Toxic Christianity and Pastoral Resistance

You don't become more Christian by becoming less Christ-like

I have been pastorally angry over the past few days. Let me explain what I mean by that. As someone who has been a pastor for decades, I have noticed that I can become upset or angry when I see what I think is a kind of religious or theological manipulation that moves people towards their worst, not best, tendencies. After that, it seeks to sanctify our biases and prejudice and to pull us towards a political affiliation. I hate it when people are treated that way.

In my experience in the evangelical church, I have seen this kind of manipulation made manifest with a kind of apologetics of cruelty. This is when the human bias towards fear or division or suspicion or distrust is used by religious leaders to further their own agenda.

It works out as the following: “While I really am loving and accepting, in the following circumstance, the Bible is clear and so we MUST stand against that person and what they are doing.”

By employing such tactics, leaders often appeal to the worst, not to the best. In other words, they warn people against loving their neighbour, loving the stranger, and loving their enemies. Such things are dangerous, they say, and then they add another trick. They say that the really loving thing to do is to attack others who are not like us. They are the danger, we are told, never us, and most certainly never our views, always THEM, always those others.

One area in which I have seen this lately is around empathy and the unfortunately growing concept in evangelicalism that empathy is neutral at best and toxic at worst.
Of course, virtually anything can be toxic. Too much water can be dangerous for us.
So, the clever trick of some writers and leaders to use their intellect to call their followers away from empathy is, as I see it, a kind of pastoral abuse. It is a spiritual abuse because it is a fairly obvious tactic to win people to a political viewpoint, not to help them to become more Christ-like. I have never seen anyone become more like Jesus by becoming less empathetic.

My pastoral anger this week was sparked by an interview that Ross Douthat of the New York Times had with a young evangelical woman. I have been reading and following Ross Douthat for a number of years. He is a conservative voice in what has been a relatively progressive or liberal field and I think that he has had a lot of interesting, compelling things to say, some that have helped me in my own reasoning and consideration. However, it seems to me that, recently, he has found a way to platform divisive, extreme ways of interpreting scripture and living out Christian faith. I see him as using his intellect to legitimize those who hold archaic, damaging, and un-Christlike ideas but lack the knowledge or intellect to make them seem viable.

The woman he was interviewing, Allie Beth Stuckey, in the conversation that piqued my anger, maintains that the earth was created in six literal days because “that is what Jesus believed.” She says that women should not teach in church¹ and that the Bible is clear about abortion and sexuality, but not about immigration and justice.

At one point, Douthat asked her about her self-identification as a “reformed” believer, about some particulars of the Reformed theological tradition. Below I include the end of his question and the entirety of her response:

Douthat: What does it mean, in the context of American Protestantism, if somebody says: I identify as Reformed? What does that mean?

Stuckey: I’ll give a short answer, but suffice it to say there are disagreements about what it means to be Reformed. I would consider myself a Reformed Baptist.

Gosh, I don’t know if there’s a short way to explain all of this. Predestination is a centerpiece of Calvinism, whether you believe that people were predestined to be Christians or whether it is by human effort that we are saved.

I fall into the predestination camp. We also have a really big emphasis on theological study and, I would say, biblical literalism in a lot of ways.

I do not mean to disrespect or demean the person who gave such an answer. I have no interest in attacking her as a person. I don’t know her and choose to hold a charitable assumption as to her character and intent. However, her answer contains virtually no content. When asked about what reformed theology is, in religious practice, she says that there are disagreements about what it is and then says that predestination is a “centerpiece.” She does not actually identify what reform theology says about predestination choosing instead to say that she personally “falls into the camp” of predestination. She ends by saying that the reform tradition has a “really big emphasis on theological study and I would say biblical literalism in a lot of ways.”

To be fair, very many theological traditions have a “really big emphasis on theological study.” Also, the quick note about biblical literalism is used as a kind of shot. It is a way of saying that people who do not agree with her, do not really care about the Bible.

I have often said that I have never, in all my years as a pastor, met anyone, including any Christian leader, who takes the Bible literally. In my experience, those who refer to themselves as biblical literalists actually mean that they take THEIR interpretation literally. They easily and gladly tell me and others that some things in the Bible are figurative. They are just conveniently the things that do not line up with their worldview or their politics.

