Red & Blue Christianity

Tooley: Hello this is Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, with the pleasure today of interviewing the author of One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America. He is a professor of sociology at Baylor University, and since you know more about yourself than I do, if you could share a few more words about your background and the many books you’ve written?

Yancey: Sure. I actually have only been at Baylor for two years. Before then I was at the University of North Texas. And I’ve done a lot of research on areas of race, ethnicity, and religion, and recently had become interested in distinctions between conservative and progressive Christians. That sort of led to this book.

Tooley: And I should point out your name is George Yancey, which is important too. So, Dr. Yancey, One Faith No Longer, which comes out in July I believe, about the divisions in American Christianity, historically, there have always been divisions between Protestants and Catholics, between Calvinists and Methodists, between Baptists and non-Methodists, between Pentecostals and everybody else, or the Holiness movement and everybody else, but the differences in recent years tend to be seemingly more sociological and political, ideological. Is that the case?

Yancey: Yeah. I would even go further than that. I think the division that I’m talking about, while all the other divisions you talked about are definitely true and accurate, I think the question I’m talking about is more fundamental. Not fundamentalist as a group, but it’s more fundamental. I think it’s the division on how you interpret meaning. And just one example, Protestants and Catholics. There is an argument that perhaps Catholics reliance upon a Pope and reliance upon certain beliefs distinguish them from Protestants, but ultimately when you really boil down to it, Protestants and Catholics vision and a God is very similar. And while there are distinctions, I don’t want to say that it’s an exact, it’s not an exact. While there are distinctions, really when you read Catholic teachings and read Protestant teachings, you really get a sense that they are worshiping the same God just in different ways, with different emphasis. I don’t think this is the same when we’re looking at contemporary more conservative Christians and more progressive Christians, once we divide them by theological criteria. And so, that’s what we use in our book. We use theological criteria to divide conservative and progressive Christians. And our argument is that conservative Christians, they’re deriving their meaning, their purpose, their security, and their identity from their interpretation of the Bible, from a notion of God being exclusive. Progressive Christians, while they too have the Bible, and I’m not saying that they didn’t read the Bible, that’s not where their source of meaning is coming from. Their source of meaning is coming from values of inclusion and tolerance, and from that then, they go from that to them using the Bible to sort of support that. Whereas when conservative Christians espouse tolerance and inclusion, it’s because of their interpretation of the Bible. And this may seem like a subtle difference, but I think it’s a very important difference. Because when your source of meaning comes from different places, it means that your religion is going to grow apart. And in a sense, you’re worshiping two different gods. So, I think that is something that’s worth noting.

Tooley: Now the progressive churches focus on inclusion and equality. They are, as you say, drawing that from gospel principles, but is it true that most, if you want to use the term apostasy or even the word heresy, often they are based on a particular truth of the gospel but distorted and taken in directions that shouldn’t be gone?

Yancey: Sure. Now if I’m going to answer that question as a social scientist, what I would say is that what happens is that a group will take a certain interpretation from this specific scripture and it will become what we call a cult. Now by cult I’m not meaning wild people gyrating or something like that. As a social scientist, all cult means is a new religion. So, you can start off with the same scriptures. I’ll give you a good example. Mormonism, one can argue, also values the Bible, but also takes it in a different direction. And of course, they have extra-biblical literature as well, but they take that and then they create a religion that is distinctive from a traditional Christian religion. So, yes, just because you both worship with the same doctrine doesn’t mean that your religion is the same. The question becomes how do you know when the religion is just kind of different, like Pentecostals, they’re different in a worship style clearly, and some beliefs, but they basically have the same basic framework of Christianity. How do you know when it’s just that and when it’s a distinctive religion? And what I come back to is how do you answer questions of meaning? And by that I mean questions of purpose, questions of security, questions of identity, questions of value, questions of what’s right and wrong. And if you use a different criteria, then I think what you’re on to is two different religions, even though they may use the same terminology.

Tooley: And is progressive religion essentially postmodern and rejecting a notion of absolute truth or is that too broad a generalization?

