As someone who somehow escaped the clutches of my childhood and early adult Christian nationalism, I know all too well the moral enforcement mechanisms that kick in when someone steps outside the bounds of conformity.
Communities under stress often close ranks. Questioning becomes betrayal. Moral clarity gets replaced by loyalty tests. And then, as you say, people start making exceptions for what they once knew better than to defend.
Thank you for sharing this. More and more people are experiencing people like your aunt as we are in an increasingly polarized context. What you’re naming — the way Israel has become a brain-breaking loyalty test that overrides every other value. It’s painful to experience this kind of moral injury and political grief. I wish you a steadfast healing…
It sure does. I haven’t seen anything else work quite the same way. In my Brooklyn PMC milieu the only thing that comes close is the conservative creep that accompanies becoming a parent and a homeowner. That self-centered shift can cause people to cross a similar ideological distance (from early-20s progressive to full-on cryptoracist parent of “twice exceptional” middleschoolers), but the corrosion is much more of a slow-burn. In the 26 months since 10/7 I have seen people CRACK.
As someone who somehow escaped the clutches of my childhood and early adult Christian nationalism, I know all too well the moral enforcement mechanisms that kick in when someone steps outside the bounds of conformity.
Communities under stress often close ranks. Questioning becomes betrayal. Moral clarity gets replaced by loyalty tests. And then, as you say, people start making exceptions for what they once knew better than to defend.
Speaking as a Catholic, the same moral blindness has occurred with abortion as a single-issue Catholic cause. Fortunately we acquired Pope Leo.
Actually, though, white Christian nationalism is as far from the Gospel as morally possible.
So I understand.
Thank you for sharing this. More and more people are experiencing people like your aunt as we are in an increasingly polarized context. What you’re naming — the way Israel has become a brain-breaking loyalty test that overrides every other value. It’s painful to experience this kind of moral injury and political grief. I wish you a steadfast healing…
It sure does. I haven’t seen anything else work quite the same way. In my Brooklyn PMC milieu the only thing that comes close is the conservative creep that accompanies becoming a parent and a homeowner. That self-centered shift can cause people to cross a similar ideological distance (from early-20s progressive to full-on cryptoracist parent of “twice exceptional” middleschoolers), but the corrosion is much more of a slow-burn. In the 26 months since 10/7 I have seen people CRACK.