If you didn't grow up in a conservative Christian home, you probably don't think about hell very often. But I was raised on that stuff, and being afraid of hellfire and eternal damnation was a big, scary thing for me when I was still an Evangelical.
When I was in my twenties, as I became more and more angry about the un-Christian ways I saw Christians acting, I reached a point where I was so done with conservative Christians that I had the shocking (to me) realization that if those were the people that were going to heaven, I would rather go to hell. I'd rather risk eternal damnation than hang out in heaven with those smug, sanctimonious "saints."
I don't believe in hell anymore-- not because I'm sure it's not there but because the idea of heaven and hell has become irrelevant to me. But I still think about that moment, the moment when I realized that I was so disgusted by conservative Christianity that I was willing to risk eternal damnation to get away from it.
Fast forward to the 2016 election. As I watched the unabashed glee of the Trump base after the election, it suddenly occurred to me that they had hit the inverse of that moment: the moment where they were so disgusted by liberals and holier-than-thou progressive moralizing that they'd rather risk being governed by a known philanderer with zero experience than vote for a liberal Democrat.
(I should insert here that this is all entirely anecdotal, just based on my observations watching the people around me. I have no hard data to back this up. Just so you know.)
The working class conservatives were overjoyed with the feeling of having won a long-shot, wing-and-a-prayer last-minute victory over the Democrats who had completely lost touch with them (see below for more about that). The more well-to-do traditional Republicans, I think, weren't so much voting for President Trump as they were voting against Hillary Clinton, and through her, voting against whatever they perceived to be the liberal/progressive/Democratic agenda.
So my mini-quest to understand the other side became a quest to figure out how we as liberals/progressives managed to so thoroughly enrage the other side. How did we lose them so completely? How did we manage to alienate conservatives so thoroughly that they were willing to believe anything someone said to them as long as it involved trashing the Democrats?
You'll note that I'm assuming that you, gentle reader, are a liberal/progressive. That's because I'm pretty sure I lost all of my conservative readers-- or at least, all the ones I know about-- when I wrote the post about why I am pro-choice. (And I guess if I didn't lose them then, I've lost them now.)
There's a lot of directions that we could go here--for example, in a country that cherishes freedom of the press as much as we all do, how in the world do we hold the media accountable for the ways they have further polarized us to increase their own bottom line? and how in the world did Donald Trump manage to convince working class voters that he was one of them?
But that would be, once again, trying to figure out why they (the press, working class voters, Republicans) are Wrong. Lord knows we've all spent plenty of time doing that. What I'm trying to do here is figure out what we (progressives/liberals) have screwed up. How did we lose them so badly?
So here are some ideas.
For one thing, working class voters resent being lumped together with the poor. When I finally got this, I was embarrassed to death that I'd been doing this for years. When liberals look at each other, mystified as to why working class voters hate them, we think, But we're in favor of food stamps! We want to increase access to medicaid! And we're completely missing that working class voters do not consider themselves to be poor. To them, poor people are people who can't hold a job-- drunks, drug addicts, deadbeats. Those people might need handouts, but working class voters don't want them. They want steady jobs with decent pay and good benefits.
Which leads to a corollary: Conservatives don't consider poor people to be minor saints. I didn't catch this attitude in myself until I'd been working at the food bank for awhile. If you talk about poor people in hushed, reverent tones, or in the same voice that you use to talk about sick children or abandoned puppies, you might be guilty of this, too. Poverty is an enormously complex issue that I'm not going to tackle in a blog post, but I can guarantee you that this attitude is not helpful. Or at least, not if you're a volunteer at a food bank.
as always, this is getting too long. The other half is mostly written, so I'll probably post it tomorrow. I can't believe I'm posting this, because I am so far from being an expert on this that it's like the proverbial chalk from cheese. And the more I write, the more I realize how presumptuous it is of me to post this as if I know what I'm talking about. My only comfort is that not many people read here, and also, if you're a conservative and you're reading this and I've gotten anything wrong, I'm counting on you to let me know.
to be continued.
Showing posts with label my evangelical past. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my evangelical past. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
In which I re-hash some old stuff about going to church
I have some things I want to talk about but I feel the need to do some set up first. So there are several things in this post, which will seem unrelated at the moment, but eventually maybe it will make sense.
First is informational: I think people who are not religious sometimes don't realize that there is wide variation in the political and social beliefs of people who call themselves Christian. There are, of course, the conservative Christians who try to reserve the use of the term "Christian" for themselves, and who are very publicly anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, and pro-virginity (for unmarried women). They also often oppose the ordination of women (i.e., women cannot be pastors in their churches, and in some versions, women are not allowed to even lead worship or pray from the pulpit).
Although that group of people think that they alone are "Christian," there are actually millions of people who honor the life and teachings of Jesus Christ but who don't share that set of prejudices. I was raised to be one of those conservative Christians, and I didn't realize that Christians could be any other way until I was in college and started visiting some other, different churches. That simple realization, which was mind-boggling to me at the time, felt like the truth that had set me free. It was one of the best things that's ever happened to me.
