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“It’s An Easy Fix”
“It’s an easy fix.” That’s what the proponents of high control religion often say in response to those who ask hard questions or level pointed critiques. But is it an “easy fix”? If not, what is the strategy behind suggesting that it is? How does the assertion that high-control religion can “easily” be modified actually work to maintain it? Why should we recognize that this response aims to coerce and maintain control over would-be faith deconstructors? Join Dan in this episode as he explores these questions and issues.
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As always, I want to begin by saying welcome to It's In The Code, a series that's part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus, and of course, I'm your host, Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
As always, so pleased to be here with all of you.
I want to thank you all for listening, for supporting what we do, especially to our subscribers.
And if you're not a subscriber, we invite you to consider doing that if that's something that might be possible for you.
And to everybody, as you know, this is a series that is driven by you.
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Got some great stuff upcoming in coming weeks and months.
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DanielMillerSwaj, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Welcome any and all thoughts.
And again, if you're a subscriber, you can also go on our Discord, and I do float around in there and peek in at least from time to time as I'm able.
Always welcome your insights so much.
Want to dive in here today.
We're continuing a series that I've called Who's Afraid of Deconstruction?
And again, this is a sort of continuing, ongoing discussion of negative responses within high-control Christianity to so-called faith deconstruction.
And just as a reminder, kind of situating these discussions, these responses all represent efforts on the part of high-control religions practitioners to gaslight those who are undergoing deconstruction, to discredit them or call them into question, to insulate high-control Christianity.
From the criticisms and critiques they raise.
And we've looked at a lot of these, as I said before, we're coming to the final stretch of the series here.
I think, I always say this, I think that this is close to the last episode.
Sometimes new things come up or somebody will email me with some great idea and I kind of keep going.
But we're coming up to the end here.
And these final episodes, and this came out in the last episode as well, sort of shift from efforts to simply insulate high-control religion from those criticisms.
To essentially suggest that high-control religion is salvageable because what it has to offer is more important or significant than those criticisms allow.
In other words, this is the move that sort of says, well, okay, maybe you've got some points, but...
And then you go on to get some sort of caveat that means that the high-control religion should remain in place.
And it's essentially an effort to minimize or trivialize deconstructionist criticisms.
And this week's response represents a kind of catch-all response.
By which I mean, it's what I'm calling the, it's an easy fix response.
That is, it's the response they give you when you go through your criticism and your criticism.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, you've got some points.
You raised some valid points.
But it's an easy fix.
It's something we can deal with.
We being the religious institution, the religious tradition, what have you.
And this is essentially another effort to trivialize any of the relevant points or concerns that are brought up by the deconstructionists.
And I think one of the keys about this is it gives the appearance of reasonableness.
It appears to be a reasonable, often heartfelt, responsive kind of reaction, okay?
And this way, it also further gaslides deconstructors.
So once again, we've talked about this before.
You're kind of brought in this position with, oh, oh, oh, that's all.
That's what you're concerned about, because that's an easy fix, right?
It's that kind of notion that...
The concerns you have really aren't that significant after all.
And it's the kind of response, it's an easy fix response.
It sort of says, you know, hey, we're listening.
We get it.
There are some problems, but while they might seem really significant to you, it's actually an easy fix.
Just wait and see.
Just give us some time.
Just stick with us.
And those last parts are really important.
Just wait and see.
Give us some time.
Stick with us.
We hear you.
We're responding.
We'll take care of it.
It's not that hard.
But like all the responses that we've seen, all the efforts to discredit faith deconstruction, this response, it's not about reasonableness, and it's certainly not offered in good faith.
So why do I say that this, with all the others, the others we consider isn't offered in good faith, and there are multiple reasons here.
Multiple ways that this operates that I think bring this into view.
And so I want to look at two of these.
The first is what I'm calling the receding horizon.
And this picks up on those statements that I made just a minute ago.
Just wait and see.
Just give us some time.
Just stick with us.
This is the line that says essentially, hey, we hear you.
We're listening.
You're valued and you have important insights.
