It's In the Code Ep. 76: "Why Can't We Just Fix Conservative Christianity?
“Why be so hard on conservative Christianity, to the point of dismissing it entirely? Why not fix it?” This is a real question we receive, and it’s a fair question. Can conservative Christianity be “fixed”? Or are the problems with it too deep for that? In this episode, Dan answers these questions, arguing that because the problematic elements of conservative American Christianity are “in its code,” the code needs to be rewritten entirely.
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AXIS, MUNDY MUNDY Hello and welcome to the series, It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
I am your host.
Coming to you today, recovering from both the Thanksgiving holiday and COVID.
I had my second go around with COVID.
I tested positive on Thanksgiving, recording this on my first post.
Isolation day, mostly past the brain fog, still some fatigue, but we'll see.
We'll see if I can string together coherent thoughts today or not.
However, I was gone at a conference, then we had the Thanksgiving holiday, then I had COVID, which means that I am worse than ever at being behind and responding to your emails and comments.
A lot of great insights that you're giving me though, folks.
I've had some great conversations with people at this conference, that's going to be reflected a little bit today in This episode, I know great insights that I'm getting from you on email and other venues.
Please keep those coming.
Daniel Miller Swag, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com is the best way to reach me.
But keep the ideas coming, comments, got some ideas for some upcoming episodes, things that I'm putting together, some responses to some of the ideas that you've had.
I'm hoping in the coming weeks here to get a better chance to go back and catch up on all of those.
But as always, can't do this series without you.
It really builds from the insights and the comments and the conversations that I have with so many of you.
So thank you for that.
So, I'm going to dive in here because I can already tell that my voice may not love talking for this long.
Yet another COVID thing, I suppose.
So, I'm going to pick up here.
I went to the American Academy of Religion, that's the big professional conference for religious studies folks, and had that the week before Thanksgiving.
And it was, first of all, sort of overwhelming and humbling, the number of people that I ran into there who know of the podcast, who listen to the podcast.
Thank you to all of you.
It was great to meet so many of you.
Maybe pick up some new listeners there as well.
So if you're new and checking it out as a result of getting a chance to talk, welcome to the show.
But I also had an opportunity there for some people to ask some of the kinds of challenging questions that I get sometimes about the series.
And this has been kind of a theme off and on for the last few episodes here.
But I had a conversation with somebody that I think they raise a fair question, pose a question to me, gentle and kind, but a sort of criticism that I think is fair and I want to respond to.
And I think it relates to some of the themes we've been talking about in this series, both recently, but also some themes that go, I mean, really far back, even before this series, to some of the earliest days of the Straight White American Jesus podcast.
So I'm having a discussion with a guy, let's call him Rick, I guess, as opposed to Ron.
So this is not the argumentative Uncle Ron, this is the nice guy Rick over a coffee or a beer at the conference, who, you know, is familiar with the podcast, has checked it out some, is a theologically conservative Christian, But not of the Uncle Ron variety.
And what Rick said, the sentiment that he expresses, and he kind of encapsulates what I hear from other people as well, was sort of this, where he says, you know, a lot of the criticisms of conservative Christianity you make are spot on, and I agree with them, but why not just fix it?
Why, as he would say, why blow the whole thing up?
That's where you go wrong, this notion that we have to blow the whole thing up and do something radically different.
We can fix it, we can modify it.
And again, this from somebody who identifies as a theologically conservative Christian, I think speaking in good faith and articulating a kind of practice that is very, very different from what the Uncle Rons of the world are doing.
And the reason this struck me is, I think, partly because of the spirit in which it was asked, but also because it's another one of these kind of you-paint-with-too-broad-a-brush concerns that I've raised.
The feedback that we get or the questions that people say, well, aren't you painting with too broad a brush?
Aren't you saying that all religious people are this or that or whatever?
Okay?
And it's a fair question.
Why not just fix the kind of popular religion that I'm critiquing all the time?
Or we could say it this way.
If we wanted to get just a little more technical, we could say, okay, if one of my central targets of critique is high control religious context, and I focus specifically a lot on a certain kind of popular conservative Christianity in America.
