Us and Them and Those

Friends, have you been feeling entirely too calm recently? Feel like it’s far too long since you’ve gotten unreasonably angry at a stranger? Is there not enough cause in your life for anger and outrage? Allow me to introduce you to the internet. 

It can be hard to stay grounded when you’re online. There is more than enough anger and fear to go around. On social media, and in every comment section imaginable there are more than a few gauntlets thrown down, more than a few would be martyrs and zealots, looking for a hill to die (and kill) on.

Of course, you’re going to come across some fights that seem worth fighting. But that takes a lot of energy, and it’s easy to lose sight of true north when you’re triggered in the midst of an exchange. As a general rule, I try not to expend energy reading things online that I know will make me crazy. But this is a general rule, not an absolute. And there are exceptions.

Such was the case when I recently came across an article written by a conservative Christian organization. Now, if getting angry at something that a right wing religious organization publishes seems a little silly… well, you are correct. And certainly that organization has produced more toxic publications than this article. But like so many things that trigger us, I had a dog in this fight. Maybe three.

The article was outlining the dangers of “Progressive Christianity” as a pathway to atheism. It wasn’t particularly well written, and it wasn’t particularly effective at making it’s central argument. But it did concern, and make make assumptions about, three groups of people: Conservative Christians, Progressive Christians, and Atheists.

Now, I’ll get to how these groups relate to my story in just a moment, but first, a small exploration of each of these groups and ideologies.

Atheism, of course, is the disbelief in the divine or supernatural. But it is worth mentioning that atheism as a worldview is as varied as the individuals who hold to it. Some atheists are anti–theist, levelling arguments against any belief in the supernatural, while others are more ambivalent about the role of faith and religion in humanity, without believing in it themselves.

Within the Christian ideologies identified, ‘Conservative evangelicalism’ is probably the correct umbrella term for almost every protestant church you can think of. If you pass by an established church building on your way to work, or have ever gone to a non- Catholic Christian church service, chances are good that it was likely a conservative evangelical church.

Finally, “Progressive Christianity” is probably best identified as a recent re-interpreting of the Christian faith (which itself has seen countless interpretations over two millennia). This re-interpretation is often in response to a discomfort with conservative evangelicalism. It may have a focus on social justice or environmental stewardship or inclusion of repressed or minority voices. Since it is a re-interpreting, there are multiple interpretations, and everything is up for grabs. And since this term refers to an ideological critique rather than an organization, it’s hard to find your local “Progressive Christian” church building.

In light of drastically different interpretations, it’s natural that the established, conservative churches would want to identify the boundaries of what is, and what isn’t, Christianity. And this, I believe, is where the aforementioned article was coming from. An established organization looking for ways to establish the boundaries, writing to its base to say “see, those (progressives) are not like us (conservatives), but they are like them (atheists)”. This is an argument about who is in and who’s out, and atheism plays the role of the ultimate boogie man. Because if you are an organization that decides the boundaries for how people interact with the divine, there is nothing scarier than someone calling out the truth that the divine may not exist at all.

Now, in general, the language of us and them always raises my hackles. Shortcuts are always taken when dividing something as nuanced and intricate as people and their ideologies. And in this particular article I was very familiar with the groups being depicted and divided.  

Over seven years ago, my wife and I experienced our first late term pregnancy loss. A little over a year later, we had a second, even later, pregnancy loss. It devastated us. In the days and weeks and months that followed, that devastation acted as an invitation to re-evaluate everything (I’ve written about those losses, and what they birthed in us, here).

Before and during these losses, I attended an evangelical Protestant Christian church, the type of conservative evangelical church I spoke of earlier. That church was filled with a lot of good people. All of them had their own biases and shortcomings, just as I did, and still do. But many of those people had kind and generous hearts, and a willingness to try and make the world a better place.

But after our losses, continuing to go to that church felt impossible.

It could have been possible, I suppose, to keep going. To keep singing the happy worship songs about how God was in control, and everything would work out to our benefit. To hear sermons of the love that God had for the world, (but with the understanding that that love looked a very particular way, required a particular mental assent, and specific language of response). To continue to bow our heads in prayer, no longer sure of how to pray, or if anyone heard or cared. It felt a lot like going through the motions. But it was exhausting propping up the thing which no longer felt animated or alive.

In my devastation and anger, I found the willingness to uproot everything that couldn’t speak to the new reality we found ourselves in. And we stopped attending that church. Stopped reading the religious books, stopped singing the religious songs, and stopped praying. Stopped everything.

Anger sustained and animated me in those days. I was angry at God, angry at the aspects of my faith and certainty that now felt offensive. Ashamed of the now dawning realization that those aspects were offensive to other wounded and suffering people too.

I returned to university to start my Bachelor of Nursing around this same time. And without meaning to, without an intentional decision, without a letter of reformation nailed to a church door, I began gain great affection for secular humanism.

As a profession within the empirical, data driven, medical model (which is not without its faults and biases), nursing is up close and personal with the human condition. The interplay between who the nurse brings to the bedside, and how they interact with obvious physical and mental suffering is a dance. And it is beautiful. The secular humanist argument that we need to be grounded in reality, and yet work for the best outcome for each member of our species (and even other species that we share this earth with) captured me. It still does.

