What follows is a letter from Pastor John Pavlovitz, followed by my response. Pastor Pavlovitz describes himself on his website (https://johnpavlovitz.com/about/) as “a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry…committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities.” His warning concerns the seriousness with which we should regard the secular power of the White Evangelical movement. He speaks to the need “to stop lamenting how much damage they are doing and start doing something to oppose them.” But what is that something we need to do? And do those who see themselves as progressives have the commitment necessary to match a political force in this country that has taken many decades to develop, much like the Civil Rights movement that came to fruition in the 1960s but took many decades to develop, not to mention that both movements developed from the ground up.
Pastor Pavlovitz’s letter is followed by my response. I agree with his analysis but warn that to be effective, a new progressive movement will require more than voting. It will take time and energy, humility, and a commitment to establish real connections between and among people, along with the building and rebuilding of diverse and welcoming communities, communities founded on the ideals of social ecology and unity in diversity.
Pastor John Pavlovitz is sounding the alarm (copied from a friend’s Facebook post) :
I’ve been a pastor in the church for over two decades, much of that in predominantly white churches in the American South. I’ve spent countless hours in church staff meetings and men’s Bible studies and youth pastor conferences. I’ve stayed connected on social media with thousands of people still there in those churches. I read what they share and post and amplify and I know how they think and what they believe.
I need you to understand something and I say it without any hyperbole: white Evangelicals need to be stopped, now.
If the 2022 midterms elections allow Republicans to gain control of Congress, Conservative Christians will decimate this nation, and LGBTQ people, Muslims, women, people of color, and non-Christians will never have equality under the law again.
We will all be at their mercy—and they will no longer have use for mercy. This is not alarmist, sky-is-falling histrionics, it is the clear and sober forecast from someone who knows these people better than anyone.
Over the last decade and a half, as my theology shifted and my beliefs grew more and more progressive, I’ve been a kind of undercover Liberal in an increasingly extremist movement, that while once relegated to minor fringe noisemakers is now at the precipice of Roman Empire-level power. They are less than two years away from having a dominance that they will wield violently and not relinquish.
I watched it all unfold from the inside: I was at a North Carolina megachurch when Obama was elected and I saw the shift take place firsthand. I saw the fear slowly being ratcheted up and the agenda become solidified and the prejudices leveraged. I was speaking regularly at the Billy Graham headquarters when Fox News reporters and Republicans like Sarah Palin started walking the halls with frequency. I saw the messages at pastor’s conferences grow more incendiary and urgent, and heard the supremacist dog whistles become louder and more frequent.
While many decent people around this nation celebrated the progress of a black president and the many civil and human rights victories and gradually let down their guard—the white Conservative church set off the alarms and prepared for a holy war.
Yet, they were still a largely powerless, dying dinosaur until 2016, when Donald Trump acquired the presidency and gave the Evangelicals the perfect amoral partner to serve as the biggest bully pulpit they’ve ever had. Combine that with a fragmented Left, a general fatigue by the larger population, a ceremonial victory in Congress (thanks to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema), and Republican attacks on voters’ rights— and we are now a hair’s breadth from the subjugation of diverse humanity here.
These are not followers of Jesus despite the trappings and window dressing. They are Jesus-less extremists: blind zealots for nothing but power. They have been conditioned by decades of polluted theology and FoxNews alternative facts to see diversity as a threat, to see progress as attacks on America, and to interpret more people being treated with dignity as oppression of white people.
Trust me when I tell you that we won’t recover from the theocracy Evangelicals are constructing once it is established. If we fail in 2022, they will have a political power that will render every election null and void, and we will never have a voice again in our lifetimes.
Women will lose autonomy over their own bodies. LGBTQ people will have the rights to marry and adopt taken away. People of color will be fully squeezed out of the electoral process. Immigrants will be denied access to opportunity and refuge here.
These are not creative projections. They are precisely what Evangelicals have repeatedly stated as their intentions, and they’re closer than they’ve ever been to having a rubber stamp.
We can still stop it, though. We just need a unity and coordination that transcends theirs. We need a sustained, passionate, dedicated defense of humanity that rivals their relentless assaults on it. I hear many people say they’re terrified, but being terrified alone doesn’t do anything but help these people. Be terrified and get angry. Be terrified and get busy. Be terrified and go to work. Be terrified and fight like hell. I wish more decent people in America remembered they are among the vast majority instead of acting as if they are helpless victims of Republican Christians. We could defeat them, and we need to. We just need to stop lamenting how much damage they are doing and start doing something to oppose them.
We’ve seen this play out throughout history and we know how it ends. We know what unchecked religious extremism is capable of and we know the cost of the silence and inaction of good people.