That's kind of what I know.
It's what I'm familiar with.
It's what I feel like I have the best insights on.
If that's your critique, why not maintain an expression of conservative Christianity that isn't high control?
I mean, that's in more technical terms what I think this person is after.
They are trying to live out a form of conservative Christianity that is not high control, that doesn't sort of run afoul of all the things that we're talking about on this all the time, that doesn't use the coded languages, that isn't into the social control and so forth.
And so here's my short answer to that question of why not just fix it.
The short answer is because being high control is in the code of that kind of Christian expression.
In my view, it can't just be fixed.
And I've said that before.
Recently, I did an episode kind of revisiting that language of it's in the code, the name of this series.
What do we mean by that?
And I'm not going to rehash all of that, but in this conversation and others that I've had recently, I think it reminds me that it's worth saying more about that.
So why do I say that?
Why do I say it can't just be fixed?
Okay.
What I think people like Rick envision and what I think they practice is what I've called in other episodes and in our main podcast, a kind of kinder, gentler, conservative Christianity.
It's a conservative Christianity that affirms things like patriarchy, though it may be uncomfortable with that language, it still affirms it.
Gender complementarianism.
Traditional, quote-unquote, understandings of gender and sexuality.
In other words, it presumes a cis, hetero conception of the human person and so forth.
But it expresses those tenets in what its adherents would argue is a more loving, positive, constructive way.
And I think they would say it's also the more authentic way.
They would say that the things I'm critical of all the time, that we talk about so much in this series, that we talk about so much on the podcast, they would say that those are sort of not authentic expressions of Christianity, that there's something wrong with those.
They would condemn those, and they would condemn those as conservative Christians.
So that's what I have in view when I talk about what I call this kinder, gentler, conservative Christianity.
So what does that look like?
Okay, here's an example from a conversation I had with somebody.
This is a long time ago.
This is a conversation I had with somebody shortly after we started the podcast.
It was in response to one of our earliest episodes or series.
I don't remember exactly where it was, but I had this conversation with this person, and I think it catches this point perfectly, right?
And in these episodes, I was critical of what we call gender essentialism, or gender complementarianism, and patriarchy more broadly.
And I argued that those ideas, together with things like purity culture, that they were, basically, I said they are inherently misogynistic.
Okay.
And I argued, and I still do, that they lend themselves easily to abusive ends like what we see with so many sex abuse scandals and churches and things like this.
And we've talked about this a lot in the main podcast that, you know, when people are sometimes shocked
When these sex abuse scandals and abuses of power come out in conservative Christian churches or in Catholic churches or wherever, and I've said many times, it's not surprising to me because I think that that's the direction that patriarchy generally, and then these more technical terms like gender essentialism and gender complementarianism, this is where they lead, right?
And so I talked about this early on in an early episode or series of episodes.
And this person, who I had known once upon a time long ago, we were undergraduates together at the same conservative Christian college.
This person is now a pastor in a conservative denomination, pastor of a large church, and so forth.
And he reached out to me and expressed sincere hurt about the things that I was saying.
And basically said he couldn't understand how I could paint all of those things as inherently negative or inherently misogynistic.
And he said that I quote, you know, that I knew his heart.
This is a very kind of, you know, evangelical way of speaking.
You know someone's heart.
He said, I knew his heart.
I knew he wasn't a misogynist.
And for him, he said, you know, as the male head over his wife and family, that's the patriarchy, this notion of male headship, that the man is the head of the family, the church, et cetera, that he worked to serve them, to sacrifice them, that he was called upon to love and care for them.
That he had a responsibility to love and protect his children, and especially his daughters, who he felt are, you know, sort of greater risk from the world, and so forth.
Reminded me of another conversation I had with somebody in a similar vein who referred to his daughters as the princesses that he would do anything to protect, and so forth.
And for him, this carries through in his ministry as well.
As the head of the church, this is not about being authoritarian, and so forth.
This is about being called to serve and to sacrifice oneself, and so forth.
You get the idea.
This is the kind of notion he had.
