Bonding vs Bridging Communities: Fear & Retribution in Fundamentalism
Last week I attended a conference hosted by a fundamentalist-leaning evangelical church. There were roughly 3000 people in attendance and I heard some of the most celebrated preachers from that particular corner of the Christian universe. Frankly, what I heard was largely disheartening. If I were to summarize the majority of the preaching, it would be this:
Jesus is the one true God who came to suffer and die in your place so you might avoid the eternal conscious torment of hell, and to think any other way about Jesus is to resign yourself to condemnation.
I’m sure each of those preachers would be delighted to know that’s what I heard. However, not only does this narrow message contain propositions that are legitimately debated in Christianity, it neglects important nuances about the teaching and work of Jesus and ignores the massive implications of Christ as the inaugurated future of hope and redemption.
Most of all, though, the way it was presented transformed the gospel from a message of liberation to one of fear and escape. Accordingly, Jesus ceases to be the person who empowers humanity to finally live into its incredible promise as the image of God, and becomes the ultimate conqueror who puts you in your place…because he loves you.
There were other ways this parochialism was constantly reinforced:
- Jesus is coming back as a “dominant and domineering” savior who will wipe out his enemies
- If you do not have a strong man preaching this message to you every week then you are in danger of failing in the Christian life and should find a new church
- If you cease to believe this message then you demonstrate you never really knew God in the first place and were always bound for hell
- If you are a woman, showing too much of your body in public is a significant betrayal of your duty to represent Jesus
- “Right doctrine is the litmus test for your life”
- God’s wrath is not only satisfied by death, but by suffering too
- People who reject penal substitution and the divinity of Christ are among the most radical and perverse members of society. L. Ron Hubbard was quoted as an example, and immediately described as, “…a man who exhibited many of the markers of pedophilia.”
- You must be able to understand and agree with an abstract concept of God (the Trinity) and a specific technical role for Jesus (penal substitutionary atonement) to be saved from hell: “You can get [the question about who Jesus is] nearly right and still end up in hell.”
Consider what kind of affect these statements might have on someone who is deeply afraid of disapproval and rejection. Or, consider how appealing they might seem to someone seeking to dominate or control others.
Preached this way, Christ and Christianity become a powerful means of keeping people in their place. This has its advantages. Forming a community around fear and guilt creates tremendous bonds among its members, even between those who are in control and those who are being controlled. The disadvantage is that it requires force and hostility to maintain, which takes its toll on the members and sets your community at odds with other communities.
During my time at the conference I read Peter Block’s book Community, and while I can’t endorse everything in it, he makes some insightful and helpful observations:
[Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein in their book Better Together] distinguish between “bonding” and “bridging” social capital. Bonding social capital are networks that are inward looking, composed of people of like mind. Other social networks encompass different types of people and tend to be outward looking – bridging social capital [...] As Putnam and Feldstein put it, “A society that has only bonding social capital will…be segregated into mutually hostile camps.”
Block goes on to insightfully point out that the only way to maintain this sort of bonding community is through retribution, law, and force.
At every level of society we live in the landscape of retribution. The retributive community is sustained by several aspects of the modern community conversation [...] the marketing of fear and fault, gravitation toward more laws and oversight, an obsession with romanticized leadership, marginalizing hope and possibility, and devaluing associational life [freely chosen voluntary associations] to the point of invisibility.
That’s fundamentalism in a nutshell.
The gospel, on the other hand, is about Christ’s eradication of barriers. Now, the Resolved preachers would agree – but they would likely say the barrier Christ eradicates is the one between the individual sinner and God. I would say it includes that, but extends pervasively to all other barriers as well – those between men and women, between races and religions, between ideologies, between humanity and the earth, etc.
Ironically, these preachers often quoted Paul’s condemnation of “another gospel” in Galatians 6 as a defense of penal substitution, (which is not the subject of that letter), but their messages were very similar to the one Paul rejected: one that creates an externally approved and exclusive religious group. Christ, on the other hand, doesn’t merely create a new and better conclave of exclusive religious adherents. That would just be another form of ancient Judaism. Christianity isn’t just a better form of Judaism. Rather, it is what God always intended to accomplish through Judaism on a cosmic scale: liberation from the destructive power of death in our everyday lives and from the paternalistic bonds of law and religion through the creation of a new and unified humanity:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ~ Galatians 3:28 (ESV)
This is what Galatians – and the gospel itself – is all about. Not fear from danger or protection within a closed community or tightly constructed system of beliefs, but liberation from such fear, isolation, and retribution. Moreover, this is accomplished not by separating us from others, but by being a people who are distinctive because they are sent to eradicate such barriers and become what Peter block calls a “bridging community.”
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. ~ Galatians 5:1
Without trying to focus on one little side note of the more important larger picture – you had made mention of *their* little mention of L. Ron Hubbard.
Being apart of a fundamentalist background for the first 21 years of my life, I’ve heard TONS of name dropping about this person and that – always coming off in judgement.
It wasn’t until quite a few years after I left and looked back on it that one of my theories as to ONE of the reasons why they do this is because (and basing this on the character of the leaders I knew) they are trying to discourage others from becoming like those “others”. Some tried to paint such a picture of “Hey, these people are living such sinful, perverted lives and they’re so miserable though they may not even realize it. Don’t become like that!”. Although that approach is understandable (if that indeed is one’s purpose for name dropping), it also understandably and *completely* backfires.
Instead of one watching their own spiritual step, they in turn quickly become self-righteous, holier than thou, judgemental, condemning people who constantly sit on their own arrogant man made pedistal.
I think this same theory can be applied to the tactics of their message. Although I do agree with a lot of their theology, like you, I also believe there is more to the story. Quite frankly, I’ve known many “fundies” who would very much agree with your statement:
“I would say it includes that, but extends pervasively to all other barriers as well – those between men and women, between races and religions, between ideologies, between humanity and the earth, etc.”
Like I said above, I think the same theory could apply (at least in some cases) to the tactics of fear and guilt that they use. Instead of it – in some cases – being used to keep followers on their toes and “on guard” it does indeed severely backfire putting their followers under a massive and choking level of fear and control from domineering leadership.
Being a “recovering survivor” of such tactics, I’ve said quite a few times that although God is indeed the perfect judge and that is a message that all should understand BUT that he is also a God of such unconditional love, mercy and grace that THAT alone is enough of a message to disciple and witness with without using the message of fear, hell fire and damnation. After all, without trying to judge another’s heart, I’ve seen people come to Christ because the fear of the alternative was so over whelming that you wonder if they really love God at all or if the literal *hell* just got scared out of them! All I know is that I would personally be saddened and dissapointed if someone I loved drew close to me because they were scared to death instead of actually loving me back.