(image from The Conscious Vibe)
This topic comes up because of a couple recent conversations with people I’ve known since college, over 200 years ago. (Not quite that long, but there are days it certainly feels like that long.) Back then, I was a “born-again, Evangelical, Fundamentalist Christian.” Now I am not. I have not been for several years, and I’m surprised whenever someone doesn’t realize that, especially based on the books I write and the content I post to social media.
Upon learning that I am not the same person I was in college (gasp!), these particular Christians cut off contact with me in both physical and digital worlds (even on Goodreads!), which brings me to today’s topic: “Tribalism,” or in-groups vs. out-groups.
As an Evie/Fundie Christian for 30 years, I was incredibly concerned with the spiritual status of everyone around me, specifically with the question, “Are you a Christian?” If a person answered, “Yes,” I put them in one category of friendship, and if the person answered, “No,” I put them in another category of friendship. Those categories were things like “Saved vs. Lost,” “Good Friend vs. Suspect Friend,” and even “Safe Person To Be Around vs. Unsafe Person To Be Around.” Basically, I was dividing people into in-groups vs. out-groups, or those people who were “part of my tribe” vs. those people were “outside my tribe”
Sadly, those divisions even extended to other denominations within Christianity. In high school and college, my Evangelical friends and I all knew which denominations were the “right ones” vs. which denominations were dangerously close to the doorstep of Hell. (BTW, it was the Catholics who were most in danger of feeling the fiery heat – which is especially funny because I now teach at a Catholic/Jesuit university, and we provide an amazing amount of physical, spiritual, and emotional support to our students, all in the name of Catholic/Jesuit traditions.)
This human tendency toward tribalism is thought by researchers to go back hundreds of thousands (possibly even millions) of years into our evolutionary past. While hunting and gathering in the forests, it was beneficial to quickly and easily identify who was within the tribe vs. outside the tribe so you knew whether to welcome the other person or be prepared to defend yourself. In today’s multicultural, pluralistic society, it can be a detriment to our overall well-being by encouraging polarization, prejudice, and even violence. Honestly, how many conflicts begin because we simply “don’t like the other guy’s thing,” whatever that “thing” might be?
However, as distressed as I might be by people I’ve known for decades suddenly deciding I’m “of the devil,” as one person recently told me, I’m just as encouraged by how many Christians I know who come alongside me on issues where we both find common cause. I know many Christians who agree with me politically (our government and police forces should not be abusing or killing innocent people), socially (we should be looking for ways to better welcome our immigrant neighbors), and morally (it is wrong to vilify people just because they are different from me). We might have different spiritual paths, but we’re still working together to make the world a better (kinder, gentler, more forgiving) place, and that’s great.
Tribalism had some good things going for it in the past – and it might still have a couple benefits today – but I think we would do better to break down the barriers between us rather than continuing to build up even higher ones that simply push us apart.
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