Article
America
Conspiracy theory
Culture
Politics
5 min read

Will America succumb to the undertow?

A returning expat asks if an exhausted majority is, in fact, asleep.

Jared holds a Theological Ethics PhD from the University of Aberdeen. His research focuses conspiracy theory, politics, and evangelicalism.

A sleeping voter sits and snoozes next to voting booth.
'Which One?'
Nick Jones/Norman Rockwell/Midjourney.ai.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously made a decision to return to Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War. The year was 1938, and he was visiting America for a second time. Instead of taking a theology teaching position in New York that would’ve kept him above the fray of a deteriorating social world in Germany, Bonhoeffer’s sense of spiritual responsibility drove him to solidarity with the German situation.  

I’ve thought about Bonhoeffer a lot these last few months as our family is making a transition back to the States during an election year. Not because I’d ever directly compare our move with Bonhoeffer’s. But because I’m anticipating the “shock” of returning to a deteriorating social world. Unlike him, our decision to return is far more modest and expedient. Still, we’re often asked by our friends here in Scotland, “why go back?” 

My immediate answer is straightforward and entirely different than Bonhoeffer: we did what we came here to do. Our visas are up; I’m defending my PhD this month. But behind these questions of expediency, I do feel the weight of an existential question, one directed towards myself as much as it is towards America. 

And that question is “who is going back?” Because after three years, America has changed to us as we’ve changed ourselves.  

The persecution confronting white Christians in America is the soft persecution of opulence diffused in the ordinary.

With that change comes new choices and new questions that didn’t confront us years ago. Returning to America has us asking questions like, how do you talk to your school-aged kids about active shooter drills in their new school? How will we navigate the racialized social scripts that pervade not just American communities, but also American churches? How will we re-enter a job market that ties production to basic health care? 

We’re bracing for the shock of going back to America. It will be more difficult than leaving ever was. Not just because we’ve changed, but also that the American situation has grown more extreme while paradoxically denying that change.  

We’ve discovered that if American Christians are persecuted at all, it’s not from President Biden’s “corrupt regime” seeking to jail Trump or secure power through another “rigged election.” No, the persecution confronting white Christians in America is the soft persecution of opulence diffused in the ordinary. 

As an expat returning to America, I wonder if this exhausted majority is, in fact, asleep. 

Perspective changes everything. The outsider’s view of America careening towards a crisis of democracy and a social fabric rent at the seams isn’t felt as much by those who live within its social world, whose experience of the mundane obscures the poly-crisis pressing our social fabric at the seams. How did we get here? 

Researchers discovered an interesting demographic cohort in American life, you might have heard of it. It’s called the “exhausted majority.” It refers to an ideological diverse cohort at the center of American life that has all but disengaged politically. Researchers began to talk about this “exhausted majority” in 2018, before the pandemic, before a less-than-peaceful transfer of democratic power. The hope was, then, that this “exhausted majority” might be mobilized to fend off polarization and extremism. As an expat returning to America, I wonder if this exhausted majority is, in fact, asleep. 

What has become of this exhausted majority? In the wake of 2020, America underwent significant backlash and retrenchment. This affected churches, too. Friends who are pastors tell me churches in their communities have “re-sorted” along partisan lines. One pastor suggested the election might not divide churches this time, as much as partisan-determined churches might contribute to social division. Polarization has worked its way from the outer edges of American life to the very center. It does this work silently, mediated by our reliance on algorithms, a life conformed to and captured by digital architecture. 

There’s an element of surprise here, at least for us as we return. Because what we experienced as the collapse of our social world in white evangelicalism—a world that we no longer are at home in— I’ve found is still very much active, very much automated—like survival reflexes—still providing an artificial coherence and plausible deniability amidst a deteriorating social situation. 

This retrenchment and backlash creates a dangerous condition: an undertow. For so many, life goes on as normal on the surface, while democratic institutions are pulled apart beneath. America is caught in a rip current, but asleep on the surface. This undertow partly explains, at least to me, why all the talk of “the crisis of democracy” doesn’t register with many Americans.  

A recent survey found that more than half of Americans haven’t heard the term “Christian Nationalism”—in spite of a flurry of academic and popular discourses on the term, often at the center of “crisis of democracy” rhetoric. 

The fact is, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it didn’t fall in a day, either. The Senate handing over power to Caesar one day didn’t do much to alter the mundane early morning routine of bread makers in Rome the next day. Tyranny dawns, but the ordinary continues. The routine of the mundane and ordinary, of bread and circuses, makes talk of a democratic collapse seem just another political game, a distraction from all the amusement that Neil Postman observed might be our death. 