The change you're looking for isn't as significant as you think and it certainly isn't insurmountable, but it'll take us some time.
I hear you, but it's going to take a while.
And that's what this is.
That response is an effort to buy time.
It's an effort on the part of the practitioners of high-control religion to buy time, but it's more than just that.
It is also an endless deferral.
It defers the action that is promised.
It seeks to mask the fact.
And we've explored this in other episodes, okay?
We've explored the fact that deconstructionist critiques do cut to the very heart of high-control Christianity.
There is no, quote-unquote, fixing it without having to completely undo it.
The things that would actually address the problems of high-control Christianity would call high-control Christianity into question.
And this response seeks to mask that.
To mask the fact that it can't be fixed.
And so this response makes a promise of change that will never actually deliver and has no intention of delivering.
The goal is to string the critic along and to keep them waiting for a change that will never happen, that will never come.
And every time the deconstructionist comes back and checks in or they revisit their questions and say, hey, I know we talked about this a few months ago.
You said that, like, you know, the church elders were going to be talking about this and changing some things and taking on board.
I'm just kind of wondering where we're at with that.
Every time we're told that, hey, we get it.
Yeah, we're moving as fast as we can.
You know how it is.
It's like steering an aircraft carrier takes some time, all that sort of stuff.
These things take time and on and on and on, okay?
It's a receding horizon.
And what I imagine with this is when I was a kid, And my grandparents and some aunts and uncles lived out in a part of kind of southwestern Colorado called the San Luis Valley.
Some of you listening, especially family members, know where that is.
And the San Luis Valley is this big open valley with like long straight roads.
And we would drive.
And I remember there was this like, I thought it maybe had rained recently or something.
There's like pool on the highway.
And I'm all excited to like run through this water on the highway for some reason, like as we drive.
And just waiting for it and waiting for it and waiting for it.
It's like, we never get any closer.
And I remember asking my dad, like, why are we not, like, when are we going to get to that water?
And he had to say, he's like, there's no water.
And I'm like, what do you mean?
He said, it's a mirage.
It's the first time in my life I ever encountered a mirage.
And in my head, like, I'd seen, like, growing up with, like, you know, old, like, Warner Brothers cartoons and stuff where a mirage was like an oasis in the desert or something, not just like a puddle on a highway.
But of course...
Because it was a mirage, we never got any closer to it.
That's this phenomenon.
The receding horizon.
You just keep driving toward it, waiting for it, expecting it, preparing for it, and it just never gets there.
And this is the same process that we're familiar with in other areas of life, and we're familiar with this.
The promised change is a receding horizon that never gets any closer.
And that's the point.
That's not an accident.
That's the aim.
The structures and practices and teachings of high-control religion can't be changed without undoing high-control religion.
And so you promise something that can never be delivered.
And the response is offered by people who know this.
They know this.
They know that there is no quote-unquote easy fix.
They have no answers or meaningful responses.
If They're even sincere in acknowledging that there are problems.
If you can even get to that point where they acknowledge there are problems, they know that they don't have any answers or meaningful responses.
They know that they can't fix the things they say they're going to fix without undoing the very structures that perpetuate them to begin with.
They know that.
And so they just defer.
They just put it off.
And the longer it lasts, the better.
And this is sometimes a preliminary response.
This is the response you put forward before.
You talked about the bait and switch, when you start really guilting people into staying and things like this, or other ways of discrediting the people that are raising these questions.
This might be the response that they sort of start with, just put you off, and put you off, and put you off, and hope that it just lasts indefinitely, but if it doesn't, it buys them time.
So they just put you off, and they put you off, and they put you off, and they wear you down over time.
Or, if they can't, right?
You do come back around.
You say, hey, look, I'm sorry.
I'm not trying to be a pest.
I'm not trying to be a pain.
I'm not trying to be a malcontent.
But here are these concerns I have, and we talked about them, and you said that the church was going to be looking at those and doing some things and addressing them, and I don't think I've seen that.
I'm wondering what that looks like, whatever that looks like.
