6 ways to Immunize Your Church against Extremism
With growing radicalization and polarization how can pastors and Christian leaders preventatively help their congregations avoid extremism?
In the last post I outlined 6 things pastors and Christian leaders should know about radicalization and extremism… now we’ll explore some practical steps for dealing with radicalization and extremism that has crept into the church and immunizing against more.
1. Tell a better story
We need to become better story-tellers focussing on the grand meta-narrative the Bible offers and the gospel Jesus himself preached. People can get lured into conspiracies and political ideologies because they make grand promises, tell a compelling story and offer tidy solutions. The Christian story proclaims a sovereign King who inaugurated a Kingdom to whom we owe allegiance. One day the whole cosmos will be restored, wrongs will be made right and evil dealt with. How we present this good news (i.e. the gospel) is often truncated or incomplete. The Greek evangelion translated ‘good news’ or ‘gospel’ was used in the 1st century to proclaim a great military victory throughout the empire. It’s usage by Jesus was no small hint at something even greater than earthly peace (pax Romana) brought about by the mighty Roman army. Personal salvation and liberation are important as are the social ramifications of the good news but they are parts of the story. Implications for personal finance and marriage and parenting are important but an over-fed diet on only some aspects of the gospel or solely life-betterment niblets in isolation is simply not as compelling as the redemption of all things. Tell the whole story and allow the narrative to wow people’s imagination!
2. Focus on Spiritual Formation
All week long people are discipled by cultural liturgies and shaped by the marketplace to be consumers, by youth sports to think the hope of the future is to ‘go pro,’ by news to be hopeless and frightened, by talk radio outrage-entrepreneurs to sort the world into us and them and by politicians to hate and believe in earthly kingdoms. We need better rhythms that cultivate a desire for the Kingdom, better discipline to tune out out bad voices and tune into good ones and a sober and serious approach to cultivating our own ‘loves’ and ‘taste’ for what is good, holy, righteous and true. This won’t happen on its own and it will be a fight. Re-visit the ancient practices of Sabbath and solitude, re-read Willard, Foster, etc. consider Jon Mark Comer’s fresh take: Practicing the Way (curriculum and book) for your church or group.
3. Know thine enemy
Every story has a protagonist and an antagonist. Lately, politicians, pundits and even pastors try to identify clear human enemies out of groups or individuals. As my pastor likes to say: ‘there are no good-guys and bad-guys… we’re all bad.” From the Christian perspective, the true antagonist is the ruler of the air and the world’s systems he has setup. Our own flesh and desires, the sinful tendencies of our own hearts are also ‘enemies’ of sorts. The conflicts we see in the world cut right through each of our own hearts… we need to see these impulses and confess revenge, hatred, self-absorption wherever they pop up. Demonizing other people or labeling enemies without acknowledging that the same issues wrestle inside us is hypocrisy. Other human beings are fellow lost pilgrims, some of us perhaps more visibly than others, but we are all made in the image of God.
4. Maintain contact with diverse groups
Deliberate exposure to groups identified as targets of hatred by radical groups or political parties inoculates against us/them thinking and insider/outsider categorization. When you know someone personally, it is harder to stereotype and easier to empathize. Former terrorists and extremists describe “exposure to positive experiences with ethnic minorities or others whom radicals were taught to hate” sometimes created “transformative effects” on their postures and thinking1. Brown, who studied extremists that deradicalized and their families says “cross-group friendship is especially important… cross-group contact may, in fact, be an ‘essential’ component of lasting change.”
Jesus modeled this in his interactions with Samaritans, Syrian soldiers and tax collectors. He ate with them, heard their stories and earned the right to speak. In our day, walking towards conflict, or towards those with whom we perceive to be at odds with is a bold, Christian step modeled after Jesus.
5. Model the Virtue Lists
In our day of shock jocks and hate filled rhetoric, hostile speech, aggressive taunts and anger are par for the course. Every one of the virtue lists in the Bible paints a picture of a different kind of posture, a persona modeled by Jesus that is a stark contrast to the prevailing culture of any age. These are the fruits of righteousness or the fruits of the Spirit (Eph 5). Imagine if your church thought seriously about the kind of people we ‘are’ in culture in the midst of conflict and strove to live this out. Often today leaders seem to fall into the trap of thinking ‘extreme circumstances call for extreme measures’ and then justify anger and slanderous speech. Jesus and the apostles laid down guardrails for the ‘ends’ or goals of the church and ‘means’ by which it is to be accomplished.
Just as a sample, visit James 3:17-18, Titus 3:2 and Colossians 3:12-14. These are not just qualifications for elders (those are also very helpful) but expectations for all Christians. In these lists we find things like humility, patience, meekness and love, traits so lacking in culture, but sadly also in the church. I find James 3:17-18 to be a poignant reminder that in contrast with the wisdom of the world, God’s way is first pure, the peaceable, gentle (or ‘open to reason’ as the ESV puts it), willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. These are like ‘seeds of peace’ that when sown, bear the fruit of righteousness and result in peace.
These fruits indicate what God wants to grow in us and that there are boundaries to behavior, to speech and to attitudes to which we must hold ourselves. But they are fruits… they have to be cultivated, grown, tended to and modeled. For fruit to grow, there has to be rootedness and health. Virtue formation comes with practice, discipline and curation. So talk about them, confess when you fail and model Christ-likeness.
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
Colossians 3:12-14
6. Emphasize the Imago Dei and Missio Dei
The Biblical story begins with a creation account that highlights human beings are made in God’s image. They are commissioned to be co-creators and stewards and protectors of creation. This God-image imprinted on humans is an awe-filled wonder. Every person carries aspects of the divine, however corrupted and badly deformed. Constantly remembering the imago Dei can immunize us against dehumanizing and thinking less of anyone, especially perceived enemies.
The missio Dei is a poignant reminder that all aspects of church and mission are ultimately God’s. It is not up to us to grow the church, convert anyone, make a nation more ‘Christian’ or fix other peoples issues. We are called to partner with God, but not be God. Jesus commissioned his disciples to go make other disciples, just as his Father sent him. He and the apostles implored the church to be salt and light, to be known by love and service, to be witnesses, produce Kingdom fruits, and to be that city on a hill as an example of what humanity could look like with the flourishing intent of it’s creator.
To close, C.S. Lewis’ admonishing thought on revering the imago dei in human beings in the Weight of Glory is worth quoting at length:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.
It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
Brown, Ryan Andrew. Violent Extremism in America: Interviews with Former Extremists and Their Families on Radicalization and Deradicalization. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2021.