Social Gatherings
James Madison wrote about the dangers of faction—a group passionately united for one cause at the expense of the rights of other citizens—and the ability for the Union to control this threat.[1] Madison felt that the size of the nation would prohibit widespread faction. “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.” This belief generally held true for over 200 years.
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt observes that technology advancements have removed the protections that Madison relied upon. Since 2010, developments in social media platforms, for example, retweets and likes, have enabled outrage and mutual animosity to spread virally.[2] Geographical distance can no longer prevent faction.
Haidt says that social media is weakening the three forces that bind democracies together: social capital, strong institutions, and shared stores.[3] The institution of the local church is not spared. Studies show that the majority of Americans want a church aligned to their political views.[4] A recent survey found that 81% of Evangelical Christians have looked for a new church where members vote the same way.[5] As local churches realign according to political preferences, the message of the church gets lost. Half of Americans believe that religion is losing influence and the outcome is bad. Only 8% believe that religion’s influence is growing.[6]
Statistics become meaningless when I am one of them. I watched many of our church’s congregants emotionally head for the door due to differences in how to respond to COVID-19 mandates, George Floyd protests, and cries to defund the Portland police department. In contrast, very few left when the elders clarified our position on women in church leadership. Doctrine took a back seat to politics. Madison’s fear of faction occurred in reverse. The deep national divisions brought the flame to my neighborhood. Our church body suffered. We were hardly unique.
My friend Josh claims that numerous Christians have converted to new political religions, recognizing that the root word of religion has a meaning similar to ‘devotion’.[7] He characterizes the political landscape as four quadrants, defining these political religions in terms of their creeds, priorities, concerns, and modern-day prophets, the loudest voices on social media.[8] Josh’s message is that Jesus is the author of each one of these leanings. None are inherently evil. We can bring our political bent, but our bow belongs to Jesus alone.
In the weeks leading up to the elections, our churches taught on the biblical basis for each quadrant, how each can serve God, and where there might be areas to keep in check. We prepared leaders with tools to promote dialog and address conflicts, then utilized the old-school social media of small groups meeting in homes to let people hear and be heard. No likes. No retweets. Our pastors said that they would pray for the elected officials on the Sunday after election day regardless of who won. Something amazing happened that morning. Though emotions were visibly present, no one left the church in search of their political allies! Social gatherings silenced social media (or at least turned the volume way down).
Nicholas Smyth encourages us to smash the technopoly—a society reliant on technology above all cultural, moral, and social values. This is not a directive to become a Luddite destroying smart phones and social media platforms. It is a call to “re-acquire the moral resource to constrain and direct our technology.” [9] This isn’t easy. It does not happen quickly. It requires a commitment to dialog, a willingness to discover that the person wanting guns to be banned from schools and the person wanting classroom teachers to be armed share the common value of protecting their children no matter what. Fostering that one-to-one openness can bring some anxiety to this introvert. That anxiety is small compared to the one I have for a factious society driven by rage and embolden by anonymity.
[1] Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. “The Federalist Papers No. 10.” Text, December 29, 1998. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp.
[2] Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell. “The Dark Psychology of Social Networks.” The Atlantic, November 12, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/.
[3] Jonathan Haidt. “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” The Atlantic, April 11, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/.
[4] Aaron Earls. “Churchgoers Increasingly Prefer a Congregation That Shares Their Politics.” Lifeway Research, November 1, 2022. https://research.lifeway.com/2022/11/01/churchgoers-increasingly-prefer-a-congregation-that-shares-their-politics/.
[5] Bob Smietana. “Shopping for a New Church? Your Politics May Determine Which Pew Fits.” RNS (blog), December 12, 2022. https://religionnews.com/2022/12/12/shopping-for-a-new-church-your-politics-may-determine-which-pew-fits/.
[6] Michael Rotolo, Gregory A. Smith, and Jonathan Evans. “8 in 10 Americans Say Religion Is Losing Influence in Public Life.” Pew Research Center, March, 2024. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/03/PR_2024.3.15_religion-public-life_REPORT.pdf.
[7] Joshua Ryan Butler. The Party Crasher: How Jesus Disrupts Politics as Usual and Redeems Our Partisan Divide. Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2024, 4-5.
[8] Butler, 18.
[9] Nicholas Smyth. “Smash The Technopoly!,” March 9, 2023. https://www.afterbabel.com/p/smash-the-technopoly.
About the Author
Rich
8 responses to “Social Gatherings”
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Rich –
Thank you for this post. It sounds like your church did a great job of fostering compassion and curiosity with each other. One thing I’ve heard from people as they are exposed to those with different viewpoints or lived experiences is their willingness to be understanding and appreciative to the individual they’re interacting with but to be challenged in extending that understanding/compassion to the broader “other” group. (Statements like, “They’re one of the good ones,” that indicate something exceptional rather than normative.) In some ways, social media can exacerbate this.
How have you been able to bridge the gap from “one” to “many”? What minefields did you discover along the way?
