Blue Fundies: Checking Our Blindspot is Essential
Are we becoming fundamentalists "on both sides?"
Bill Maher and Jane Fonda recently had a conversation about voters who don’t like Trump but think the left has “gone nutty.”
“Because the other part of the coalition are people who, they don’t really like him that much,” Maher continued. “They just think the far left has gone so nutty on so many issues.”
“That’s what they’re being told … by people like you,” Fonda interjected.
Maher has become increasingly critical of the Democratic Party and liberals in general, with the crux of his criticism seeming squarely aimed at his disdain for “woke” culture.
I watch Maher’s show from time to time. He’s unafraid to be cocky and condescending, and it seems like he’ll entertain anyone on his show, giving viewers a chance to watch his reactions and provocations over a relatively diverse field of voices. Many times I watched with a gut hunch that he was a covert Trump supporter blowing wind on the “left is woke” talking points. He seems to hold some weird views when it comes to religion, patriarchy, education, trans rights, democrats—even equating Taylor Swift fans with the cult of Trump.
I think that’s a stretch. Even if her influence was powerful enough to sway an election (and it was not), Swifties aren’t going to harm democracy and the wider world the way Trump will. These influences are not equal.
That got me thinking about a conversation I’m hearing in several areas online: Are there blue fundies? Are the rigid thinkers on the left the same as the rigid thinkers on the right? Is it as bad to be “woke” as a Maga-steeped Retrumplican?
If you’ve followed my work for very long, you’ve probably heard me say, “Fundamentalism can be in anything.” It’s the premise of this very column.
While the “Fundamentalists” are also a specific denomination of Protestantism, and there are longer, more academic definitions of fundamentalism available, I sum it up with a shorthand that’s become a filter.
Fundamentalism is valuing the purity of an idea over human needs. It’s an idyllic outcome and a formula for success that, if pursued correctly, will result in happiness, success, order, eternity in heaven….whatever leadership promises. There are fundamentalist approaches to exercise, spirituality, wellness, faith, food…anything.
Fundamentalism is characterized by sharp, polar binaries—hard swings between right and wrong, us and them, this and that, good and bad, black and white—and rigid rules that must be followed to protect the purity of the idea in question.
Fundamentalism is valuing ideas before people.
That keeps it very simple for me.
Fundie is shorthand for fundamentalists, and my work here, which sprang from my experience in a Christian cult that controlled us with ideas, addresses explicitly the abuses by Christian fundamentalists. But I believe polarities and binary patterns can show up anywhere. If you’ve seen the front page of this column, you’ll find categories where I deconstruct the fundamentalism in culture, politics, and even trauma recovery itself.
Back when I was in that ideological prison, first in an evangelical megachurch, then in groups belonging to Bill Gothard’s IBLP, and eventually a covenantal Presbyterian congregation that taught men should discipline their wives like children, I wasn’t able to tell the difference between our lifestyle and the only fundamentalists I knew of—the Afghan women wearing full burqa’s in the news during the war. Journalists blamed “religious fundamentalism” for the terrorist acts and restrictive lifestyles, but when I examined our belief systems, I saw more similarities than differences.
The working title for A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy was The American Burka. My editors recommended a switch because the conversation about Islam has changed so much over the past twenty years. However, the comparison I was making and my conclusion remained in the story. “The denim jumper was the American burka.”
If people are wondering if there are blue fundies applying binary, polarized, rigid ideological purity with a formulaic approach to life that results in a happy outcome, I’m here for that conversation. If fundamentalism can be in anything, it can be in “woke politics” too.
Writer Johnathan Merritt, who wrote the adorable “My Guncle and Me” and who calls himself “Christianity’s Gay Best Friend,” had this to say on the That Sounds Fun podcast.
“There has been the rise of progressive fundamentalism. And it’s a lot of people who grew up fundamentalists, and they left behind the fundamentalist theology, but they took all the machinery with them. All the litmus tests, all the cancellation, all the us versus them, all the demonization and the villianization, and now they deploy the same tactics of fundamentalism in the oppositie direction, against often times, their parents, their family members, their former pastors…and I’ve determined I’m not going to do that.”
