Chargrill

Bottom line: I know what I'm talking about because I've lived it on both sides.

The US is absolutely saturated with cultural Christianity in general and the calvinist values of the original settlers in particular. The vast majority of people in the US are either Christian or culturally Christian. Because of this, everyone who does not do the immense amount of work to deconstruct those views and values and actively replace them with something different is going to be coming at the world from this viewpoint.

One of those views has to do with equating purity with integrity. Purity of thought, purity of actions, and purity of associations. Anything impure must be shunned and cast aside. Once someone or something has been deemed impure, you must immediately cut all ties too or you will also become impure.

I'm sure you can see how this plays out when trying to build a coalition around a specific area of advocacy: coalition building is damn hard when everyone you might ally with is viewed as being fully 100% endorsed for all topics and purposes by you once you ally with them. This creates three major problems: 1) You have a much smaller pool of people to draw from, once you've vetted them to make sure that you fully agree with them on everything, 2) it means that your cause must be every cause and you must form full-fledged opinions on every major topic regardless of whether it relates to your focus area, so that ultimately every cause is seen as so thoroughly related that it's hard to focus on just one issue, and 3) you ultimately end up with a bloc of groupthink, because to remain in the coalition (and therefore within its protection) you must tow the party line on the other issues. If you don't, you risk being cast out due to the purity of association thing.

The purity of actions piece makes it exceptionally difficult for people to come back from mistakes, which inevitably everyone is going to make. There is a process of sorts, but the "accountability" I've seen from the left is far less focused on learning from your mistakes and correcting the harm you caused to the best of your ability, and far more about accepting whatever unreasonable demands, public shaming, and abuse people want to heap on you for an indefinite period of time. There is no clear ending to it and no guarantee of real forgiveness, but it starts the second you flinch and admit that you screwed up. This process is so demoralizing and painful that many people leave and never return. The ones who do are unlikely to ever admit a mistake ever again.

The purity of mind thing makes it really difficult to interrogate these issues at all. Christianity itself has become something of a persona non grata in leftist spaces because of how terrible the church as an institution and many individual Christians have been to various minorities. So many people have deep, irreparable spiritual wounds from Christianity that discussing cultural Christianity or unpacking the ideas they absorbed from it is itself a trigger for their religious trauma. So things like the above analysis? Not something that is likely to happen unprompted and often gets a massive emotional reaction when pointed out to people by outsiders. Nevertheless, these ideas are all carried over from people's Christian or culturally Christian backgrounds and then never unpacked and examined critically.

And even if you can get past the trauma reaction, there is a huge barrier of understanding that cultural Christianity actually exists, is a real factor in society, and is something people need to be aware of. Namely: Christianity itself tries to separate itself from culture to be able to infiltrate every possible other culture, and therefore the very idea of religion-as-culture is difficult to fathom for those inside of it. There is a resistance to questioning doctrine and what has been deemed to be the right beliefs, and there is a resistance to understanding how this is a meta version of the thing itself.

Another mental purity thing that comes up is that Christianity has correct belief ("faith") at the heart of its core beliefs. If you stop believing, you are no longer a member in good standing, and that is also really the only way TO leave. Therefore, to leave, a lot of people simply stop believing in the core required religious tenets without unpacking anything further. Pointing out to them that there is much more work to do and in fact that it has just started, causes major breakdowns because they did the One Thing They Weren't Supposed to Do. They quit believing in the actual spiritual elements, and have accepted all of the fury and threats of hell that came with it. So if you say: "My guy, you just substituted this particular leftist work for the Bible and The Revolution for Revelations, you might want to reconsider that and look at how it's effecting your advocacy," expect waterworks and gnashing of teeth rather than introspection and commitment to change.

And as someone who's done that work?

Great question! Glad you asked!

Two things:

A) Well, actually they are having many of those same problems (think about the whole bizarre RINO, uhh Thing, for example); and,

B) There are a number of other factors that contribute to their ability to work with (or at least around) these problems in ways that the left can't or won't, but a lot of them boil down to the following:

They accept authority and appeals to authority far more than leftists

They are frequently single issue voters (the forced birth movement in particular is notoriously bad on this level) and so can be convinced to ally with the actual scum of the earth if their one major issue is addressed; this does not create a purity issue because their locus of purity centers on that one issue rather than a larger framework of social justice where all issues are intersectional

Probably a lot of other reasons; I'll tag @batboyblog to see if he has additional thoughts on the civics/voting side of things

But most importantly from my perspective on this post: they are actually Christians, so they have the theological framework to address these holdups internally. The big problem with leaving Jesus behind but still applying those views and beliefs to secular issues is that when things don't make sense, there's no home base to center corrections on.

