Dear Christian, whose side are you on, anyway?
Why deconstructing labels is part of the anti-fundamentalist journey
Labels are powerful tools for group think and fundamentalist rails; words and names to keep us in line, identify which group we belong to, and signal to others what we believe, how we live, and who we align with anytime “sides” are involved. Labels are a social cue humans use to convey context and facilitate social understanding: they help predict social behavior.
Who I affiliate with under the same label allows others to know something about me, before any interaction has even begun. I’m known by my brand.
A Gator football fan can see a Seminole fan and, going by just team color and logo, receive a healthy portion of rivalry history in an instant. How each fan base behaves towards the other is relevant. It matters, at least to UF and FSU fans, that each team is not in the same conference—there’s an ongoing embroiled debate about the SEC and ACC. If you’ve ever been inside the stadium for a rivalry game, you’ll bring your experience with you to this identification. Was it Doak or the Swamp? (The noise level matters too.)
While the gator fan is not responsible for the behavior the entire gator nation fan base, the reputation will likely factor into a decision of whether or not to attend a live game. Ever witnessed a parking lot fight? Tempers run hot, fueled by sweat, testosterone, and tailgate alcohol. Games get emotional. Fans have very little impact on the score or ultimate outcome and that lack of control channels itself into the side-by-side and one-on-one interactions in the stands. What sway they may not have on the officials calling the game, they might feel like they have with that ice cold Coke in their hands as they douse it into an opposing fan’s face.
It was the reputation of the group’s behavior that provoked me to deconstruct my loyalty to the “Christian” label. It was the election in 2016, when so many people I went to church with at different points in my life shared “I voted” selfies on election day, scrunching their nose or gagging, but saying, “I voted for the bad guy just because he’s not her. He’s on my side.” What they were really saying was, “I’m on his.”
Realizations hit me rapidly that season. The christianity I grew up with, that seemed so principled and well-meaning, even if their pursuit of virtue hurt sometimes, melted away. The “R” next to his name meant more to them. His gender meant more to them. His reputation (without proof or merit) of wealth and success meant more to them. They looked past the stats of his awful behavior towards women, minorities, and contractors. Past the flags thrown onto the field. Past the rulings of unsportsmanlike conduct and personal fouls. Past his conference hopping and transfer portal pattern to position himself on whatever winning side. He claimed their label was his. His congregation said they wore his label too. Suddenly, Christian in America, once and for all, didn’t mean what it used to, and I had a new choice to make.
Whose side was I on, anyway?
Ultimately, becoming anti-fundamentalist is not about swapping sides or teams. Becoming rigid in the other direction isn’t better. Likewise, Jesus presented followers a third way too. It’s not Republican or Democrat. It’s not American Evangelical. The Jesus life, if you’re listening to the guy who started it, is about stepping outside of labels and social groups. It’s about no longer othering others. This is not how I was raised.
My Southern Baptist Church hammered the Christian identity into our psyche. They used mottos to train us: STAND ALONE as followed THE HIGHEST CALL. We carried our Bibles to school so we’d set ourselves apart but gather at the flag pole to pray so everyone could see who we were with. We wore crosses around our necks, on our clothing, on our bumper stickers, and stuck on signs in our yards, using this ancient symbol of torture to send powerful social cues to everyone that we identified as Christians and they could predict certain behavior from us.
The trouble was, that behavior unfolded in my life as a public performance. The private pain and abuse that was much more impactful than any yard sign or prayer meeting stayed in the shadows while the shiny evangelists led on stage.
It’s unfolded in our country that way as well. American Evangelicism adopted Nationalism and chose a rabid rule-breaker as it’s standard bearer.
Christians are left to reconcile all that dissonance. The actions don’t match the words. The words don’t match the actions.
To be fair, religious exiles have examined the Christian label in their deconstruction processes for years before the 2016 election. Some choose the names of other belief systems. Some choose no label at all. For some, that season became a breaking point where the label was no longer conscionable to use. And for many, and maybe you, it’s a label you still sometimes use, but scramble to clarify “what kind” you are, or swallow down an ick feeling of hesitation, because your faith means something to you but you don’t want to communicate it means what the MAGA group does now.
The question I get in my work educating on the abuses in Christian Fundamentalism and sharing the world of my memoir, A Well-Trained Wife, more than any other, is “Are you still a Christian now?”
It’s a question I refuse to answer. My reply is always, “I’m spiritually private now, because it was having a firm answer to the fluidity of spirit-faith that got me into fundamentalism in the first place.”
Which is true. All that pressure to identify beneath a label as a Christian teenager felt good. I knew who I belonged with. We had swag. I had friends and easy answers to extremely complicated questions. In the South, as part of one of the largest and most powerful conferences in America, as a member of one of the largest teams, I had bragging rights. I didn’t have to wonder whose side I was on because I was sure my group had it right: we were on Jesus’s side and we stood for everything Jesus taught. Everything and every one around me confirmed my bias too—the news we discussed, the books we read, the music we chose, the company we kept. Never were we challenged to look at history or the wider group or the fruit of what we sold.
They were right: labels divide. The Bible calls it separating the wheat from the chaff, but if you’re relying on that cherry-picked goodie as justification, you’d better take a hard look at what you’re calling wheat. As soon I answer yes or no to that question, I’ve placed myself on a side, alienating the others. I’m affiliating with a group who may or may not accurately represent my personal ethos and behavior. I’m pressured to adhere to choices determined by my group, such as who I’m supposed to vote for and what kind of decorum I’m expected to accept. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus, because Jesus wasn’t a Christian either. And I think he’d probably be horrified with the flagrant use of an ancient torture symbol as his logo and his blood as the team colors, too.
For a long time, I felt a level of expressive freedom within the Christian name. I was able to flow through several denominations and keep it. Stop attending altogether and keep it. I didn’t feel the behavior of a bad portion of the group said anything about me at all, much like a person is still who they are even if they have cancer. Then I wondered why I held on to it—what was I getting from calling myself something long after I no longer needed the public validation of belonging to that group, and when the group itself now behaved in ways I wanted to distance myself from?
The answer had a lot to do with how I felt about myself in private, healing my own religious trauma and learning to feel confident in my understanding, wisdom, intuition and integrity. Ironically, the highest call was learning to stand alone, just not in service to a fundamentalist agenda.
I’ve come to understand that true faith is private. It’s not for public consumption or currency as a social cue. My character is evident; my interactions with others can offer the context anyone needs to evaluate if they align with me or not. I don’t need to call myself something for you to know who I am and what I’m about, and who I pray to or not isn’t going to be a box someone can check to determine if I’m worth reading.
As a Christian Evangelical, I was taught to disregard boundaries around probing questions regarding someone’s faith. We demanded answers and provoked their fears daily: “Excuse me sir, if you were to die tonight, do you know where you’d spend eternity?” Looking back, I think we were jerks. Also, bad at parties. Now, I model respecting boundaries by not asking strangers such personal questions that are part of their own quest towards what they believe. I’m not recruiting for a team.
Part two of this series: How to Stay a Christian After Abuse.