A couple of examples:
In interpreting the Book of Revelation, the “literalists” say that the horns, and the lampstands, and the trumpets, and so many other things are figurative and represent other things. Then, when they get to the lake of fire toward the end of the book, they say - “LITERAL!”

Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.² Literalists say that the statement is figurative or even that it was actually easy for a camel to get through the eye of a needle because what Jesus was really referring to was a gate in Jerusalem that camels went through all of the time. They twist themselves in knots to be able to convince themselves that they are taking to Bible literally.

When Jesus says that if your eye causes you to sin, you should gouge it out,³ that is, of course, they say, figurative.

When Jesus tells the rich young ruler that to acquire eternal life he should sell what he owns and give the money to the poor,⁴ those who count themselves biblical literalists gladly say that this applied only to the rich young ruler, not to us.

Without getting too much into the weeds on this, the rationale for rigid views on gender and sexuality employed by people often come from what they call the “creation order.” They go back to one of (there are multiple, but they don’t usually tell you that) creation narratives in Genesis to basically say, “This is the way that God made and ordained things and we should not mess with it.”

So they use Genesis to totalize social and political views, but they qualify passages like Galatians 3:28 which says that “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male or female for all are one in Christ Jesus.” That passage clearly implies that Jesus has overturned whatever we identified as an order.

My anger about this kind of thing is because it hurts people. It takes people who are genuinely interested in spiritual growth, in denying self, and tells them that their worst tendencies are their most Christian.

Here is another excerpt from the interview:
Stuckey: I think we can look throughout Scripture to see the principles for a lot of things, like justice and immigration. But those are going to be open to more debate and discussion — which I am also very open to — than the big three: abortion, gender and sexuality, which I think there should be zero debate on within Christianity.

What is being said here is that the Bible is not clear about justice and immigration, but it is very clear about abortion, gender, and sexuality.

To identify “the big three” biblical concerns as abortion, gender, and sexuality is abusive to the text of the Bible and certainly abusive to the idea that the fullness of God is revealed in Jesus Christ.

The Bible is not clear about abortion. There are not direct verses about it. You certainly can get to the concept of the sanctity of life from scripture and I feel that such a concept is faithful. However, the idea that opposing abortion but being pro-gun, pro-war, and pro-capital punishment would uphold the sanctity of life is a stretch. The passages that those who support an anti-choice position tend to quote come from sections of poetry in the Bible (Psalms, Jeremiah). In other words, they are filled with symbolism and metaphor. The only direct reference to abortion in terms of religious law is a passage in Exodus which outlines punishment for the taking of the life of a pregnant woman. In that case, the punishment for the death of the woman is greater than for that of the unborn child.

Jesus never says a word about homosexuality, but he does speak A LOT about the dangers of loving money and about the call to care for the poor. His central call is to deny self, to die to self. Stuckey explicitly says that her highest priority is “the preservation of Christians.” Jesus issues a call to self-reflection. Stuckey issues a call to arms against others.

Another quote from the interview in which Stuckey is seeking to say why being anti-immigrant is really Biblical: “I would say that people on the progressive side don’t even consider the plight of those who have been negatively impacted by illegal immigration.”

Really?⁵

It is abundantly clear to me that the central problem currently in evangelical Christianity is not toxic empathy, but rather toxic Christianity. A Christianity that becomes less and less like Jesus is toxic.

Of course, weakness masquerades as strength. Caring for the poor is strength, not weakness. Pleading the case of the foreigner (as the Bible instructs us to do) is strength, not weakness.

As Jonathan Sacks (former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth) points out, the Torah tells us in one place to love our neighbour and in thirty-six places to love the stranger. This is not because loving neighbour is unimportant, it is because we tend to forget that loving the stranger is faithful.

Stuckey calls pastors who don’t share and perpetuate her views “soft” and “cowards.” She warns her followers against listening to such “weak” preachers.

Let me tell you a secret that I know to be true from my years of work in the church:
The loudest, angriest voices usually belong to the weakest people.
They need to force their views on others. They are not strong enough to exist in a world that includes people and views not like their own.