Dean and I have attended the same church in our small Montana town since we moved here in 1992. At the time, the congregation was fairly large for the size of our town (300-ish members), and there were regularly well over a hundred people in worship services.
If you've been around for awhile, you may remember that although we attended church sort-of regularly (1-2 times/month), I didn't join for a long time. Dean joined shortly after we moved here, but I was still feeling ambivalent about church, and although this particular church had many of the things I wanted in a church family (other kids the same age as ours, friendly atmosphere, active in the community, and allowed women to be pastors), it didn't have certain others--most obviously, it discriminated against the LGBTQ community by not allowing them to be elders, deacons, or pastors. (Same-sex marriage wasn't even a discussion in 1992.)
So I attended without joining, and if you want to read more about that, I wrote a post about it in 2011. But that ambivalence was maybe even more important. In 1992, I had only very recently been able to disentangle myself from my evangelical upbringing, and I just wasn't interested in tying myself to another church of any type. Church still filled a need for me, a need for ritual and acknowledgement of a Divine Being, and I loved (and still love) the community of people at our church. But I couldn't really agree with a lot of the things you had to say you agreed with if you joined, so I didn't. Join, I mean.
Ack, I could keep going on about this for paragraphs but it's not necessary for where I'm going with this. Long story short: At some point in there, I read Kathleen Norris's book Amazing Grace, which helped with my ambivalence about the church's creeds. And then our denomination approved gay ordination in 2011, and shortly thereafter I officially joined the church I'd been attending for 18 years. And then in 2014-15, our denomination changed the language of the Book of Order to allow pastors to perform same-sex weddings, and I was even happier.
On both of those occasions, we lost a sizeable number of members of our church. And then of course people left for other reasons, and new people came, and babies were born and people died. So now our church has about 180 members, and we've been through a lot.
And if you read all the way through this post, you've been through a lot, too. I will try to make it worth your while when I get around to part two, which probably won't be until next week.
First is informational: I think people who are not religious sometimes don't realize that there is wide variation in the political and social beliefs of people who call themselves Christian. There are, of course, the conservative Christians who try to reserve the use of the term "Christian" for themselves, and who are very publicly anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, and pro-virginity (for unmarried women). They also often oppose the ordination of women (i.e., women cannot be pastors in their churches, and in some versions, women are not allowed to even lead worship or pray from the pulpit).
Although that group of people think that they alone are "Christian," there are actually millions of people who honor the life and teachings of Jesus Christ but who don't share that set of prejudices. I was raised to be one of those conservative Christians, and I didn't realize that Christians could be any other way until I was in college and started visiting some other, different churches. That simple realization, which was mind-boggling to me at the time, felt like the truth that had set me free. It was one of the best things that's ever happened to me.
Dean and I have attended the same church in our small Montana town since we moved here in 1992. At the time, the congregation was fairly large for the size of our town (300-ish members), and there were regularly well over a hundred people in worship services.
If you've been around for awhile, you may remember that although we attended church sort-of regularly (1-2 times/month), I didn't join for a long time. Dean joined shortly after we moved here, but I was still feeling ambivalent about church, and although this particular church had many of the things I wanted in a church family (other kids the same age as ours, friendly atmosphere, active in the community, and allowed women to be pastors), it didn't have certain others--most obviously, it discriminated against the LGBTQ community by not allowing them to be elders, deacons, or pastors. (Same-sex marriage wasn't even a discussion in 1992.)
So I attended without joining, and if you want to read more about that, I wrote a post about it in 2011. But that ambivalence was maybe even more important. In 1992, I had only very recently been able to disentangle myself from my evangelical upbringing, and I just wasn't interested in tying myself to another church of any type. Church still filled a need for me, a need for ritual and acknowledgement of a Divine Being, and I loved (and still love) the community of people at our church. But I couldn't really agree with a lot of the things you had to say you agreed with if you joined, so I didn't. Join, I mean.
Ack, I could keep going on about this for paragraphs but it's not necessary for where I'm going with this. Long story short: At some point in there, I read Kathleen Norris's book Amazing Grace, which helped with my ambivalence about the church's creeds. And then our denomination approved gay ordination in 2011, and shortly thereafter I officially joined the church I'd been attending for 18 years. And then in 2014-15, our denomination changed the language of the Book of Order to allow pastors to perform same-sex weddings, and I was even happier.
On both of those occasions, we lost a sizeable number of members of our church. And then of course people left for other reasons, and new people came, and babies were born and people died. So now our church has about 180 members, and we've been through a lot.
And if you read all the way through this post, you've been through a lot, too. I will try to make it worth your while when I get around to part two, which probably won't be until next week.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
You Light Up My Life! You Give Me Hope! to Carry On!
As you know, I was raised Evangelical, and I spent a considerable amount of energy in my twenties extricating myself. Evangelicalism (the way I experienced it) is a closed system. When you're inside, it makes perfect sense. You can build elaborate thought systems within Evangelicalism and it all works. Or maybe you never think about theology at all because everyone you know and love is in there with you, so there's no need to ask questions.
But then somehow you get a peek at what's outside (possibly because the whole edifice is starting to crack). And if your brain works like mine does, you start investigating it, because you can't not do that once you know there's more out there. And before you know it, the whole thing has fallen apart. You can't go back, because you've seen outside it, and you've realized how limited it is in there. Why would you want to go back in that claustrophobic little box?
