the New York Times<\/em>. I should<\/em> begin each morning by smiling gratefully at the dawn sky and thanking the heavens for another blessed day to live. Instead, I\u2019m usually hidden under my down comforter, the only light in the room emanating from my smartphone screen, which I anxiously scroll to find new election forecasts and political commentary, most of which has already been said before.<\/p>\n In general, I have a lot of bad technology habits, but they become even worse when they intersect with my bad political news habits. I recall waking up the morning after the Iowa caucuses feeling tired and almost hungover\u2014not from the overconsumption of alcohol, but from the overconsumption of political news. I imagine others, dealing with the aftermath of Super Tuesday, might be feeling similarly this week.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always been interested in politics. I am, after all, a political historian in addition to being a religion scholar and an immigration scholar. It\u2019s my professional responsibility to stay informed and bring my expertise to inform public debate. But my excessive consumption of news has become almost pathological in the past few years, especially in the past few months, with the ongoing political drama of both impeachment and the 2020 election.<\/p>\n And so, for Lent, the solemn season of reflection and repentance, I have vowed to give up political hobbyism. I\u2019m striving instead to trade shallow political engagement for deep political engagement, which focuses on building relationships, serving my community, and effecting real change that has an impact on my neighbors. I know from my research on religious communities and their involvement in immigration and refugee issues that this type of work matters immensely\u2014not simply for meeting the real, immediate needs of people, but for creating enduring and impactful political change.<\/p>\n The problem, I\u2019m finding, is that political hobbyism is hard to give up. Like chocolate and red meat and single-use plastic, it\u2019s pervasive, it\u2019s convenient, and it often feels good\u2014until we wake up the next morning.<\/p>\n Political hobbyism is the topic of Politics is for Power<\/em><\/a>, a new book by Tufts political scientist Eitan Hersh<\/a>. Hersh describes political hobbyism as \u201cconsuming and participating in politics by obsessive news-following and online \u2018slacktivism,\u2019 by feeling the need to offer a hot take for each daily political flare-up, by emoting and arguing and debating, almost all of this from behind screens or with earphones on.\u201d The people who practice politically hobbyism are typically people who consider themselves \u201cpolitically engaged,\u201d and they\u2019re often in Hersh\u2019s own demographic group\u2014white, male, and college-educated.<\/p>\n Political hobbyists often harbor genuine concern about the direction of the country. However, their primary form of engagement\u2014constantly refreshing FiveThirtyEight.com<\/a>, for example, and engaging in Twitter feuds\u2014is only a shallow form of political activity. In Hersh\u2019s view, it\u2019s actually a form of entertainment. Focused primarily on meeting short-term individual desires, these pastimes make people feel good, even if they don\u2019t produce meaningful, long-term political change. \u201c[I]t would be hard to describe our behavior as seeking to influence our communities or country,\u201d Hersh writes. \u201cMost of us are engaging to satisfy our own emotional needs and intellectual curiosities.\u201d<\/p>\n Political hobbyism is harmful for a variety of reasons, Hersh argues. For one, it contributes to the breakdown of our political system. \u201cOur collective treatment of politics as if it were a sport affects how politicians behave,\u201d he writes. \u201cThey increasingly believe they benefit from feeding the red meat of outrage to their respective bases, constantly grandstanding for the chance that a video of themselves will go viral. In treating politics like a hobby, we have demanded they act that way.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, the individual pastime of political hobbyism undermines the community-focused work of real politics. \u201c[H]obbyism takes us away from spending time working with others to acquire power,\u201d Hersh writes. \u201cWhile we sit at home, people who seek political control are out winning over voters.\u201d He offers one memorable and deeply troubling example of this phenomenon:<\/p>\n In 2018, for instance, the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina went around offering to help opioid addicts, telling addicts that their addiction wasn\u2019t their fault and that the white knights of the KKK were there to offer a helping hand. This image haunts me not just because in it I see an organization I fear that is serious about power, that recognizes how service to one person at a time aggregates into power. The image haunts me juxtaposed to how most of the rest of us are doing politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hersh likens the shallow political engagement of political hobbyists to the shallow religious engagement of people who are \u201cspiritual but not religious,\u201d a growing group in the United States. In his view, what political hobbyists have in common with people who are \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d is a focus on meeting individual needs, rather than community needs. Hersh writes,<\/p>\n Spiritual-but-not-religious identifiers seek out religious-themed activities but reject communal or institutional religious settings. They typically engage in one-off events, solitary activities, or the anonymity of being another mat in a darkened yoga studio. These activities do not typically involve long-term commitments to other people\u2026Spiritual-but-not-religious participation is finding opportunities to briefly help others and then move on (a onetime volunteer shift at a food pantry) or seeking personal gratification absent any sense of duty to serve others (as in the Jewish-ish podcast). Some of these are genuine attempts at moral self-improvement, but they share a common feature with shallow online political behavior, which is a focus on the self rather than a commitment to others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In drawing parallels between the limitations of practicing political hobbyism and the limitations of being \u201cspiritual but not religious,\u201d Hersh quotes the critique of the Reverend Lillian Daniel, senior pastor at the First Congregational Church in Dubuque, Iowa. Daniel sees recent religious developments as reflecting \u201cthe norm for self-centered American culture.