As Thomas Merton (he was not soft intellectually or spiritually) wrote,⁶ “It sometimes happens that men who preach most vehemently about evil and the punishment of evil, so that they seem to have practically nothing else on their minds except sin, are really unconscious haters of other men. They think that the world does not appreciate them and this is their way of getting even.”

If someone tells you that “the big three” in terms of the Bible are “abortion, gender and sexuality,” then they have either been taken advantage of by such people or they are seeking to take advantage of others, or both.

So back to my particular pastoral anger. I do get angry as well, I just don’t tend to use it as a preaching tactic. To be a little arrogant, I think that I am called to be stronger than that. My pastoral anger this week was around how the concept of “toxic empathy” is being used to manipulate people.

If you are reading this, you have some kind of connection or interest in the way in which I see Christian faith. If you are obliged at all to count me as pastoral, then I would ask you to lean towards empathy, not away from it.

As a pastor, I think that I can speak to a positive desire in you to seek to identify with, to even feel the sorrow or pain or someone else, someone not like you. This is a good desire. Of course, you can and should pray about what to do with and from this feeling. I trust that you can do this. Real spiritual leadership identifies tensions in the spiritual life and then directs you to seek God in the tension, in daily living. Weak spiritual leadership sets up false tensions and then offers counterfeit resolutions. You don’t actually need to seek God. You don’t actually need God to be a living God. You just need the proper viewpoints - which happen to be the same as those of the weak teachers.

The call to be less empathetic, to treat empathy with suspicion, might be compelling to you as well. I think that you will see that, most often, when you take this direction you become less Christ-like, not more. You wind up defending views you already had. Do you want me and others to congratulate you for this, for finding more clever ways to upohld your biases? I think that you are better than that. You almost never grow spiritually when you become more convinced about how right you already are. I know that you know that.

You and I could have a conversation about how empathy (like anything) can be toxic. However, I know that your faith in Jesus (if you ascribe to such faith), the Jesus of the gospels, is lived out in the call to be more empathetic, not in the call to not be less empathetic.

I’ll end this post by noting briefly that my pastoral anger this week was countered by an example of a powerful and beautiful way of Christian faith. Julian Davis Reid and his family were in Vancouver from Chicago and a few of us got to share lunch together. Davis Reid is a musician and theologian. He is incredibly talented and his defiant, but hopeful faith is infused with his art, his music. In conversation, he is gracious and inspiring. Considering the conversations with Julian from this week and the new music that he played for us I wound up feeling joyful and strong - far from angry. I felt strong enough to reflect not on how right I already am, but on how far I have to go, on how Jesus calls me to selflessness. I have nothing against Allie Stuckey as a person but I can tell you that I have entirely no interest in the kind of Christianity that she is espousing. Julian, on the other hand, he schools me. He calls me to hope and faith.

I intended to write more about him, but I don’t want it to get lost in this post. For now I will simply alert you to some of his work.

Thanks be to God.

1. I do not know the nuances held by Stuckey around this view, but I suspect that they are similar to some held within evangelical circles as I have experienced them.
Many of the people who argued that they simply were following a biblical injunction against women teaching actually maintained a different view in practice. In most evangelical churches, women could teach Sunday School (so they could teach children). They could teach other women (say at a women’s retreat or women’s Bible study). They could even teach men who were being taught in the mission field (often non-white, non-wealthy men). Pretty much the only people they could not teach were white men within the church, often the very men who occupied leadership and teaching positions. This practice led me to question to motivation and intellectual/spiritual integrity of the argument.

2. Mark 10:25
Matthew 19:24
Luke 18:25

3. Matthew 18:9

4. Matthew 19:21

5. This recalls one of former Bishop of Stockholm Kirster Stendahl’s rules for religious engagement, “Don’t compare your best with their worst.” When what is important to you is to demonize the other side, you define the other side only by the worst of its adherents. Of course, you never do this with your own side.

6. Merton, an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion, included this quote in an essay titled “The Moral Theology of the Devil” in his 1949 collection, New Seeds of Contemplation.