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{"id":16360,"date":"2019-05-14T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T10:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/?p=16360"},"modified":"2019-05-13T23:08:39","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T03:08:39","slug":"the-dangers-of-tribal-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/the-dangers-of-tribal-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Evangelical Christians Discriminated Against? The Dangers of Tribal Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last week,\u00a0a\u00a0Christianity Today<\/em> article reported that \u201cHalf of Americans Say Evangelicals are Discriminated Against.\u201d<\/p>\n

www.christianitytoday.com\/news\/2019\/april\/evangelicals-face-discrimination-pew-research-antisemitism.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Sigh. I always appreciate being reminded that evangelical Christians believe that they are the most persecuted majority in history, constituted by people who can\u2019t tell the difference between disagreement and discrimination. What evangelical Christians actually are is a prime example of how faith can turn into defensive tribalism.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

This is something that one of my favorite Christian apologists, Marilynne Robinson, is acutely attuned to.\u00a0The recently published\u00a0Balm in Gilead<\/em> is a collection of essays presented at a 2018 theology conference on Robinson\u2019s work at Calvin College. Robinson\u2019s own contribution to the colloquium, \u201cThe Protestant Conscience,\u201d pulls no punches. Sounding at times like a prophet from the Jewish scriptures pointing an accusing finger, Robinson notes that<\/p>\n

It is characteristic of Christians in many times and places to decide that the grace of God is very narrowly channeled\u2014through their own beliefs and practices, usually. This can mean for them a qualitative difference between themselves and all those others outside the precinct of their sect or denomination or their alliances. It can mean that those others will be seen as a threat, simply because they exist.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Under such conditions, faith can quickly turn into defensiveness and fear:<\/p>\n

It has been true of Christian churches again and again that their faith takes the form of a belief that they uniquely can claim to know the will of God and to afford the means of salvation. It is at this point that faith takes on the worst qualities of fear.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week was the final week of spring semester classes on my campus; I\u2019ll particularly miss one of my classes that focused on the work of three important women: Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and\u2013you guessed it\u2013Marilynne Robinson.\u00a0We ended the semester with Robinson\u2019s essay \u201cAwakening\u201d from\u00a0The Givenness of Things.<\/em>\u00a0 In this essay, Robinson reflects on a contemporary phenomenon that runs rampant through our current public and political discourse\u2014a professed \u201cChristianity\u201d that looks and sounds like anything but Christianity.<\/p>\n

No doubt as a consequence of a recent vogue for feeling culturally embattled, the word \u201cChristian\u201d now is seen less as identifying an ethic, and more as identifying a demographic. On one hand I do not wish to overstate the degree to which these two uses of the word \u201cChristian\u201d are mutually exclusive, and on the other hand I think it would be a very difficult thing to overstate how deeply incompatible they can be.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For many people, in other words, \u201cChristianity\u201d has become a tribal label, a marker of \u201cus\u201d vs. \u201cthem,\u201d the very sort of tribalism that currently infects and threatens to permanently damage our political and social structures. Robinson notes that when the hallmarks of being a Christian are reduced to \u201care you in or out?\u201d very un-Christian consequences are inevitable.<\/p>\n

The simple, central, urgent pressure to step over the line that separates the saved from the unsaved, and after this the right, even the obligation, to turn and judge that great sinful world the redeemed have left behind\u2014this is what I see as the essential nature of the emerging Christianity. Those who have crossed this line can be outrageously forgiving of one another and themselves, and very cruel in their denunciations of anyone else.<\/strong><\/p>\n

How is it, I have been wondering for some time now, that professed Christians can support candidates and policies that are, by any stretch of the imagination, anything but embodiments of traditional Christian values? How is it, for instance, that evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, Jr. and Jerry Falwell, Jr. are joined at the hip to Donald Trump apparently until death they do part?<\/p>\n

If Marilynne Robinson is right, it is because contemporary Christianity often is not a way of life or a commitment to the principles of a historic and beautiful religion\u2014it is rather a way to facilitate what are often the worst tendencies in human nature and behavior.<\/p>\n

People of good faith get caught up in these things in all times and all places. In the excitement of the moment who really knows he or she might not also shout, \u201cGive us Barabbas!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

All of this sounds rather harsh and judgmental\u2014also not congruent with Christian values. So be it. I grow weary of hearing the name of my faith used in the service of un-Christian and inhumane policies and actions, in much the same way that sincere and serious Muslims must tire of hearing their ancient religion\u2019s name used as a placeholder and justification for terrorism and murder. The truth of the matter is that Christianity as a lived faith runs contrary to much of our deepest, natural human wiring. The first will be last; to him who asks give; turn the other cheek; judge not. Tribal Christianity, on the other hand, appeals to the worst in our nature. As Robinson points out,<\/p>\n

It is worse than ordinary tribalism because it assumes a more than virtuous\u00a0<\/strong>us<\/em>\u00a0on one side, and on the other a\u00a0<\/strong>them<\/em>\u00a0who are very doubtful indeed, who are, in fact, a threat to all we hold dear . . . If the claims to Christian identity we hear now are rooted in an instinctive tribalism, they are entirely inappropriate, certainly uninformed, because in its nature the religion they claim has no boundaries, no shibboleths, no genealogies or hereditary claimants.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Robinson writes, fear and the desire for identity and a place to belong can cause people of good will and intentions to choose and accept things that are in truth the very opposite of what they claim to believe in, even with the real thing right in front of them. But fear need not rule the day.<\/p>\n

We should take very seriously what the dreadful past can tell us about our blindnesses and predilections. The haunting fact is that we are morally free. If everyone around us is calling for Barabbas, it is only probable\u2014but never necessary\u2014that some of us join in.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"