PicoBlog

My series on John Inazu's book "Learning to Disagree" will continue next week, featuring an interview with the author.

It’s been one year, today, since my second book —Testimony — was released. Thank you to everyone who has bought the book, supported me, and been kind enough to tell me about their experience of reading it and how it’s often matched your own stories. Some of those notes are below.

A year later, the question of why so many evangelicals are for Trump continues to dominate much of the political conversation.

The fact that this question still gets asked so often illustrates the tension between stated beliefs and identity.

When I say identity I mean at least two things. An identity is a way that an individual finds belonging in a group, and that group provides meaning, belonging, and safety. I also use identity to describe the hidden deposits in the culture and in each individual that build up over time and are inherited, subsumed, assumed, and unexamined.

I think my book does a pretty good job of showing, not just telling, what it’s like to come up in American evangelicalism over the past half-decade, and how these identities are formed.

Our religious, political and cultural identities are deeply embedded in each of us. Beliefs are part of these identities, but often beliefs are shaped by identity rather than the other way around.

Religion and religious groups place heavy emphasis on beliefs, doctrine, dogma, etc. But there is no question that religion also often functions as an identity, in many religions, in many places around the world. When you hear someone say they are going to “protect Christianity” or see Hindus in India vowing to “save our religion,” that is talking about religion as an identity, a group of people, more so than it is talking about a set of beliefs.

Evangelicalism is no different in this respect. But it believes it is different.

Evangelicals, as I wrote in the piece below, too often think of themselves as “hatched” rather than “formed.”

The last decade has been an apocalypse, a revealing. It has shown many evangelicals like me that much of evangelicalism is a cultural product rather than a theological one.

Reflecting on How Our Selves Are Formed

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February 3, 2023

I have reflected recently on how my own deep evangelical training and instincts were on display after Trump spoke at Liberty University in January of 2016. That day, Trump’s gaffe of saying “Two Corinthians” got most of the attention. But what stood out to me was how Trump talked about Christianity in a way that was foreign to me (you can read my dispatch that day for Yahoo News here). It sounded, I thought at the time, like he was talking about faith as an identity in the same way that Catholics and Protestants in Ireland have thought of it.

The idea of Protestants marching in parades through Catholic “territory” (or vice versa) — as has happened in Ireland over many years of violence driven by politics, power and wealth, all wrapped up in religious identity — was also foreign to the way I was brought up to think of religion. To be clear, I still think that Christianity’s teachings do tear down the dividing walls between us, and that all ground is level at the foot of the cross. But I also recognize that religion functions as an identity marker in a way that just seems natural and inevitable in human history, and I’m not so sure that this has to be a negative thing. It just is.

When I heard Trump speak in 2016, the idea of “defending” Christianity was laughable to me, because I was raised to think that Christianity represented ultimate reality. Only people who lack confidence that they are following the right path feel the need to defend a faith system, I thought. God doesn’t need our help.

This notion of having a total handle on all truth or ultimate reality is what it means to think of one’s self as being hatched, I think. It is also the mark of a fundamentalist. I now subscribe, personally, to the notion that being a Christian means living like a certain type of person that reflects Christ’s basic teachings, and pursuing truth rather than seeking to possess it.

"The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent and proud."

-Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, "Anti-Goeze," Eine Duplik (1778)

I didn’t intend or set out to write all this. It was supposed to be a short post. So to bring it all home as much as possible, I’ll say this in conclusion: Many struggle with the incoherence of the stated beliefs of evangelicalism versus its behavior. But the political choices and public behavior of evangelicals is shaped by their identities as much if not more so than their stated beliefs.

Identities form over time and change slowly, and most importantly, we are often blind and unaware to how our identities have been formed.

I know that many people are tired of this question/topic. I am too, but there are also plenty of people whose curiosity has just been piqued on the topic and haven't thought about it too much before.

The questions I've come to ask are different:

• Where do we find our identity?

• What is faith?

• How much of religious faith is grounded in identity, and how much in beliefs and doctrine? What is the proper balance and emphasis?

• How do we define anti-intellectualism?

• While I believe that faith tradition/church involvement, ie. how one does church or expresses their faith, is a matter of personal preference, can we conclude that certain faith traditions, religious practices, have better track records of producing better citizens?