I agree. That happens. This is the living, breathing battleground of deconstruction. Life will throw us into situations, and we’re tasked with unpacking our reactions and reflexes into binary thought. It’s not enough to leave the high-control church you came from—it takes years of therapeutic work, intention, and self-awareness to get the high-control out of you.
If you have a fundamentalist background that groomed you to extremes, it will show up everywhere. What you eat, how you approach problems, how you dress, body image, how you evaluate threats and chaos, and in every relationship. Until you learn to love the soft animal of your body, to quote Mary Oliver, over ideological purity, you’ll find burrs and spurs of fundamentalism clinging to everything you do.
Fundamentalism is often suggested as the remedy for fear, chaos, disorganization, and uncertainty. People crave the security of a solution and a formula that offers them some level of control over progress. As far as ideologies go, progressive liberalism makes sense to me as the salve to the fear of high-control authoritarianism, and in this way, it’s vulnerable to fundamentalist thinking.
Here’s a solution + steps = happiness.
But I’m not ready to equivocate progressives with lingering deconstruction and right-wing fundamentalists. Nor am I willing, like Maher, to suggest nutty woke folk are as equally dangerous as the religious fundamentalism sweeping over our nation. The reason why is because the theory quickly breaks down with the data.
If both sides claim to be true, how can we know?
Liberalism is supposed to be anti-fundamentalist in nature because it values people over ideas. But liberalism is an idea, just as conservativism and religion are. And, paradoxically, tolerating the intolerable creates an intolerant society.
If a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance that was there in the first place. — Karl Popper
The paradox raises complex issues about freedom, liberty, and the protection of democratic values. Reason, open debate, and free speech aren’t enough to protect society from intolerance and tyranny. Reason itself isn’t enough to change someone’s mind (which is alarming to consider.)
As Susan diRende says in the linked reel, our brains light up with increased blood flow when we hear things that agree with our biases. We feel rewarded. When I consider this within the context of groupthink and collective effervescence, I’m humbled, if not discouraged. How can we combat the “it’s the same on both sides” accusations, which we know in our guts and instincts to be patently untrue if reason and rationale are unavailable to help us out?
The answer, according to diRende, is the scientific method.
Observe
Ask questions (fundamentalists hate questions, so if you’re curious, you’re already deconstructing)
Make predictions
Gather data and test your prediction
Analyze the data
Draw conclusions
Personally, this is the only reasonable path to escape harmful religious ideologies. Education was my way out. This is why I get twitchy when Christian Nationalists attack education, ban books and threaten to dismantle the Department of Education. It’s also why I get twitchy when presenting-left but behaving-right commentators like Bill Maher say he’s against a college education. Education is how we learn to think critically, question, analyze, and study what we think and why we think it.
Liberal fundamentalism is an overarch, an over-correction. The pendulum swings to the other side—-but no, it does not create a horseshoe in the case of fundamentalism. I used to joke, “What are we gonna do? Congregate in the library and beat you over the head with our NPR book bags? Love someone too much?”
But seriously…
Show me where liberals are congregating by the millions weekly around the same dominionist ideology in churches all over America to take over America.
Show me where progressives are threatening to mass deport immigrants, rip apart families, ban the Bible, and press women to be pregnant against their will.
Show me a cabinet full of liberal known sexual predators and men embracing an agenda for America to take us into a theocracy.
If the observation is that some progressives are fundamentalist (polarized, binary, rigid) in their approach to the election as it relates to so-called “woke” or “nutty” politics; and we’re curious enough about that to suspend assumptions and ask questions; and we hypothesize that it’s possible; then the data so far suggests the outcomes are uneven.
