By lapsing headlong into partisan politics, especially on controversial matters such as “social issues,” otherwise known as “culture wars,” a congregation unwittingly, and, from a religious standpoint, arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) constrains (i.e., limits) its potential membership unnecessarily because people who would be open to and even relish the religious dimension but are opposed ideologically to the partisan stance on a political, or social, issue would not be likely to attend the ostensibly religious services. No one likes to feel ideologically uncomfortable or, even worse, despised. This is particularly likely when a congregation turns its building into an ideological billboard. I suspect that this is a distinctly American phenomenon (i.e., taking things too far). Behind the extravagance lies the sin of pride, wherein a person erroneously believes that he or she cannot be wrong ideologically. This presumption of ideological (or political) infallibility carries with it the erroneous perspective of one’s partisan stance representing a whole (i.e., truth) rather than being partial, as with respect certain values being privileged above others.
Perhaps it is only natural to
prefer that other people line up with one’s own beliefs, whether religious or
political/ideological. The presumptions of inerrancy and completeness, or
truth, typically undergird this self-centered perspective. It is easy to
conflate one’s own ideological stance on partisan “social issues,” such as
abortion, gay marriage, and even stem-cell research, with religious truth even
though the latter transcends human ideology. In other words, whereas truth has
the property of wholeness, ideological positions are partial, hence partisan
politically. Conflating the two, a congregation can even usurp its distinctly religious
message by focusing on political issues of the so-called American “culture
wars.” Beyond taking up space in sermons, ideological positions can become
totalitarian, even in turning a church building into a billboard advertising
the partisan stance on a privileged social issue.
In Christian churches, the emphasis on partisan stances can bring with it a certain intolerance, and even hostility if resentment of an opposing partisan position is fueling the importance being placed on the favored stance. Sometimes the hostility can be quite simple, as the partisans often are so fine-tuned to picking up on subtle cues on whether another person is in the same ideological camp. Even the words a person uses can be picked up by others who are bent on judging for themselves. By 2023, the politically-correct camp had been dubbed “woke,” and an “anti-woke” opposition had become more vocal in some American cultures. This in turn may have intensified efforts by “woke” congregations to go so far as to turn their church buildings into billboards.
In visiting one church, of the Methodist sect (or denomination) of Christianity, that had so many gay flags in the social hall that their sheer number seemed to imply an ideological vehemence: You had better agree with us! The excessiveness itself sent a message. The rainbow colors were literally wrapped around stone pillars on the exterior of the building, and during June several gay flags were flying on the church grounds. Again, the excessiveness itself sent a message, but at this level the message was as much psychological as it was ideological and partisan. The liturgy was not exempt, as the prospect of building up to a religious experience was broken up by commercials. One announced, “We are all in favor of reparations” going to a church of an unmentioned denomination whose members were Black Americans. How does the speaker know that everyone in the sanctuary agreed on that controversial, political issue? I was not surprised that most of the seats were empty. This is the true religious cost, which economists would call an opportunity cost: the benefit foregone by making a choice.
The choice to privilege partisan political issues comes at a cost in religious terms. People who might otherwise visit or even regularly attend a church whose liturgy, rooms, and building are placed in the service of particular political stances on “social issues” will bypass the church if those stances are not ideologically palatable, especially if the sense is that they are being “shoved down their throats.”
Presumably a
faith message is important at Christian churches, and it does not reach those
people who happen to hold the contrary partisan stance on a privileged social
issue. Congregations that succumb to the hegemony (i.e., dominance) of partisan
political issues unwittingly self-weaken faith-outreach. To believe that people
must have the “correct” partisan stance on ideological issues to be saved by
Jesus Christ is to use an exogenous litmus test, or “gate,” to arbitrarily
(i.e., dogmatically) limit the saving of souls because in the Gospels Jesus
does not specify that people must have certain ideological stances to be saved.
In fact, Jesus distances himself from the zealots, who incorrectly interpret
Jesus’ version of the Kingdom of God as coming forth externally, through
conflict, rather than in individual transformations of the heart.