We also know what people are capable of when they refuse to accept fascism and white supremacy cloaked in the Bible and wrapped in the flag, when they fight for something inherently good together.
As someone who knows just how much these Christians have lost the plot of their faith tradition, believe me when I tell you that they cannot be allowed to steer this nation. It will not end well for the disparate people who call it home or who one day wish to. Love and equality and diversity are in the balance. It’s time we made a choice. It may be the last one we get.
A Progressive Response to Liturgical Capture:
There is an old expression – might makes right. And I believe that many evangelical Christians believe in this as it is one way to comprehend how so many in this country who portray themselves as followers of Christ can still overwhelmingly vote for and support a man who acts more like the anti-Christ. On the other hand, I believe there is a distressing amount of self-defeating chauvinism and arrogance on the left, undergirded by the belief that right makes might, even if it takes time. Think of the famous quote by MLK, Jr. – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I believe history has taught us that there is no objective morality, only what we make of it. And there certainly is no fixed arc. As James Baldwin famously said of this country, “There are no clear vistas: the road that seems to pull one forward into the future is also pulling one backward into the past.” This quote seems particularly appropriate to our current circumstances. So, instead of an arc, we have a series of cycles, with progress met with setbacks, where progress can be identified, but only through periods of collective, purposeful, and meaningful struggle. And even with that, there are no guarantees that fairness, justice and equity will prevail or that we are immune to atrocities. As holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl famously stated, “every nation is in principle capable of a holocaust.”
So how do we fight this regressive trend? It will take more than voting or simple acceptance that “we have to do something!” I believe we have to begin with three things: (1) acknowledge our own arrogance and sense of delusional comfort derived from “being right,” (2) acknowledge and understand the success of what the right has done over many decades and then figure out what analogous approach can be taken by progressives on the left, and (3) accept that the effort will takes years to succeed.
I recommend that we focus on the approach, since addressing arrogance will likely follow if we can agree on the right long-term approach. I did not come up with this term and do not recall where it came from, but what the religious right seems to have done can be described as “liturgical capture.” I believe this means that communal religious practice has transformed from a focus on the Kingdom of Heaven to a focus on creating a Kingdom on Earth. Through this process, secular considerations have “captured” the spirit and binding power of liturgical practice. Jesus Christ, who lived in poverty and admonished the rich to give away their possessions if they wished salvation, is now portrayed through prosperity gospel teachings as blessing those who are rich among us, with the rich among us justifying their own success, even greed, as proof of being blessed by God. Liturgical capture is powerful, part of what manifests as tribalism in our current divided nation. It is powerful because of the “binding practices” that religious liturgical practice develops, a practice that now has pervasive secular and political relevance. Think of how Hannah Arendt defined power, as “binding and promising, combining and covenanting,” which then brings power into existence. Regarding religion, Jonathan Haidt has discussed power within a religious context. He has been critical of liberals who look down on religion as a focus on the individual and his/her beliefs as opposed to how religion promotes “binding practices,” collective practices that are crucial to collective belief, collective commitment and collective resolve. And, as we all know, prolonged exposure to, and practice in, liturgical ceremonies produces cultural manifestations, which are also “binding” mechanisms.
I say all of this to demonstrate what we are up against. Also, I want to emphasize that the only way to counter this is to compete with these forces with means appropriate to the ends sought within a progressive movement. What is it that will “bind” progressives in substantial, meaningful and lasting manner that goes beyond any one election cycle and can manifest as transformational political power? I believe the answer consists of a return to community, adoption of an ethic of social ecology, development of a culture of unity in diversity, and creation of a system of cooperative democracy. And, if we are willing to put in the work, there can be long term success, but it will likely take decades to accomplish. In the meantime, and as we work on this from the ground up, we need to continue to fight to minimize the damage being done with this country’s flirtation with fascism.
Unfortunately, we need to do both at the same time — fight oppression now and work towards a better, more humane future. I agree with the Pastor when he says, “We can still stop it, though. We just need a unity and coordination that transcends theirs.” Most will consider transcendence accomplished by doing some set of big, splashy things. This may work in minimizing or stopping some of the damage done by those pushing White Nationalism. This will not, however, build what we need to build. In other than defensive work, we will need to do thousands of small things that connect us in a common cause. Big splashes are likely to only create destructive tsunamis, prompting the opposition to build bigger and better retaining walls. What we need is constructive work at rebuilding a society without walls, a society with a culture defined by diversity, inclusion, fairness and opportunity. Instead of a destructive tsunami, let this culture extend as a managed floodplain brining fertility and prosperity to all who will embrace it.