In his book, \u201cThe Righteous Mind,\u201d Jonathan Haidt offers his findings in moral psychology that seek to explain why some people are \u201cliberals\u201d while others are \u201cconservative.\u201d Or to put it another way, \u201cWhy is everyone who disagrees with me so stupid?\u201d According to Haidt, it is not because some of us used pure reason to evaluate all the options and decide accordingly, while the others failed to reason, but more that we are each wired to prefer either order and predictability (conservative) or variety and diversity (liberal).<\/p>\n
Any Christian leader involved in the ministry of spiritual (trans)formation and discipleship knows that nobody makes decisions based on reason alone, and the deeper one goes into theological anthropology, the more easily one can see this truth. Even more, Christians are skeptical about the reliability of any of our faculties, including reason, all of which are fractured by the fall. To quote a clich\u00e9d proverb: \u201cTrust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding <\/em>(Prov 3).\u201d The Bible understands that none of our faculties can be trusted. According to one reviewer, \u201cThough the Enlightenment project is devoted to putting reason in charge\u2014and even succeeds to some extent with the highly educated minority\u2014our emotional reactions shape our moral judgments, and thus our social order.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n I was particularly interested in Haidt\u2019s research related to group behavior and the paradox of group members acting both selfishly and selflessly simultaneously. It\u2019s as though the individual members of a group have to behave selflessly in order to protect the selfish interests of the group. Haidt argues that \u201chuman nature is mostly selfish, but with a groupish overlay that resulted from the fact that natural selection works at multiple levels simultaneaously.\u201d[2]<\/a> Since my research is centered on xenophobia, I was hopeful that Haidt might wonder if xenophobia arises more as a \u201cgroupish\u201d attitudinal behavior than an individual one, or at least he would discuss something of the social psychology of xenophobia, but to no avail.<\/p>\n Xenophobia is literally means \u201cfear of strangeness.\u201d It is the fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners, or anything which is perceived to be strange, foreign, or different. It is commonly understood as \u201cfear of the other,\u201d and according to CNN, goes by the name of Donald Trump. But liberals don\u2019t have a \u201cGet Out of Xenophobia Free\u201d card, as both conservatives and liberals are largely xenophobic toward each other. But I wonder, if I were to accept Haidt\u2019s arguments, it would seem to me that conservatives, who, according to Haidt, place a higher emphasis on the virtue of Loyalty, could be more vulnerable to xenophobia.<\/p>\n His chapter titled, Why Are We So Groupish?, <\/em>caused me to wonder whether Xenophobia is not an individual attitude, in that it doesn\u2019t arise at the level of individual consciousness, but is a collectively shared attitude that arises from the collective consciousness, that seeks to protect the moral foundations of a particular group. The xenophobia of President Trump toward brown immigrants, as expressed in speeches on the campaign trail and subsequent actions as president, did not arise in isolation. His is the voice of a large xenophobic voting block, seeking to protect their moral foundations, which they perceive to be threatened by the outside. According to Haidt, every group needs to suppress the vices of cheating, betraying and subverting the group in order to survive the process of natural selection.<\/p>\n One reviewer, William Weston, focuses on Haidt\u2019s synergy with Emile Durkenheim\u2019s approach to the emotional roots of social solidarity. He suggests that Haidt draws most on Durkenheim\u2019s argument that \u201chuman society rests on the emotional bonds within our groups.\u201d[3]<\/a> This explains why human beings, who are primarily selfish creatures, biologically, can express such selfless behavior within groups, such as being a religious martyr.[4]<\/a> Weston continues: \u201cDurkenheim emphasizes that our attachment to the collective conscience and consciousness is not simply intellectual; rather, it is first an emotional bond. We are devoted to our shared understanding as a central part of who we are. And we are devoted to other people in our groups, on up to society as a whole, because we share an understanding of, and devotion to, a collective conscience and consciousness\u2026Durkenheim argues that every society needs a shared sense of the sacred to hold together.