Those are just a few of the questions that emerged from talking about the book. Someone said that talking about a book you've written is an entirely separate and equally challenging phase of the creative process. Someone else said there are two books: the book you write and the book you talk about. That's very true.

If you never got a copy of the book, now's a good time to do so. Brazos Press has told me Testimony was one of its strongest releases in 2023, and it would be great to keep that going in 2024.

I've included below some of the interviews I did with major news outlets and podcasts. An excerpt I published at Yahoo News is here: "I Was a Teenage Evangelical Missionary"

But I also wanted to share some of the reader feedback I received over the months here, and that's below the interview links. There's been some really great responses to the book, and I wanted to share some of them.

First, here’s some of the media I did for the book:

And here's a small sampling of the many amazing notes I've received in response to Testimony:

My process is to summarize books I’ve read into a word or phrase, and even before I reached the conclusion, my word for your book was “love” because it was evident that you wrote it from a place of love ... I wanted to let you know it wasn’t just “a book” I read but one that spoke to me, and I will reflect on it throughout my journey. - N

"Truly, thank you so much for sharing your story and writing this. It makes me feel very understood and less alone." - C

"It is a gift and a tool for those of us who have lived experiences nearly identical to yours, and who have struggled to communicate about this with beloved parents. This is the first time I've read a book that I felt not just comfortable, but eager, to have my parents read. I know that it came at a personal cost to you, so I want you to know that that cost wasn't for naught. I'm sure I'm only one of countless readers who read Testimony and thought: THIS is the book I was looking for! Thank you for sharing your experience with us. It is not an exaggeration to say that your book has been life-changing for me." - B

"You give the best picture I've ever seen of what it is like to inhabit the evangelical right, without being by someone who then lost all faith before writing about it. People on the left are always asking me how people can believe the things those on the right do, politically, and are just as bad at demonizing the right as the right can be at demonizing the left. Both sides need some empathy, and you have given me the tool I need to advance that on my side of the aisle." - R

“You do a great job of walking through your story of (to use an overused term) deconstruction, but without burning down the house of faith in Jesus. It helps me hold out hope that enough of us are committed to doing the necessary and hard work of pruning and taking apart the harmful stuff in an effort to calling the church back to a more faithful truer picture of Jesus. So many these days are deconstructing and moving to a fundamentalism and judgmental tribalism on the other extreme. Thank you for helping carve out a third way. Today I am a female pastor, attorney, & mother of 3 seeking to navigate this same journey myself. Your words are life giving to me.” - K

"I have been a Philip Yancey, Brennan Manning, Shane Claiborne, Tony Campolo kind of guy for many, many years. And your book was exactly among this crowd to me. I cannot think of a higher compliment I can give to anyone in your shoes. Writers are my equivalent to modern-day prophets. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, city that kills the prophets. You guys are the brave, the willing, my source of hope and inspiration, regarding the church in this country and on this planet. You are outsiders, unwelcome and unwanted with your questions and in your role. I call it 'beauty from ashes.' Your candor, humility, and skills struck a wonderful and much-needed note with me. Thank you so much." - G

"I’ve been trying to navigate the waters between complacency and cynicism with the various Christian tribes I’m torn between while trying to figure out how to exist politically. Your book is one model of how to do that. It's one constellation in the star chart Christians need to navigate the times we find ourselves in. I’m so thankful for your book because it has let me know that I’m not alone. There ARE those who love the Christians they are compelled by their faith to critique. You may already be aware of this, but this note should let you know that you are very much not alone either. There are many of us in the margins. Thank you for loving Jesus’ church even while you point out some of its deepest flaws." - M

"While my religious upbringing was more Southern Baptist than Pentecostal, at its core there are many similarities between our paths and I too continue to formulate the faith I have come to believe and find it hard to square in many instances with the religious teachings that I was raised with. When I began to question certain of those tenets, I also found myself at odds with members of the family, although the disagreements were born in private, rather than public. Knowing how difficult they were in my setting, I can only imagine the difficulty of doing so in public, for all to see. Thank you again for your willingness to share this very personal part of your life." - M

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