By Eric Blauer
We used to say there were three things you shouldn’t talk about: race, religion and politics but I think cable news has imploded that rule of relational decorum. I think the new three are: gender, sexual identity and birth ethics (abortion/women’s health).
I am someone who is fairly passionate about religion, politics and race, probably in that order. As an educator, writer and speaker, I find myself engaged in dialogue and debate quite often, but nothing seems to go nuclear and personal quicker than the new forbidden three.
I find this extremely frustrating in light of the fact that all citizens of the United States have the privilege and responsibility to practice their civl duty and vote. We elect representatives to vote on matters that touch these supposedly, forbidden topics. The political system demands us to engage matters we may or may not have a personal connection to in a way that justifies our voice in the eyes of some people.
On one hand people decry the uneducated voter but on the other, deny them the expansive, public discourse needed to become informed. The very act of questioning the presented evidence is shouted down with cries of intolerance, ignorance and other shaming tactics that shut down the willingness to engage the rigorous process of coming to truth. Our conversations are so precarious and potentially injurious, it’s easy to just retreat into one’s own safe circle of likeminded, ‘pat on the backs’.
The average person is being forced to deal with matters that professional scientists in biology, psychology, sociology and theology can’t even agree upon and yet we must still cast votes and have answers in our circles of community be they civil, religious or relational. Where do we turn if we cannot engage the issues without being tied to the guillotine for even wanting to air our questions, concerns or commitments?
Unfortunately, the public court of opinion will have nothing of the judicial-like court process. To cross-examine or present other witnesses or evidence is an act of personal injury upon someone, somewhere. Every juror is guilty of a false verdict just by entering the court, in fact, to even have a court of inquiry is an act of ugly intolerance. We are expected to accept great changes in traditions, values, science, language and cultural institutions and to do so with no hesitancy, questioning, or inquisitive challenge.
Here are a few issues that I think need healthy debate and dialogue:
- 1If someone says they feel a certain way about something that is considered by many to be illogical, immoral, unreasonable, biologically improbable or unsustainable and/or potentially dangerous to society or themselves.
- Why does someone’s feeling about themselves determine or define reality for others?
- If other people’s choices involve me or my children, shouldn’t we have the chance to challenge those new developments?
- If laws potentially affect my business practices or values or if areas of extreme personal privacy, now become confusingly open or if we are having to altar our interpersonal understandings of matters of gender, sexuality and identity.
I am sensitive to the fact that these matters revolve around people and they are not just positions or policies but we are being forced by the rabid changes in our culture to explain, enforce and evolve in ways that are directly related to polices because we are a community of individuals.
I am committed to doing my best to navigate through these cultural minefields but I will not allow mutated views of tolerance to strangle the gift of pluralism that this country has set as one of it’s guiding ideals.
I heard William Lane Craig say something like:
If you tolerate a view, it means you don’t agree with it, you think it is wrong, but you tolerate it.If you agreed with it, you wouldn’t need to tolerate it because you consider it true. You can only tolerate a view you consider false, the concept of tolerance entails a commitment to truth.
I think that distinction needs to be deeply reinforced in todays education systems, we are to value all, but that doesn’t mean we have to agree with all. As a Christian loving others means we ‘will and work’ for their good, but that doesn’t mean we have to agree with them at all. We can value one another’s human worth as created in God’s image or as fellow human beings, but nobody has to bow to someone else’s view of reality just because they feel or think a certain way.
Such straightjacket reasoning is hamstringing public discourse and the culture that gave birth to this new mutated understanding of tolerance is now getting devoured by it.
Your third point, “that needs healthy debate”, is very nearly the heart of the entire issue. That is, “if someone else’s decisions involve me and my children, shouldn’t we have the chance to challenge those developments?” The point that anti-equality christian’s can’t seem to grasp is that this entire civil rights movement is aimed at challenging the Christian decisions that have condemned LGBT citizens for so long.
Societies change. So too do customs and individuals. In American society we are seeing an awakening to the idea that Christian ideas, which have largely been given a pass for the last 239 years, also require critical evaluation. As a result, Christians themselves are experiencing a sort growing pain as a result. These growing pains are the impetus of this and other similar articles like “The Duggar controversy is not an indictment of conservative Christians.”
Your discomfort with the current state of things is concerning to you and so you exert yourself in the hopes of creating change. That natural response to discomfort is basic human nature. After over 200 years of being subjected to ancient biblical ideas, the LGBT community and the 61% of American’s that support them, are exerting themselves to create change as well. The difference is, you’ve never been under their thumb. Another major difference is that the progress of humanitarian desires have decided, that you’re on the failing side. Fortunately, this isn’t the first time for you. Culture has evolved on several outdated Christian ideas like slavery, interracial marriage, women rights, etc. You’ll recover, adapt and move on as always.
The nature of these debates surround basic human rights. This is why anti-equality christians find little tolerance for their arguments that being gay is a choice, conversion therapy works, deliverance/exorcism is a viable solution, Gays are condemned to hell, etc. This is not a trend that’s likely to subside. More and more American’s stand for equality everyday.
I voted for marriage equality but thanks for your comment.
I know you did. Doesn’t change the point. You still believe they’ll be ultimately judged for their lifestyle. Culture has shifted. All Christians can do is adapt. You’re in the process, while many have already. There is a large community of progressive believers that don’t share your stated struggles. The credibility of Christians that do share your struggle, has been called into question, by their own actions, to the point that challenging them feels like a no brainer.
I disagree. Progressive christianity is dying. Atheism has little to offer the thinking soul and ethical relativism leads to moral darkness.
Ah yes. All those who don’t believe in Christ, dwell in moral darkness. Unfortunately this viewpoint does nothing to alleviate the growing pains you’re feeling.
You’re projecting Bryce. Please share your opinion about yourself but please let others speak for themselves.
That’s funny. I was thinking that you’re projecting too Eric. 🙂 You are writing out of the frustration of feeling socially strangled and edged out for your beliefs. While I, on the other hand, am celebrating a steady drumbeat of victories.
I couldn’t agree less. Progressive Christianity didn’t die out with the abolitionist movement. Progressive Christianity didn’t die out with women’s suffrage. Nor did it die out with interracial marriage, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, nor the LGBT rights movement. And it will not die out with whatever expansion of God’s justice dwells just beyond the next horizon. Progressive Christianity has always been the authentic, prophetic voice of Christianity; the greatest danger it faces comes when the truths it struggles to proclaim become so commonplace that they are accepted by the next generation of regressive devotees of Christendom, whose battle cry has always been “this far and no farther.” But then, at that point it has ceased to be either progressive or Christian, hasn’t it?
According to very good, professional polls, a little over 20% of protestant Christians identify positively with progressive Christianity issues. Add those who have left the church and the number is much greater. It hasn’t died out, only in churches that tend to be very exclusive in their definition of Christianity.
You once quoted Rev 22 to me. “”Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile”. Your viewpoint of the “vile” is clear.
Eric, you said, “We are expected to accept great changes in traditions, values, science,
language and cultural institutions and to do so with no hesitancy,
questioning, or inquisitive challenge.” As you have written abut many of the tough topics that you refer to, how can you also now say that you are being “expected to accept…without questioning, or inquisitive challenge.”? You are examining these topics in a public forum, engaging others with your questions and continuing to live out your truth as you now hold it, as are the commenters on your articles. I think your articles engender quite a lot of open debate, and that FAVs has one of the most open, wide-ranging, and thoughtful group of writers and commenters. How can you say that discourse is being strangled?
Favs is only one circle I’m in and I think this is primarily a liberal/progressive voice as almost all the interaction reflects.
As a platform we are unique but I think that reflects the dangers of ultra-fundamentalism in both sides.
So, pluralism isn’t dead on Spokane FAVs? I’m glad to hear it! I enjoy reading what ALL of our writers have to say, as it makes me think about why I believe what I believe, and often my opinions change based on something I have debated with everyone here.