As we return to America, reflecting on who we’ve become and the responsibility of faith, I’ve found myself considering the difference between being fated and being holy.  

Fate confronts us as necessity. The holy confronts us as something other. And this “other”—at least for Bonhoeffer—was the freedom of God. And I can think of no better prayer for the church in America in the coming years to maintain in ourselves the crucial distinction between fatedness and holiness. To not confuse the expediency of partisan games with the responsibility made visible in the light of the central claim of Christian faith in the body of Jesus Christ. The Crucified One, not the fate of Western Civilization, determines what it is to be the ekklesia, the “called out” community, both free and responsible, never fated. 

Article
Comment
Mental Health
Politics
4 min read

Rachel Reeves’ tears: public life still mocks those who show anything but the positive

‘Mental health awareness’ is failing, our words are not matched by our actions

Rachael is an author and theology of mental health specialist. 

 

 

A woman sits and holds back a tear.
Rachel Reeves on the front bench.
Parliament TV.

It’s a bad day at work. Everyone is on high alert, and tempers are frayed. You have your own reasons for being extra ‘on edge’, but now isn’t the time to get into it because it’s the big weekly meeting and everyone is going to be there - worse still, the cameras are going to be there. Despite this, you take a deep breath and take your seat (which, although an honour, is regrettably in the front row).  

But as the fractious meeting begins, you feel the ache of impending tears at the back of your throat, and to your horror, your eyes fill. You do your best to wick them away, but you know they’ve been spotted when someone opposite announces how miserable you look. 

Many of us will have been in a similar, if probably less public, situation at some point in our careers when the emotions we stuff down in the name of professionalism spill out - but I doubt any of us will have done so in the House of Commons with cameras trained on every movement and a less than friendly crowd opposite.  

There have been countless articles already speculating about the reason for the tears of the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, during Prime Minister’s Questions - but most seem devoid of sympathy or empathy, concerned only with the political implications, but not the person at the centre of this story.  

Our reaction to Rachel’s tears is an echo of the sentiment behind the Welfare Reform Bill, which seems to say that need is unacceptable and we should all be able to don that famously British ‘stiff upper lip’ and just get on with life.  

Regardless of what you think of the Welfare Reform Bill, the way it has been briefed and communicated has raised anxiety and fear amongst the disabled community (me included).  

The main message has been that too many people are receiving Personal Independence Payments (PIP) for mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression, with even the former Prime Minister Tony Blair telling people to ‘stop diagnosing themselves’ to combat out rising welfare bill - despite the fact that accessing PIP requires rigorous assessments and support from medical professionals. (It also has a 0.01% fraud rate and was designed to compensate people for the extra cost of being disabled which is estimated to be up to £1000 a month.) 

This tableau is emblematic of how ‘mental health awareness’ is failing in this country; our words are not matched by our actions. 

We know, 27 years after the first ‘Mental Health Awareness Week’, that mental health is important, that emotions are natural and valid - and yet we mock any leader who shows anything but positive emotions.  

We know that people suffer, are disabled by and killed by mental illnesses, and yet we seek to strip support from those who need it most, claiming that they are diagnosing themselves. 

We need a different approach, both to how we handle emotions in public life and the way we talk about those who need extra support due to their mental illnesses.  

Emotions aren’t bad - they help us connect, keep us away from danger and allow our bodies to release unbearable tension, as in the case of crying, whereby tears of pain are intricately designed to help us cope. The tears we shed when faced with chopping a pile of onions are chemically different to those that fall when we are grieving, angry or in pain. Tears of pain should inspire us to reach out to the one in pain with compassion not contempt.  

The way Jesus led 2,000 years ago shows us another way, both of leading and emoting.  

Jesus consistently welcomed those most in need; from healing the woman who had bled for twelve years, considered unclean and rejected by her community, to healing a paralysed man lowered through his roof by friends.  

And yet his ministry was not just one characterised by miracles and might, but demonstrated humility and humanity as he wept over the death of his friend Lazarus and allowed himself to be stripped of all strength as he hung on a cross made for criminals.  

The night before he died, he gathered his friends and through tears and blood-soaked sweat submitted to the Father in the most painful way, and I, like many others, draw comfort and strength from Jesus’ willingness to cry.  

As preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, "A Jesus who never wept could never wipe away my tears."  

So perhaps rather than mock Rachel’s tears, they should cause us to rethink how we approach need and recognise none of us are immune.  

Perhaps, we may even join with Paul’s words in his letter to the Corinthians: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 

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