Book review of "Finding your Feet after Fundamentalism", By Darrell Lackey. With apologies to the other book.
An old friend has published a book. We had an epistolary relationship, fretting about creationism, intelligent design, and related topics back when those were livelier issues than today (and it directly inspired the birth of this blog). He was on his way out of Christian fundamentalism, and into something more liberal, even post-modern. His new book is a somewhat autobiographical account of the problems of fundamentalism, and of leaving fundamentalism as one's tradition. Naturally, evangelism dies hard, and takes this new form of broadcasting the good news of a more moderate and decent Christianity.
The book hits hardest on the issue of Donald Trump. No scandal has so thoroughly demonstrated the ultimate hypocrisy of fundamentalism than its allegiance to Trump. The transaction has given religious conservatives control of the Supreme Court, (though perhaps that owed more to Mitch McConnell), but in return, they showed their support for the most morally vile and incompetent person ever to hold the job. Lackey relates how he was fully in the FOX news orbit in the 90's, happily imbibing its bile. But then something snapped, and by the time of the Trump election, he had fully left fundamentalism and its communities behind. Living in California might have something to do with it, since liberalism, at least of a lip-service sort, is the dominant way of life here. Something that Republicans have learned the hard way.
Yet the interesting part is how strenuously Lackey hews to Christianity, proclaiming that liberal versions are not gateway drugs to atheism. Quite the contrary- close attention to the actual New Testament provides ample justification for things like supporting marginalized communities, helping the poor, afflicting the rich, and viewing one's enemies as possibly reasonable human beings, if not friends in the making. He mentions how false it is for evangelicals to be so eager to spread the good word, but at the same time so deaf to the words of others that actual relationship is impossible- an evangelism of a closed-off community.
For what are the fundamental values? Lackey cites love and beauty. Love is clear enough, (and damning enough regarding the FOX- driven culture of conservative Christianity), but the role of beauty needs a little more explaining. Religious thinkers have spared no effort in extolling the beauty of the world, but in the current world, serious artists are rarely Christian, let alone make Christian art. Why is that? Perhaps it is just intellectual fashion, but perhaps there is a deeper problem, that art, at least in our epoch, is adventurous and probing, seeking to interrogate narratives and power structures rather than celebrate them. Perhaps it is a problem of overpopulation, or of democracy, or of living in late imperial times, or of modernism. But whatever the framework, contemporary Christian communities have become the opposite of all this- anti-intellectual, tone-deaf, and art-hostile (not to mention power-mad). It must be exasperating to someone with even the least appreciation for finer things and for art that is "interesting".
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| Jean-Michel Basquiat- too messy for insensitive temperaments. |
Beauty has deep Christian connotations. The world is god-made, good, and thus beautiful, as indeed we all feel it to be. But life is also messy, competitive, and dark. Death and suffering are part of it as well. If we refuse to own those aspects of the world, and of ourselves, we become blinded to the true nature of things, and expose ourselves to unintended and invisible expressions of the dark side, as we see in the deep hypocrisy on the subject of Trump, on sexual morals, and countless other areas within fundamentalism / evangelicalism. Lackey ticks off a lengthy list of subjects where conservative Christians have become blind to the obvious teachings of Jesus while fixated on relatively minor cultural flashpoints and red meat- symptoms of a general moral blindness borne of, arguably, flaccid aesthetic and intellectual habits.
So I would like to offer another value, which is truth. As a scientist, it is a natural place for me to start, but I think it is both illuminating of, and interrelated with, the other virtues above. What modern artists seek is to express truths about the human condition, not just ring out positive affirmations and hallelujas. Truths about suffering as well as truths about beauty. What scientists seek to do is to find how this world we find ourselves in works, from the cosmos down to the gluon. And they do so because they find it beautiful, and, like addicts, would like to unlock more of that beauty. Beauty inspires love, and love ... can only survive on truth, not lies. So I think these values live in a reinforcing cycle.
All that implies that there is another step to take for someone who has left fundamentalism. That is, to re-evaluate Christianity as a whole. While the achievement of decency (and better taste) by the renunciation of FOX and its religious satellite communities is an enormous step, indeed a momentous one for the preservation of our country's sanity, grappling seriously with the value of truth would suggest an extra leg to the trip. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christianity as a whole is a questionable proposition, philosophically. As a narrative and moral system, it clearly has positive as well as negative potentials. But as a "truth"- with its miracles, resurrections, triune deity, and salvation at the end of the line, (whether for the elect, the saved, the good, or for all)- well, it is impossible to take seriously without heavy doses of tradition and indoctrination.
For his part, Lackey has headed in another direction, into the Eastern Orthodox church, finding a place that richly satisfies the fundamentalist urge to return to one of the most traditional and historically continuous churches in existence, and also one that does not tie itself into intellectual knots about literal truth, living biblically, and the like. Orthodoxy accepts mystery, and cherishes its ancient rites and structures as sufficient theology. It is not modernist, or goaded by the enlightenment to make a rational system of something that so obviously resists reason.
For there is a fine line between lies, illusions, and truths. As anyone who is married will understand (or a citizen of a country, or part of a corporation, or part of any social structure), truth is not the only or necessarily best virtue. A bit of illusion and constructive understanding can make a world of difference. Narrative, ideology, framing, etc. are essential social glues, and even glues of internal psychology. So, given that illusions are integral, the work to identity them, bring them into consciousness, and make positive choices about them is what matters, especially when it comes to social leadership. Do we choose narratives that are reasonably honest, and look forward with hope and love, or ones that go down the easy road of demonization and projection? And what role should the most traditional narratives in existence- those of the ancient religions- have in guiding us?
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