Becoming Bland Partisans
The Risk of Losing Our Saltiness
Several exciting updates related to Reimagining Biblical Politics before we get to this week’s reflection:
I got my copies in the mail this week! So cool to see this thing actually launch into the world. And I discovered today that if you pre-order now through Baker, you can get the book for 40% off ($16.20 USD).
Episode 2 of the podcast is live. Check out my conversation with Marshall about the expslosive political vision of the Torah. Check it out on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify (and if you like it, hit subscribe, give us a review, and share with friends)
Becoming Bland Partisans
In her fantastic book Faithful Politics, Miranda Cruz points out that Christians are called to engage in politics, and doing so in America’s current two-party context often requires Americans to affiliate with partisan political groups or parties. For her, this is just one way Christians can serve as “salt and light” in our communities.
According to Cruz, though, the great danger is that in our political affiliations we lose our saltiness, and instead become “bland partisans.” Research suggests that when Americans affiliate with a party, over time, we begin to “uncritically align with our party on issues that are not our top priorities.”[i] In other words, we start adopting positions because of our party rather than adopting our party based on our positions. While we may initially gravitate towards a party because of a specific political issue, we gradually begin to adopt the entire basket of political issues associated with that party. One result is that bland partisans learn to happily wage war against our political enemies, but fail to confront issues on our own team.
I can’t stop thinking about this concept, and find it helpful for identifying what I see as problematic approaches to Christian political engagment across the political aisle, and in my own life.
Bland Partisanship On the Right
Examples of this on the right abound, and I’ve called them out repeatedly here at crossRhodes. Despite the fact that Scripture constantly calls God’s people to love immigrants (and their enemies, for that matter), many on the right celebrate President Trump’s relentless campaign of lies and violence against refugees and immigrants (as I’ve pointed out here and here; see more recently Ben Hein’s excellent response to the administration’s gross behavior against immigrants here). I’m trying to stay away from social media for the most part, but when I do go on Facebook I regularly see stories and videos of Latino/a citizens being violently roughed up by ICE agents and long-term members of our communities torn from their families, held in horrific conditions, and deported to countries, some without due process. And yet many Christians, whose God demands that we love the immigrant and provide them food and shelter the way God does continue to actively support this injustice.
Similarly, many Christians supported or remained quiet about Trump’s slashing of USAID, despite the fact that Christians have a long history of both advocating for global aid and running the Christian organizations through which such aid is given (as I pointed out here).
What explains these apparent dynamics? Many explanations are possible, and people will no doubt embrace these positions for different reasons. It’s possible some may have carefully studied immigration or international aid, sought to bring what they’re seeing into dialogue with their faith, and genuinely come to the conclusion that Trump’s approach to these matters is better than the alternatives. I completely and utterly disagree, but I can imagine a Christian arriving at such a conclusion. I know some who have.
But I think a better explanation for many people is simply that many American Christians have a long history of affiliating with the Republican party, and have often become “bland partisans” as a result. Even if somebody originally aligned with the right over abortion,1 for instance, along the way there’s serious pressure to embrace the ugly callousness towards the outsider and the poor that I believe characterizes the Republican party under the influence of President Trump.
Bland Partisanship On the Left
But the temptation to bland partisanship does not live solely on the right side of the political spectrum (I’ve shared about the way I think I’ve fallen into the trap of bland partisanship in relation to abortion here). Because I’ve spent much more time critiquing the right on this blog than the left, I’m going to spend a bit more time this week on an example I think may be representative of this dynamic on the left.
Last year, the Supreme Court sided with Tennessee in its ban on “gender affirming care for minors.” The TN law in question
Prohibits health care providers from providing or offering gender affirming care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery — to minors.2
In response, the Southern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee wrote a pastoral letter lamenting the Supreme Court’s decision. Their theological rationales include:
The “fundamental truth that every human being is created in the image of God… and is therefore deserving of dignity, respect, and love.”
The Episcopal Church’s belief that “health care” is a “human right” and the concomittant belief that Christians should pursue health care for their neighbors as an act of justice.
Jesus’ identification with the “most vulnerable.”
God’s love for all.
