Mind the Gap
Those of you that have been reading these regularly have probably deciphered a pattern. I tend to hover around the same topics like a moth rushing to the flame. That means I hover between issues of faith, education, and issue framing. While I appreciate that not everyone wants to hear about faith, that issue is paramount to me in terms of reaching a bigger audience.
The simplest way to consider this is to consider it as a form of language. It’s more like a regional dialect. It’s like those raging debates about how “coke” is labeled in speech or how someone says “y’all.” In this case, it isn’t regional but spiritual (or not spiritual).
People speak in a particular way when they come from a Christian tradition. They speak in a certain way when they don’t. They also speak in a specific way when they used to be Christian and have decided to go in a different direction they speak in a specific way. A large part of keeping a big tent in politics is finding ways to communicate to a variety of groups. Those groups all have languages of their own.
The Democratic party has slowly developed an advantage over time of communicating with people of color. They have developed an advantage of communicating with women. They have developed an advantage of communicating with the LGTBQ+ community. They have developed an advantage in communicating with those that have shunned the church.
That leaves one group out. Those are the people that the party is having an increasingly difficult time reaching. Those are the people that many progressives are becoming increasingly hostile towards. These are the folks that share political values even when they are still members of the flock. They can be reached if you simply speak the language.
This concept is easy to understand when we look at the other side. Think of how many times we have watched a conservative think they are trying to reach disaffected groups of their own only to come off sounding more offensive. They belittle women. They somehow harbor racists and spew racist language even when they seem to be trying to be inclusive. It’s awe inspiring in a way.
It is all well and good not to be interested in the church itself, but it is paramount to understand the politics going on inside it. There is a divide throughout Christianity between what we might classify as the legalistic group of Christians and those that we might classify as the social justice group of Christians.
The Bible obviously can be split into various parts, but the two biggest dichotomies exist between all of the rules and regulations that people of faith are supposed to follow and the mission of Christ. That mission involves feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and healing the sick. That is the very heart of the progressive platform.
The problem comes when you insult believers. I understand it. Many believers are insulting themselves. They don’t respect non-believers and deride them unmercifully. We all get that. Yet, there are a group of good and decent believers that believe in our values that are there to be courted. I know because I’m one of them.
The current strategy forces those that we might label “the Christian left” to choose between Christian and left. When you force people to choose you never end up liking their choice. When you are forced to choose you usually choose against those forcing you to make the choice. Stop making them choose.
I see it, too, Nick. I’m not a Christian but I was raised Catholic and am now a Unitarian Universalist – a religion built from two denominations with Christian roots.
So many times, I read a post where the author makes a great argument and then makes fun of folks who believe in “the sky daddy.” Or they say churches should be taxed – yes, if they’re telling people how to vote from the pulpit! no, if they’re carrying out their missions of social justice without regard to the politics of the people they’re helping / the people in the congregation. Athiests can be as dogmatic as evangelicals in this respect.
There are organizations for religious liberals. We’re out there and we see what you see. The problem I see, though, is that our numbers are small and getting smaller. We tend to skew older and young folks just don’t see the point in joining a church. All religions – liberal and conservative – share this problem. Perhaps, as a desired voting bloc, we just don’t have the numbers anymore?
1In the Episcopal church, we believe God loves you, no exceptions.
2Presbyterian viewpoint here: we would all be better off if we could follow the Great Commandment, which is to love God and your fellow man as yourself. I understand that many will leave off God, and that is their choice. But the part about loving other people and loving yourself – many people have problems doing either. We do not promote candidates from the pulpit, but we do promote positive values like kindness, compassion and helpfulness, and oppose murder, lying, theft and other”sinful” actions.
3LOVE?? Tell what that is and I will comment on it!
4Tax churches? YES!!!! just like ALL other charities are taxed!!! Take in $100 and spend $100 on charity stuff and you pay no tax…pay $5 on charity stuff and pay taxes on $95!!! Too many churches where the preacher has a $2000000 mansion is NOT a non-profit nor a charity!!!
And the greater commandment…BE NICE to all!!! & lying aint necessarily bad, and sin is a BS word.
I read an article the other day, I think it was in the N.Y. Times in which they interviewed Americans who displayed the flag, and then were confronted by people who incorrectly assumed they were conservatives and Republicans. They were not.
