Opposing Cliffs

Last time I blogged (and it was a while ago), I mused on Rachel Maddow’s reaction to Obama’s speech about the gulf oil crisis. Her negative reaction to his calling on people of faith to pray brought to mind a theory I have about liberal and conservative movements in America. The recent debacle concerning the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod is a telling counterpart to Rachel Maddow’s reaction in illustrating what I want to suggest.

My theory is this: there is a cliff at the extreme of both the liberal and conservative movements. The danger of each cliff frightens the opposite movement and pushes them toward a cliff of their own.

Though I think my theory is relevant to broader secular political movements, I’ll limit my focus to conservative and liberal American Christians. By doing so, I can speak to underlying biblical themes. Standard warning though: I am going to offer broad generalizations, and such generalizations are always only partly true. They can offer interesting peeks but, taken by themselves, are too simplistic.

First the conservative movement and then the liberal.

Conservative Christians want to conserve. A conservative tradition is a tribal tradition, and its disposition is to take care of one’s family or community against outside threats. Biblically, it evokes the tradition of Moses where the Hebrew people are called to be “holy.” They are called to set themselves apart in worship and in practice so as to form a unique identity and protect themselves against influences that could destroy their community. Gentile outsiders are seen as threats, for interaction with them might dilute the community’s traditions and values putting the community at risk. This tradition runs through Jesus’ teachings when he announces he came not to overturn the Law but to fulfill it, to bring his message first to Israel.

In America, this “tribal” drumbeat can be heard in American isolationism, protectionism, and in the push to promote and defend “traditional values.” Within the Christian community, it is reflected in the desire to promote Christian identity and values, and convert outsiders before accepting them.

I often dance to this drumbeat because I love my tribes: my family, my country, my church, and my treasured circles of friends. “Inside traditions” have formed me and mean a great deal to me.

One cliff Christian conservatives must always be wary of falling over, though, is the cliff of racism. Conservatives have to be careful not to become so insider-oriented that a wariness of “outsiders” becomes an intolerant prejudice against them.

The recent debacle concerning Shirley Sherrod is an example of this danger. If you don’t know the story, Sherrod was falsely accused by a conservative blogger of bragging at an NAACP function of discriminating against a white farmer. A taped snippet of her speech was provided as proof. A rush to judgment quickly followed by the media; especially FOX News which trumpeted the story as evidence of a malicious agenda by minorities. Fearing being identified with reverse racism, the NAACP too quickly condemned her speech and the chief of the Agricultural Department demanded her resignation. It turns out that the Sherrod was quoted out of context making her look like she was saying the exact opposite of the point she was making.

I suggest that this story, like many others, had play among white conservatives because it fed into a fear of outsiders. I don’t want to argue by circumstance (a term used in Logic that means generalizing from isolated incidents), so I encourage you to back over the stories that have gotten significant play in the conservative community and ask if there is not a trend. Many presidents have had messages broadcast to school children. Why was it considered so outrageous that this particular president- this powerful man- would have an influence over children’s minds when such a protest was not raised about previous presidents; both Republican and Democrat?

There are other stories. What is behind the way these stories have been spun: Jeremiah Wright, Acorn, Van Jones, and the two misbehaving African Americans who yelled crazy things at a polling station. There were some inappropriate words and some real misdeeds embedded in some of these stories, but much was made up and amplified. Van Jones is not a convicted felon as Fox News reported him to be. The two African Americans were not evidence of the new rise of the Black Panther movement even though they managed to get a dozen names or so together to say that they were.

I already can hear a Christian conservative who jumped on one of these bandwagons objecting, “Hey, I’m not racist!.” I’ll quickly respond by saying, “I believe you.” I’ll also agree that I’m making a judgment call that can be debated. Also, there are times when something real needs to be discussed. Reverse discrimination can happen, racism is not the vice of only those of western European descent, quotas can promote incompetence and ignoring race as a factor can be another way of being dishonest.