\u201d[5]<\/a> In other words, in order for a group to survive and protect the sacred sacred (namely justice, loyalty and authority), it has to punish cheaters, sanction betrayers, and stop subverters. But the problem we face today, in part, is that we perceive threats that are not real, and act according to perception rather than reality.<\/p>\n Haidt has caused me to reflect on the emergence of the Christian community as an oddly inclusive, enemy-loving community in the Roman Empire. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, George Weigel writes: \u201cChristianity modeled a nobler way of life than what was on offer elsewhere in the rather brutal society of the day. In Christianity, women were respected as they weren\u2019t in classical culture and played a critical role in bringing men to the faith and attracting converts. In an age of plagues, the readiness of Christians to care for all the sick, not just their own, was a factor, as was the impressive witness to faith of countless martyrs. Christianity also grew from within because Christians had larger families, a byproduct of their faith\u2019s prohibition of contraception, abortion and infanticide.”[6]<\/a><\/p>\n How was it possible for an emerging community to not act as \u201cgroupish\u201d as the other groups in society at that time? I suppose the answer lies in the realm of theological anthropology. Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians believe is God incarnate, did not fall prey to the dualism we know today that Haidt describes. Christians believe that in Jesus, we serve an others-centered, enemy-loving God who strongly criticized selfish and groupish behavior. In other words, Jesus\u2019 genes were not \u201cselfish\u201d as Haidt suggests are for all other human beings. As the fully \u201cHuman One,\u201d Jesus was not \u201cgroupish\u201d in the way Haidt describes the rest of humanity. I don\u2019t disagree with Haidt\u2019s description of moral psychology, but I wonder how spiritual formation might \u201crewire\u201d our brains to be less xenophobic, less selfish, more inclusive, and more understanding of the other. At the end of the day, Haidt agrees with the Bible that the fundamental problem is human selfishness. It\u2019s as though he has discovered scientifically what Christians have based our entire lives on for two thousand years.<\/p>\n For the Christian, the question isn\u2019t so much, \u201cCan liberals and conservatives understand their differences enough to work together?\u201d but \u201cCan the Church in America rise above its political binaries to become more like Jesus?\u201d And the answer is \u201cYes, with God\u2019s help.\u201d Christians are able to factor in the transforming role of the Holy Spirit to literally \u201crenew our minds\u201d (Rom 12). Overall, the book is helpful for any pastor serving a politically diverse church. We are far from the unity that will come with Christ\u2019s return, so we need to understand one another in order to love better, and that\u2019s the gift this book offers. But Christians cannot be content with mere \u201cunderstanding.\u201d We must work to \u201cstand firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel\u201d (Phil 1). For that, we look to the truly Righteous One.<\/p>\n ___________________<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> William Weston, \u201cA Deeper Durkheimian Society for Haidt’s Righteous Minds,\u201d\u00a0Springer Science+Business Media<\/em>\u00a0no. 51 (09\/19\/2014): 686-91,\u00a0https:\/\/link-springer-com.georgefox.idm.oclc.org\/content\/pdf\/10.1007%2Fs12115-014-9841-7.pdf<\/a>\u00a0(accessed April 3, 2018).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Jonathan Haidt,\u00a0The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion<\/em>(New York: Vintage Books, 2013), 222.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Weston, 686-91.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Ibid, 686-91<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Haidt, 687-8.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> George Weigel, \u201cThe Easter Effect and How It Changed the World,\u201d\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>, 03\/30\/2018,\u00a0https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-easter-effect-and-how-it-changed-the-world-1522418701<\/a>\u00a0(accessed April 3, 2018).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his book, \u201cThe Righteous Mind,\u201d Jonathan Haidt offers his findings in moral psychology that seek to explain why some people are \u201cliberals\u201d while others are \u201cconservative.\u201d Or to put it another way, \u201cWhy is everyone who disagrees with me so stupid?\u201d According to Haidt, it is not because some of us used pure reason […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17299,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17298\/revisions\/17299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}