I wonder if anyone would be interested in discussing
this essay published on the Slate Star Codex blog? It was written in 2014 but I was led to it in
an Alan Jacobs post today. Both posts deal with in-group/out-group dynamics and how easily we find ourselves thinking in those terms. Jacobs comes down hard on his fellow conservative Christians and Alexander criticizes fellow liberals for as he describes it:
...boasting of being able to tolerate everyone from every outgroup they can imagine, loving the outgroup, writing long paeans to how great the outgroup is, staying up at night fretting that somebody else might not like the outgroup enough.
This is really surprising. It’s a total reversal of everything we know about human psychology up to this point. No one did any genetic engineering. No one passed out weird glowing pills in the public schools. And yet suddenly we get an entire group of people who conspicuously promote and defend their outgroups, the outer the better.
He goes on to talk at great length at what is occurring in one of the political tribes within the United States, a tribe with which he identifies broadly-speaking. In the end though he realizes he has engaged in much of the same behavior that he accuses his tribe of:
I had fun writing this article. People do not have fun writing articles savagely criticizing their in-group. People can criticize their in-group, it’s not humanly impossible, but it takes nerves of steel, it makes your blood boil, you should sweat blood. It shouldn’t be fun.
You can bet some white guy on Gawker who week after week churns out “Why White People Are So Terrible” and “Here’s What Dumb White People Don’t Understand” is having fun and not sweating any blood at all. He’s not criticizing his in-group, he’s never even considered criticizing his in-group. I can’t blame him. Criticizing the in-group is a really difficult project I’ve barely begun to build the mental skills necessary to even consider.
I can think of criticisms of my own tribe. Important criticisms, true ones. But the thought of writing them makes my blood boil....That is how I feel when asked to criticize my own tribe, even for correct reasons. If you think you’re criticizing your own tribe, and your blood is not at that temperature, consider the possibility that you aren’t.
I should say from the beginning that I dont have a problem with in-groups and out-groups as such. They are inevitable to a certain degree and part of what make life interesting, comfortable and enjoyable. I do think though it is important to engage in true self-criticism with respect to our own in-groups and to avoid the pitfalls that Jacobs is observing in American Christianity:
We are looking here at the consequences of decades of neglect by American churches, and what they have neglected is Christian formation. The whole point of discipleship — which is, nota bene, a word derived from discipline — is to take what Kant called the “crooked timber of humanity” and make it, if not straight, then straighter. To form it in the image of Jesus Christ. And yes, with humans this is impossible, but with a gracious God all things are possible. And it’s a good thing that with a gracious God it is possible, because He demands it of those who would follow Jesus. Bonhoeffer says, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” He doesn’t bid us demand our rights. Indeed he forbids us to. “Love is patient and kind,” his apostle tells us; “love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Christians haven’t always met that description, but there was a time when we knew that it existed, which made it harder to avoid.
As a coda I should add that at a personal level there was time in my life, something like 10-15 years ago where I truly felt like my Anabaptism, tightly held, was a strong critique of in-groups in American society more generally, both Right and Left. I felt neither conservative nor liberal nor moderate and I credited Anabaptism with giving me an outsider's perspective with which to stand outside the system and critique the whole lot as misguided. That seems all muddled to me now; Anabaptists are just as entrenched in societal groups and just as susceptible to in-group blind-spots. Much of my thinking, reading and writing these past few years has been spent trying to work that fact out.
Affiliation: Lancaster Mennonite Conference & Honduran Mennonite Evangelical Church