The flag is bigger than politics, it represents all of us, even though it has been in ways co-opted. In a similar manner spirituality is greater than religion, and we should be equally careful not to confuse the two. Democrats who are Christian is not an oxymoron. Christians who are Republicans in its current state of immorality, lies, and deceit are far more likely to be an implausible contradiction.
5L. Long @ #4:
Love is when your happiness is dependent upon another’s happiness.
6Backing up what Katherine says:
7Our own Episcopal parish keeps growing by an influx of people who feel unloved in their former church [or lack thereof]. I cannot imagine Jesus turning anyone away from his table. All are welcome, including some who are hard to get along with.
The YouTube algorithm sends me ENDLESS videos of skeptical debaters tearing up brainless ideologies like religion. You can enjoy this algorithmic backpatting by watching a few Christopher Hitchens videos, and then the algo will do the rest.
Soon you will join the throng. If you wish to see theists get their butts kicked mercilessly, Talk Heathen, Atheist Experience (25 years old) with Matt Dillahunty, CosmicSkeptic, Aron Ra debunking Young Earthers, Sam Harris debunking religion in general….
Most atheists are basically skeptics: You postulate supernatural things, skeptics then ask for discernible evidence. Never happens, of course.
8It’s the age-old battle between convenient comfort and Inconvenient Truth. (snicker)
I hesitate to make my comments, but here goes.
9I am guilty as charged. I have tended to generalize that many who push their religious beliefs out to people when they’re not asked to, tend to be beyond right leaning, they’re Trumpf supporters. That’s wrong on my part. Before the last 5 years, I didn’t generalize that way. The last 5 years have soured me when I see people laying their hands on trumpf like he’s their god and say he’s the chosen one; it reinforces my feelings that they’re part of a cult. Again, I should not generalize and the comments above make me feel guilty.
Also, the same could be said about flag waving. Up until the last 5 years, flag waving was a sign of patriotism to me. But the flags waved above or below trumpf banners has made me skeptical when I see them out in the neighborhood continuously (a few houses only). That has been going on for the last couple of years around here.
Again, I’m guilty as charged and should not generalize about groups of people. I feel bad about that. I’ll try to do better.
Another Episcopalian here. One reason our denomination has shrunk a lot in the past 50 years is that we *don’t* tend to be very evangelical. Thus the nickname “frozen chosen” by some who aren’t. I was taught (mostly at home) that religion is a private choice or inheritance or however someone caught it, and trying to “convert” someone who has a religion means you’re disrespecting them. If they asked questions about mine, I would answer the questions. If they expressed unhappiness with their present religion, I’d say “You’d be welcome to visit (whatever parish I was in.)” If they didn’t ask, or comment, then I figured I wasn’t a good enough follower to make it attractive and left it alone.
If I were in charge, I would tax those churches which a) instruct their members how to vote from the pulpit or whatever they use, and b) do not devote a substantial part of their income to outside, as well as inside, “good works.” (A) is supposed to be illegal but it’s not enforced; I think it should be. But then I’ve never heard (in my obviously small experience of the entire denomination) an Episcopal priest tell anyone how to vote, let alone *in* church from the pulpit.
Members of the little (and it was *little*) parish I grew up in founded a food pantry and grew it into the Rio Grande Valley Food Bank. Both Austin churches I’ve been part of (member of one, singing in the choir of the other) have extensive outreach in multiple ways that involves the city, the region, and beyond that. Both in my home town and elsewhere, I’ve seen “Interfaith” groups that cooperated to provide for whatever local conditions were being ignored by politicians.
I have friends who are anti-church because of negative experiences when they were kids, and friends in other denominations and religions who are happy where they are. This includes liberals (and used to include more conservatives, but now they’ve let me know I’m not welcome anymore because I’m a liberal. And I’ve been yelled at, called names, insulted, and threatened because of being a liberal, a Democrat, and my kind of Christian. Just to drag in the Bible for an instant, Jesus said that would happen. (Oh, I was also yelled at, insulted, and threatened for being other things I’ve been, or was thought to have been, in case someone wants to yell at me again. After having been chewed out by the Judge Advocate General of the Marine Corps–an experience I don’t recommend trying for–I’m pretty impervious to yells. And he chewed me out for what I *had* done, and not done. Some of us are slower to learn than others.)