The roots of “woke politics” include a race-relevant source, as it originated in the 1930s as an African-American form of “awake.” This (analysis of the data) seems highly relevant in consideration of Christian Fundamentalism and the inherent white supremacy within it
“Woke politics” refers to left-wing politics, which calls out actions or ideas believed to threaten freedom of speech. (analysis of this suggests protecting the freedom of speech might be the side of history you’d want to default to if democracy and freedom overall matter to you.)
“Woke politics” is a phrase that has been co-opted by the right-wing (analysis of this suggests it should include a big fat WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT critical thought)
Julie Bogart, who wrote Raising Critical Thinkers, says, “Answer this question every time you look at a fact or assertion: ‘What do I hope will be true?’ Your biases will surface. Being suspicious is not the same thing as critical thinking. Being snarky is not the same as critical thinking. Critical thinking starts with self-awareness.”
She further lays out some helpful steps:
Just because a scenario seems “plausible” to you doesn’t mean that doubt is the reasonable position to take
Training in complex fields is required to offer an opinion. Everyone else is repeating information that they accept or they don’t.
We resists facts that contradict what we want to be true and lean toward explanations that help us maintain our membership in communities we value.
The use of “they” is a tell—define “they”
Diversify your sources
Typically, theories that lead with motive are not as reliable as theories/explanataions that rely on data.
The hardest advice for me to take is stating, “What do I hope will be true.” I don’t like revealing my bias because it makes me instantly insecure—a consequence of being punished for asking questions in a high-control religion. Revealed bias reminds me of Stephen King’s famous writing advice to “Kill your darlings,” because my biases are darling to me. I want to protect them. Anyone can become loyal and precious when it comes to our favorites, including ideologies. Allowing the mental space to be wrong about something is imperative to set down defenses and think critically about a subject.
When I think of the most strident leftists I’ve ever come into contact with, I remember my bias is to make excuses for them, because I’ve worked so hard to leave the right and move to the center and sometimes the left. My stomach recoils from ardent absolutes.
I rebuff cries that “Well, Antifa is just as bad” because Antifa, as an example of as far-left as one can go, is short for anti-fascist. As a movement, Antifa is loosely formed and decentralized. Is this my protection of liberal ideas and anti-fundamentalism at play? Or is my gut instinct resisting because I know the data will back me up: these things are not the same.
While there may be apples to apples to compare—individuals who are just as anti-fascist as the most fascist person and individuals who pursue their leftist ideals with the same violence we see on the right, I think organization matters. Centralization, critical mass, and an influential trad-wife movement matter. An authoritarian leader guiding a religious movement to vote for him matters.
I think the blue fundie debate compares apples to an orange, so to speak.
The synonym for woke is aware, conscious, evolved, and inclusive.
Those are good attributes that allow us to value people over ideas.
My conclusion, at this time, is that equating progressives who still have fundamentalist patterns in their thinking to right-wing fundamentalists driving dominion is a false equivalency. They are not the same distance from the center, they do not have the same oppressive goal, and the structures to achieve them are not similarly in place.
Do secular democrats have improvements to make? Yes. Did they make mistakes in the campaign? Yes. Can they sometimes swing to a binary in their thoughts and behaviors? Also yes. But are they to blame for the rise of MAGA-red Christian Nationalism in America? No.
That’s one helluva deflection.
Book Office Hours with me here.
More on trad wives and fundamentalism:
What its Really Like to be a Trad Wife
I Would Have Been a Trad Wife Influencer
Our paradigm exist in our minds. My “recovered” Catholic friends are still looking for a pope somewhere. I remember hearing a Wiccan talking about what “ the goddess wants me to do” and thinking that it sounded no different than the Xianity I grew up with.
People get legalistic about who ought to be able to ride a bicycle, why and where. I was once lectured because I the organ in stocking feet, making it easier to slip across the pedals. It’s everywhere.
Making the paradigm shift in my own mind was critical to my own healing. Having said that, I don’t think that bi-nary thinking ever quite goes away. It’s just that now I have any number of doors to help me escape it.
Great article. I’d like to point you to Ken Wilber’s pre-post fallacy (like I always do) because there is a subtlety here that is really important.