I've been kinda waiting for someone to say something to this effect because this comes up a lot when cultural Christianity is discussed.

I'll add on the bit for the right, from my experience growing up in the south: a lot of the religious right is based on purity of belief and redemption. "I accepted Jesus so nothing else matters." The very Calvinist belief that if you're among god's elect, the chosen, then you're good, you're going to heaven. Actions don't matter so much as belief or being chosen for salvation. That's why you can have vile, unkind people be fervent Christians. They don't need to do anything, like feed the poor or love their neighbors. They're already In, so to speak. So everything is irrelevant. That's why they can vote for a serial liar rapist fraud like Trump - being kind doesn't matter, being preordained as chosen does.

And frankly, the right is much better at coalition building than the left at this point in history. They can unify culture warriors on abortion and race with socially liberal inclusive business interests by appealing to both of their senses of independence and the Calvinist view that if you're rich you deserved it because you're inherently good. Tons of the success of the right since Reagan has been building coalitions with unique and diverse interests like the religious right, gun owners, business, etc. They appeal to individual issues these voters care about and say "vote republican"

Meanwhile leftists will ignore any good Biden does on any issue because he's not pure enough on Palestine. Or that he hasn't done enough on this or that or the other. It's fucking tiring.

You even see fractures on the left right now. The black and Jewish communities, which were powerfully united during the civil rights era, have broken on Israel and Palestine. The left practically rejects any coalition with white working class voters in the Midwest or rural areas, despite that being the backbone of the New Deal coalition. You see people actively not caring about entire swaths of the country or industries and the people who live and work in them. Like. West Virginia used to be the backbone of labor, of the Democratic party, and now it has gone full Trump because the modern Democratic party and many on the left actively don't care about old white Appalachian hicks.

The left has got to get better about coalition building, about accepting diverse people with diverse views all moving in fits and starts toward common goals instead of fucking rejecting anyone with a whiff of something they don't agree with.

If you live in the U.S. then you hear religious ideas discussed in public forums regularly. The right has forced Christian topics into mainstream debate for decades. Christianity and culture are inseparable in the U.S., but that's not what cultural Christianity means, at its core. What it means - and I say this because I've see way too many people on this hellsite misunderstand - is that the basic culture of the country is informed by the religious ideas and interpretations of the people who that culture traces back to and is built on. You can perpetuate cultural Christianity without being affiliated with Christian institutions or communities or even being Christian at all. There is a specifically Calvinist approach to how ideas are discussed in the U.S. - even secular ones - and the ways in which engaging with others is socially acceptable. The more you read up on Calvinism and how the early Puritans interpreted it, the more you recognize contemporary American culture, political discourse, and the way the political left polices itself. Everything in the thread above is an accurate and brilliant assessment of this.

I also think it's important to mention the impact of the Bush era on all of this. Their political PR machine was devastatingly effective. Years before Twitter they boiled down political rhetoric to short sound bites. They did this by sending their representatives out to news shows, interviews, campaign events, basically any public forum, and ensuring that on any given issue every one of those people would repeat the prescribed sound bite or phrase that had been pre-written for them. They argued their positions clearly, succinctly, and ensured it was saved in people's memories through the power of repetition. If they were asked diverging questions their job was to repeat the sound bite and avoid engaging with any other probing questions. It was infuriating, because this appealed to their own voter base (the single-issue Christians) while also making it difficult, if not impossible, for their opponents to offer counter arguments, because once you offer people an idea that's terse, clean, and easy to remember, most won't be interested in a complex and nuanced counter-perspective. It also appealed to people who weren't interested in politics but found it hard to remain neutral in a time of war, because it validated their ignorance while giving them easy to remember sound bites to regurgitate. To round this out, Bush constantly pushed the idea that belief isn't exclusive to religious faith, but can also be the basis of convictions in all aspects of life. The vibe was, "I don't have to know if I'm right, I just have to feel like I am."

Meanwhile, they defunded education aggressively, so after 8 years of pushing these ideas and changing the cultural narrative and approach to discourse in horrifically effective ways, they had public schools nationwide churning out students who had been deprived of basic media literacy skills and critical thinking skills, who are thus much easier to appeal to with simplistic ideas and lack of nuance. This, coupled with the cultural Calvinism of the U.S., is what enabled social media to succeed in the format it has. Before Facebook there was Friendster, which started with the format of leaving "testimonials" on friends' pages. Instagram started out with people sharing photos of their daily lives. Facebook itself took more than a leaf out of Friendster's book (including aesthetic and branding).