Yancey: I would characterize progressive Christianity in the United States as more modern than postmodern in that I don’t think they reject the notion of absolute truth in that the Bible is the word of God. But they do have values so that there is a right and wrong, whereas and I’m not philosopher, but my understanding of postmodernism is that you really cannot create values of right and wrong ultimately. Sort of like nihilism. I don’t get that sense from our quantitative and qualitative work on progressive Christians. They do see a right and wrong. And the way they interpret right or wrong is based on issues of social justice, inclusion, and these sorts of things. So, that’s where I’ll probably put them in a modern framework rather than a postmodern framework.

Tooley: And is it fair to say that progressive Christianity is more prone to be individualistic and autonomous in its interpretation of the faith or are conservatives just as prone to individualism in their interpretation?

Yancey: That’s an excellent question. I think I would say both groups are prone to it. Whether progressive Christians are more prone to it or not I think is an open question. They may well be. I’m not sure we really measure that. I think the way individualism plays itself out varies. So, and this is in keeping with the whole different meanings. For conservative Christians, where the individualism can play out is in the interpretation of the certain scriptures. So, where someone might say the scriptures say don’t dance, someone else might say you can dance. Things of this nature. And then it gets a little bit narrower range, but we have to recognize that that’s there because if it wasn’t there then everyone would interpret the scriptures the exact same way. So, there’s some individualism in that sense. For progressive Christians, of course, the individualism is united by this notion of inclusion. So, you’re free to some extent to have certain interpretations if you want of different scriptures or to even be agnostic to certain degrees and things of this nature, as long as you also have an attitude of inclusion, an attitude of tolerance, an attitude of social justice. And so, when you violate those in a sufficient manner, then you’re kind of on the outs of them. And here’s another thing our research found is that progressive Christians actually reject conservative Christians more than they reject non-Christians. So, our quantitative data, and some of the qualitative work sort of reinforces this, is that a progressive Christian is less likely to see a conservative Christian as a partnering group and they have fewer friends, Christian friends that are distinctive from one another, they have a lower variety of Christians as their friendship networks. Conservative Christians will have a lot of Christians in their friendship networks, and it’ll be different types of Christians. Less so progressive Christians. So, they have individualism, but it too is limited, just in different ways from a conservative Christian.

Tooley: And is it just a stereotype or the progressive Christians tend to be persons who come from conservative Christian backgrounds and therefore they are reacting against what they disliked about that background?

Yancey: Yeah, we didn’t have any data on that. We didn’t ask them about their backgrounds, nor do we have the quantitative data to look at the background. I have done other research on atheists and culture, if it’s reactive, and my sense is that yes, you do have some of them come from Christian backgrounds. But you have a lot who grew up in those sorts of households as well. I think there is some data out there just looking at, I mean, defined by denomination, which is what we’re not doing. But you look at denominations that while some progressive Christians do come from certain households, a lot of them grew up in mainline denominations and they stay in those mainline denominations. And in fact, as I’m thinking of that research, it was more likely for a person to grow up in a mainline denomination and go to a conservative denomination than the other way around. So, I don’t have data to definitively say one way or the other, but I’m not really confident that progressive Christianity is growing from taking away from conservative Christians. I’m sure there’s some of them that grow up that way, to be sure. But my sense is that they grew up in an atmosphere like this and thus they feel comfortable with it.

Tooley: And would you describe progressive Christianity, that would typically be ascribed to predominantly white liberal mainline Protestantism, but obviously it can be found among segments of American evangelicalism, among American Catholics. Would that be found as a significant force among within the historic Black Church?

Yancey: Now remember, the way I define it is theological not political. So, when we look at political, yes, African American Christians are more likely to be more progressive than white Christians. No doubt about it. But when you’re looking at how we operationalized, we operationalized it with questions about do you believe the Bible is the word of God, do you believe Jesus Christ is the only way. And here African Americans are more religious than white Christians. African American Christians are more religious than European American Christians on these sorts of factors. So, obviously there are some Christians of color who are progressive Christians theologically, but the larger research suggests that whites are more likely to be theologically progressive than people of color. I think with Asians I’m not sure, but especially when you’re looking at African Americans and Hispanic Americans, if you compare those Christians to white Christians, they’re more likely to be conservative Christians theologically.