Yes!
I think that is a beneficial outcome of the ideals expressed in the articles we read. The viral outrage of social media is built on us vs. them. The algorithms push different news articles to me than to my uncle next door. The echo chamber leaves no room for common ground.
When we meet face-to-face, the information isn’t filtered by an algorithm. I do think it is still one at a time. Do that often enough and a bunch of ‘ones’ makes ‘many’. Give the bunch of ‘ones’ a common purpose and the ‘many’ become ‘us’.
My home group is about 18 months old. The roster was formed with prayer and pondering. It wasn’t me and my friends. We range from 36 years to 72 years. We eat, laugh, and cry together. We fall into at least three of the above quadrants–maybe all four–and voted differently last fall. Some of the political conversations got a bit cringe-worthy. Nevertheless, one bought a MAGA hat for another and she wore it. Nobody got upset. We weren’t looking to survive another election season. It didn’t define ‘us’.
‘Many’ doesn’t just happen naturally. I can’t change your mind. My previous home group split up over masks, vaccinations, and underlying worldviews. The biggest minefield was when curious, open-ended questions were met by emotional, defensive, arbitrary positions. If the deepest desire is to be right or to defend my rights, then it is difficult to maintain ‘us’.
Hey Rich,
Thanks for your writing this week.
The quadrant model was an interesting tool, but I don’t understand the quadrant of “Post-Modern Right” being associated with Security–particularly the post-modern element of that. Can you help me understand that?
Geoff, the left to right axis is the classical liberal to conservative spectrum, or Democrat to Republican in the US. We see factions within each party, which is why Josh adds a vertical axis. Focusing on the right, Responsibility would be like Reagan with a mindset that hard work leads to the American dream. Security is embodied by the messages of Trump: build the wall, drain the swamp, make America great again. Security gets at the idea that there is a deep state to fear, that immigrants threaten society, and that strong fences make for better neighbors.
Josh credits George Packer for introducing the Four Americas in The Atlantic.[1] George’s Free America is Josh’s Responsibility religion. George’s Real America is Josh’s Security religion.
If you want an overview from the author (who has much better hair than you and me!), see this video. It is 13 minutes long. He describes Security beginning at 8:15. Josh gets to the point, Jesus, at 11 minutes.
https://vimeo.com/1000518963
[1] George Packer. “How America Fractured into Four Parts.” The Atlantic, July/August 2021.
Thanks Rich, It sounds like your church has a spectrum of beliefs on various cultural topics and even points of theology. That sounds healthy. We have just entered into a church that, for the first time in our life holds a spectrum of beliefs. It’s amazing to be in a body that can hold civil and loving tense conversations and remain in loving relationship.
We are certainly facing some large issues in our church today. Could you share a bit more on how you prepped your small groups to have these dialogues?
I love my church. We have not been spared controversy. We are comprised of five local churches and don’t have membership, so tracking people is a bit of an art. In the five year period between 2018 and 2023, the families who gave 80% of our budget left for one reason or another. God has drawn new, imperfect people to replace the departed, imperfect people. Don’t let me pretend we have lightning in a bottle!
Based on the previous election cycle and the deep divisions over the social issues of 2021-22, the leadership felt that a different approach to dialog was appropriate. We spent time training our small group leaders for managing difficult conversations. We had a 30 days of prayer emphasis leading up to the election. We boldly talked about the godly aspects and challenges of each of the four ‘political religions’ from the pulpit and in the small groups. We believed that our congregations would respond, and they did.
I wouldn’t wish a recording of a 2 hr. training on anyone. We had 150 small group leaders show up for this training. If you listen to the first few minutes, you’ll hear the setup and posture.
https://vimeo.com/1008550265
I’ll also include a link to the facilitator’s guide. This is available through the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy if you submit your credentials. We partnered with ICRD and could thus make the materials available on our site. If you read the fine print on page 2, you will find that the Department of Homeland Security provided funding. The department provided grants to organizations working to improve dialog within communities, essentially the opposite of what Haidt wrote about.
https://cdn.willamette.cc/assets/downloads/Making-Space-for-Grace-Facilitator-Guide-Digital.pdf
Rich –
Thank you for this. Your replies to me and Christian give me renewed hope that we can find a great path forward to unity in “love and good deeds” as Christ followers, even when everything else seems to be moving toward fracturing.
Your comment here brings to mind a conversation I often have in the context of the reconciliation and healing work I get to be a part of: The only promise with greater diversity is conflict; how we steward that conflict is what makes all the difference.
Rich, I appreciate you highlighting the statistics in your post. It’s interesting how people prefer to be surrounded by like-minded individuals. Conversely, we tend to disdain those who do not share our beliefs. Why do you think that is? In Matthew 5:38-40, Jesus proclaims that a believer, when struck on the face, should turn the other cheek to the one who hit him. Given the current division, do you think it is still possible to demonstrate the true character of Jesus to a skeptical world?