I don’t want to live in a paracosm. I don’t want to just diet on the excrescence of my own news, and I don’t want to live in a tautology, where what I think is good is good because I think it’s good, and I think it’s good because it’s what I know is good.
I don’t believe that Republican voters are evil, or even stupid at a rate greater than Democratic voters, even if I think they may do evil and be misled more often. On the other hand, they sure seem to be certain that I and all the people I like most are evil and bent on national destruction, and they’re certain that they are serving the personal and cosmic good. Even when they scream and threaten people, they believe that they are cauterizing wounds, trimming away infections, and purging the body of disease. Then again, sometimes “we” do, too.
So, are “we” just as bad as they are? Are they genuinely worse?
I wanted to work this out honestly. I started thinking it through, and I came up with three “yes” answers where, yeah. . . we’re better than them. Don’t get me wrong: we fall into “them” territory. We’re better, though.
Then I realized that it was too long (probably is already), so I’m going to split it. #1 will be on the Ichthus badge and making an enemy. Part two will be on “A Well Armed Society Is a Polite Society” and what that garbage indicates about us and them. Part three will be about the underlying difference and distinction of looking outward in (from actions to character) versus inside out (from personality to group) as a key to who “we” and “they” are.
We have to define our terms. For me, “good” and “bad” will refer to moral qualities like — love of neighbor, devotion to something greater than oneself, charity, child care, humility, and mercy. It also includes ethical qualities: respect, acceptance and welcome of the stranger, hospitality, politeness in speech, bodily cleanliness (including matters of sexual and alimentary display), and polite disagreement.
As for who “we” and “they” are, the terms can’t mean the two political parties. Also, using terms like “civil war” or “culture war” cedes the ground and says that culture is binary, a zero sum struggle, and that the United States are, not is.
All the polite footnotes aside, I have concluded that the current group of people opposing the voices surrounding Donald Trump’s allies really are better than the others and their ancestors.
I’m going to start with the pre-history of “grievance,” though, to get a look at one element of themness — the self-selection of suffering and privileging of isolation.
Why Have an Ichthus Badge on Your Car?
I’m a Christian, and a conservative one, generally (virgin birth, resurrection from the dead, confession of sin). I have mainly lived around the radical protestant segments, too. I like to mention that I was preached at by jimmy Swaggart for a week-long revival and still did not “convert” (from diaper Christian to “born again,” I guess). [Eventually, that kind of preaching, with its latent Calvinivism, did persuade me to leave my faith, though. If my choices were eternal doubt or lying about an emotional conversion experience, I was ground up, at age thirteen, between the millstone and the wheel. Jimmy Swaggart offered thunberbolts of high confession and high relief or lightning bolts of despair. I wasn’t surprised when he fell the way he did, or when he confessed before his congregation the way he did.]
After I returned to my faith around 1980, the evangelical movement was underway. The odd Jesus Freaks had become earnest “church planters,” and the television evangelists had become syndicates. Pat Robertson had been joined by other media conglomerates. Coincident or not, people began to adorn their cars with the ichthus.
This is the “fish” stick figure that dates back to Christian persecutions, when church members could identify themselves to one another in a way that the Romans could not recognize. The Greek letters were an acronym: Iesous Christos Theou ‘Uoios Soter, for Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior. I knew the history of the symbol before I saw it on car bumpers. I also knew ancient Greek before I saw it on car bumpers.
WHY put that on your car? Christianity is far and away the majority religion in the United States. If a person wanted to testify to being Christian, a cross would the the customary way. If a person wanted to tell others about a specific Christian point of view, then the normal thing is to put on a sticker for a church denomination (I have an Episcopal Church decal). If one wanted to fellowship, the customary thing is to have a bumper sticker like, “Follow me to Hillside Baptist Church!,” which gets a two-for-one.
Why put the ichthus on one’s car? I couldn’t figure it out. Back in 1985-7, when I began to see these things everywhere, I was simply baffled.
And when thou prayest, thou shat not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. — Matthew 6:5
For the longest time, I thought the people putting on these stickers were trying to boast of their religion, were praying in the corners of the streets (or right in the middle of them), and now I think something else was happening.
These are NOT the days of Nero. Nero’s persecutions were horrific, and the Revelation of John was written during his brutal and brief reign. The church faced persecution off and on after Nero, too, and generally the best it had was tolerance for quite a while. I mean, these aren’t those days, are they?
Ah. Of course they are. 1980 was just like Nero’s Rome, and so was 1992, and so was 2008. It’s interesting that we haven’t seen a return to eschatology and billboard Christianity this year, but that’s beside the point.
The ichthus stickers were being sported by the same people who are now part of the “religious right” and the “culture war” right — the people who, at the time, were speaking of how “the world today” was full of persecution of Christians.
The “grievance culture” is at least forty years old. In fact, it’s a feature of the fundamentalist urge in all religions. Not only is there a claim that “the religion” of today is corrupt and that the religious institutions and practice of today have gone wrong, but, similarly, in almost every religion, there is a concomitant claim that those who practice the “real” religion are persecuted.
If I saw a car with an ichthus on its bumper, was I supposed to:
A) Honk and wave? B) Hold up a large cross as I pass
C) Follow them to the next exit and have a prayer service/ Bible study
D) Nod, because providence has afforded protection from Caesar who wants to send me to the coliseum for my faith?
Because the groups promoting the notion that these are the End Times, as we can see by the persecutions (or the coming persecutions) were also promoting the alliance with the Republican Party at that time in extremely specific ways, what was going on was a very narrow form of faith as a boast and nationalism of religion. The evils of nationalism are not patriotism, but the idea that one American is worth ten Mexicans, no matter the American or Mexican. Nationalism of religion is when sporting a membership to a church or wearing an identifier with a church makes a person objectively worth ten others, no matter the deeds of the person or the views.
The eschatology that emerged in the Left Behind mania made it not just a nationalism of religion (Americans are Christian; Christian is one type of Protestant that reads the Bible in a narrow way and votes a particular way), but religion as nationalism. The ichthus was signaling of an already formed side, already fashioned, that declared an enemy of an indifferent world and which believed its Christ commanded that it give unto Caesar political action committees.
The first way, then, that we are better than them is:
They make “us” out of our indifference.
As a mainline Protestant who is pretty devout, I was astonished to find that I was an anti-Christian persecutor of Christians. As someone who absolutely does not like abortion and would prefer that there be none but who believes that the issues are too complex for me to rule anyone on and who recognizes that I could easily prove hypocrite, I was astonished to find out that I am a baby murderer. As someone who believes that capitalism is a powerfully energetic force but that socialism is a necessary general economy, I was puzzled to find out that I’m a communist. In other words, it isn’t just a straw man fallacy: “they” feel pain or anger or construct an end of the world crisis and then, from a coldly indifferent world, MAKE the enemy.
We generally don’t.
“We” are “us” only if we self-select for tolerance and forgiveness and a naive belief in inherent equality, and that means that the moment any of “us” begin to announce that someone is “them” who hasn’t actually struck a blow first, that person is disqualified. Should be disqualified. Ideally.
The real “us” don’t manage to be who we think we are very often, but at least we feel the pain when we don’t.
Thanks for reading this far. I promise that the next one will be more muscled up.