So it hurt him for me to say that these ideas were inherently misogynistic, that one was participating in misogyny if they affirm these ideas or express them.
And so, in his experience, these core tenets of his conservative Christianity, they made him a more caring father, they made him a more caring partner, they made him a more effective and caring pastor.
And he wasn't trying, and I know this, he was not trying to be duplicitous.
I don't think he was trying to hide anything from me.
I fully accept that this is how these tenets of his faith shaped his practice.
And so the question is, hasn't somebody like that kind of fixed, quote-unquote, conservative Christianity?
Does the person who, because of their gender essentialism and complementarianism, does that person who preaches and teaches that men are to honor, respect, and protect women, doesn't that person fix the conservative Christianity that affirms those views?
Does it make any sense to insist that people who hold those tenets but express them in this way That that's a form of misogyny?
That's the question that arises.
And again, I think it's a fair question.
And my answer, just to be really clear, and then I'm going to expand on it, is that this kind of expression doesn't fix conservative Christianity, and that those expressions and those key ideas remain misogynistic.
And I'd love to hear what people think about this.
Maybe listen to the rest of the episode first, but I would love to hear where folks are at with this.
And here's why I say that, okay?
Let's imagine that expressions of these generally patriarchal views exist on a continuum, because I think that they do.
And on one end are the kinder, gentler expressions that this former acquaintance of mine, I guess we were never close friends, That kind of expression, that protective, caring, called-upon-to-serve-and-to-honor-and-so-forth expression, that expression exists on one end of this continuum.
But on the other end of the spectrum, on the other end of the continuum are those abusive, high-control expressions.
I think the extreme example of this would be overt sexual abuse.
And let's imagine this is a continuum.
It's got two extremes, and those two positions are far apart from each other.
There's real distance between them.
I am not trying to collapse the two.
Okay?
To say that I think that they all participate in misogyny is not the same thing as to say that I think that they are all abusive in the same way, or to the same extent, or something like that.
Okay?
But here's the issue.
No matter how much distance separates those expressions, they are positions on the same continuum.
And it's not difficult to sort of conceptually map the shift from position to position to position on that continuum until we find ourselves at one end or the other.
We can do the thought experiment, or if we have the time, we can go and find real-life examples of people occupying different places on that continuum, ranging from this acquaintance of mine on one end all the way down to the abusers on the other end.
It's not hard to map those transitions.
And this is why, for me, as paradoxical as it may sound to some people, and again, I would love to hear what folks think about this.
As paradoxical as it may sound to some people, even those positive expressions of patriarchy, they remain misogynistic.
Because they're on that continuum.
Because you can map the move from, let's say, the most benign expressions To the most malignant, atrocious, abusive expressions, they're on the same continuum.
And this is why, for me, these tenets of that tradition, they can't be fixed, right?
What's necessary is to move off the continuum entirely.
Not a kinder, gentler patriarchy, but the rejection of patriarchy.
Not a kinder, gentler gender essentialism, but the rejection of gender essentialism.
Not a kinder, gentler form of, you know, notion of authoritarian, singular, omnipotent authority, but rejecting that conception of authority entirely.
Right?
A kinder, gentler expression of patriarchy isn't enough.
We have to reject patriarchy and these other sort of core tenets that come with it.
That's what I think is at work here, and I think that all of those tenets, all of those kinds of things, the authoritarian God, views of, say, violence as an inherent part of redemption, linking gender and sexuality to biology, or whatever it is, they can have kinder, gentler expressions, but they all exist on a continuum that for me ends in abusive, high-control expressions, and that is the problem.
That's why they can't be fixed.
They can't be made okay as long as they exist on this same continuum with these other views, right?
These problematic tenets are written into conservative Christianity.
They are in its code.
Again, that's what we mean when we say it's in the code.
It's in the code.
That misogyny is in the code of patriarchy.
We can't step around it.
So modifying the expression of the code isn't enough.
We need a different code.
We need something else.
And so, you know, here's a final way to think about this.
I want you to stick with me a minute.
I promise I'm going to land this plane.
But here's my illustration of this.
I hate the game of Monopoly.