Anyway. There’s a problem of discernment here. Christians are commanded to do good works *secretly*. If they brag about something “you’ve already got your reward” in the public approval. If you don’t at least say *something* there are always people who think nothing’s been done because a big problem (like poverty, racism, injustice) is still there. For me, as for others, that’s a dilemma. It would be nice if the anti-religionists would consider that across several religions (at least) secrecy in doing good works is expected, and quit thinking nobody’s doing anything because they don’t know about it. But that’s really their responsibility, not ours. I should do what I can, in my own corner, and not expect anything but maybe having eased someone else’s problems.
10I used to have a live and let live attitude towards religion. If it gave folks the strength and moral compass to lead a good, happy life, I saw it as a harmless, perhaps even helpful delusional state. (see Jimmy Carter} My attitude changed during the Reagan years and became more of an evangelical atheism with the rise of both Islamic and Christian fundamentalism. Gay people, single mothers, the poor (obviously unloved by God, otherwise why would they be poor?} all became targets of marginalization by the newly powerful Christian Right (see Pat Robertson) aided by the Republican Party.
I’m all for a welcoming big tent philosophy for the Democratic Party, but…
Anti-vaxxers? Homophobes? Trickle down economists? My particular tent has room for these folks and others when they come to their senses and would like to join Democrats in working for social justice and education. If they wish to change our goals by “speaking our language” while they explain to us why non-traditional sexual orientation is an abomination I will hold the tent flap open as I escort them out.
Nick, I ask you one of the two questions I always ask myself about your posts (which continue to run at least 3 times the length of anything else in the beauty shop). What is your point? Are you honing your Christian communication skills here at TWMDBS until you’re ready to post on a 700 Club forum and convert them all to Christlike kindness in one fell swoop? Because every soul reading Juanita Jean already thinks it’s horrible to tell people that voting Democratic is a sin. Your imaginary audience of good Christians is not waiting in the wings to be convinced any more than your God is just biding his time (after all, what’s time when you are eternal?) to strike the 45th with a bolt of lightning.
All of this harsh, I know, but Mind the gap explains why you write religious navel gazing posts but makes it even more puzzling why you post them here.
11Also, the other question I ask myself is, “Hasn’t he ever heard of editing?”
Carl Sagan Predicted The Mess 2021 Would Be 25 years Ago ~
Jul 13, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGanLUnjoPI
12Obviously you are tired of the topic Wally. I can respect that and I’m a big boy. I can handle the criticism. Of course, that being said you managed to illustrate my point.
13And, Nick, you illustrated and broadened his points.
14It’s not at all about what a big boy you are. It’s about the gratuitous god-smuggling and the looooong posts.
There are bigger issues to debate IMO. The manic trumpf followers pushing the big lie and the media giving his rants airtime. The assault on voter rights (raging in Texas). What do the Christian (including progressives) have to say about that.. Racism is still ingrained in a large portion of society. Many more issues are manifested by the right- covid vaccines and their misinformation, women’s rights and on and on. Talk about these issues.
15I was raised LDS (fka Mormon). Ancestors on both sides of my family joined the church early in its history and trekked to Utah across the plains. It’s deep in my DNA. I became disillusioned at 17 and haven’t been back. My parents and extended family were troubled, but never ever shut me out. We never talked about politics. It wasn’t until I was in my late 40s that I discovered my parents were the only Democrats in my extended family. It was just never anything that came up who family members voted for. Then … Trump. Suddenly on FaceBook family members were making their positions clear and tensions rose. I decided to stop posting anything political. I didn’t want my relationship with my extended family members, whom I love dearly, to be compromised by his poison. Sadly, the evening of January 6 when I was trying to come to grips with the horrors of the day, an uncle’s semi-recent wife posted an offensive defense of Trump and the awful people who stormed the Capitol, and I replied that I was sad to read that she was headed down such a dark road. She unfriended me. I was crushed and I’m still sad every time I think about it. Why would she do this?
I found out from Utah friends who visited over the weekend that congregational leaders and Sunday School teachers in Utah are telling members that they need to support Trump if they want to stay in good standing with The Church. My friends are deeply troubled by this, as they should be. Suddenly it’s not enough to tell people how they need to believe in God, now they want to tell people what politicians to support. Sometimes I’m glad my parents are not here now to see the horror that religion and politics has become. I consider myself a Deist. I want a spiritual life. I am not anti-church, but there sure are a lot of churches that make it hard not to be. And not just Christian ones either. I don’t like dogmatism in any form.
