Tag: Republicans

Blame, Charlie Kirk, and Jesus

We live in a culture addicted to blame. It happened this summer when floods in central Texas killed over two dozen children. Questions began before the waters receded about whether the owners of the camp were negligent. Once upon a time, such natural disasters were written off as “acts of God,” presuming no human liability (though still strangely blaming the Big Guy). We now seem bent on finding fault.

Recently, I’ve watched blame be cast like a net over whatever group an individual might represent – a political party, the mentally ill, a gender, a race, an ideology, or a religion. We used to call this prejudice and bigotry. An intelligent person could distinguish an individual from a group. Pointing to the worst case was understood to be a straw man that was avoiding dealing with the best case, or even the average case. For some reason, a cross-section of Americans now defend broad-brush demonizing.

The History of Blame

It didn’t used to be like this. About a lifetime ago, there was a dramatic shift in the way legal cases placed culpability. Through the 1800s, if you were hurt by a product or service, it was generally your problem. The policy of caveat emptor reigned – buyer beware. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, a suspicious eye turned towards companies and their wealthy magnates. A decisive case was the 1916 MacPherson vs. Buick Motor Company, where the New York Court of Appeals allowed a man who had been injured by a defective wheel to hold the company liable. Thereafter, contracts were no longer required to prove culpability.

A court ruling in the 1960s then declared that companies could be held liable for defective products even if they hadn’t been negligent.

By the late 20th century, lawsuits abounded – asbestos, medical malpractice, tobacco, and even spilt hot coffee. Blame snowballed. Blame was a multi-billion dollar industry.

Modern neo-liberal, post-civil-rights-era activists and thinkers, particularly in elite universities, have advanced blame to the ideological realm. The recognition of ancestral land ownership, the tracing of longstanding structural inequities to a modern beneficiary, the attribution of explanation for crime to structures rather than individuals, the attribution of health issues to a food industry rather than choice – all of these are modern manifestations of a blame culture stretched to ambiguous ideological grounds. They bring out the wounded and the disingenuous capitalizers alike.

The Spirituality of Blame

Jesus said, “What you loose on earth, you loose in heaven.” When we loose a culture of blame on the earth, we invite a spirit of blame to take spiritual power over our society. I believe we are there.

In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, blame is an odd thing. The person who shot him was clearly responsible. Given a cogent, functioning mind, that person’s ideology must have been the motive. The culture that created his ideology seems to be the garden that grew it. There must have been gardeners.

But the eagerness to blame Democrats, liberals, or what have you for a violent culture will only go so far. Who murdered Democratic Representative Melissa Hortman? What motivated the shooter in the Buffalo shopping mart? Who has been responsible for abortion clinic bombings and LGBTQ-directed violence in America? The extreme right blames the extreme left and vice versa. The common thread is extremism.

A Way Out

Today, I’m inclined to turn the spirit of this age back on itself. The blame goes to a seething culture of blame. Polarization is a product of the extremes pulling us away from the middle, pulling us away from dialogue and communication. In this landscape, the enemy is clearly “over there” with the guilty and can be attacked from a distance. We need not find common ground – we retreat and leave scorched earth behind us.

One of the things I like best about Jesus of Nazareth is that he was always on the bad guys’ side. When the religious right formed a rock-throwing hoard, Jesus went and stood by the woman caught in adultery. When the nationalists gathered to evaluate Jesus’ loyalty, he went and had lunch with the traitorous tax collector, Zacchaeus. When zealots sought to kill Roman sympathizers and Romans sought to kill rebels, Jesus put Matthew the Roman-employed tax collector and Simon the Zealot in his inner circle of twelve. When he could have been a member of the Sanhedrin, Jesus was counted among sinners. When Creation staged a rebellion against its Creator, Jesus incarnated among the Creation.

Jesus of Nazareth didn’t seek to destroy us when we became his enemies. He sought to win us back. When we crucified him, he did not flood the earth and wash us away. He began, one by one, to win us over to his side. He also didn’t tell us to destroy our enemies. He showed us how to convert them. When I realize what he did for me when I hated him, I can do little more than bow and submit to his Way. It is the way of acknowledging my own guilt rather than finding a group to scapegoat. And rather than throwing rocks, I seek to stand alongside the sinful and broken the way he stood alongside me, with the hope we will forsake sin.

