The Church is Losing Its Power to Oppress, But That's Okay

There's an interesting fear in the Evangelical community that they are being oppressed in some way. I have a bunch of Facebook friends in the Evangelical community and they often post about how they are being oppressed for their views on homosexuality, abortion, spanking etc. For a while some of them were championing the cause of 'Religious Freedom', as though they were being stopped from practicing their beliefs. Many of their posts were filled with fear. But where is this fear coming from?

The reality is just that the Church is losing the hegemonic power and control it used to have. It can no longer oppress and suppress alternative viewpoints. In our postmodern world you must now compete with alternative claims of truth, and this can be frightening if you're used to being in the driving seat.

But what's interesting is that the Bible itself doesn't seek to silence alternative viewpoints, but is exactly how the Bible is made up. It's a collection of varying viewpoints and understandings, and the editors of the Bible didn't seek to harmonise the theology or the contradictions that exist. In fact the rough edges and alternative views are what gives the Bible its depth and unique character.

The history of the Church also gives us an insight into why the Church losing its hegemonic status is not a bad thing. The early Christians were not part of the powerful, elite that many Christians are today. They were oppressed outcasts that were welcomed into a new hope where all would be equal. It's only when Christianity becomes the religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine that it becomes the religion of the powerful.

So perhaps when Christians feel threatened by alternative viewpoints of 'the other', they could remember that Christianity is a religion for 'the other' who has been oppressed by the powerful. The desire to silence the 'other' is so prevalent in the Evangelical Church of today, but perhaps Jesus is showing us another way.

The Rhetoric of Power and the 'Language of Love'

“Of course I have nothing against the fact that your boss treats you in a nice way and so on. The problem is if this not only covers up the actual relationship of power, but makes it even more impenetrable. You know, if you have a boss who is up there, the old-fashioned boss shouting at you, exerting full brutal authority. In a way it’s much easier to rebel than to have a friendly boss who embraces you or how was the last night with your girlfriend, blah, blah, all that buddy stuff. Well then it almost appears impolite to protest.
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And I think that this is for me almost a paradigm of modern permissive authority. This is why the formula of totalitarianism is not — "I don’t care what you think; just do it." This is traditional authoritarianism. The totalitarian formula is "I know better than you what you really want and I may appear to be forcing you to do it, but I’m really just making you do what without fully knowing what you want" and so on. So in this sense yes, I am horrified by this.” - Slavoj Zizek

The problem that Zizek is pointing out is not that the boss is a nice person, but rather that this niceness covers over the systems of power and hegemony that exist.

I think this can equally be applied to how fundamentalist Christians respond to the LGBT community (and more recently Caitlyn Jenner). The rhetoric is one of love and concern, as though by posting articles saying that gay people are 'deceived' that they are in fact being loving. They call it “tough love”, but what this “tough love” is doing is only re-entrenching the oppression the Church has held over the LGBT community for centuries. The Church is still the one controlling the interaction and telling others how they are to behave. The Church is still the one holding the power.

The rhetoric of love in this context functions as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be love while covering over a destructive bigotry. At least with the previous authoritarianism of the Church, where it violently opposed homosexuality, it was quite clear that what was happening was wrong, and people could rise up against the hegemonic control of Church. Today, the authoritarianism is more subtle and more chummy, but it’s still there.