1. Woman’s health, and specifically abortion and reproductive rights, has received more attention legislatively and judicially in the past ten years than since the early 80’s. It’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that robust debate on this topic isn’t occurring, or that it is somehow being constrained.
2. Both sexual orientation and gender identity have been discussed and debated ad nausieum for decades. I wish we could have been having a “honest debate” about sexual orientation when I was 13. I may not have hated myself so much for being gay if that were the case.
The only thing that’s changed about the debates on these topics is that the subjects of the debate (women, LGBT people, etc) aren’t willing to allow themselves to be trampled anymore under the guise of free speech. If sharp criticism is the worst someone has to endure in a debate on these topics, I’d say they have it pretty good.
Here’s a non-Christian author, writing an article that is saying similar things but using the Caitlyn/Jenner Vanity Fair event as the example.
Call me Caitlyn or else: the rise of authoritarian transgender politics
Brendan O’Neill
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/brendan-oneill/2015/06/call-me-caitlyn-or-else-the-rise-of-authoritarian-transgender-politics/
“What the Cult of Caitlyn confirms, beyond a doubt, is that there is nothing progressive in trans politics. It is shrill, censorious, unreal, demanding compliance, punishing dissent. Progressives should reject it. Jesus was not the Son of God, Bruce Jenner is not a woman, and, I’m sorry, but 2 + 2 = 4, and it always will.”
Wow. That wasn’t so much an article as it was a temper-tantrum with buzzwords. The not-so-simple fact of the matter is that gender is determined by what’s between a person’s ears, not by what’s between their legs. This is frightening for some people, as it requires a suspension of judgment–we cannot assume based on someone’s genital configuration, or manner of dress, or even historical behaviour that they belong in one category or another, subject to one set of culturally-conditioned expectations or another. It is frightening, in short, for some people to admit that perhaps they don’t know a perfect stranger quite so well as that person knows themself, and that they don’t have the right to insist that person adopt and conform to the identity that has been chosen for them. It is frightening to acknowledge the full humanity of another person, because doing so requires relinquishing the illusion of control. Fortunately for those of us who would call ourselves Christian, “perfect loves drives out fear.”
Um, I believe that Jesus IS the son of God, so…is that author saying that I am not a “progressive” Christian, ’cause that’s just silly. Like all “progressive” anythings, or ANY group, all believe/think/feel the same things. Again with the labels…really doesn’t further the conversation.
I guess I’d just emphasize how very, very figurative the giullotine in your metaphor is. I agree with you that we all need to get better at listening to each other. But there’s a difference between a topic being closed to debate, on one hand, and people fighting for hard-won ground, on the other. You and I, in general, can debate gender politics all day without ever feeling personally threatened in our identities or rights – maybe disrespected or disliked, sure, but not threatened. To transgender folks, just for an example, the debate isn’t so safely hypothetical. So, I guess my answer is that there’s a special burden on us white, educated, middle-class dudes to make an empathic leap first, and ask if we’re really just asking to be heard, or if a reasonable person might suspect we’re trying to turn back the clock on some very painful history.
Just my 2 cents. I think I’ve felt the frustration you’re talking about, so now I’m trying to remember how I got past it.
Well put, Eric. If your article were about the topics that are ignored, I would reply like most below. It’s interesting they tend to discuss the censoring of culture war topics. HOWEVER I have noticed that we have not had a discussion about Climate change, The Coal and Gas going through our community and their contribution to global warming and the threat of massive destruction, the use by our violence industries of drones, the acceptance of torture, and the economic policies that oppress vulnerable minorities and third world countries. There is a reason, or several, that, IMHO, allow this ignorance, and it is a power issue: Those who profit off these oppressive social institutions and behaviors also control the press and our educational institutions, including what is talked about in our churches. Most ministers, following the Grahams and many ministers that like access to the political nobility of our culture, don’t want to risk their jobs or their standing in the eyes of those who wield the power. We need a more sophisticated analysis of the effect of powers’ control of the media.