Three years ago, my colleague and friend, Dr. Larycia Hawkins, displayed embodied solidarity with persecuted Muslim women. In a now infamous Facebook post that was heard ‘round the world,’ Larycia wore a hijab and acknowledged her respect for fellow human beings of devout faith. I was supportive of her gesture and told her that, but, knowing the rampant Islamophobia in the evangelical subculture and at Wheaton College, I was concerned about her wellbeing. I commented on her post, “If you get any grief at work, give me a heads up because I’ll be teaching Islamic prayer in my spring class.” While this was technically true, I also knew that it could attract the same animosity as Larycia’s post. I know well the speed and intensity with which that animosity can appear.
I was born and raised in a small church in a tiny farming community in northeastern Montana. I say “church" instead of “family” because that congregation easily had as much influence on my development and formation as did any relatives, and in many ways, much more.
This was the era in which evangelicalism was evolving out of fundamentalism. Evangelicals, in their response to the dangers of modernism, sought to draw a line between themselves and their legalistic, anti-intellectual fundamentalist cousins. Anyone who lived through that transition, however, can tell you that the line was only ever blurry, at best. It is no surprise, therefore, that in the current crises of our culture, evangelicalism is regressing toward its fundamentalist origins in tone and temperament. This is especially evident through the resurgence of tribalism.
Fundamentalism depends heavily on tribalism. I like Brian Zahnd's definition of tribalism, "An us vs. them scapegoating groupthink.” A fundamentalist worldview requires an enemy to maintain cohesion of tribal members’ beliefs. In my early years, growing up in a "fundagelical" church, there was never any doubt about who the enemies were. I heard innumerable sermons and rants spitting out words of contempt that named those outside our tribe who meant to do us ill. Words like liberals, progressives, mainline, ecumenical, communist, secular humanist, pro-choice and homosexual. These words were often spoken in hatred.
Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:42-44 NIV) No one in the church would have admitted that we were being encouraged to hate our enemies. In fact, the list of enemies often came with the uniquely evangelical form of gaslighting, “Love the sinner but hate the sin.”
However, actions speak louder than words and, even as a child, I understood that hate resides in the heart and simply denying it doesn’t make it go away. I am reminded of the
Supreme Court Justice commenting on a case involving a charge of obscenity. He refused to try to concretize an objective definition of hard core pornography, choosing, instead, to quip, ‘I know it when I see it.’
In the same way, I know hate when I see it and when I feel it.
Despite insistence to the contrary, I knew growing up that I was being taught to hate my enemies. When an expert in the law tried to make himself look good by challenging Jesus to explain who is his neighbor, Jesus responded with the parable of the good Samaritan. As a youth, when I heard this story, I wished someone had asked Jesus “Who is my enemy?” But I have come to realize that Jesus answered that unasked question as well in the parable. I can imagine his listeners’ surprise when Jesus introduced the Samaritan into the story. They must have thought “Why are you bringing our enemy into the tale? We asked who is our neighbor.” Jesus shows us that enemies exist only in the heart. To eliminate your enemies, do as the Samaritan did and change your heart perspective. The Samaritan didn’t see his enemy lying on the ground, a Jerusalem Jew who would likely persecute him, he saw a man, like himself, dying and in need of help.
Jesus was quite literally addressing tribalism here since the Samaritans (like the “Jerusalem” Jews hearing the parable) descended from the sons of Jacob. In that situation, Jesus was making everyone uncomfortable because in addition to expounding on the commandment to love your neighbor, he was showing that tribalism asks the wrong question. The question is not "Who is my enemy?” but rather, "Whose enemy am I?”
Loving my neighbor doesn’t only include showing mercy to someone I thought unworthy of mercy, it also means acknowledging that others have reason to consider me unworthy.
When I was young, Jesus’ command to love our enemies was rather confusing to me. I didn’t really think I had enemies. Oh, there were the bullies at school that I’d avoid running into in the hall, but I knew that it wasn’t really me that they hated, I was just an easy target. Besides, they had no reason to hate me that I could think of. I heard the message loud and clear in church that there were enemies “out there” that I should hate. Homosexuals were, for some reason, a frequent example, but it all seemed rather abstract since I wasn’t aware that I knew any. It was especially confusing to try to understand why someone should consider me an enemy since I didn’t give anyone a reason to hate me. Everything in my world taught me that as a white, American, evangelical, male, there was nothing about me to dislike.
So, while I grew up in the church learning there was an abstract enemy “out there” that was not in my tribe, I never saw the opportunity to show them love. Besides, if anyone in the church did suggest that we should love them, it was in the form of harshly warning them they were bound for hell.
Growing up evangelical meant having a constant sense of safety in the assurance that I was a member of the superior tribe. I even remember a sermon explaining that American evangelicals were God’s new chosen people with the guarantee of His blessings.
Being part of the “us” and looking down on “them” did not prepare me for what could happen if my tribe turned on me.
I was able to attend the world premiere of Same God a few months ago at the Los Angeles Film Festival. That experience was so healing for me that I have tried to attend every screening since that night. The healing has come from finding a new tribe. The film tells the story of what happened to Larycia and me in the aftermath of the controversy over her statement that Muslims and Christians worship the same god. The Evangelical subculture went ballistic over that statement as people reacted reflexively without taking the time to even read what she was intending in the statement.
Likewise, when I supported her and criticized our employer for not treating her fairly and, in fact, for treating me very well while treating her terribly, the reaction was extremely hostile. Both of us were shocked at the hatefulness and even violence of the messages we received from the “Christian” community, especially from Evangelical leaders. We were effectively cast out of the Evangelical tribe and, though both of us were tenured professors, we both lost our beloved classrooms.
After 50 years in Evangelicalism hearing about the enemy “other,” I found myself on the outside being treated as the enemy. The lessons are still unfolding but this is what I have learned so far:
When I first heard Larycia speak of embodied solidarity I imagined it, like most people I suspect, from the perspective of someone with abundance gifting to someone in poverty. One might call that condescending “generosity.” Far from embodied solidarity, that kind of “giving” is hateful and violent because it makes me one of the superior tribe of “haves” and an enemy of the poor, disadvantaged “have-nots” because it denies our shared equal humanity. God’s command is not to love anyone as “other” at all. It is to love them as I love myself. As part of me or perhaps as the rest of me. To see anyone as “other” is to hate them and be their enemy in God’s eyes. To see myself in them, to put my body right next to theirs, is to begin to live the kind of love that God showed in Emmanuel, God with us. Anything less is not worthy of the name Christian.
From Larycia and from the way God is redeeming my recent experiences, I am finding that I may have lost my evangelical tribe and become an enemy to some, but I have joined a much bigger tribe of sojourners, many of whom have also followed Jesus out of former tribes that were neglecting his profound example as the one we once treated as estranged enemy, yet who stopped on the road to tend our wounds.
Whose enemy are you?
Please learn more at . thttp://samegodfilm.com/