16If you raise a child on faith in the unprovable, you make them a target forever for politicians and charlatans.
17That’s what we’re seeing now in Trump voters. All their life, “faith” has been their final response to any argument about reality. Now we complain about their prepubescent gullibility.
What did you expect? I tell every little kid I can that god isn’t real, and I tell them the questions to ask to force that admission from proselytizers of every stripe.
I wish Nick wouldn’t hide behind that faith door he so blithely slams in the skeptics’ faces…no proof at all, just inherited foolishness.
How can we progress into reality in politics while bible-bangers keep indoctrinating their children to not think, just believe?
Christian here, Nick, to tell you this is way too vague. Which progressives talk wrong about religion, and how, exactly. Did you mean Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, who have frequently talked about their faith (and been called liars)? Rev. Barber? Be specific or you won’t be convincing.
Second, POC and women aren’t attracted to the Ds because of what they say. It’s because Ds do act in these groups’ interests and Rs act against them. Oppressed people can spot lip service several miles away.
18Ted#6…if so than gawd is not love…cuz it could care less about most people’s happiness.
19“Yet, there are a group of good and decent believers that believe in our values that are there to be courted. I know because I’m one of them.” True to a point. But There is another name for the “good and decent believers” … enablers! So long as your Big Book of BS enables evil people to throw kids out of the family, not bring sick kids to doctors, and beat up homosexuals and condemn women, don’t say you are “good and decent believers”. Rewrite your Big Book o’BS to remove the evil and then I will be convinced of your “good and decent believers”.
20I do care about the members of this ad hoc community including you, Nick. I hope that your beliefs and your faith that an omniscient, omnipotent being has got your back is a constant source of strength and courage to do what’s right. (although too often, we all fall short of that goal) As difficult and painful as it was/is to speak harshly to someone like yourself, who plainly is a kind person who seeks to make the world a better place it wads/is important to open the discussion and remind people of faith that the amazing, powerful connection they feel with their “creator” exists only in their head. Their faith allows them to look at a flower, a mountain range or a simple act of unexpected kindness and be awed and humbled by the wonder-fullness of their God. It also allows then to look at a child wasting away in the last stages of cancer or a mother weeping for her family, lost in an instant during a tsunami, and take comfort that it is all part of god’s mysterious plan. If the new testament stories are true, Jesus was an exemplary, altruistic person, but, if also, the old and new testaments are true, his dad is a monster if infinite proportions. Bible and Koran based theists would do well to keep their adoration of “the one god” to themselves and let it bring them what strength and comfort it may.
21Well, this discussion has certainly been enlightening. I appreciate the description of religion as I recognize it from my fellow Episcopalians. And several posters have illustrated Nick’s point well.
I find this demonstrated intolerance among my fellow progressives to be appalling; and while it is sometimes based in traumatic experiences from childhood, it is often based in ignorance of the beliefs and practices of those being characterized as ‘less than’. In what way is characterizing someone who believes in a unifying pattern in the universe (let’s call it ‘God’…or physics…take your pick) as deluded, unable to think for themselves, and probably evil, any different from characterizing a gay child as evil, and abandoning that child?
One may choose to believe in a god or not, one may choose to define one’s meaningful relationship to the universe along any particular string of ideas or not, but vilifying someone who shares one’s progressive ideals because they don’t share YOUR particular relationship with the universe is no different from the Fundamentalist garbage spewing from the Trumpers, and (which is Nick’s point) it dis-invites people from our big Progressive tent.
22Well said Opinionated Hussy@22, thank you.
I don’t find Nick’s pieces too long. El Jefe writes lengthy stuff too. Besides I think most of the customers at the shop have intellectual endurance to read on through something the length of an opinion piece found in the major national newspapers.
23I want to thank everyone for their thoughts. Thank you Wally for your last comment but also your frankness in the other responses. I hear everything everyone is saying and will take it in the spirit intended. Believe it or not, these pieces are usually edited down from their original version, but more editing can always be done.
I also hear the pleas for something else and I’ll strive to dive into some other topics.
24IMO Religion is one of those personal things that is nobody else’s business. I have no problem with whatever your religion is. If you want to worship a turnip, that is between you and the turnip. Just do now try to push the turnip on me or make it the law of the land.
25L. Long @#19:
God is not real, so your point is without eanig.
