It shouldn’t be this difficult to convince conservative Christians to love their neighbor. But in seemingly every example of someone in power mistreating the marginalized these days, the Religious Right sides with the person in power.
The presence those on the right have in the United States today is one of authority that demands submission and threatens retributive punishment on all who won’t submit.
Rick Pidcock
On the domestic front, if you protest in favor of Palestinians, you’ll get arrested and threatened with deportation. If you boycott Tesla, you’ll be told what you’re doing is illegal. If you don’t put up the Ten Commandments in your classroom or teach “biblical character education,” your school might lose funds. If you identify as transgender, you’ll be fired from the military, erased from culture and, if some Texas Republicans have their way, you could be prosecuted with a felony for lying.
In foreign policy, conservatives are now sympathetic to Russia, while being antagonistic toward Ukraine. They’re in favor of shutting down USAID support for starving children all over the world. And they’re in favor of moving Palestinians away from their homes so the United States can own their land and build Trump Tower Gaza.
In every one of these cases, and many more like them, the Religious Right stands on the side of those in power threatening to punish, not with the powerless who are being oppressed. They demonstrate their siding with the powerful through their silence or celebration. And for those of us who have empathy for the oppressed, the political right says we’re being weak and the Religious Right says we’re being sinful and toxic.
“Today’s religious conservatism is by definition incompatible with loving your neighbor as self.”
Until religious conservatives are willing to disentangle themselves from the “America First” movement and deconstruct their hierarchies, we need to acknowledge that today’s religious conservatism is by definition incompatible with loving your neighbor as self.
Authority and submission pervade everything
One of the most stubborn examples of conservative Christians refusing to love their neighbors in recent years was John MacArthur and his elders deciding to continue meeting during the COVID-19 pandemic without taking any precautions.
Despite 173,995 confirmed cases with 4,360 deaths in Los Angeles alone at the time, with no vaccine available, Grace Community Church packed thousands of worshipers into its sanctuary, with another 1,000 people outside.
Looking back at this time in an interview with the evangelical satire site The Babylon Bee, MacArthur said, “Those conversations with (California Gov. Gavin Newsom) or with anybody else in that environment, was always an authority discussion.” He told The Babylon Bee his questions for Newsom were: “What’s your authority? Are we supposed to accept you as the authority, sole authority, purveyor of all truth, architect of truth, source of truth?”
According to MacArthur, “Authority and submission pervade the whole universe.” And this includes all human relationships.
“God’s basic pattern is there are two factors in society: authority and submission,” MacArthur explained another time. “And God has designed that men be given the position of authority, and women the position of submission.”
Thus, MacArthur demands, “A woman, whether she is married or single, must recognize the fact that in general, as a woman, she must have a spirit of submission to all men.”
The sheep and the goats
One of the classic threats conservative evangelicals use is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.
The story starts with the Son of Man coming in glory with the angels and sitting on a glorious throne. With the nations gathered to him, the king separates the sheep on his right from the goats on his left. The sheep get to receive the inheritance of the kingdom, while the goats are told to depart into eternal fire because they are cursed.
Conservative evangelicals claim to be the sheep and accuse anyone who won’t submit to their theology or who questions or deconstructs their theology of being goats.
They interpret the story through the lens of MacArthur’s paradigm of authority and submission. Thus, men taking their role as the head of women are sheep, while women who won’t submit to men are goats. In MacArthur’s hierarchy, the sheep are the ones in power, while the goats are the ones below.
And if the goats are to be dismissed for not submitting, then the United States as a supposedly sheep nation would be right to cut off USAID, support Russia, prosecute transgender people, withhold funding from schools that won’t teach the Bible, and deport protesters.
There is no love in sacralized hierarchy
In the world of conservative evangelical patriarchy, love is defined as convincing people to submit to conservative evangelical hierarchies. Thus, the loving thing for me to do as a parent would be to tell my kids they deserve to be crucified or burn in hell forever. The loving thing for me to do as a husband would be to tell my wife to submit to me as her head. The loving thing for Americans, who are supposedly part of a chosen nation with a divinely inspired constitution, would be to tell all other nations to submit to us.
“Love is defined as convincing people to submit to conservative evangelical hierarchies.”
But there is no love in the coerced submission of sacralized hierarchies. How can I say this? Because “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
The Religious Right who have succumbed to the Make America Great Again movement know nothing of that love. In fact, they and their golden god are the antithesis of 1 Corinthians 13.
They can’t claim their plan is loving in any way, shape or form. As I said in a recent episode of BNG’s new podcast “Highest Power: Church + State,” “You can’t even argue that they’re doing these things because they think these policies are better for the oppressed. Withholding food isn’t better for the hungry. And withholding information isn’t better for the people being bombed, or for the people who are sitting ducks as a hurricane or tornado comes barreling down on them. As Anthea Butler pointed out, this is just cruelty.”
The king and his siblings
There’s more to the Matthew 25 parable than many people realize. There is the obvious subversion of hierarchy present in how the sheep give the king food, drink, company, clothes, healing and liberation when they do it for the least of these, as well as in how the goats withhold those things from the king by withholding them from the oppressed.
But perhaps rather than calling this the parable of the “sheep and the goats,” another possible name could be the parable of the “king and his siblings.”
Notice what the king doesn’t tell the sheep. He doesn’t say, “Whatever you did for one of my subjects, vassals, servants, or allies.” Instead, he says, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
“This king doesn’t consider the oppressed to be beneath him in an authority and submission paradigm.”
This story is ultimately the revelation of a king and his siblings. This king doesn’t consider the oppressed to be beneath him in an authority and submission paradigm. Instead, this king exists in the dirt, in and among the oppressed. This king loves the oppressed through the actions of the sheep and is loved by the sheep through their actions toward the oppressed.
The presence of this King is a presence of valuing those whom the powerful choose to belittle, healing those whom the powerful choose to hurt, and being with those whom the powerful choose to exile. This is such a different kind of king that it’s worth wondering if “king” is even the right word at all to call this person, or if the references to a “king” with his “coming in glory” and his “glorious throne” are merely conversation starters meant to subvert everything we’ve ever thought about glory and power.
The reason today’s conservative evangelicals don’t embody the presence of this king isn’t that they are hypocrites who aren’t taking their theology seriously enough. They don’t embody a presence of healing and wholeness because an embodiment of healing and wholeness is incompatible with their theology of hierarchy.
For them to love their neighbor would require them to leave their theology.
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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How John MacArthur loves the Bible but not his neighbor | Analysis by Rick Pidcock
Why empathy is under assault today | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy