8 min. to read if you read all the footnotes, too.
A few months back, I saw a Saturday Night Live sketch that I cannot get out of my mind. Satire done well is a bucket of cold water to the face, washing away the cruft of self-righteousness that obscures our vision. The clowns of Saturday Night Live threw such a bucket in a sketch brilliantly led by Ashley Padilla.
Padilla portrayed the mother in a family about to go to dinner. She needed to make an important announcement. After demanding no one react to her news, she haltingly declared that “…I may have changed my mind (long pause) about Trump.”
The adult kids erupted. A chaotic back and forth ensued. Each new revelation — “I feel now… that he might be… bad… for our country” — was met with an increasing cacophony of exasperation, long-repressed frustration, even gloating. The sanctimonious avalanche was met by mom’s own reactivity. “Stop it! Do you want this to be real or not?!”
In a masterful six minutes, Padilla and crew portrayed a scene many have hoped for, even fantasized about, while revealing a critical problem. Watch it here. It’s worth your time.
A Bid for Belonging
Of course, it’s normal to feel exasperated when friends or family embrace ideas we think are self-evidently terrible, hurtful, or ignorant. There’s a natural sense of victory when those folks finally admit they were wrong. Of course, we think we’re right! (Same as they do). But Padilla pointed to a reality that we often ignore.
People do what they do for reasons, and those reasons often are not based on a careful evaluation of the data. (True for us, too). One of those reasons is our need for belonging. Sometimes this belonging is about real relationships, like family or church. Other times, this sense of belonging is about identity — People Like Us Do Things Like This. Feeling a part of Us carries powerful cognitive and emotional benefits. This is the crucial problem.
When Padilla’s mom carefully couched her announcement, she was making a bid for belonging. She was telegraphing her vulnerability, wondering if her family could open up a space for a new possibility. Her shouted counter-reaction — “Do you want this to be true or not!?”— tells us about the fragile edge she stands on. She was contemplating a leap of faith. Would her family give her a place to land?
There is a tangle of questions that arise. Why did they think that was a good idea to begin with? Why couldn’t they see the corruption? We can get into conversations about privilege, racism, and nationalism. We can discuss American capitalism and how the desire to participate in the comfort of the system numbs you to those who must inevitably be exploited in pursuit of that comfort. All of these are conversations worth having. Things need to change! But those are not the primary questions at this knife-edge moment.
Maybe you’re recoiling, wondering if I’m suggesting we ignore past bad behavior and all the ways MAGA and Christian Nationalists have contributed to the trauma of this moment. I’m not. True reconciliation will require an honest accounting of what has happened. Further, there are real dyed-in-the-wool Christian Nationalists and White Supremacists out there. This is unquestionable, and their toxic ways of thinking, rooted in self-centered, ego-defense, must be attended to. Accountability is necessary; retribution is not. What is at stake today is whether we will have a society or a church where we can deal with those things at all.
This Crisis Isn’t New
We stand at a junction where we are choosing whether the future will be increasing ideological Balkanization or whether we have the strength of character to be a society. It is the Christian Nationalists, the White Supremacists, and the Fundamentalists of every stripe who long for hard-edged lines of exclusion so they can build their pure utopia. The terror and trauma of this moment are the fruit of their world-building. These things are worth opposing. Yet, we can’t forget Nietzsche’s prophetic warning in Beyond Good and Evil against becoming the monsters that we fight.
I’ll press further. It’s not enough to avoid being monsters. If we think we have a better world to offer, we aren’t going to get there by employing the tactics we decry. The Beloved Community — that kinship circle where all are welcome, cared for, and encouraged to be who God made them to be — won’t emerge through doctrinaire exclusion and condescension. We are invited to be icons of the co-suffering God. Not easy in moments like these.
This tension isn’t new for the church. One of the harshest persecutions in church history took place in the early fourth century under Emperor Diocletian. The particular intensity of this persecution came because it wasn’t merely an attack on Christians as minority outsiders. It was an intentional effort to erase the Christian identity in the Empire. Diocletian’s edict of 303 commanded the destruction of Christian churches and the burning of scripture. Magistrates were directed to force Christians to make a choice between their loyalty to the Empire and Christ. They could keep their social position by turning over their scriptures.
Many couldn’t bear up under the tremendous pressure. Some feared for their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Others perhaps agreed with the stated desires of the state for security and uniformity that would result in peace for all. These weren’t always or even often dramatic denials of Christ; often these were quiet, pragmatic concessions to what felt like a necessary consolidation of Roman order. While personal motives varied, many recanted their faith.
These people came to be called the lapsi, the lapsed. When the persecution began to wane, many wanted to return to the community. This created a crisis. Some bishops, led by Donatus Magnus, were adamant that the church was the pure community of those who obeyed God. The lapsed had lost their place. To provide a path of reintegration dishonored God and shamed the price paid by the martyrs. Others believed that the door to the church remained open to all. This disagreement developed into a schism and even the creation of a parallel church system in North Africa. In a cascading parade of reactivity, bishops excommunicated each other and declared any baptisms that had happened under their enemies’ authority void.
Augustine was elevated as Bishop of Hippo in 395 CE, at the height of this controversy. His response was to remind the church that, according to the Lord’s parable of the Wheat and the Tares, the church on earth would always be a Corpus Permixtum, a mixed body. Any attempt to purify the earthly church was a destructive act of spiritual pride. The church was a hospital rather than a museum of perfect statues. If a hospital, then welcoming the broken was essential. In fact, this welcome was what opened the space for healing.
Begin Imagining Reconciliation and Reintegration
Augustine’s response was a pastoral application of Jesus’ guidance in his story of the Prodigal Son. If the Spirit is at work in the heart of the prodigal, inviting him home, then there must be a parallel work in the church creating a safe place to receive him. Jesus warns of the possibility of standing removed in the field of our self-righteousness, judging the purity and motive of the lapsed. Be clear: The elder brother out working in the field was right. He was the one honoring his father, handling his responsibilities. His sense of betrayal was fair. But it was his very certainty of being right that kept him in the field, outside the house, outside the party. There is a sense of certainty and vindication to be had by being right, but that won’t build the Beloved Community.
There is an enormous amount of work ahead of us. The church that exists on the other side of this earthquake will look different. The society we live in will look different. Will these be communities that honor human dignity, that respect every person’s God-given free will? Will we build communities that work for the common good and sustainably care for those in need? We cannot get there by closing the doors of grace or requiring every prodigal mom and dad to withstand the withering condemnation of our self-vindicating lectures. If the gateway of reintegration requires a televised confession and a lifetime of penance, it’s a barrier, not a door.
Those who are beginning to haltingly mention that their minds are changing won’t leap if there is no safe place to land.
Well said. The parallels to 305ce are stunning. I’ve been in several churches recently, due to school activities.
I’ve not experienced vibrant community, a vision of hope, or a sense that they are doing anything other than kicking the can down the road.
The prayers are empty, the music is lifeless, and the people seem to have already capitulated to state-sanctioned religion.
Thanks, Gary. I’m glad to be connected with folks like you who know there can be more. (Oh, and thanks for commenting in the private community. I’m going to be transitioning all comments into that space in the near future, so I appreciate you getting the ball rolling.)