America has submitted itself to a spirit of blame, and we are spiraling in it. Peace will not be found by finally driving out one end of the political spectrum. It will be found by exorcising the spirit of the age and choosing grace instead.

Christian Voters and Shifting Sands

There are three hypodermic shifts that are going on in the American circulatory system as we enter this next election season. On the surface, it’s the same story as always. We do this every four years. There are primarily two parties every time. The issues they are debating are unlikely to be any different than four years ago, and only moderately different than forty years ago. The rhetoric hasn’t changed much.

But under the skin, there are three philosophical shifts that have gone on in the ethical decision making of Christian voters, a bloc that became noteworthy in the late 70s, grew in influence until the first decade of the 20th century, and seem to be on the wane since. My sense is most Christians haven’t noticed, though the shifts are of tectonic importance.

  1. A shift from character to consequences. If you watch the debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980, you watch two civil, gracious candidates disagree over the substance of issues facing voters. They were both, I think I can assert, Christian men, though neither faultless. Carter was a devout Baptist who wore his faith on his sleeve. Reagan had led a prayer at the end of his acceptance speech at the RNC. Both had been Sunday school teachers. Their faith claims appealed to Christian voters. Today, however, the devout Christian marks the ballot with one hand and pinches her nose with the other. There is a recognized undercurrent among religious voters that you have to put up with whomever your party puts forward, because while they not be a person of character, at least they will deliver the final outcome on whatever social issues are most important to the voter. We’ve moved from a “character counts” voter to an “end justifies the means” voter. We’ve switched from virtue ethics to consequentialism. Carter was elected as a moral correction to the Watergate mess. Reagan spoke openly about ending racism, fighting Roe v. Wade, and even of “maintaining one’s virtue.” I don’t hear voters looking for character this cycle, and when one candidate happens to try to make such an appeal, we rarely believe them anymore. My problem with this is that it is not characteristic of the ethics of Jesus. Jesus would never say that the end justifies the means.
  2. A shift from favoring one to disfavoring the other. This may not entirely be a shift, so much as a recurrent pattern in national sentiments, but we’re definitely at the bottom of this cycle. There is very little general enthusiasm among devout Christians for any potential candidates this year, as there was mixed to little enthusiasm four years ago and eight years ago. We’ve become far to comfortable with the “lesser of two evils” being the only option. This is one area in which we are truly bipartisan – I don’t hear a lot of eagerness for one’s own party from the Christian who votes on either side. And after a third election like this, it increasingly feels like a trend and a norm rather than an off year. Again, what bothers me is that you will not find Jesus ever commending the lesser of two evils, and I’m not sure we’ve noticed that we’ve slipped away from the ethics of Jesus in our political thinking.
  3. A shift from public civility to public shame. Again, the Reagan/Carter debate is such a contrast to the mud-slinging, name-calling, slandering oration that has become not only acceptable but desired by an American audience. Jerry Springer aired from 1991-2018, and there may be more causation than correlation between what he made acceptable and what we now accept. Facebook launched in 2004, Twitter in 2006. Our ability to have immediate, uninhibited access to an often anonymous field of public debate (or just outright slugfest) is probably also a catalyst. But wherever it comes from, the fact that an audience of Christian voters not only witnesses this incivility but is now being shaped by it and willingly participates in it is a horrendous judgment on the moral fiber of American Christians. I just don’t hear a lot of Christ coming out of a lot of Christians, at least the loudest ones.

I’m cognizant of all of this as we face a second round of debates among the Republican candidates this week. I’ll be looking for how much or little attention the candidates give to matters of faith as an indication of how much they think it means to the voting public. I’m watching the ethical demeanor of the debate and to what degree candidates will openly contradict their own previous statements and hurl nasty insults at their rivals. Mostly, I’ll be looking for character. Whether we ask the President to be one or not, they serve as a moral exemplar for our children, and we are tacitly informing our children how important morals are every time we elect one.