26L.Long says @20 “Rewrite your Big Book o’BS to remove the evil and then I will be convinced of your “good and decent believers”.
Sure … we can get around to a task to rewrite the Bible immediately after you finish rewriting the IRS code (which has a much smaller set of devotees and is not nearly as ancient) to convince us of your sincere commitment to liberal priorities.
Just curious … what do you gain by using an insulting name for the Bible? What do you gain by assuming none of those among the believers are “good and decent,” including in this ad hoc gathering in the beauty salon?
27i have seen the plus & the minus of religion in peoples life’s. Take the money & the politics out & the equation changes. Using Jesus to make money or win political battles is not what I learned in Sunday school. Would love to join a church that was a gathering place of goodness. Instead have come to view most as trouble makers.
28I enjoy reading and appreciate Nick’s lengthy, detailed, and in depth examination on issues he writes about. The subject matter is always a topic close to his personal interest, one he lives with, which allows him to offer us subtle details within a bigger picture. He generally includes far more information than I can simply agree or disagree with, and when it’s presented as he does I feel it deserve my consideration.
Thank you Nick.
29#27 … “after you finish rewriting the IRS code” is a fallacy called redirection, & is worthless. BS is not insulting as it has long been a slang for crap-lies-untruth-insulting fairy tales, etc. Actually it is a compliment as BS is worthy of being fertilizer and the Big Book O’crap cannot.
30#26 … try convincing a xtian of that.
I’m a catholic happily and successfully married to an agnostic/atheist for 35 years now. If I want to discuss something that I KNOW is going to involve the religious point of view/frame through which I still choose to look at things, I ask my spouse to “suspend his system of disbelief” as we continue the discussion. It generally serves us pretty well, and keeps us from devolving into a pattern of sneering, mildly abusive attack and useless passionate defense that does neither of us nor our marriage any good, and derails any discussion completely.
This post and the ensuing comments remind me of this old, bad pattern of ours…the ugly is even escalating into a snarling tone like ours does.
Nick is pretty good about letting us know in the first couple of sentences where he’ll be going. If you don’t care to read about topics that include religion, just skip that one. No one is holding anyone hostage here, right? Just as when my sweetheart DOESNT want to follow me down a particular rabbit hole, we don’t go there-we find something else to discuss. You can do that here too.
Vis a vis the long form, well, some things are complicated and can’t be thrashed out in a sound bite or a bumper sticker. That’s part of the problem we have communicating with conservatives, religious or otherwise: they like simple explanations, even if false, and slogans. Again, no one is forced to read the posts long or short, right?
31@Aggieland Liz
32I don’t skip over things just because I might disagree with them. I read everyone’s posts in the frame of mind of learning something. And, the comments section is just that. Comments. Agreement, disagreement or totally unrelated commentary. I guess my point in this discussion is “because God” is not a valid argument or point of discussion, even among believers given the wide range of beliefs and their associated dogmas. Since the religious orthodoxies that we can all agree on (thou shall not steal) have an origin based on societal good, I offer that deists might make their points based on the societal implications of rules or actions without reference to their particular beliefs, or even a general reference to religion. Believers and non-believers both can surely be swayed by logic and the real world implications of real world actions. The editing part? Well, my posts and comments would certainly not stand up under the withering gaze of a 1st year rhetoric class teacher but I do try to get to the point. I think even Nick recognizes that he’s wondering about something in a repetitive, meandering fashion without ever really getting to a defined point. That’s something that I, and most people I know, could all stand to get better at in their writing.
Since at least the time of Reagan, the Christian Right has presented their fundamentalist view to the world, and for the most part, mainstream media have characterized this dogmatic view being a characteristic of religion in general. Radical Islam has also contributed view among non-religious people that being part of organized religion requires believing in the literal truth of bible stories. The Fundamentalists have given all religion a bad name. And while fundamentalists claim to represent true Christianity, the literal viewpoint of fundamentalism is only about 200 years old.
My favorite quote on this is from John Dominic Crossan in the book, “Who is Jesus? Answers to your Questions About the Historical Jesus”
“My point, once again is not that those ancient people told literal stories, and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically, and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
Nick’s point is to resist the temptation to mock religious people, even though the loudest, fundamentalist voices in the public square deserve to be mocked. Many religious people understand that “to do justice and love mercy” is the important part. We need those people in our big tent.
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