Okay, if you're out there and you're a Monopoly lover, got holidays coming up and your favorite thing in the world is to set up the Monopoly board and spend like six damn days playing the game that never ends, good for you, you do you, I'm not judging you, but I hate the game of Monopoly, okay?
It lasts forever.
It starts feeling endlessly repetitive, you just do the same thing over and over and over again.
You wind up having to do math.
Like, I get it, like in games you keep scoring stuff, but like, you run into that card about the taxes or whatever, and you gotta add up all your properties and your money and figure out if it's cheaper to pay the percentage or the flat rate or whatever.
Not what I want in a game, okay?
I just, I don't, I don't like Monopoly.
I've got a kid who loves Monopoly, always wants to play it.
Every time there's like a snow day or a long weekend and I'm like, oh my God, we play like anything else.
Okay.
And I think I'm not alone in that.
Okay.
I think a lot of people don't love Monopoly, which is why Monopoly has been modified in lots of ways.
There are rule variations to make it shorter.
There's Monopoly Junior, which is sort of simplified.
There are all the themed games that are clever and novel.
There's like NFL Monopoly, National Parks Monopoly, Stranger Things Monopoly, Game of Thrones Monopoly.
There's even Metallica Monopoly.
But at the end of the day, for me, it's still Monopoly.
And if you've got a problem, as I do, with the basic setup and mechanics of the game, you need to play a new game.
No amount of modifying Monopoly for me makes it a playable, enjoyable game.
It's in the nature of the game that I just can't do it.
I can't do it.
You need a new game.
And that's where I am with the kind of mainstream, popular, conservative Christianity in America that we talk about so much.
We need a different game.
We have to reject the code.
We cannot simply fix it.
So, Rick, I'm sorry, but I don't think it can be fixed.
For me, the problem isn't just the expression of conservative Christianity.
It's many of the central tenets of it.
And despite the well-meaning intentions of so many, I think it is, when we talk about patriarchy, I think it is fundamentally misogynistic.
I think that tradition is fundamentally homophobic.
I think it's transphobic.
I think it's authoritarian.
I think those things are baked in.
And I don't say that as a judgment.
If I've got people listening who are hearing that, I say it to say, I was once where you are.
I spent a long time trying to fix that tradition, trying to stay within it.
If I thought it could be fixed, I would still be some sort of conservative Protestant today.
I'm not, because I don't think it can be.
So that's where I'm at with that.
If we want to escape the problematic legacies of that tradition, we have to change the game.
We have to rewrite the source code.
We have to find something that's not based on patriarchy.
Not a kinder, gentler patriarchy, but not patriarchy.
Not a kinder, gentler gender essentialism, but an awareness of the fluidity and dynamism of gender.
Not notions of normative sexuality, but an affirmation of the diversity of sexualities that we as human beings enjoy, that makes us what we are.
The last thing I'll say about this is that doesn't mean somebody has to give up Christianity.
And I know that for a lot of people that sounds strange.
I deal with this a lot with my clients who are leaving conservative Christianity and that's kind of all they know.
There are other ways of being Christian if that's what you want to do and that's important to you.
There are other ways of rewriting, reimagining the Christian code other than conservative Protestantism.
I had to find a new game.
And that's part of what I do in this series, is trying to explain why that is, and why that code is problematic, and how it plays out in really concrete ways.
Need to wrap this up.
Still coming off COVID, as I say, so I don't have that much stamina.
Anyway, as always, though, I would love to hear what folks think about this.
Again, it's coming out of real conversations that I had the privilege of having with people when I was in San Antonio at the conference.
I would love to hear what people think about that.
Daniel Miller Swag, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
Other ideas or topics that are coming up, ideas related to the upcoming holidays.
I know I talked some about the Christmas things and the war on Christmas and so forth.
Last Christmas, I don't want to repeat all of that, but if there are other things that come to mind that you think would be worth some time, let me know.
As always, value so much all of you listening, your time, all of our patrons, just the encouragement I received from so many, as I say, in the last week and a half or so.
Thank you for listening, thank you for doing everything that you do, and please be well until we have a chance to talk again.