And you come back, and you persist in those critiques, and maybe you finally get to that point where you're like, you know what?
I think I'm done.
I just can't be a part of this anymore.
Then they use their supposed efforts to discredit you.
They can turn it around on you.
And here's how that works.
They essentially say, we've been working really hard to address this, maybe to the congregation, to others.
Maybe they get a conversation with somebody that you knew in the church, and they're wondering, like, why you left or why you disappeared or why you stopped leading the Bible study or whatever it is.
And they say, you know, I shouldn't talk about this.
It's a private matter, but you need to know, you know, yeah, they came to us with some concerns, and we listened to them and heard them, and we met in a spirit of fellowship or whatever other churchy things they want to say.
And so, you know, we've been working hard to address their concerns for weeks, or we spent months working on this, or this is part of something we've really been focusing on as a church for years, but nothing we've done is ever enough for them.
You know, we've been working on this for a long time, and they're still dissatisfied, and, you know, they're just not being reasonable.
I hate to say it.
I hate to say that kind of thing.
It doesn't sound kind, but they're just really not being reasonable.
They're really not interested in working with us.
To be honest, to be really frank, they're not acting in good faith.
They completely flip the script and accuse you of exactly their unreasonableness as a means of discrediting you.
So the longer you sort of fall for this trap, the longer you are strung along waiting for them to make these changes that will never come, The more that is then taken as evidence later of your unreasonableness, because we've been working on this for weeks.
We've been talking to them for months, and they still chose to leave.
I mean, I really, I just don't know what else we could do.
We did the best we could do.
God knows we did the best we could do.
So that's the first dynamic of it's an easy fix.
It's just a way to buy time.
It's not an easy fix.
There, in fact, is no fix to be made, but that they will insist that there is, that they're working toward that, that it's not such a big deal to gaslight you, to string you along, and if necessary, if you persist and you decide to leave, you decide to step out, then it will be used to discredit you as the unreasonable one,
the one raising the questions to start with.
So the heating, excuse me, the heating, the receding horizon.
Is the first dynamic here.
The second one is what I'm going to call putting on the makeup.
Okay?
And this is the response that's more complicated.
This is the response that creates a semblance of change.
This is the response where some of the people undertaking it might even believe that they are sincerely responding to deconstructionist criticisms.
They might actually believe that.
Okay?
And this one involves making essentially cosmetic changes.
To the entire edifice of high-control religion in an effort to, one, like, why make these cosmetic changes what I'm calling cosmetic changes first?
To pacify those raising the difficult questions or criticisms?
To make it look like they are actually responding to those criticisms?
And, or, right, both of these can be in effect, to also once again mask the fact that they're not really changing anything of substance.
So it's a way of preserving the structure, but making it look like changes have been made.
And this represents the response of putting the proverbial lipstick on the pig of high-control Christianity.
That's why I call it, you know, putting on makeup.
The lipstick on the pig.
The idea that you put pig on the lipstick, or pig on lipstick.
Lipstick on a pig.
I guess you could put a pig on lipstick.
Put lipstick on a pig, and it looks better.
Maybe it looks better, but at the end of the day, it's still a pig.
This is the same thing.
It looks better.
It might even feel better to many people, including many of its practitioners.
But below the surface is just the same old thing, the same high-control Christianity at work.
And this cosmetic effort to sort of refresh high-control Christianity, it can take a lot of forms.
And what I want to focus on, in the early days of this series, I did an episode called Cool Kid Church.
And a lot of features of Cool Kid Church fit under this category.
And a lot of, like, cool kid churches are still high control, okay?
What I call cool kid church, you can think of, like, the seeker-sensitive services.
You can think of churches that are just aimed at being sort of hip and young and drawing people in and so forth.
That kind of articulation represents the kind of high-water mark of trying to make high-control Christianity kinder and gentler.
That's another phrase that I've used.
If you're a longtime listener to this series, You know, I've talked about the kind of myth of the kinder, gentler, high-control religion.
It's the high-water mark of trying to make high-control Christianity kinder and gentler without actually changing anything of substance.