A few years later, I also was invited back to a church. A much smaller church. A church also full of people with kind and generous hearts, and willingness to try and make the world a better place. Also with their own biases and shortcomings. I had the same problems with some of the happy clappy worships songs. The same problems with the desire for certainty and boundaries around what and who the Divine is. Even the questions of whether the divine or supernatural was real at all. But this time I asked them. This time I didn’t pretend I was okay when I was angry. This time, in a smaller circle, around friends that I trusted, I was honest. Secure in the belief that any question, honestly asked, with consideration of those around you, was worth asking.

And over days and months and years I began to see in those friends, and in the friends from my previous church, and in the books I began to read again, and the podcasts I would listen to on my walks alone, a way to hold the tension of belief in, and love for, a relational centre of the universe. A way that allowed and included the reality of suffering; the welcoming of mystery and doubt. Some of these friends and voices had even found a way to love the words and actions of Jesus. Some even had affection and reverence for the Bible, full of its contradictions and ancient (and often offensive) language.

I was (and am) keenly aware that there may be no relational centre, that Jesus may have been just a man, that the writings in the Bible may just reflect our ancestors interaction with the concept of the divine and each other. But the love these people held for God, for church, for scriptures, for tradition, for each other, this was real. I borrowed some of their faith in the beginning, and have slowly unearthed some of my own.

This is obviously a big lead up, but I include it because every story is personal to someone. The article that made me angry identified three people groups, but didn’t do justice to any of them. The reasons for disruptions of faith, dismantling and examining, deconstructing and reconstructing are always personal. In the past seven years, I have considered myself a conservative evangelical Christian, I have felt my old faith die and wondered in the dark if I was now an atheist, and I have sorted and sifted as I gently held a faith both new and ancient.

When I first read the article, my original reaction was outrage. In trying to connect the common beliefs between two outlying groups (Progressive Christians and atheists), I could feel the author reaching. Logic was flawed, indistinct phrasing was used but never defined. I set about writing pages of counter argument to the articles’ main points, identifying the holes in the authors logic. When I was finished, I felt I had completed a thorough theological slam dunk on my (unknown) opponent.

But who was it for? For the small group of Progressive Christians that I might share it with? How was that any different than the original article speaking to its base? What was the fruit of such an argument? To prove that progressives and atheists were actually in, and conservative Christians were out? I was just redrawing boundary lines.

Every time I came back to this piece of writing, I puzzled at it. The post was finished, and could be uploaded at any time. But it needed to be different, better. And I wasn’t sure how.

Eventually I was reminded of a recent interview with the 2018 US poet laureate, Tracy K. Smith.  After an evening of discussing her work and reading some of her poetry aloud, a member of the audience asked Smith how to balance ‘sitting down for poetry’ and outrage over the current racism facing black women in the United States. Tracy K Smith is a black woman, and speaking to this moment, she would be keenly aware of the racism and sexism all around her. It would be apparent how divided and outraged the United States is. She would know the reasons and justifications for outrage.

But this is her response:

“I think there is a value to outrage. I think that it activates a kind of power that we can choose to act upon. In art, I think that outrage might lead me to the page, but it has to go sit down somewhere else when I’m writing a poem, because — I really do believe this — a good poem isn’t going to be the result of the certainty that drives emotions like anger and outrage. If I know I’m right, and they are wrong, my poem is going to be a tract. But if I can say, what are the weird spaces that are under-imagined? What are the areas where I either am already perpetuating something that is part of what I envision as the problem, or what are the imagined spaces I can enter into where I have to get uncomfortably close to that problem? That’s where something really, I think, interesting starts to happen.”

The moment I heard these words, I wrote them down. I shared them with my friends. I’ve written them upon my heart and carried them with me. I knew they were true, and true for more than just poetry. True for all our creative expressions. True for the way I wanted to think and write and create.

And when I remembered these words, I knew what was wrong with my rebuke. My response was so certain. And I knew it was a tract. I was preparing for a debate, when I needed to be writing a poem.

And the poetry, the weird and under-imagined spaces, the places where I am uncomfortably close to the problem, these are always personal. The stories of belief and disbelief, faith and doubt, leaving or returning, these are our stories. This my friend who is now identifies as an atheist after spending his entire adult life as a revered member of a church. This is my friend who goes to a local church, and wonders if she can continue there as the organization tries to determine how literally it should interpret an ancient (and offensive) text. It’s the author I’m reading who left the church for years and questioned everything, and has somehow found a way back to cherishing being part of a local church. It’s my friend who just took boxes of theological books to the thrift store because he doesn’t think that way any more.

And in a strange sense, this was the sum total of the best of my arguments. That the original article kept people and stories at a distance, to label and sort them. That it was too certain of who was in and who was out to accept the ambiguity and complexity of those involved. That it reduced belief or disbelief as the mathematical result of proper or improper values.

One of my favourite authors, Richard Rohr has a quote that I think of often. “The best critique of the bad, is the practice of the better”.

When we are surrounded by boundary lines that offend us, by language that divides us and narratives that make simple the complex, it is natural to be angry and outraged. But perhaps the practice of the better is not a debate, not a punching match, but a poem.

And that poetry, is always found in the personal.