I still know and love many Evangelicals, though, so I am never able to leave it entirely behind. Weeks will go by when I don't think about it at all, and then there will be weeks like the past month or so where everywhere I turn, I'm surrounded by Evangelicals.
Sometimes this is good--it reminds me why I love so many Evangelicals. And to be honest, I feel at home among Evangelicals. I'm pretty liberal as far as politics and theology go, but I'm a conservative person. I don't like to party and never have. I've never used recreational drugs of any kind. I can have a really foul mouth when I'm angry, but most of the time I don't swear much. I've been monogamous since I started dating Dean when I was 20. Among Evangelicals, that would be unremarkable. In a group of people who were raised in non-religious homes, I look like Debby Boone.
So it happens sometimes that I find myself hanging out in person or online with Evangelicals and enjoying it. There's no chance I'd ever go back to Evangelical theology, but it makes me remember what I miss about the kind of closeness that is fostered by hanging out with like-minded people. And I get lulled into thinking, hmmm, really we're not that different.
Until some touchy subject comes up, and then I realize, OH. OOPS. Nope, this is not working for me. NOT AT ALL. In the past month, this has happened in three different online situations I've been following-- an online bookclub and two podcasts. We're going along just great, and I'm thinking, hey! wow! this is working! And then suddenly it's not. I can still listen/read there, but I'm no longer under any illusion that my opinions would be acceptable to them.
On a slightly tangentially related topic: here is a story from my past that I remembered while I was hanging out with the Evangelicals recently. I've mentioned the Popcast before, a podcast about pop culture whose hosts Knox and Jamie are sharp and funny, and also clearly Evangelical, although they aren't preachy.
They started a discussion thread on Instagram recently about crazy things you did growing up because you thought God would want you to. Like praying for David Cassidy to be saved (although Knox and Jamie are probably too young to have any idea who David Cassidy is), or burning a book of horror stories in a sudden moment of conviction that Jesus wouldn't want you reading that stuff.
It reminded me that when I transferred from a Christian college to a secular university for my last two years of college, I destroyed my beloved cassette tape of Queen's album The Game because I thought if I had that music, I would be a bad witness for Christ.
Yes, I did.
Just wanted to get that out there, because on Friday one (or maybe two) of my Things will be about going to see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. I don't have anything all that interesting to say, but this post is already long enough.
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like
But then somehow you get a peek at what's outside (possibly because the whole edifice is starting to crack). And if your brain works like mine does, you start investigating it, because you can't not do that once you know there's more out there. And before you know it, the whole thing has fallen apart. You can't go back, because you've seen outside it, and you've realized how limited it is in there. Why would you want to go back in that claustrophobic little box?
I still know and love many Evangelicals, though, so I am never able to leave it entirely behind. Weeks will go by when I don't think about it at all, and then there will be weeks like the past month or so where everywhere I turn, I'm surrounded by Evangelicals.
Sometimes this is good--it reminds me why I love so many Evangelicals. And to be honest, I feel at home among Evangelicals. I'm pretty liberal as far as politics and theology go, but I'm a conservative person. I don't like to party and never have. I've never used recreational drugs of any kind. I can have a really foul mouth when I'm angry, but most of the time I don't swear much. I've been monogamous since I started dating Dean when I was 20. Among Evangelicals, that would be unremarkable. In a group of people who were raised in non-religious homes, I look like Debby Boone.
So it happens sometimes that I find myself hanging out in person or online with Evangelicals and enjoying it. There's no chance I'd ever go back to Evangelical theology, but it makes me remember what I miss about the kind of closeness that is fostered by hanging out with like-minded people. And I get lulled into thinking, hmmm, really we're not that different.
Until some touchy subject comes up, and then I realize, OH. OOPS. Nope, this is not working for me. NOT AT ALL. In the past month, this has happened in three different online situations I've been following-- an online bookclub and two podcasts. We're going along just great, and I'm thinking, hey! wow! this is working! And then suddenly it's not. I can still listen/read there, but I'm no longer under any illusion that my opinions would be acceptable to them.
On a slightly tangentially related topic: here is a story from my past that I remembered while I was hanging out with the Evangelicals recently. I've mentioned the Popcast before, a podcast about pop culture whose hosts Knox and Jamie are sharp and funny, and also clearly Evangelical, although they aren't preachy.
They started a discussion thread on Instagram recently about crazy things you did growing up because you thought God would want you to. Like praying for David Cassidy to be saved (although Knox and Jamie are probably too young to have any idea who David Cassidy is), or burning a book of horror stories in a sudden moment of conviction that Jesus wouldn't want you reading that stuff.
It reminded me that when I transferred from a Christian college to a secular university for my last two years of college, I destroyed my beloved cassette tape of Queen's album The Game because I thought if I had that music, I would be a bad witness for Christ.
Yes, I did.
Just wanted to get that out there, because on Friday one (or maybe two) of my Things will be about going to see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. I don't have anything all that interesting to say, but this post is already long enough.
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like