Social media started out as a way for people to connect with each other, catch up with old friends they otherwise wouldn't have bothered to find, share their lives, and be nice to each other. As it slowly shifted to the dogpiling, insecurity breeding, soulless money-grabbing hellscape these sites are now most people didn't question it, because they were used to not questioning. As fake news and propaganda became widespread, people didn't get angry at being deceived, or log off a site that was feeding them lies, because most of them had internalized the ideas the Bush administration sold them: what they read was true because they believed it was, the actual truth was irrelevant because their personal beliefs were just as valid as facts. They liked the dopamine hit they chased on social media, and they could validate themselves enough to continue.

There's a lot that is swirling in my mind right now because I'm replying to the discussion response as a whole, not individual posts, so bear with me if this is a bit all over the map.

One thing to preface: I've said this elsewhere and I'll say it again because it bears repeating I think. "Culturally Christian" in and of itself is NOT meant to be a term of coercion or abuse by outsiders, but rather a neutral description of the cultural milieu we live in here. It can simply be a neutral descriptor of a neutral trait that simply must be named and identified and addressed as the bias and ideological framework that it is. For example, my own parents are culturally Christian. They dropped the theology many years ago at this point and are functionally atheists from that perspective, but they still go to the church they raised me in because that's their community. That's their people. They are honestly pretty self-aware of this for people within it and yet I still know that means that I must account for this cultural gap when I explain Jewish stuff to them.

(B"H they have been wonderfully supportive of my conversion, even though they now understand that this means I have acculturated away from the community and culture they raised me in. Credit where credit is due, I can't imagine that's easy.)

I framed these posts initially in the negative because, in this context, American Calvinism really is hurting progressive movements here, both in its own right and from a meta perspective of refusing to identify and interrogate where certain ideas are coming from. Also American Calvinism has few redeeming qualities, in my opinion, even if there are some good qualities in Christianity more broadly. (*Pin that thought, more on that later.)

It's not even really that helpful to label people as culturally Christian in my opinion, but rather thoughts, ideas, and behavioral patterns that flow from having been raised in a Christian culture without also being raised in a fully formed minority culture that is different. Some of those are even Christians from vastly different cultures! I've talked to Coptic Christians who grew up in Muslim majority countries and guess what? Their attitudes overlap far more with Islam than American Calvinism. Same thing with the culturally Catholic (admittedly ex-Catholic) folks I've spoken to from Latine countries, culturally Orthodox Christians living in proximity to eastern cultures and religions, and even some from the African-American churches who center their Christianity less on the Calvinism of their white abusers but rather on Black identity, liberation theology, and the Exodus narrative. This is not to absolve any of the above of having issues, bad acts, or problematic ideology — everyone has that (yes including Jews and Jewish culture, don't think I don't see our intracommunity issues) — but those problems are different and most importantly to this discussion, they do not create the baseline ideological framework for the United States. That would, unfortunately, be white settler Christianity in particular.* That other groups have gotten caught up in it or forced to work with it because it's too powerful to have to work against it is less an indictment or devaluation of these cultures, but simply a practical reality when it is the proverbial soup you swim in.

Which brings me to:

Systems, prevailing cultural attitudes, and infrastructure are also helpful things to identify as being culturally Christian when that is in fact the case. Labeling a person as a whole human being as ontologically culturally Christian is not only not optimal but often hurts the conversation by causing people with genuine religious trauma from Christianity (and especially fundamentalist and/or calvinist Christianity — a not-small portion of progressives) to understandably and reflexively shut down.

It also — spicy opinion incoming — plays into culturally Christian fears itself, in that it judges whole people and their lives as one, immutable thing. And so in Calvinist speak, what that means is that if someone is labeled culturally Christian because of their negative behaviors that flow from that, what they hear is that they are not selected for heaven but condemned to Hell. Or, to translate that again to secular cultural Christian speak, they have been adjudged to be Problematic in an ontological and unfixable way. Which is actually not what I think the Jews of tumblr are usually meaning by this; usually it's meant as a shorthand for: "you were raised in a Christian culture and I'm trying to help you break out of some negative thought and behavioral patterns that I, a cultural outsider, have observed. You can't go back in time and change your upbringing and you shouldn't have to change your default culture unless you individually want to, but you seem to want to divorce yourself from Christianity while simultaneously are still acting within its framework in a way that is actively harmful to others [usually this is said in the context of someone being antisemitic in a CC way] and ultimately to your goals. Let's work on that together, shall we?"

