It merits quoting, in full.
I’m a secular/agnostic Californian and longtime reader of your blog. I’ve enjoyed your books beginning with Crunchy Cons, and have valued your insights over the years.
Though you don’t know me, I feel like I know you and your family. And I want to share with you, from the liberal bastion of Northern California, that I am officially tired of the type of people who have surrounded me my entire life. In the wake of Trump’s election, I am experiencing “tribe fatigue.” I’m not tired of The Other, Detestable Tribe. I’m tired of my own.
A bit about me: I am a [deleted] with two young children. My parents were non-religious Democrats, and my ex-Catholic mom loathes organized religion to this day.
So I was raised a secular liberal. My college professors were secular liberals. During my journalism phase, my newspaper colleagues were secular liberals. My law school professors and peers were – in the vast majority – secular liberals. Almost everyone at my corporate law firm was a secular liberal. My California neighbors and friends are secular liberals, as are my colleagues. My mother, siblings, and their spouses are all secular liberals.
By all rights, I should be a member in good standing of their tribe, “liking” their Facebook posts and joining their candlelight vigils against the evil Trump Administration. But November 8 and its aftermath revealed to me that I am just so tired of these people. I can’t be like them, and I don’t want my kids turning into them.And this, dear reader, is where the truly pithy parts begin....
I am tired of their undisguised contempt for tens of millions of Americans, with no effort to temper their response to the election with humility or empathy.
I am tired of their unexamined snobbery and condescension.
I am tired of their name-calling and virtue-signaling as signs of supposedly high intelligence.
I am tired of their trendiness, jumping on every left-liberal bandwagon that comes along (transgender activism, anyone?) and then acting like anyone not on board is an idiot/hater.
I am tired of their shallowness. It’s hard to have a deep conversation with people who are obsessed with moving their kids’ pawns across the board (grades, sports, college, grad school, career) and, in their spare time, entertaining themselves and taking great vacations.
I am tired of their acceptance of vulgarity and sarcastic irreverence as the cultural ocean in which their kids swim. I like pop culture as much as the next person, but people who would never raise their kids on junk food seem to think nothing of letting then wallow in cultural junk, exposed to nothing ennobling, aspirational, or even earnest.
I am tired of watching them raise clueless kids (see above) who go off to college and within months are convinced they live in a rapey, racist patriarchy; “Make America Great Again” is hate speech; and Black Lives Matter agitators are their brothers-in-arms against White Privilege. If my kids are like that at nineteen, I’ll feel I’ve seriously failed them as a parent. Yet the general sentiment seems to be these are good, liberal kids who may have gotten a bit carried away.
I am tired of their lack of interest in any form of serious morality or self-betterment. These are decent, responsible people, many compassionate by temperament. Yet they seem two-dimensional, as if they believe that being a nice, well-socialized person who holds the correct political views is all there is, and there is nothing else to talk about. Isn’t there, though?
I am tired of being bored and exasperated by everybody. I feel like I have read this book a thousand times, and there are no surprises in it. Down with Trump! Trans Lives Matter! Climate deniers are destroying the planet! No cake, we’re gluten-free!
These are good people in a lot of ways. But there has got to be a better tribe.
That leads me to . . . drum roll . . . the Christian Right. It is no small feat, switching tribes. It feels stressful and weird to abandon your tribe for the Detested Other Side.
Since November 8, my husband and I have been taking the kids to church. (He is politically conservative with a religious bent, so no argument there.) I have come this close to buying a giant poster of the American flag for the living room. I may do it still.
Right now, I am struggling to accept the basic Christian doctrines (virgin birth, resurrection, second coming) because I feel the Christian tribe may be the right tribe for my family. We just finished watching a BBC miniseries about the birth of Jesus, which was so beautiful and moving compared to secular TV. My nine-year-old really enjoyed it. I want to prepare my kids to live according to some unchanging truth, not subject to every passing trend, and this felt like a start. But I worry that an inability to believe in the supernatural aspects of the faith will limit my ability to be a “real” Christian.
Last Sunday’s sermon mentioned 1 Peter:18-19, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors.” This may be obvious to you, but secular liberalism does seem empty in some way, despite all the things my educated, middle-class tribe has to be grateful for. If that’s what’s been handed down to me, I want more, especially for my precious kids. I’m trying.
The famous, now-neglected poem by Francis Thompson, here read by Richard Burton, comes to mind. The opening lines ring loud and true in so many lives:
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days ; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind ; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes, I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears. From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase. And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat — and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet — ''All 'things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
Somewhere along the way, at sometime, she heard some other voice, a phrase of music, a turn of phrase--something, somehow, somewhere. And this year, the Year of Our Lord 2016 (not C.E. 2016!)
the bell rung for her that could not be un-rung.
For her, the adventure now begins, and it will not be an easy trip. One such 'traitor to tribe' is Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, who left a most cozy life inside the academic-left 'bubble' to follow the call of conscience and Christ. Her book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert found here on Amazon, is not an easy read, because hers has not been an easy journey. OS knows people who are members of the local branch of the tribe she left behind, and he has not yet summoned the courage to bring up her name to them.
So, OS sends greetings to the dear lady in California, who will undoubtedly experience some real losses as she embraces her new 'tribe', and will be horrified to find how many members of that 'new tribe' are just as awful as the people she left behind. Christ himself, however is calling, who never fails.
As one old preacher once put it to his congregation: I've only got three things to share with you.
God's in charge.
He always finishes what he begins.
He never leaves Himself without a witness.
Merry Christmas, dear lady. Keep writing, and sending news of the journey.
