“And you never ask questions, when God’s on your side.” – Bob Dylan

December 27, 2023

The current bloody conflict in the Holy Land, also known as Israel and Palestine, has me reflecting on the challenges of breaking through religious dogmatism to find anything that looks like common ground. I’m sure there are currently Jews and Muslims alike who feel God is on their side of the conflict. I’m mindful of the 1431 trail of Joan of Arc in which the English were desperate to prove the teenaged “Maiden of Orleans” was a heretic and not carrying out God’s mission to drive the English from France in the Hundred Years War.

When I was working on my dissertation research on white supremacists, I spent a lot of time with members of the Ku Klux Klan and members of a religious sect called Christian Identity. They were all quite sure the Christian Bible mandated their racism. In fact, the doctrine of Christian Identity states that a white God created white Adam and Eve in his image and the Jewish race are the descendants of Cain and the Serpent (Satan) and are inherently evil. And what about non-white and non-Jewish people? Oh, they are all the offspring of the soulless beasts of Eden. “It’s right here in Genesis!” They would tell me, quoting chapter and verse.

When I would bring up the concept of liberation theology and how Martin Luther King, Jr. found a very different message in their sacred texts, they would tell me that all that was “the devil’s work.”

We are in a similar moment where chapter and verse are quoted around the world to legitimize political positions, whether it’s opposition to LGBTQ rights or in support of Hindu nationalism. While many, and I hope most, people of faith are open to conversations about how their faith frames their political views while honoring that there are alternative faith-based interpretations, there is a significant phalanx in all religious traditions who are quite convinced that they have the one true interpretation of scripture. To those of us on the outside, that dogmatism seems pathological.

While toxic dogmatism can come in all ideological and theological disguises, it can be particularly tricky for us folks on the outside to have productive conversations with those who don’t share our foundational beliefs. When we don’t agree on foundational premises, like in the authority of scripture, or if we use vastly different interpretive lenses to make sense of the same passage, common ground can seem impossible to find.

So how do you talk to someone who has God on their side?

In most settings this might be a situation where a person backs away slowly, so as to not get stuck in the tarpit of religious debate. There’s a great spot in London called Speaker’s Corner where people have those debates/shouting matches as a form of entertainment. The rest of us have more productive things to do, like doom scroll through our social media feeds. However, some of that dogmatism becomes violence very quickly. And we don’t have to go back to Joan of Arc and the Hundred Year’s War to see it. Just turn on CNN.

This project I’ve been working on for the past two years, called Cure-PDX, is charged with reducing political violence and some of that violence has a religious element. For example, there is an evangelical church in the region that has preached that God does not punish violence against gays and lesbians. There is a church right down the street from them that preaches a more inclusive message from the same Bible, and they have experienced vandalism from the anti-gay church. Here is an opportunity for us to bring in the de-escalation work before somebody gets hurt.

One of things that makes our team so well positioned to do the work is that we represent a wide variety of political and social positions; we are liberal and conservative, Buddhist, Christian, and wandering agnostic. We have pastors on our team that help facilitate outreach to various faith based communities and I thought I’d rely on their lived experience and vital insight into this matter. Here’s the question:

Americans often rely on their faith traditions to inform their political opinions. However, there are those who are so wedded to a narrow interpretation of their sacred texts that it often leads to the vilification of those who don’t follow the same interpretation, as well as others, who may all fall under some label of “infidels,” and may become targets for violence. For example, we’ve seen a spike in religiously motivated hate crimes across the country, as well as attacks targeting the transgender community. Given this dynamic, is there a way to talk to the more dogmatic members of faith communities that encourages them to accept more nuanced interpretations of text that allows them to take a step back from more hostile rhetoric?

I asked this question to Pastor Jeff Hoover, who founded and pastored a church in Longview, Washington for 31 years, when he got a new “assignment.” Today, he leads an organization called CitiServe of Cowlitz County, where he walks with pastors and leaders, encouraging, equipping, and uniting the church in the local area and is a new member of our Cure-PDX team.

“I feel the key to having a conversation with someone you may disagree with is curiosity. Instead of going into a potentially difficult conversation wanting to prove or discover who is right or wrong, go in with authentic curiosity about just how the other person arrived at their particular viewpoint. It is astounding just how much we can learn from and about each other if we would simply be open to see things through someone else’s eyes.”

Pastor Jeff hit on a key tool that has been so useful in this project, the power of curiosity; the power of asking instead of telling. Between people’s strongly held beliefs and their relationship with the world is a whole backstory worth investigating. Spending time getting to know a person will likely create more openings in that dogmatic wall than going at it with a sledgehammer of counter arguments. 

Sociologists use the term “religiosity,” to describe how committed people are towards their faith traditions. Some completely define themselves by their beliefs and practices, bordering on fanaticism. Others have no engagement with any religious beliefs or practices. Most folks are comfortably somewhere between those two poles. (You will find me at mass most Christmas Eves, on my knees praying for peace, and the other 364 days of the year offering lectures on the problems of religions rooted in Bronze Age thinking.) But, unless there is a mental health issue involved, even people on the “fanatical” end of the religiosity spectrum have a very human story about how they arrived at their conclusions.

We are looking for ways to interrupt violence. Much of this work has to do with finding ways to identify common values with people who may be escalating towards violence. I’m guessing matters of faith provide a perfect place to find those values.

Note: Thank you to team member Ryan Nakade for some of the framing in this piece.