Tooley: And that would be true especially among Hispanic evangelicals more so than Hispanic Catholics, as I recall?

Yancey: Probably. Yeah, I think you’re probably correct, but I don’t think that Hispanic Catholics are more progressive than white Catholics theologically.

Tooley: Now obviously, the theological perspectives of these various groups have cultural and political implications. Do these religious divisions, are there straight lines between them and current political polarization in America?

Yancey: I think it matters. It’s well established in research that people who are theologically conservative are more likely to be politically conservative. People who are theologically progressive are more likely to be politically progressive. So, that’s well established. One thing that we found, though, was that when it came to establishing out groups, progressive Christians are more likely to use political criteria than conservative Christians. In fact, one of our arguments is that when it comes to political values, progressive Christians, even though their core values are inclusion and social justice, they still use politics as a way to weed out other Christians, more so than conservative Christians. Political matters are more important to them than they are to conservative Christians. Here’s one way we illustrated this. I looked at blogs of conservative Christians and progressive Christians, and I wanted to find an issue among conservative Christians where they disagreed with other political conservatives, and same thing for progressive Christians. So, for conservative Christians, we looked at immigration. I found several conservative Christians who want not open border per se, but a pathway to citizenship or legalization, who wanted immigration reform, things that were at odds with their party, because at the time, this was during the height of Trumpism. We also looked at progressive Christians on the issue of abortion, where several progressive Christians said that they are pro-life, which is at odds, of course, with the progressive political party. And here’s what’s interesting, those conservative Christians when they’re trying to justify their stance on immigration, they tend to use scripture quite heavily and they tend to try to talk about family values and these sorts of messages. Progressive Christians did not use scripture very much at all. And these are progressive Christians, I’m not talking about secular progressives. Rather, they talked about the value of life in a sense of inclusion, justice, this sort of thing. So, in a way, looking at these blogs show us how these individuals use the values within their own communities, conservative Christian communities, progressive Christian communities, to appeal to others. And for progressive Christians, their appealing was based on these values. One last thing I think is very interesting on the political spectrum. Conservative Christians when they’re talking about immigration, they do not hesitate to call for legal changes. In other words, they said we need immigration reform, we should push our congresspeople to get us immigration reform, we need to take these steps. Progressive Christians do not do that on abortion. They talked about how abortion was bad and is wrong, but with only a couple exceptions, they did not push for legislation on abortion. And my interpretation of that is for progressive Christians, maintaining their political allies is of a higher priority for them than it is for conservative Christians. So, while people talk about conservative Christians being politically active, and many are, progressive Christians I think per capita are more politically active.

Tooley: Is it safe to say that because conservative Christians theologically are drawn to focus more on issues of personal salvation and personal morality, whereas liberal religious people, for theological reasons, much less stress personal salvation and arguably personal morality. So, by definition, more liberal Christians are drawn to issues of social justice and systemic injustice as higher priorities in their faith?

Yancey: That may well be the case. I didn’t say that definitively from our data, but that may well be the case. That somehow a theological progressive aspect draws them away from the supernatural and more into the profane, more to the political realm. I would argue that it seems to me that if you are a conservative Christian and your concern is on heaven, then political matters are going to matter a little bit less to you because your concern is on heave. And I’m not saying that progressive Christians don’t believe in heaven. What I am saying is that the concern is not on heaven as much. If you read liberation theology and black theology, a lot of that is about don’t be so focused on heaven, let’s make this world better. And if that’s your attitude, then it makes sense to me that you would be more actively involved in making political changes.

Tooley: If you had to summarize in a couple sentences what you hope readers will take away from your book, what would you say?

Yancey: Well, I have two audiences. So, I hope that conservative Christians read the book and realize wow, this group really is, because a lot of Christians think that we’re in a Christian nation, wow, people who say they’re Christians really work against me more so than I realized. And I guess for progressive Christians, I hope that they would read this book and see where conservative Christians disagree with them, but that they do have some commonalities too. And I’m not saying that the religions have to unite, but perhaps a little bit more acceptance from progressive Christians to conservative Chrsitians. That would be desirable.

Tooley: George Yancey, author of One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America, thank you very much for an educational conversation.

Yancey: Thank you.