And of course, the people who need to hear what we are actually saying and our intended meaning the most are, unfortunately, the least likely to listen. This is because if they haven't unpacked their culturally Christian framework, they sure as hell haven't worked to unpack their culturally Christian antisemitism. Of which there is a lot. Christianity as a religion was built on the bones of a profoundly desperate and traumatized Jewish apocalyptic cult that was then stolen and colonized like the rest of Eretz Yisrael by the Romans. This would be the same Romans who hated and felt threatened by Judaism, Jewish peoplehood, and Jewish national identity, and therefore baked these ideas into Christianity's foundational texts. This has morphed and warped over time into not just theological opposition and anti-Judaism, but is the precursor to 2000 years of European (and their colonies') violent antisemitism, up to and very much including the Holocaust (even though that had already twisted into a racialized hatred post-Enlightenment) and certain types of goyische opposition to Jewish national identity today. There's even an argument that early Christianity's attempts to cut its own umbilical cord to Judaism led to our modern understanding of racial categories and all of the associated horrors that came with it.

It is in some ways the Ur-example of why cultural appropriation is morally wrong and evil, and can carry disastrous consequences for the original (often indigenous) culture it came from. (But I digress.)

Bottom line: if you were raised in Christianity or a Christian culture or have only learned about Judaism through a Christian lens, you have a lot of antisemitism to unpack, and it's not gonna be fun. Having done it (and periodically reassessing to make sure it doesn't creep back in) it can be cathartic. I can recommend some reading for anyone looking to actually do this work of unlearning.

Which brings us back around to the thoughts I'd pinned above with an * to hold on to.

I want to make now a distinction between the gory and inexcusable antisemitic violence of the church, the horrific twisting of scripture to serve white supremacy in the US via American Calvinism, and the genuinely good parts of Christianity and the good people who are Christians and/or culturally Christian.

The first thing is something that absolutely must be reckoned with in a real way by all Christians globally, as this is a problem deeply embedded in the fabric of Christianity itself. We can expect no real progress on Christian antisemitism until this has been done, and quite frankly Christians need to do this for your own sake to heal the body of Christ and the soul of the church. For how can the church be God's hands in the world if they are covered in the blood of their Jewish brothers? How can the church be fit to be the bride of Christ when she celebrates this union with the rape and murder of her Jewish sisters? But ultimately, as much as I can offer tochecha, loving rebuke, and implore good-hearted Christians to listen, it is not up to Jews to mend this breakdown in your humanity and your ability to see ours. It is up to Christians to do teshuva — that is, seek repentance in a way that earns forgiveness through fixing what can be fixed, grieving what cannot and offering alternative restoration where possible, and fundamentally changing yourselves to prevent future pogroms and Holocausts. That is how Jews address sins against our fellow human beings, and it is our belief that not even G-d can forgive you if you haven't made your best effort first. If you seek our forgiveness, understand that it will need to be on our terms, by doing teshuva.

The second thing is something all American Christians, especially all non-Black American Christians, and exponentially moreso white American Christians, need to seriously reckon with and work on unlearning the white supremacy settler version of Christianity, of which Calvinism is very much a part. The truth is — and if you look into the linked source above, written by a Black Christian man, you'll see what I mean as he explains this much more eloquently and deeply than I ever could — American Christianity and whiteness are linked, hand in hand, and Christianity was used as a tool of oppression and violence for our entire country's history from the very start of the colonies to the present day. Christians of color, especially Black and Native Christians, have done a lot of this unpacking for themselves and wrestled with their faith until they found versions of it that were not simply the master's tools. Some white Christians have started this process as allies, but that is not my place to assess. All I can say is that there is a lot more work to do, and, like the discussion of teshuva above, reparations are in order. If you are a white American Christian and you haven't started to unpack the deep ties between American Christianity and racism, you have a moral obligation to start. Even for non-Christians, learning how cultural Christianity plays into American racism is something we need to do, too, especially those of us who were raised as white Christians. This is an area I very much include myself in; being Jewish has helped me identify lingering cultural Christianity in my anti-racism learning, but does not absolve me (or anyone like me) from this lifelong process.

Which brings us to that third and final category: the possibility of a Christianity that has redeemed itself, and the good-hearted Christians that have the ability to realize that vision collectively over time, probably over the course of generations.

