As I was reading Hemant’s post linking to Rachel Held Evans’ blog, I couldn’t help but feel struck by the similarities in my own experience of backing slowly away from organized religion over the past few years. I, too, felt keenly aware of the exclusivity of the club and the fickle nature of its champions; however, my criticisms of the church eventually led me to reject its foundational beliefs and not just its physical manifestation.
When I look back on my seemingly slow and drudging deconversion from Christianity, one of the most important, pivotal elements in my ability to continue questioning faith and religion was that I wasn’t deeply embedded in church culture. At that point in my life, I had already become agitated with the church I had been raised in, which led to more frustration when I could not find a church that felt “safe” enough to ask my questions. In college, my social circles consisted of my classmates, coworkers from part-time jobs, participants in extra-curricular activities, so on and so forth… but no one from a Bible study. Because I didn’t have a church structure I was attached to, it was much easier to serve Christianity the divorce papers.
However, most of my church-going peers wouldn’t have had that luxury of such freedom. Christianity is a very caring institution (or smothering, if that’s how you feel about being on the receiving end of that care) -– in the sense that it provides community throughout a person’s life. From cradle to grave, there are Nice People who are willing to tell you how much you need Jesus in your life and the fellowship of other believers at every opportunity. Children’s programs feed into youth programs that feed into college groups that urge you to “find a church of your own” upon graduating, settling down, and entering the real world. Once you’ve “found” your church, you’re there! Set for life!
Of course, it’s not a bad thing that churches exist and function as social networks, in and of itself. I think where Rachel and I agree would be that the problem with big “C” church is that it requires obedience to their social requirements at the exclusion of all other possibilities. In many strains of Christianity, the relationship that believers have to non-believers must be fundamentally different. In the church I grew up in, we were taught that believers must be “in the world but not of the world,” derived from Romans 12:2 (NIV):
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
There are a variety of interpretations of this passage, but the important takeaway is that this popular concept establishes two things in Christian culture: a feeling of separation or distinction from mainstream society, and an important reward for achieving that distinction. The way that churches incorporate this idea into their dogma spans the spectrum to isolated faith communities like the Amish (who set themselves geographically apart) to the liberal Christian idea that salvation “renews” your mind or heart (where the distinction lies in the “condition of the heart” rather than external displays). The point, regardless, is that the concept requires a belief that there is something special about Christianity, both as an identity and as a lifestyle.
We hear stories all of the time of the immense pain and suffering that people go through when they voice disagreement with their church or with Christianity at large, but I would ask that you consider the powerful force at work on the other side: the individuals who stay in the Church. For all its power to hurt individuals on the outside, how much can it benefit those on the inside?
I’ve been musing about this concept while watching Rick Santorum’s ascendance in the GOP race (and Romney’s quick uptick in hardline, right-wing rhetoric), especially with the increased emphasis on moral issues like abortion, contraception, and women’s health care. Why, oh why, I lamented, were women voting for this guy? Can’t they see that his decisions would make the U.S. a worse place for women to live?
In short: no, they can’t.
A commenter on John Cassidy’s blog at the New Yorker had this to say (emphasis mine):
About women supporting Santorum: I too find this baffling, and can only attribute it to some form of Stockholm Syndrome. As someone who grew up among born-again and evangelical Christians in Appalachia, I would hypothesize that women who have accommodated themselves to living an evangelical lifestyle have nothing to gain from questioning the premises of Christian patriarchy. Their lives are more comfortable, less fraught with domestic conflict, if they simply decide to be happy and make the most of their assigned roles. Although to a feminist the trajectory of their lives seems constrained, on a day-to-day basis evangelical women feel productive and empowered by playing a dynamic role in their churches and schools, from which they derive a potent sense of community. Nor are they necessarily barred from having a job. They have avenues for self-expression such as crafts, baking, or book clubs. (If your first reaction is to disdain these, then unless you’re a professional artist you probably have too high an opinion of your own creative outlets.) In fact, when I recall the women I grew up under, they didn’t think men were superior at all; they took the patronizing attitude that men were to be indulged in their masculine delusions. It would be elitist/snobby/condescending/wrong to view such women as passive or merely subservient. How many of us want to challenge the social constructs within which we have created active lives that are reckoned as meaningful? At any rate, this is my best effort to make sense of the women’s vote, which is otherwise unfathomable and preposterous to me.
—CWolfe
This, to me, is where things get really interesting. Women are voting for Santorum because he supports ideologies that protect their interests, even though it appears, on the outside, to work against them. Protecting and encouraging “Biblical” marriage and family life secures freedoms for women who have found legitimately fulfilling and rewarding niches within their faith communities. As much as Rachel and I have found to criticize about religion, these women have not; they have invested time, energy, and money into a faith that rewards them.
While I can’t understand how it’s possible to refuse to contend with some of the intellectual difficulties in the doctrine of Christianity, I can certainly understand the reluctance to give up that culture. In many cases, churches provide friendships, networking opportunities, creative outlets, emergency relief, moral guidelines, and structured authority that no one place has outside of it. The fact that Christianity tends to bundle their services makes it very easy for them to also monopolize those services.
When an individual’s entire identity, relationships, social activities, and beliefs center around a single place, it’s much harder to leave, and you have much more at stake if you do.
As I and other bloggers and writers around the web have continued to cast a watchful gaze at Mark Driscoll‘s Mars Hill Church, I’ve noticed a recurring theme that commenters have raised: that church attendees are there by choice, that their presence is completely voluntary.
Well, yes, you’re right, technically. If you subtract the social pressure exerted on them to continue attending church where they have the opportunity to socialize with their friends and authority figures that will constantly reinforce their beliefs and reward them for believing.
When Hemant talked about religion having the market cornered on empathy, I think he is on to something. It’s not that this criticism is limited only to atheists, nor do I think that all atheists are guilty of it, but it’s a somewhat troubling trend that illustrates a broader undercurrent in our movement: to discredit believers for their gullible natures, or their stupidity, or for their lack of commitment to the truth. This, I think, is a trend that needs to stop, as it gives atheists the same holier-than-thou distinction that we object to in Christian culture, and it falsely takes the teeth from the most powerful weapons that Christianity exercises: peer pressure and isolation from dissent.
When we fail or refuse to acknowledge the power that these elements have, we misunderstand the breadth and scope of the church, and we fail to empathize with the reasons that people sit through misogynistic sermons or vote for Rick Santorum. Instead of saying “I understand,” some of us are saying “you’re stupid”.
There are lots of people in this world and there are a lot of people who do mind-boggling amounts of stupid things every day (myself enthusiastically included). If we want to win the debate against religion, I think we owe it to ourselves and to the future of the atheist movement that we do it cleanly, thoroughly, with a commitment to the facts and a rejection of the need to stereotype others falsely.