Because an orientation to
contentious ideological issues tends to involve hostility towards people who
disagree, and even anger simply because some people do disagree, a congregation
oriented to partisan positions may not be conducive to the spread of the
Kingdom of God. At most, the kindness or compassion of a partisan is usually
limited to ideological compatriots, whereas Jesus preaches that kindness, and
even love, be extended to a person’s detractors and even enemies. This is the
true cost when a Christian congregation becomes unduly and
overwhelmingly partisan, whether on the “right” or “left” of the ideological
political spectrum. Partisan “love” is partial, whereas neighbor love is
wholistic, as is truth itself.
Sure enough, after a month of
being in the choir of a very ideological Methodist church, I ceased my
association with that church. I had found that there were too many bosses in
that choir, one of which apparently didn’t like me, for he said before we were
to sing on a Palm Sunday, “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” I
countered that perhaps someone should tell me that I don’t talk enough when
something needs to be said. He then ordered me to “line up” even though the
choir was not yet lining up at the back of the sanctuary. That that member of
the choir literally had keys to the building—but not to the Kingdom!—meant that
I would be facing an uphill battle, and are Christian churches really the place
for battles anyway? So I kicked the “dirt off my sandals,” upzipped my robe,
and went grocery shopping rather than sang that Sunday. I had previously picked
up on hostility from some other members, including two in the choir who had
scolded me for not standing on a certain step during a practice. “You stand
there!” one pointed. It was barely a step. That congregation was not fertile
ground for a mustard seed to take root—too much stone draped in ideological
flags.
At least for the Methodists the claim
can be made that matters of faith can be distinguished from a social ideology,
so there is hope that the adoption of a transcendent reference point could be
used from which to view the dominant ideology and the related political activism
as partial, and even as human, all too human. The litmus test for inclusion could
therefore be based in religious faith rather than on a position on a “social issue.”
One of the benefits of a faith-perspective is that human artifacts cannot be placed
that the center of our existence. Humility can thus replace arrogance. This is
not possible where the transcendent nature of distinctly religious faith has
been vacated and replaced with the ideological content of political activism.
The Unitarian Universalist “religion”
accomplished such a transition in the twentieth century. Originally,
Unitarianism, as preached by Emerson, was a rejection of the Christian Trinity
from within that religion. By 1980, humanism had become the dominant strain in Unitarian-Universalist
societies. My parents were such humanists, and my limited exposure to a UU
congregation as a teenager left me with the perplexing question of how a
religious organization could survive without being religious. My mother later
told me that I used to protest the hypocrisy as a young teenager. Later in life,
when visiting UU congregations, I found that the rejection of religion had
taken hold, and in its place, the human ideology of political
correctness (or “woke”) had pride of place. One UU minister insisted that religious
Unitarianism was in vogue. Unfortunately, he mistook the term religious. For
example, he insisted that egalitarian economic systems are sacred. He
quickly closed himself off from being open-minded when I suggested that to
regard a human construction as sacred is self-idolatrous. This is the message
of Moses when in returning from the mount he discovers the worship of a golden calf.
So too, a person who “knows” that one’s political ideology on social issues is nothing
short of truth is essentially engaging in self-worship. The evisceration of a
transcendent dimension cuts off a means by which such a person can be humble
with respect to one’s own ideology and thus open to the possibility that a
person can be wrong, and is at most partial and fallible. In succumbing to
temptation, the UU organization closed down a place for Christians who believe
in Jesus’ preaching yet do not accept that he is the Son of God.
By 2023, much had been written
about the ideological polarization of the American people. That divide had
reached congregations on the “right” and “left,” just as segregation had taken
hold. Religious faith is not reduceable to an ideological position; rather, the
former transcends the latter. To the extent that ideological advocacy is
salient in religious congregations, especially spread across their respective
buildings, a dearth of religious faith can be assumed. In the most extreme
cases, the ideological positions masquerade as the proper content of religious faith.
The “faithful” become like gods on Earth, and the societal bipolarity becomes
even more difficult to smooth over in reconciliation.
