Evangelically Departed aims to outline concepts of Hopeful Theology in Christian faith. Many people have found some expressions of Christian theology to be far less than hopeful. One of the ways that we articulate this is to argue that any eschatological (the end of things) story that has a small percentage of people in some state of heaven or paradise, while most people who ever lived exist in some state of eternal damnation should probably not be considered hopeful. Another way that we state this is to say that if it is not good news for everyone then it is not good news for us.
Ta-Nehesi Coates in his book, Between the World and Me, warns against particular forms of hope in a way that resonated with me. If I am to argue on behalf of hope then I ought to seek to see other perspectives and their value. Coates, writing in the tradition of civil rights and matters of race in America, parts from the religious foundation shared by many earlier champions of civil rights. Where Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and others often cited a form of Christian hope as motivation, Coates says that such religious hope was often problematic.
“I have no God to hold me up. And I believe that when they shatter the body they shatter everything, and I knew that all of us—Christians, Muslims, atheists—lived in this fear of this truth.” (Between the World and Me)
I think that what Coates is getting at is that a future hope can, at times, grant a kind of excuse for or acceptance of current injustice. If we inspire people to hope that one day things will be better we might just perpetuate present problems.
As I read things like this, I can honestly see the value in non-belief. I say this, however, as a believer, as someone whose Christian faith directs much of my worldview. This faith, at its best, calls me to see what is often labelled non-belief or atheism as something that does make sense in the context of many of the injustices and struggles of our day.
And yet.
It is fair to say that Coates’ view is pessimistic. Any theological view that aims to be hopeful is, therefore, not shaped by the same way of seeing things.
It is curious, these days, that in some circles reading things that don’t fit a particular view can be seen as dangerous or even unacceptable. This has long been true in some religious circles, but a similar self-focus now exists in some social and academic settings. If a person of a particular political persuasion warns against some of the excesses or blind spots of their political group they might be castigated or even cast as an enemy. This can happen on the left as well as on the right.
Yascha Mounk’s book, The Identity Trap, could well fit into this frame. Mounk identifies with the political and social left, and yet the book offers an outline of dangers of some of the tendencies and practices on the left in our current political and academic culture.
One of the terms that he identifies is “proud pessimism.” He mentions Ta-Nehesi Coates in describing what proud pessimism is. Mounk says that while civil rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr, and even Barack Obama were critical of American society, they also insisted that if the country’s founding principles were actually put into practice, the country would be guided to a better future. They were, in other words, optimistic. Proud pessimism, on the other hand, argues that progress is illusory and short-lived. It is fatalistic.
What is curious to me is that some of this proud pessimism present on the left is similar, in form, to a kind of proud pessimism that I saw in some theological understandings that existed (and still do in some cases) in evangelical culture. You may have been part of a church or religious community that always assumed that things were getting worse. In fact, this way of seeing things was necessary as the return of Jesus was thought to be in response to a kind of societal moral decay. Add to that the vision of the end of all things being a few people saved, with most people damned, and you have a kind of proud pessimism. Somehow, in either a religious frame or a cultural frame, the proud pessimists can come to see themselves as the few saved, or the few enlightened, or the few pure in matters of morality or acceptability.
I really can see the value of pessimism at times. Hope that is forced is false and even dangerous. As I won’t accept a pessimism that is insisted upon, I hope not to insisr upon the kind of hope that I feel. However, hope does hold onto the idea that things can be better, that progress is and can be real. We can be hopeful, even as we are honest. Being hopeful and honest at the same time does open us up to a kind of sorrow. Even as we see inhumanity in others and in ourselves, we can be guided by a call to something better, by the idea that seeing the humanity of others whether inspired by faith or not, can lead us to a better place.