I consider myself deeply committed to these principles. Moreover, I believe gender dysphoria is real, and that those struggling with such dysphoria deserve our care and compassion; they need to hear, in the words of the pastoral letter, that God sees them and loves them. In a pluralistic society, I support the rights of trans-identifying adults to be protected from discrimination.
Yet this pastoral letter fails to consider or even mention any of the many reasons Christians might have for being concerned about offering “puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery” to minors. I’m not an expert on this topic, but it’s striking to me that you’d never know from this pastoral letter that there are all sorts of people, Christian and otherwise, who are calling for bans on at least some “gender affirming care” for young people.
Indeed, in this harrowing essay from 2023, Jamie Reed, a queer woman who worked for years at a Transgender Clinic and is herself married to a trans-identifying person, calls for a “moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria.” She describes “what’s happening” at centers like the one where she worked “morally and medically appalling.”
I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here are a few quotes:
To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription.
That’s all it took.
When a female takes testosterone, the profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months. Voices drop, beards sprout, body fat is redistributed. Sexual interest explodes, aggression increases, and mood can be unpredictable. Our patients were told about some side effects, including sterility. But after working at the center, I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor…the center downplayed the negative consequences, and emphasized the need for transition. As the center’s website said, “Left untreated, gender dysphoria has any number of consequences, from self-harm to suicide. But when you take away the gender dysphoria by allowing a child to be who he or she is, we’re noticing that goes away. The studies we have show these kids often wind up functioning psychosocially as well as or better than their peers.”
There are no reliable studies showing this. Indeed, the experiences of many of the center’s patients prove how false these assertions are…
One of the saddest cases of detransition I witnessed was a teenage girl, who, like so many of our patients, came from an unstable family, was in an uncertain living situation, and had a history of drug use… She was put on hormones at the center when she was around 16. When she was 18, she went in for a double mastectomy, what’s known as “top surgery.”
Three months later she called the surgeon’s office to say she was going back to her birth name and that her pronouns were “she” and “her.” Heartbreakingly, she told the nurse, “I want my breasts back.”….
[After I left the clinic], I came across comments from Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender woman who is a high official at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The article read: “Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, said that clinics are proceeding carefully and that no American children are receiving drugs or hormones for gender dysphoria who shouldn’t.”
I felt stunned and sickened. It wasn’t true. And I know that from deep first-hand experience.
If she’s right, then the very theological convictions the pastoral letter names might well lead Christians to stand against offering such potentially life-altering medical interventions to young people.
As a Christian who adheres to a traditional biblical sexual ethic, I also believe there are all sorts of theological reasons Christians might be concerned about the sudden explosion of “gender affirming care” for minors. I’d argue there are a lot more theological rationales that should inform a Christian response to this issue than those listed in the pastoral letter. But even read on its own terms, the letter seems to me to problematically suggest that the obvious Christian position is to identify concern about such “gender affirming care” as simply injustice.
Why does this letter not consider or even acknowledge that people might be against “gender affirming care” in line with the very principles they outline? Again, there might be all sorts of reasons. Some may have studied the issues thoroughly, listened to the voices of all involved, returned to Scripture to try hear God’s guiding voice, and come to the conclusion that “gender affirming care” for minors is indeed part of honoring the image of God. I seriously disagree, but I can imagine a Christian arriving at such a conclusion. I know some who have.
But I suspect that, for some at least, a better explanation is that this position reflects a kind of temptation to bland partisanship on the left that is the mirror reverse of the bland partisanship on the right with which I am much more familiar. Christians who have affiliated with the left over issues they care deeply about—perhaps even the very ones currently being ignored by their bland-partisan-brothers-and-sisters on the right—have slowly adopted what appears to be a fairly extreme approach to “gender affirming care for minors.”
Bland Partisanship In My Life
I’m not trying to offer my own version of another bland “both sidesism.” I do not believe that both parties currently pose equal threats to democracy, for instance. Nor do I intend to draw a moral equivalency between a decision about “gender affirming care” and the Trump administration’s decision to gut USAID, which some experts suggest has already led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Moreover, you may disagree with either or both of my examples; I’m not an expert in international aid, immigration policy, or transgender issues, and I could well be wrong. But even if you think I’ve missed it on these particular issues, I invite you to ask yourself: am I at risk of becoming a “bland partisan”?