So what does that look like?
And if you're familiar with this, these are going to ring really true.
If you're not, I hope this gives a sense of what I have in view here.
But it involves, especially back in the day, preaching from Bibles is quote-unquote like regular language, you know?
So people will be like, oh yeah, the pastor of our church, I mean, he preaches from the Bible, but he makes it so easy to understand.
We use this translation that puts it in everyday language so it doesn't seem so foreign or strange.
So it feels fresh.
It feels relevant.
It feels, you know, like this is somebody who gets me.
But it doesn't actually challenge the underlying understanding of the Bible that drives high-control Christianity, what I've called biblicism and the stuff we talked about in the series on inerrancy and so forth.
None of that's called into question.
It involves pastors who dress and act like, you know, sort of regular guys.
And think here, like...
Like, cool dad fashion or references to dad rock or all that kind of stuff.
The pastors who dress and act like regular guys, the pastor who's in, like, the vans and the blue jeans and a t-shirt or something like that, who sits on a stool and just kind of chats with folks or whatever.
Or maybe the church has really cool stuff, like they meet in a bar once a month to, like...
Drink some beer and talk about theology or whatever.
A pastor is just a regular guy.
But it's in churches that still only allow men to be clergy and continue to teach the normativity of traditional gender roles, for example.
Other staples of high-control Christianity.
These are the churches that emphasize that, you know, sort of all are welcome.
No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, you're welcome here.
It's on their website.
It's on their flyers.
They say it at the beginning of the church.
But they are not.
For example, still LGBTQ plus affirming.
They're not going to have pride flags.
They're not going to say we unequivocally affirm whoever you are in your gender identity or sexuality.
Again, to give an example, but a prominent example.
They emphasize the need to make faith relevant to people's lives.
Again, people will talk about, oh, you know, Steve, when he preaches, he makes it so relevant.
He's just like regular guys sitting down and talking to you.
It all makes sense.
It's not all weird and judgy and whatever.
But in doing that, they only make it quote-unquote relevant by also avoiding so-called divisive issues like race and social justice.
They'll stay away from the big questions.
They'll preach a love of neighbor, but they won't say anything to challenge xenophobia or anti-immigrant rhetoric because they don't want to be too political.
That's the church.
That's the church that puts all the surface look of something different and fresh and inviting.
But if you probe down just a little bit, it's the same old thing.
And the cool kid churches are also the consummate practitioners of the bait-and-switch dynamic we discussed a few episodes back.
This is the church expression that wears its love-bombing on its sleeve.
We talked about the kind of love-bombing articulation of the faith that makes it sound so inviting, so inclusive, so welcoming of everybody.
Everything about this articulation is intended to look that way and feel that way.
It's what you'll see on the website and the clever slogans on the front of the church.
It's all part of why the pastor dresses as a regular person and won't use reverend in front of their name and won't talk about their educational credentials or whatever.
The sermons are often kind of shallow or saccharine in flavor.
Why?
Because they want to just sort of stay on the surface of theology that, again, sounds inclusive and inviting.
But when you get below the surface, the bait and switch reveals all the dynamics of high-control Christianity.
And this is what happens when you say, hey, Pastor Steve, I appreciate your sermons and everything.
It's really cool.
But you say that we welcome everybody, but are we cool with people?
If an openly gay couple comes, can they be part of our church?
Can they join it?
Or I think that that's cool.
If everybody's welcome and we affirm everybody, should we maybe march in the Pride Parade?
Or there's a social justice protest going on down the road next weekend.
Can we maybe put together a church group and head over there after services or something like that?
So when those claims to inclusion or acceptance or equality, when they're pushed too far by those who would deconstruct that church or who would reform it, then it comes out.
Then it provokes the bait-and-switch response.
Then the real high-control dynamics come out.
That's what happens.
And this is the way that it works.
This is the way that it works within the kind of lipstick-on-a-pig model of kind of surface changes.
And the other part of this is that this is the articulation of high-control religion that doesn't—it's not the receding horizon.