\u201d As she says<\/a>,<\/p>\n Any idiot can find God alone in the sunset. It takes a certain maturity to find God in the person sitting next to you who not only voted for the wrong political party but has a baby who is crying while you\u2019re trying to listen to the sermon. Community is where the religious rubber meets the road. People challenge us, ask hard questions, disagree, need things from us, require our forgiveness. It\u2019s where we get to practice all the things we preach.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, the key difference between the self-oriented \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d behaviors and the type of religious life that Daniel values is a long-term commitment to prioritizing relationships and serving others.<\/p>\n Setting aside my own quibbles with Hersh\u2019s casual treatment of the term \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d\u2014a label that fails to account for groups that don\u2019t fit the Protestant-centric rubric of being religious, a point that I\u2019ve made in previous posts\u2014I think that he makes a valuable point. Political hobbyism, while entertaining, is \u201can un-thought-through, cathartic, politically-spiritual-but-not-committed stab in the dark at fulfilling a civic duty.\u201d Just as pursuing religion for deep-seated reasons and in the context of community is more sustainable and powerful, pursuing politics for deep-seated reasons and in the context of community is more sustainable and powerful.<\/p>\n Importantly, religion is not merely a metaphor for Hersh. Religious groups also offer a useful example of the impactful merging of direct service, political action, and long-term commitment to community needs. As he rightly points out, immigrants and minorities have practiced this type of politics for a long time, especially through their religious institutions. Black churches, for example, have often functioned as institutions that provide social services at the same time that they support political organization. Similarly, Alyshia Galvez<\/a>\u2019s work<\/a> has shown that Catholic parishes and devotional groups are important settings for Mexican Americans to find spiritual reassurance and material resources for daily survival and also advocate for immigration justice. \u201cGroup empowerment is the connection between service and politics,\u201d Hersh writes. \u201cIn communities with real needs, where stakes are high, where fears are palpable, politics and service are not different things.\u201d And throughout history, religious institutions have been a significant site for this type of group empowerment.<\/p>\n Hersh urges Americans to turn away from the paralyzing overconsumption of news and social media and shift attention to finding practical ways to address the needs of the people around them. This focus on serving others and using power to improve their communities would be \u201cthe redemption of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n What he advocates bears much in common with what I\u2019ve observed in my own research on the history of church-based refugee resettlement activists after the Vietnam War. Like many of us today, these activists were overwhelmed by the events of their time. However, they channeled their sadness about world events and their frustration with their government into meaningful direct service and community organizing projects that had long-term political importance.<\/p>\n I think, for example, of a Minnesota woman named Joanne, an opponent of the Vietnam War who turned her anger at the U.S. government into two decades of work leading grassroots Lutheran efforts to resettle refugees. \u201cI was horrified at the Vietnam War and the effect that that had on that country,\u201d she told me during an oral history interview. \u201cAnd so getting involved with the refugee program here [at church] was one little thing that I could do, since my letters to the President or Congress hadn\u2019t done too much.\u201d<\/p>\n And I think of another Minnesota woman, Kathy, who was recovering from surgery when Saigon fell in 1975. Confined to bed, she was transfixed by the events she saw unfold on the television in her hospital room. She was especially moved by news coverage of refugees scrambling aboard helicopters evacuating people from Vietnam. But rather than becoming paralyzed by the news, she decided to take action as soon as she was released from the hospital. Within months, she was coordinating a massive volunteer effort involving three different congregations and organizing the effort to resettle the Twin Cities\u2019 first Hmong refugee family. The wintry morning they arrived was less than a year after Kathy watched the television news from her hospital bed.<\/p>\n Years later, Kathy continued her community activism and eventually became a member of the Minnesota state legislature. And the Hmong family resettled by Kathy\u2019s church was the first of thousands of Hmong refugees who eventually came to the Twin Cities, which is now home to a thriving Hmong American community. Hmong Americans themselves are now a formidable political force in Minnesota, and they have often advocated for just and generous immigration and refugee policies.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cObsessive News-Following and Online \u2018Slacktivism\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\u201cPolitically<\/strong> Spiritual, but Not Religious\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\u201cP<\/strong>olitics<\/strong> and Service Are Not Different Things\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n