No Church is Immune from...

No Church is Immune from…

Churches are immune from lots of challenges but no church is immune from politics-based divisions. Covid-19 made this more than abundantly clear. Masks. Just mention the word to most pastors and you will hear tales. Yes, the church has succumbed to an emerging reality in America’s churches: mega-identities. Churches today more and more are aligning with a political party since people prefer to worship with persons with the same political stance. Politics divides church, especially when it comes to race and ethnicity.

In my lifetime, I have watched a polarization based on politics reshape the church in the USA. The 80s shaped evangelicalism into what I call “Reagan-ology,” a fusing of the evangelical church with the Republican party. The Reagan era’s fusings have become reified in contemporary America.

In one of Bob Smietana’s chps in Reorganized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why It Matters, we read about David Platt’s problem in his church in the DC area where, because he preached about race, was called “woke,” a term that has a rich history and meaning for African Americans and has become a slur for some for anyone who cares and advocates for social justice.

Majorities of white Christians (evangelicals, Catholics, mainline) lean Republican; majorities of every other “major faith category” lean Democrat.

The political leaning of a church is invisible to all but those who have a different political persuasion. Evangelicals voted Trump at 85%; Black Protestants were at 91% for Biden. A white conservative visiting a Black church will feel it, just as an African American visiting a suburban evangelical church will feel it.

A mega-identity is “where people’s political views and religious beliefs are merged with their social and regional preferences.” In other words, it’s a package product that of politics and religion wrapped in red or blue.

Plus, the package comes with an affectional, or emotional, ribbon. That is, these are not ideas or positions or intellectual decisions; what drives much of this mega-identity is emotion.

What can we do to break down our mega-identity problem?

Churches have been sorted and are sorting more and more into mega-identities. Churches used to be marked by “cross-cutting identities,” and he relies on Lilliana Mason for this language about identities. Churches had people who differed politically and it was good for the church to have those differences.  Today people in churches see those with other mega-identities as enemies. “It’s hard to worship with people who think you are the devil.”

Smietana always has concrete examples of living realities – like churches that speak of coming to worship and going home, as a result of a raffle, with a gun. Many however have walked into the Nones because of the politics of a local church, a church that contains their friends whom they love.

Tony Campolo, always ready to offer a one-liner: “Putting religion and politics together is like mixing ice cream with horse manure. It doesn’t hurt the horse manure; it ruins the ice cream.” Mega-identities, one could say, ruin the Christian faith. The contaminate the gospel about Jesus. And the more sorted into such identities we become, the more we will experience affective polarizations – the emotional heat will increase. Ruth Braunstein says the more sorted we become this results: “If that is what religion is, then I am not religious.” Bingo.

Dissenting voices will not be permitted; just ask Beth Moore or Russell Moore (no relation).