A Peaceable Faith

Part 2, Trade-Off Theory and Deconstruction

As I described in the first post, my encounter with Ernest Becker set me on my own particular journey of "deconstruction." Specifically, I was haunted by Becker's argument that religious belief, as a cultural hero system deployed to repress and sublimate death anxiety, would be inevitably involved in worldview defense, hostility toward cultural outsiders. 

This isn't idle academic speculation. Worldviews, cultural differences, values, ideologies, and religious faith have been the primary engine of violence, genocide, terrorism, colonialism and war in the world. And if you think you're somehow escaping worldview defense, just consider the political hostility we experience between Republicans and Democrats. This is an election year, and the worldview defense is going to explode. Social media will be filled with fear and hate.

In addition to the witness of history, the empirical work of Terror Management Theory has also demonstrated the reality of worldview defense. 

In short, your values make you violent. 

As a person of faith, I found (and find) all this very troubling. Is a peaceable faith possible? Can you hold to cherished values in a way that won't cause you to lash out and attack those who disagree with your beliefs? 

If you ponder it, this seems to be a very real psychological challenge. The more passionately you hold a conviction the more violent will be your response toward anyone who challenges the the truth of that conviction.

Troubled by all this years ago, I went in search of some answers. Most of this search was through a series of studies I did (see here and here and here) that I eventually pulled together in my book The Authenticity of Faith to make an extended argument. That argument was later succinctly summarized by Tongeren, Davis, Hook, and Johnson as Trade-Off Theory.   

The basic idea is simple enough. If you hold your beliefs dogmatically you will reap the benefits of existential comfort and consolation, but at the price of worldview defense. That's the trade-off, comfort at the price of intolerance. However, you can avoid this outcome by holding your beliefs more tentatively and provisionally. But the cost here is existential uneasiness. Lacking any firm convictions in the face of death, we have to live with a fair amount of anxiety. The win, though, is a more open posture toward difference, less worldview defense. You trade comfort for tolerance. 

This was the conclusion I reached at the end of The Authenticity of Faith. There are moral and ethical benefits to doubt and uncertainty. If I don't possess all the answers, I stand in a more open and tolerant posture toward others. I'm more willing to listen and learn. Dogmatism and fundamentalism, while comforting and consoling, are dangerous. So it's better to hold your beliefs more tentatively in order to extend welcome and hospitality toward difference. 

If you've followed the conversations about "deconstruction" in Christian spaces over the years, this dynamic should be familiar to you. People who are "deconstructing" are coming out of conservative, dogmatic, and fundamentalist faith traditions. In the past, they found these faith traditions to be very comforting and consoling. You possessed all the answers and knew you were among God's chosen. That is a very happy place to be. Trouble was, the pricetag of that consolation was worldview defense, hostility toward the world, the stigmatization and demonization of difference. Your convictions turned you into a culture warrior. 

Finding this hostility antithetical to the life of Jesus, many began a journey of "deconstruction." This is the ex-evangelical and progressive embrace of uncertainty and doubt, the open-endedness of faith as journey. True, this deconstruction brings along with it a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, we have to live without the answers, but the upside here is tolerance and inclusion. Brian McLaren, the late Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, Rob Bell, Peter Rollins, Richard Rohr, Donald Miller, and Peter Enns, among others, were influential voices when deconstruction first became thing over a decade ago, and they remain treasured companions for many today. A consistent theme is found in their books: embrace uncertainty to embrace others. 

Basically, Trade-Off theory.

This was precisely were I was when I started this blog in 2007. I was a companion for the deconstructing for many years. A lot of people found my writing because Rachel Held Evans frequently shared links to my blog in her regular Sunday Superlatives posts. During those years, I preached Trade-Off theory. Doubt was a moral good. Conviction was an engine of hostility. I was a progressive Christian.

But as longtime readers know, a little over ten years ago, triggered by sharing life at Freedom Fellowship and becoming a prison chaplain, I began my phase of "reconstruction." The publication of my book Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted in 2016 caught my audience by surprise, and that book remains the least favorite book I've written among my most progressive readers. I also started describing myself as a "post-progressive" Christian, much to the annoyance of these same progressive readers.  

I don't think progressive Christianity is a bad thing. I'm post-progressive, not anti-progressive. So let me be clear: Progressive Christianity is banal, but evangelicalism is a dumpster fire. I remain convinced that Ernest Becker was right: Dogmatism and fundamentalism are reliable engines of violence and hostility. My worries here have not abated in the least. 

And yet, as a post-progressive Christian, I have become concerned about Trade-Off theory, my ending to The Authenticity of Faith. It is true that doubt is a moral good, but chronic doubt has other sorts of problems. For example, a lot of formerly progressive Christians are no longer Christians. This, it seems to me, is the logical outcome of Trade-Off theory, to deconstruct until you believe nothing at all, or to the point where your beliefs are so insipid it makes one wonder why anyone would bother with them. I find is outcome worrisome for reasons I talk about in Hunting Magic Eels. 

Which brings us back to the question of this series: 

If not deconstruction and Trade-Off theory, then how is a peaceable faith possible?