Yet, the consistency of racial nature of these stories and the hysteria surrounding them ought to at least make us ponder. If the stories are revealed to have been overblown beyond reasonable proportion, is it because it works to hype fears of outsiders “taking-over” in order to motivate the masses. The gravitational pull toward believing fear-based stories about outsiders has real pull, doesn’t it? There is nothing wrong and much right with being conservative. But if we are going to obey Christ’s command to be aware of what is in our own eye, we should be wary of the danger of the cliff of racism that the obstructed eye can miss seeing.


The liberal movement within Christianity, on the other hand, has another cliff of which it needs to be wary. The tendency of liberals is to be tolerant of differences and open to outsiders. Biblically, it is the open tradition of Abraham that is about a people being blessed so that all nations will be blessed. The “Abraham Openness” is in healthy tension with the closed protectionism of the Moses tradition. You can find the Abraham tradition in the teachings of Jesus who healed and taught Gentile as well as Jew, and who accepted sinners who others wanted to condemn and exclude. The Apostle Paul, in using Greek images to communicate the Gospel, and in advising churches to change their dietary practices and abandon insider requirements like circumcision so as to bring Gentiles into the church, exemplified the best of this open tradition.

In American Christianity, the cause of being open to outsiders and adaptive to change reverberates in calls for social justice for the marginalized here and abroad and for cross-cultural understanding and interfaith dialogue. As a child of a minister who stood up for Civil Rights in the ‘60s and as someone who loved receiving a liberal arts education, I often find myself dancing to this drumbeat as well.

However, one cliff the liberal wing of the American Christian movement is in danger of falling over is that of agnosticism. If “the right” fears regulation of the market, “the left” fears regulation of the mind. But when suspicion swings away from the threat of outsiders to the threat of insiders, one is in danger of losing sight of, and confidence in, the stability and strength family and tradition can bring. There is a closed aspect to a healthy personality that protects the person and the community. When we become open to believing anything, it can be an easy slip into believing nothing. And nothing is meaningless. And meaninglessness leads to meanness.

This is part of what I was getting at in my previous blog. I have no idea about Maddow’s religious beliefs, but her incredulity at a president making an appeal to people of faith to pray and her wanting only to hear solutions suggested for me a too strong an Enlightenment confidence in our ability to fix all wrongs. Christians informed in the theology of hubris know that modern cures can cause modern problems. Knowledge without morals is dangerous. When science is without moral restraint the possible becomes probable; and that could include nuclear annihilation.

The champions of tolerance can be as blind to the log in their own eyes as anyone. If Maddow’s moment of incredulity is not illustrative enough, I point to the way the shallow documentary “Religulous” attacked Paper Tiger arguments for God and the skewed arguments of bestselling books of “The New Atheists” which do the same.

And if that is not enough, I point to the oversensitivity by the left to any discussion of religious beliefs and the place of religion in American history. I’m not in the “America is a Christian Nation” camp, but to ignore the huge influence religious movements have had in this country’s history is to be intellectually dishonest. Dishonesty does not promote a healthy diversity.

Consider also the bias against people sharing what they believe in public places or at work. There is a difference between indoctrination and sharing perspectives and viewpoints. When honest dialogue is banned simply in the fear of indoctrination or intolerance, then the Enlightenment has given up on enlightening. Toleration becomes its own intolerance.

Another example: In the toleration camp, personal choice can be such a strident virtue that the evidence of the wide spread of sexually transmitted diseases even in privileged communities is under-reported. Also underreported is the damage done by promiscuity to relationships and self-esteem. The climate of accepting of personal choices can lead to a withholding of important information that can promote health and even save lives.

Many liberals get it, but some forget: Toleration of differences aside, we really do need to stick together in this world. We just have to keep negotiating who “we” are.


This was too long a blog. Here’s my point in as brief a way as I can say it today: The ideologues of the extremes, the prophets and soldiers of the fringe, are those who are in the greatest danger of falling over a cliff, and can be those who are the most dangerous in pushing us toward either their cliff in convincing us, or another cliff in scaring us. When we get in our conservative or liberal moods, let’s be careful of the gravitational pull toward those cliffs. People can get hurt.