This is in response to terrypinder's diary.
It started out as comment in reply to his last question, but it grew to require a diary of its own.
First off: terrypinder has a right to his fears. People scoffed at the idea that Trump would attempt a coup before January 6. Christian Nationalism is the Devil wearing a cassock--all the more dangerous because it appears banal. It is a classic conspiracy theory. By offering simplified "solutions" to complex problems, it provides a certain sense of security to individuals under stress. The more stressful a society becomes, the more likely its citizens will welcome one or more conspiracy theories. We have a feedback loop here.
It's going to take more than one village to break that loop.
As recently as 2000, one could walk into nearly any Christian church and learn that 1) Jesus loves you, and 2) God hates gays. When our congregation voted to become a More Light church, several families left. Most went to other congregations.
If I were terrypinder, I would not want to walk blindly into a local church and expect to be welcomed. Fortunately, however, most churches now have online presences, and it is possible to safely screen them before making contact.
That said, I think terrypinder would be welcome in my church. And I have an answer to his final question: What we need from you is...your presence, and your support.
While I can’t speak for the entire religious left, in my particular church, there’s no requirement for any specific belief about God or heaven--but we are expected to commit ourselves to following Jesus—to do our best to live according to his teachings, and to support each other in doing so. As a church, we support a small congregation in Hungary as it helps Ukrainian refugees. We provide reparation scholarships to students of color (of any faith) at our local high school. We provide support for summer classes at Liberty Church in North Minneapolis. Our Earth Angels Apostle Group focuses on ecology and climate change outreach. Sunday services are available via Zoom, as well as masked in the church itself. Sited in a Minneapolis suburb, we are a mostly white congregation, but we have blacks and asians who are active members, plus several gay couples with children. (We probably have the only worship band in Minnesota with a Jewish banjo player!)
The thing is, to become more effective in our outreach, we need more people. (Where would Democrats be if only the caucus attendees voted in November?)
When confronted with Authoritarion demonstrations of force, the immediate wish is for a similarly structured anti-force. But when two giants fight, it's the little folk around them who get trampled. Instead, to effectively counter top-down autocracy, we need bottom-up democracy. Dandelions eventually break sidewalks. Millions of drops of water wear away rocks.
And this is where the religious left comes into play.
People who feel safe in the world don’t fall into rabbit holes of conspiracy. Churches like mine provide spaces where people can safely be themselves. Creating trust between people takes time--like any other kind of building process, it is slow, incremental, often discouragingly so. We need the support of our friends to help us "keep on keeping on" when we get discouraged. Our congregation is there with encouragement when we need it.
Fighting viral memes has all too much in common with fighting covid. There are many small steps that help. The more people working the steps, the more effective the steps become. And immunization is perhaps the single most effective step of all.
To immunize against a conspiracy theory, we have to find the “unvaccinated”. These would be the typical apolitical and/or pre-political people. The vaccination process simply describes the wild theories, and points out that they truly are unbelievable.
Of course, it is even more effective to train outreach teams, who can go out into the hinterlands and vaccinate. These people will need to be well prepared with ideas to counter the prevailing viral memes. Larger churches with active youth groups can provide direct training for kids in how to recognize conspiracy theories early and defuse them before they spread through a school. Unlike memorizing a catechism, this means teaching the kids how to evaluate the implied social outcomes from the various conspiracies (because, as Jesus pointed out, “By their fruits you shall know them.”)
Another approach is the symptomatic treatment. Any idea that can weaken the viral mimetic hold on a human mind. For example, there’s this otherwise intelligent Trump fan I’m working on--when he tossed out the idea that George Soros was funding the protesters in the summer of 2020, I replied, “Oh, come on!!! If I had that kind of money, I could think of dozens of more effective ways to spend it to reach my goals!” That didn’t cure him completely—but it did make him think.
But asking the kinds of questions that will cause someone to think also requires preparation. I had to listen to my friend over time, in order to discover that he had an engineering background which would respond to a logical challenge. I needed to earn his respect as someone who could think clearly about the world at large.
Most conspiracy theories have a grain of truth in them—and it may be worth following that truth to see where it actually leads. Consider Big Pharma. There’s all kinds of evidence that pharmaceutical companies are out to make pots of money. And there’s no harm at all in finding yourself and your friend in complete agreement on this. But the hole in the antivaxxer theory is just there—people will only buy pharmaceuticals if they actually work, so Big Pharma has a real incentive to produce vaccines that really do what is claimed. And it may be worth investigating the financial incentives for those who hype vaccine alternatives.
And this is where people like terrypinder can really add to congregations like mine. He has a gut-level grasp of the dangers of fundamentalism. There are people in churches like mine who need to be immunized against Christian Nationalism, and it is voices like terrypinders who can most effectively do that job. In exchange, terrypinder, isn't there a building project you would like to take on (with a bit of help)?