I'm going to be blunt: this is something I had a lot more faith in before the utter inhumanity expressed towards Jews in the wake of October 7th, specifically and especially by progressive Christians. You collectively and the majority of you individually failed us miserably. This is an open wound for me because I lost progressive Christian friends over what should have been a moment of solidarity. I can hardly even talk about it because I really believed in the ability of progressive Christianity to do this tikkun, to make this repair of the gaping wound of Christian antisemitism. I was so invested in interfaith work because I knew people who believed it was their mission to change that fate. That the church is not doomed to repeat the sins of its forefathers but can break the cycle of violence. To say that seeing said friends refer to the largest antisemitic massacre of Jews on one day since the Holocaust, replete with rape, torture, burning people alive with their children wrapped in barbed wire to them, mutilation, and ultimate murder of 1200 Israelis and the taking of hundreds more as hostages as legitimate "resistance" is a betrayal? I don't even have the words. Ein milim. It's been nearly eight months and there are still hostages and my belief in gentiles' ability to even see us as human has been shaken to my core. It wasn't everybody, but it was everybody I knew here. I have since met a small handful of new people who are progressive Christians who met us in our grief and outcry, and that is not nothing. It is a seed of hope and hope is everything.

But everyone I knew before on here (and even some in person) is someone who has fundamentally broken my trust in a way that cannot really be fixed. Not without some significant apologies offered unprompted that show they have done some deep learning on this issue and truly understand how profoundly they have hurt us and sincerely regret it. That would earn your forgiveness from me as an individual (if not necessarily my trust on this matter), but the ugly truth is that teshuva is only complete once a similar set of facts arises and that would require a similarly traumatic event to occur to my people. I am not so naive as to think that's not fully possible in my lifetime, but you'll have to excuse me for davening every day that this does not come to pass.

How about this: if your work in teshuva prevents said future violence, such that you never get the opportunity to support us like you should have, I'll forgive you anyway.

Now and most importantly, are the actionable things:

So first, with the above in mind, I still think it's absolutely critical for progressive Christians to get involved and begin building a Christianity that doesn't sully the blood of Jesus with the bloodshed of innocents. The ground cries out to Hashem and if you stand idly by the blood of your brother, you will be held accountable in the end. We can't stop this violence for you; we need you to step up and start clawing your faith back from the bigots who will use it to kill us all. This needed to start, like, yesterday, but now is better than later. Put unlearning antisemitism at the top of your list. Not because Jews are more important than anyone else, but 1) so it's not an afterthought or forgotten entirely, which has been my experience so far, and 2) because antisemitism is so foundational to Christianity that I don't know how you can even begin to fully root out the rest without having done that first. Choose the shack on the rock rather than the castle in the sand. If you need help figuring that out, you know where to find me and I'm happy to help however I can.

As for people who have left Christianity or were raised culturally but not religiously Christian and are trying to unlearn cultural Christianity, feel free to message me for sources on whatever topic you're looking for. If I don't know, I'll poll my friends for you. :)

Additionally, there was at least one comment in the tags about how difficult it can be to balance avoiding purity politics with laying down with the flea-ridden dogs, so to speak.

It's a good question and deserves an actionable answer. I wouldn't say I have a full or complete answer for all such situations (anyone who does is overconfident or lying tbh) but here are some questions to get you started:

I mean honestly, stopping and asking the question itself, every time, really is the best place to start.

Ask yourself and your comrades to weigh the pragmatic value of allying with this person or group versus making a point of not doing so.

What is it you are actually doing with them, and how does that impact the seriousness of your connection to them?

Is allying with them going to make you or members of your group actually unsafe? (Not vibes. Concrete safety concerns.)

(Examples of some actual safety concerns might be: physical or spiritual violence against Jews, transphobes not respecting people's genders in spaces where there would be direct interaction with trans folks and the transphobes, people refusing to wear masks or take Covid and high-risk folks' safety seriously, etc.)

Is their negative quality actually so negative that engaging them at all is eating fruit of the poisoned vine? Or will it simply make a small number of disproportionately loud and self-styled "radical" people squawk about it on social media? Are those people's opinions really so critical to maintain?

How likely is it that, if you organize with objectionable people, that they will use this as a way to get their foot in the door and recruit, either from your ranks or whoever else you're engaging with who might be reassured of their legitimacy by their connection to you?

How fortified against disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, and/or recruitment tactics are you, your comrades, and/or your allies?

Are there ways to mitigate any of the above? Do they mitigate it to a point that you feel comfortable allying with these people for your limited pragmatic purposes anyway?

depending how much sodium, potassium, and/or calcium is available, you can get different feldspars! labradorite is my favorite.

remember: stay OUT of the miscibility gap.

time was never on our side

“i dream of you every night. but i no longer remember what your face looks like.”