The Purity Culture of Progressive Christianity: Additional Reflections

Monday's post "The Purity Culture of Progressive Christianity" generated a lot of discussion so I wanted to follow up with some additional comments and clarifications.

To start, some concluded that I was saying that progressive Christianity, because a purity psychology is a work in how we reason about righteousness, is "just as bad as" conservative Christianity. So a pox on both their houses.

But I'm a progressive Christian writing, mainly, for other progressive Christians. Which is to say I think progressive Christianity is getting right some fundamental things about Jesus and the church in a way conservative Christians are not. Yes, I was describing psychological similarities about how both conservatives and progressives reason about righteousness in the idiom of purity. And about how this "will to purity" creates similar problems for both camps. But at the end of the day, as a progressive Christian I'm oriented to see purity/righteousness the way progressives see it. That's what it means to own the label "progressive" after all. (See my book Unclean for how I argue that Jesus reworks purity to align it with justice.)

So to be clear, the point of the post wasn't to say that progressive and conservative Christianity are theologically "the same." I don't think that. But I do think that a purity psychology works among both groups and that this psychology, given that it's a purity psychology, creates similar sorts of temptations.

A second concern raised about the post is that it was centering the feelings (e.g., burnout, exhaustion) of privileged progressives rather than the feelings of the oppressed and victimized. I think this is a potent observation.

I think many privileged progressives do use social justice as a route toward self-justification, as a way of overcoming liberal guilt. Especially if you've come out of fundamentalism or evangelicalism where a purity-driven moral performance has been inculcated into you, where you learn that you are good because you are being good. For many progressive Christians who are post-evangelicals it's very easy to import that same purity psychology--I am good because I am being good--into the progressive fight against injustice and oppression. And the tragic aspect to this pursuit is that, as with all attempts as moral self-justification, we can't ever fully get clean. Not in the evangelical way, nor in the progressive way.

So, yes, there is a legitimate concern that such efforts at moral self-justification in progressive Christianity do unwittingly center the needs, feelings and goals of the person fighting for justice rather than upon the needs, feelings and goals of the marginalized and oppressed.

I think that observation deepens the analysis of Monday's post, that one of the pernicious effects of the purity culture of progressive Christianity is the way it centers the feelings of the privileged rather than the oppressed.

But that doesn't mean that this purity psychology is limited to privileged progressive Christians. Because even among the oppressed who are fighting for justice this purity psychology is also at work.

For example, I was in Selma on Sunday for the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" and the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March. And in Selma there were lots of examples of this. For instance, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge there was a young African American man screaming at other African Americans calling their lives and alternative forms of activism into question. He rebuked them, saying things like "Ya'll are going home back to your plantations!". What I was witnessing was an intramural squabble between African Americans. And a purity psychology was at work. The same purity psychology that was at work when Malcolm X called Martin Luther King, Jr. an "Uncle Tom" and a "House Negro."

In short, there is a purity culture among progressive Christians and it is at work among both the privileged and the oppressed and, perhaps especially, at the intersections between those two groups. So if you can't see the "purity culture of progressive Christianity" then you're just not paying close enough attention.

Either that or you've weaponized the phrase "purity culture" so that it can be wielded solely against evangelicalism with the assumption being that progressive Christians are too enlightened or "pure" to ever be "contaminated" by that sort of thinking...

The reason for the ubiquity of "purity culture" is simple: purity is one of the ways humans--all humans, progressives and conservatives, privileged and oppressed--reason about morality. Purity is just a piece of our innate moral software. We can't help but think of morality in the idiom of contamination. Progressives as much as conservatives. (Psychologists have called this "the Macbeth Effect." For more again see Unclean.)

Finally, let me end with a few comments about how to deal with exhaustion in the fight for justice.

Some readers felt that I was arguing that because purity psychology creates exhaustion (or free-floating rage, what might be dubbed "generalized anger disorder") that this was warrant to opt out of progressive Christianity. That I was arguing that exhaustion could become an excuse for inaction and complicity. 

That wasn't my point. Again, I'm a progressive Christian. My faith orients around lifting up "the least of these." That's what I think Jesus was doing. That's why I think the progressive vision of Jesus is more biblical. That's the reason I work in a prison. That's the reason I was in Selma. That's the reason I visit differently abled friends at an assisted-living facility. That's the reason I share meals each week with the poor and homeless. That's the reason LGTBQ students know they can come out to me. The post I wrote wasn't about giving up any of these things. The post was about giving up the exhaustion that flows out of an "everything is problematic" mindset that haunts progressive Christianity.

And where does that mindset come from? I am arguing that it comes from a purity psychology--the purity culture of progressive Christianity--that grounds moral performance in freedom from complicity.

To be sure, this is a worthy and noble goal. But this is a vision that we--oppressed and privileged alike--come to experience as both impossible and unsustainable. And if we are not attentive to the temptations related to the purity culture of progressive Christianity our pursuit of justice--for both oppressed and privileged alike--can fall into exhaustion, schism and anger.

So the point of my post wasn't an excuse to give up on justice for victims. The point was to give up on the toxicity rooted in the pursuit of purity.

The call was for progressive Christians to become a little more self-reflective in how they are affected by "the will to purity," in how they both view themselves and others. 

We are limited and finite creatures. We have to pick and choose our fights. We will, inevitably, fight harder and more passionately for some things rather than for others. You might care about food justice and sustainability. You might care about animal rights. You might care about race. Or LGTBQ issues. Or sex trafficking. Or mass incarceration. Or immigration. Or wage and income inequality. Or capital punishment. Or sexual abuse. Or universal healthcare. Or exploitative labor practices. Or woman's rights. Or the plight of indigenous and native peoples. Or war. Or education. Or the treatment of the differently abled. Or the mentally ill. Or clean water. Or world hunger. Or global warming. Or homelessness.

Or even things many conservatives care about, like the global persecution of Christians or abortion.

To say nothing about all the debates regarding how these various ends are to be achieved. When does helping hurt? We might agree on the ends but come to blows over the means.

You care, I'm guessing, about many if not all of these things. But if your vision of being a Christian is rooted in a progressive purity culture--I am good because I am being good--you'll find that you can't fight all these battles with equal passion and investment.

So when the inevitable moment arrives when someone calls you out for how you're slacking in a given area--because there will always be a person who cares 10% more than you in a given area--you end up feeling like a piece of shit. Like a hypocrite. Like a bad person. And it's not just White people who struggle here. After the victories in '65 when Martin Luther King, Jr. turned to the issue of war and the military-industrial complex he was harshly criticized by his Black peers for turning his back on Black people.

Even MLK found it hard to care about everything.

So the takeaway here isn't to give up giving a damn. The goal is to reject the "will to purity" and learn to extend grace to yourself in the midst of the fight. And then, in turn, to extend grace toward others. Because we're all complicit. No one is pure. This is the progressive version of Original Sin.

And that's not an excuse to give up fighting. Nor is it an excuse to sin so that grace may abound.

It is simply the recognition that the purity culture of progressive Christianity--for privileged and oppressed--will be perennially tempted to marginalize joy, love and grace in its pursuit of the Kingdom of God.

Which means that great effort must be exerted to gather grace, for yourself and for others. Daily, like manna. Over and over.