As for me and my house, in light of Cruz’s call to be “salty partisans,” I once again find myself falling short of my own standards. As I wrote in Just Discipleship, I believe the book of Daniel suggests that one test of our political faithfulness is our willingness to “criticize the hell—literally—out of our own political team,” and indeed our “own political selves.”
But I’ve often failed to do that. I consider myself an independent and have voted for Republican, Democrat, and third party candidates. But while I’ve written a lot of letters to my political leaders, almost all the time they’ve been aimed at conservative politicians’ policies or perspectives, despite the fact that I have many disagreements with left-leaning policies or perspectives.
Indeed, I’ve struggled for months with whether to post this blog. I worry that anything that sounds like “both sidesism” will undermine what I take to be the need for concerted political action to defeat the toxic effects of President Trump.
But isn’t that precisely the problem with “bland partisanship”? As soon as we become unwilling to criticize the team we’re currently affiliated with, as soon as we self-censor appropriate criticism of one side or the other because the “stakes are too high” or its “not the right time,” we risk abandoning the call to prophetic witness. We become far too easily used. In a world like ours, a Christian is called to be, as Tim Alberta puts it, “‘an unreliable ally’ to every social, political, and government order of this world.”3 Or as Miranda Cruz argues, “If we do not feel tension between our faith and our partisanship, we are likely bland partisans who have bent our faith to align with our politics.”4
I suppose all of this explains why I was so challenged and encouraged by receving an unsolicited text message from my Dad a few months back. I’d describe my Dad as one of the least political people I know. Yet I think that this past week, he modelled the kind of faithfulness I aspire to.
No need to comment, but this is what I sent my senators and congressman, president vice president and two newspapers, way too late, though I had sent them something similar before…
I am a Lifelong Republican. And I am Angry at My Party, Myself, and My Christian Community for Not Speaking Up about Indiscriminate Arrests & Deportations. There is NO DOUBT that many undocumented people , FOR YEARS, were “allowed” to enter our country while our government (Republican and Democrat) turned a blind eye, taking little or no action to stop them. We have also failed for years to develop a reasonable and just pathway in immigration policy. Our local and national economy has experienced the great benefit from these hard working , tax paying, overwhelmingly law abiding, often church going, NEIGHBORS! Many of our industries like building trades and agriculture are dependent on these folks. Though not formally citizens, they live overwhelmingly “As Good Citizens”, a net positive! I am all for deporting TRUE CRIMINALS who are a threat to our society. I am all for Secure Borders. I may even be okay with deporting recent entrants who are not established here by some criteria. WHAT IS NOT OKAY is to threaten and destabilize neighborhoods, families, and children with a BROAD BRUSH/ ALL BAD GUYS approach to ARREST AND DEPORTATION. This is based on lies and is UNJUST, UNCHRISTIAN and UNAMERICAN, harming our communities and economy. Our UNNUANCED BINARY POLITICS is Short Term and Unsustainable. It caters to the Extreme Worst in both Parties. For Republicans, it also DISCOURAGES COMPASSIONATE AND THINKING PEOPLE who otherwise might join or remain in a party of Truly Compassionate and Wise Conservatism. We and our leaders in both parties need to SPEAK AND ACT FOR WHAT IS JUST AND REASONABLE AND ADMIRABLE LONG TERM, rather than for SHORT TERM POLITICAL GAINS. Only that effort can truly make our nation more secure and just for all, for years to come.
I’m not only grateful for Dad taking an opportunity to criticize his own political team for their treatment of immigrants, I was again inspired to ask: what would it look like to be a saltier political presence in my own practice? Doing so is one way we seek to become more faithful political disciples.
Extras
Common Sense Media is an org that has helped me over the years. They’re pleading with people to join their push to get safeguards for Grok, an AI chatbot that is interacting with children in chilling ways. You can read more and sign the petition here.
[i] Cruz, Faithful Politics, Kindle loc. 1180.
I am well aware that the actual nature of the relationship between Christian pro-life concerns and Christian affiliation with the Republican Party is deeply contested.
https://www.kff.org/other-health/what-to-know-ahead-of-the-supreme-court-case-on-youth-access-to-gender-affirming-care/
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. Alberta is quoting Karl Barth.
Cruz, Faithful Politics, 84.