Meanderings, 20 July 2024

Political "unity," James Davison Hunter, narcissistic systems, and more...

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

I begin today’s Meanderings with a brief essay of my own.

On CNN, Sunday evening 14 July 2024, having listened to the president’s evening address to the country, Jonah Goldberg claimed something along this line of thinking (and I heard him say much the same last night, even quoting Augustine):

The USA is not about “unity.” The USA is designed to foster a democratic process for factions, for people who engage with difference with another, and then head for the ballot box (and hope their candidate comes out with a victory).

That is my summary of Goldberg’s idea that is far more important than our constant, superficial, and unattainable appeals to something called “unity” and our tradition’s idealistic “union.” Think about it. Christians, whose Lord prayed they’d be one (!), don’t have unity with one another. Democrats don’t have unity with one another. Republicans don’t have unity with one another. If we can’t find unity with our own parties and faiths, how can we find unity with those who are in different parties and faiths. But we can find a basis for engaging with one another on the open market of free ideas. We can engage with one another as citizens, as fellow Americans, as fellow human beings, and for those with this faith, as humans dignified by God with the image of God. With some measure of civility.

We are a country based on law, and for the law to operate well there must be measured civility. But difference is not going away and that is why the Founders, with profound wisdom, inscribed checks and balances into the fabric of this country. We will never agree, except to operate on the basis of law. We will never achieve unity, which is not the same as a “more perfect union,” but we can achieve civility.

The USA needs a lot more “We” rhetoric and a whole lot less of “They” language connected to aspersions.

Civility does not ban passion from the conversation. It bans speaking of others in language that demeans instead of differs. It bans treating others with disrespect instead of dignity. It bans excludes one kind of American instead of including all Americans.

So speak your mind. Express yourself. Disagree. Then shake hands with one another, or hug your fellow, and continue on in a system shaped by the wonder of checks and balances.

I like this post by Kelley Mathews on the “art” of church history:

History is written by the victors, we are told. In the church, history was written by the men. How do we know? Because the men, for the most part, held the power.

I’m not throwing shade on the church’s well-documented history of male leadership. They weren’t making things up—men truly did rule the world. We read about them in verified records such as the pages of Scripture, scholars’ letters that crisscrossed the Western world for centuries, and literature.

So what about the women? Logically we know they were present, but what impact did they have on their societies and church life? If our current historical documents tell the whole story, the women generally fed the men and raised their children. A few of them rebelled against secular parents and ran off to live celibate lives for Christ. But women leaders? We just don’t have much to go on in the written records….

The paper trail is scarce. But we have another reliable source of information on church history.

Art.

“To save your neck muscles, consider packing a small handheld mirror.” Of all the items on the suggested packing list for a class trip to Italy, this surprised my fellow doctoral students the most. But professor Dr. Sandra Glahn knew from leading multiple trips to Italy that we would be craning our necks to view church walls and ceilings. 

Rather than peer down into files full of ancient documents, we stood in dozens of cathedrals and museums—and looked up. Why? Mosaics, frescoes, stained glass, and inscriptions from centuries past remain vivid evidence of who influenced the ancient church. Mosaics shine as brightly now as the day they were installed. Inscriptions can’t be edited or erased. Wood carvings and paintings fill museums and churches across Europe and the Mediterranean countries where the church first exploded in growth. We have a plethora of visual records revealing women in leadership.

And I also like what John Blake wrote about women, and I really like the question he asks… wait for it.

A week after she went on National Public Radio to urge the Southern Baptist Convention to officially accept women as pastors, the Rev. Kristen Muse received an unusual letter at her church office.

The letter, addressed directly to Muse, was stuffed in a large manila envelope along with three pages of scriptural references. The writer asked Muse how she could call herself a pastor when the Apostle Paul said that “I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man; she must be silent” in 1 Timothy 2:11-12. And, by the way, why was she wearing her hair long in church when the Bible clearly states that women should cover their heads or wear their hair short during worship?

Muse then looked closer at the signature at the bottom of the letter: It was a woman’s name.

“It hurt,” says Muse, the executive pastor of Hayes Barton Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her church is considering leaving the SBC because the denomination’s statement of faith declares that “the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by scripture.”

“It hurts even more to know that’s a woman is saying that,” adds Muse, whose congregation has skirted the ban on women pastors because the SBC has traditionally allowed individual congregations some autonomy (her church is headed by a male senior pastor). “I just wonder how long her hair is.”

Here’s another question the letter writer would not have dared ask:

Why do millions of women belong to religious groups like the SBC that do not treat them as equal to men or allow them to have full control of their bodies?

And I liked the review of James Davison Hunter’s book John Hawthorne:

While I like the aspirations present in this quote, it’s not clear how we get there from here. These are certainly not the themes being discussed at the RNC in Milwaukee nor in the current conversation about the Democratic campaign. I wish we had been given a little more in terms of what levers we might use to move toward this idealized outcome.

I do wonder about Hunter’s focus on large scale intellectual leaders like Dewey or Neuhaus or Lippman or Niebuhr. I dare say that people who are in American Studies or US History departments might be familiar, but not most people — including me.

It begs the question about these ideas filter into the culture of everyday people. In reading, I found myself thinking of Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stranger in Their Own Land, which explored the “deep story” of Tea Party members in Louisiana. Beyond the ressentiment that Hunter describes which has echoes in Hochschild, I wanted to know how the Hunter’s big ideas inform those feelings.

I also had question about the figures he focused on in his intellectual contrasts. Why these figures? Are they the primary shapers of culture in their period? Who else might have been considered? How might different pairings shift the argument?

Finally, I found a subtle preference for the more conservative voices in each time period. Clearly, that’s Hunter’s prerogative as an author but it could have been more clearly stated. As it was, I was caught off guard by references to disapproval of Vietnam war protests without mentioning the parallel moral problem of the war itself or by a passing reference to “Fauci’s lies” during COVID.

All in all, I appreciated Hunter’s attempt to explore the Durheimian problem of solidarity in late modern capitalist democracy. We have much work to do for which our current political, media, religious, and educational institutions are not currently prepared.

And if you want to read an exceptionally clear analysis of a narcissistic system, this one by Kat is it:

Narcissism describes when a person cannot tolerate or absorb any form of shame - even “healthy shame” (4) that would enable them to self-reflect and take ownership or accountability.

For example, if someone you love comes to you and says, “You really hurt me when you said ______,” the hope is that even if you feel defensive or misunderstood, you eventually are able to let that “sting” (of shame or guilt) enter in–that feeling that says, “Ohh! I hurt this loved one and I hate that I did that. I want to make this right.” (5)

Most people will eventually be able to get to this point. A narcissistic person, however, will be very resistant to it; instead, he will do everything he can to avoid self-reflection and accountability. (6)

A narcissistic system, then, occurs when a narcissist manipulates the group dynamics to serve his own needs. Other group members then adopt roles that reinforce the narcissist’s self-image and thus become enablers and defenders.

This means that as the narcissist relates in his sphere, there is an interdependent, mutually-reinforcing dynamic that takes place. Since the narcissist is unable to take in shame and determine whether to absorb it or to cast it off (which would require honest curious self-reflection), he must off-load the shame to others at all costs. 

A narcissist off-loads shame through blame, criticism, manipulation, and controlling behavior. All of these function to protect him from shame. 

This is why something known as projection can be common for narcissists –projection is a psychological defense strategy where a person might accuse others around him of things that he is incapable of seeing in himself. Thus, the very flaws he critiques in others may be true about him. As it has been said, “a narcissist’s accusations are often his confessions.” (7)