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My Mom has an excellent post, The Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever: Destructive Imprinting and Growing Pains. She talks about how she's changed over the years, and yet people close to her expect her to be the same Janice that they always knew. She also discusses how certain beliefs (Armstrongism, among other things) were imprinted on her at an early age. The following passage stood out to me:
"It is probably safe to say that the roots of a person’s belief system are imprinted early on and, while the beliefs can change, some of the roots can remain to color the new beliefs."
I can identify with my Mom's frustration. I feel that I've changed my beliefs, and yet people still consider me to be a conservative evangelical. They read everything I write through the lens of "James Pate is a conservative evangelical." I can't say that this is entirely other people's fault, for it's happened so often---and among different people. For example, when I was in college, I made some liberal points in classes, believe it or not. But because my classmates had a preconceived notion of "James Pate is a conservative evangelical," they usually didn't accept my points at face value; rather, when they responded to me, they responded to their stereotypes of what conservatives believe, even if I had said no such thing.
I think that there are different reasons for this. One is that I have said strongly conservative things over the years, and that has left an impression on people's minds. Consequently, when they see me now, they have in mind the things that they heard or read me saying in the early days of them knowing me.
The second reason is that I still use conservative vocabulary, whether I'm aware of it or not. This has bitten me in the rear-end a couple of times. For example, I was one time getting into an argument with somebody about abortion. He said that we should save the mother's life if her having a child will result in her death. I sympathize with that point, but what really angered me was his justification for his position: he said that the mother is part of a community and contributes to society, whereas that is not the case for the child. He then said that we Christians should view issues through communitarian lens, not individualistic ones. Immediately, my buttons were pushed, on account for my dislike of communitarianism (since I have rarely fit into communities), and this guy's smug, arrogant, condescending attitude didn't help matters. But I responded that even the mother may not be contributing to society. He read that as me denigrating welfare moms who abuse drugs. At the time, I didn't think I was doing that---at least that wasn't in my mind when I wrote my comment. But now I wonder: was I displaying some deep-down prejudice against welfare mothers, based on what I had heard all of my life about them?
Then there was a more pleasant interaction on Rachel Held Evans' blog. The topic was homosexuality, and I used the expression "gay lifestyle," even as I made a liberal point. A lesbian lady gently told me that there is no single "gay lifestyle," and that I might alienate my homosexual friends through my use of that expression. Now, when I used the term, I had in mind the basic sexual act between homosexuals. I didn't have in mind the sorts of things you'd read about homosexuality in writings by Paul Cameron, or Concerned Women for America: water-sports, sadomasochism, multiple partners, fisting, etc. But, because the Right loves the expression "gay lifestyle" and uses it to refer to those sorts of activities, it carries a negative connotation for people like this one lady. And, as a person who has read and listened to the Right for many years, I've absorbed their vocabulary, even if I'm not as sold over their ideology these days. Even if I'm moderately liberal nowadays, I still use conservative terminology. (But I will say this: I say "gay rights," not "special privileges for homosexuals." I never understood the argument that gays are asking for "special privileges," even when I was a conservative.)
Third, I've kept one foot in and one foot out of the conservative movement. My heroes have always been conservative, and I still have some affection for people such as Phyllis Schlafly, Ronald Reagan, Connie Marshner, Richard Viguerie, Ann Coutler, and George W. Bush (if you want to call him a conservative). Moreover, I think that conservative public figures are cooler than liberal ones. Does the liberal side have anyone as cool as Nikki Haley, a daughter of Sikh Indians? Or the child prodigy Jonathan Krohn? And I still get excited when I hear that certain celibrities are conservative---such as Michael Caine, or Patricia Heaton, or the late Dixie Carter. And so I have a hard time exchanging one set of baseball cards for another. Other than Barack Obama, and maybe Marcy Kaptur, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Clinton (whom I like on account of his conservative approach to government, even though I consider him a scum-bag), I can't find liberals whom I admire.
Also, even as I learn about the Right's distortions of facts (case in point: Obama's trip to India), I still realize that the Left distorts them too. That Rand Paul supporter who put his shoe on a Move-On.org activist? He says that he had a motivation for doing what he did, and it wasn't anger or violence; rather, according to him, the Move-On.org activist was being disruptive and was trying to create political theater, and so he attempted to restrain her. But we don't hear the Rand Paul supporter's side of the story. And so leaving one sub-culture for another one is quite difficult: it means having to get new heroes, and having to embrace another set of "us vs. them" talking-points. I'm reluctant to do either.
Fourth, I look like a conservative Christian. I wear plaid shirts and glasses. I try to be clean-cut and smile as often as I can. Maybe these are factors that make me look like an evangelical. I don't know. I will say, though, that people who have never even heard my beliefs talk to me as if I'm a conservative evangelical. An intellectual recently said to me, "I'm going to say something to you, and I don't want you to take offense, but I think that Christians follow personality-cults because their religion was founded on a personality, Jesus." I've also gotten the impression that he thinks I struggle to reconcile the Christian faith with the historical-critical method. But I realize that all sorts of religions have baggage, and my approach to the historical-critical method is the same as his: I believe in loving-kindness, meaning I don't obsess over the problems that come with accepting the Bible as inerrant. But he, and others, think I'm an evangelical.
On some level, me coming across as an evangelical can be a good thing. The Right stays off my back, since they consider me to be one of them. At the public library this past Sunday, I was looking at religious books, and a guy standing close to me said, "We need to use discernment nowadays in reading the Bible, for not all that glitters is gold!" I politely agreed with him (even though I'd probably prefer what glitters to his definition of "gold"), and he told me to have a nice day. He didn't try to witness to me, and that's probably because I look like an evangelical---one of his people.
I wasn't intending to blog about this topic when I quoted my Mom. Tomorrow, if the mood strikes me, I'll write what I originally intended to write. Stay tuned!