This isn't the one that says, we're trying to get to it, we're getting to it, it takes a lot of time, just bear with us.
This is the articulation of high-control religion that says, we've already made the changes.
I don't know what you're talking about, man.
It's inviting, and we have a message of inclusion, and we welcome everybody, and everything we do is about making people feel welcome and know that we care about them, and God has a plan for their life, or whatever else.
This is the articulation that says, we've already done all that.
And there are plenty of people within those churches who might actually believe that they have met those challenges, that they are, in fact, what they say they are.
They might sincerely believe that the cosmetic changes are substantive and signal something that really moves beyond the strictures of high-control religion.
But again, if you scratch below the surface, if you press a little harder, if you keep asking questions, if you press them on what they actually believe, if you press them on the substance of their actual practices, you will find high-control religion under the surface.
And this is often revealed when those cool-dad pastors finally push back.
The veneer falls away and we're left with appeals to, say, their authority.
Or the gaslighting that tells us that our dissatisfaction reflects our own misaligned priorities and so forth.
We're just not being team players.
We focus on the wrong things.
You only focus on the negative.
You're being divisive.
All the things we've talked about, all of a sudden that comes out.
And it's there that the claims of an easy fix are revealed in their falsehood, where it comes out that, oh!
Countering high-control religion is about more than Bible translations or saying that you're inclusive or telling people that everybody's welcome even when they're not.
There was no fix.
There was no legitimate acknowledgement of real problems of issues and therefore no sincere or meaningful attempt to address them.
It was all on the surface.
And if you scratch through that surface layer, if you wipe off the lipstick, you see it's still a pig.
You scratch through that surface layer, all you find underneath are more of the same high-control religious dynamics that we've talked about so much.
It's an easy fix.
That's what we're told.
Essentially, we're told, hey, you're making a bigger deal out of this than it really is.
It's an easy fix.
But that response is either intended to just buy time to just string you along.
Or to convince you that changes that are only of a surface nature are more substantive than they are.
And I think once again, as we kind of close this up, we can acknowledge and recognize how manipulative and coercive and potentially abusive that kind of dismissal is, if we think about it in the context of interpersonal relationships.
Leave out the context of like a religious institution, because I know it can be strange to think of that in the same terms.
But in interpersonal relationships, when somebody strings us along, when they promise that they're going to make changes that they never have any intention of making, when they change their surface behaviors but not the real substance of what they're doing, we recognize the problems with that.
And so when the same dynamic comes through in religion, we have to be able to recognize that it's the same thing, that what is abusive and coercive in an interpersonal relationship is also an abusive and coercive expression of religion.
High-control Christianity, once again, As the name suggests, it's about control and coercion.
It is a form of abusive religion.
And we need to recognize the dismissal of legitimate concerns and questions on the grounds that, well, you know, that's an easy fix.
We need to recognize that as the red flag indicator that it is.
We need to recognize that it trivializes, and it is intended to trivialize, the real insights and experiences of people whose spiritual well-being, high-control religion, claims to be concerned with.
It damages and traumatizes the very people that it says it wants to serve.
And just as it should move us out of coercive interpersonal relationships, it's the kind of thing that has, you know, come to a point of recognizing that maybe we have some of these toxic relationships in our life and we need to create some distance and step away from those.
We have to recognize the same thing with high-control religion.
It's not easy.
It's not simple.
But it's what we have to do.
I have to wind this down.
I want to thank everybody again for taking the time to listen.
I say it often, but I think not often enough.
If you're listening to this, I'm very well aware you could be doing something else with your time.
And so I thank you for that.
I thank you for listening.
I thank you for being here and giving me a part of your time.
Again, welcoming the insights, thoughts, concerns, questions, ideas for new topics and themes.
Daniel Miller Swag, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Welcome anything that you've got.
If you're not a subscriber and that's something you could consider doing, I would invite you to do so.
We put out a lot of content and we work really hard on it and we want to be able to keep doing that and that helps us to do it.
In the meantime, for everybody, again, thank you for listening.
