The Pathology of Christian Zionism
By
Stan Moody
Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry
Psychologist Eric Fromm has left behind (pun intended) some very incisive gems that link the pathology of Christian Zionism with the culture of fear that gave rise to Nazi Germany.
Christian Zionism is the logical end-game of a diasporic Evangelical Right that has lost sight of Jesus’ inauguration of the
Redemptive history always holds out the hope of a Promised Land – from the Jews in exile in
A distant and unresponsive God leads the discouraged believer to long for security within geographical or ideological boundaries rather than within the boundless presence of God with his people. The transfer of passion from boundless presence to geographical boundaries inevitably leads to nationalism and the insistence on the ability to worship without biblical or intellectual challenge to one’s doctrines.
Fromm dissects nationalism and finds within it pathology of narcissism. In the outline of a lecture, he extends to groups certain familiar codependent behavior patterns prevalent among individuals. This phenomenon is not unlike that explored by Anne Wilson Schaef (Schaef, When Society Becomes an Addict, HarperCollins, New York, 1987). The difference is that Fromm writes from the very real condition of an alienated and discouraged German populace safeguarding itself against an alienated European Jewish population.
For nationalistic Germans, their Promised Land was to be the Third Reich, strengthened by the annihilation of a vulnerable and competing Jewish culture – vulnerable by a seemingly odd religion and economically competitive.
“Three Aspects of Nationalism”
Fromm’s three aspects of nationalism are:
1. A sentiment of belonging with those who share the same language…
2. The organization of shared ideas into a sovereign state representative of those ideas…
3. The unification of the state by a common economy…
If we were to apply these three aspects of nationalism to the agenda of the Christian Right, it is easy to see how the movement has progressed from the local church to political activism to nationalism.
The local church is a classic group of people who share the same language – a cryptic language, the use of which stands as a litmus test of faith. Each denomination or sect has its own idiom. Such terms as “born again,” “saved” and “Rapture” are metatags of language to qualify believers. “Talking the talk” carries with it the assumption that one is “Walking the walk.”
As a result, con artists whose faith runs no deeper than a platform for self protection and self advancement abound within the Christian Right.
Over time, churches become ghettoized in their longing for comfort against the painful search for truth that requires exposure to and confrontation with competing beliefs. Study becomes sloppy and superficial, and core doctrines of the faith give way to idiom. In short, the ghettoized Christian knows what he knows but does not know, or perhaps care, what he believes outside its shorthand language.
This pathology leads to a resistance to cultural change and becomes reactive in a system that has codified its symbols into its faith. Change from without challenges paralysis from within. The more change, the more fear. The more fear, the greater the feeling of alienation. The more alienation, the greater the tendency toward seeking comfort in larger groups, leading ultimately to nationalism and the enshrining of religious language into the law.
Fromm distinguishes a healthy interest in and love of country from narcissism, a condition under which love of country overrides love of humanity, and love of family overrides love of neighbor.
Narcissism sees self as the only viable reality. When narcissism is extended to groups, group-think, group-fear and group-oppression become the only reality. The “outside world” has no credibility. When that outside world begins encroaching on the ability of the group to remain comfortable in its ghetto, however, the group seeks out other groups whose language of faith is shared. As a result, the language of faith becomes watered down into one-size-fits-all and supersedes core beliefs.
The ultimate comfort in this search for acceptance is nationalism and the constitutional protection of religious language. It is not unusual, for example, for the Christian Right to advocate for the replacement of the Constitution with the Bible. Such patriots, then, work against liberties of other groups than their own, which translates into bias against those who fail to adopt familiar language.
Even the proud phrase, “God bless
The resulting consensus yields an ethic that says, “My group or nation is wonderful.” Church people are notorious for selling their church to others on the grounds that theirs is what everyone in the church culture is seeking: “You ought to check out my church!”
Fromm sees social narcissism as a way of boosting one’s own estimate of self through the adoption of desired qualities by the group. “I am wonderful because my group is wonderful.” Rather than work on self improvement, the narcissist bypasses the pain of personal growth by deferring to the group. Religious convictions, therefore, become head-bound rather than heart-bound. Religious language becomes group law rather than personal conviction.
Today, nation, religion and political creed are the main objects of Group Narcissism.
“Pathology of Narcissism”
Lack of Judgment and Reason:
By closing the mind to alternative belief systems or examining its own language for content and meaning, Group Narcissism protects its creeds against an encroaching world. Fromm sees this development as an inability to view the world objectively.
In the church culture, objective truth evolves into subjective faith because it is protected against an assault that usually never happens. While the world lumbers on in its inimitable fashion, any deviation from the body of truth that has solidified into group-think is perceived to be a focused attack on group values.
Because symbolism (creeds, carvings and language) becomes the hallmark of faith, any attack on symbols is viewed personally by the group as an attack on its beliefs. As the group develops a poor self-image, the only way to right its perceived strength is to join forces with other groups of like language and fight for the reinstitution of the symbol. At this point, belief becomes secondary to the language of belief.
Thus, school prayer, which is really not Christian prayer at all, is a symbol that must be restored at the expense of discrimination against people of other faiths or of no faith at all. Traditional marriage must be constitutionally mandated at the expense of those who are in non-traditional lifestyles. Love of self, then, overrides love of neighbor. Faith loses its objective of trusting God and subjectively turns to the group, the political party or the nation.
Failure of Love:
The second pathology of narcissism that Fromm identifies is its antithesis to love. The great irony for the church, of course, is its common failure as a community of love to demonstrate that love to a watching world. The war in
Narcissism never goes much beyond “them” being those who pose a threat, however remote, to the language of faith, and “us” being those who are surrounded by a worldwide conspiracy to destroy our nation as a Christian republic.
“…the gates of Hell will not prevail against it (the church)” becomes Hell crashing through the wall of the church rather than crumbling under the advance of the church, as though gates were implements of war. A fortress mentality prevails to turn offense into defense, thus denying the sovereignty of the God of Israel, who turns weakness into strength.
Fear of losing the language of faith sets up a defensive posture. Defense justifies objectifying people of other cultures or opposing points of view. Once objectified, these people are no longer “neighbors” but are enemies. Just as individuals in the narcissistic group surrender their individuality to the group, so their enemies lose their individuality, justifying scapegoating and stereotyping.
Since there is nothing in the Bible about loving groups of neighbors, one can justify categories of liberals, terrorists and atheists as objects for extinction. Groups lose their human face.
Wounds Inflicted by Narcissism:
Any kind of criticism, real or perceived, is received as personal attack against the narcissistic group and, indirectly, the individuals in the group. The reaction is invariably hostility and anger or depression.
Since one’s strength is wrapped up in the group, an attack on the group is a deflation of personal ego, leading back to the feeling of being nothing, the original impetus for the group.
If my group is perceived as never being wrong, it has no shortcomings. Thus, I will have projected all my defects on others because the group stands as a vanguard against self-criticism and personal growth. This rigid framework is nearly blind to the advance of time and aging of members and ideas.
The perceived enemy, on the other hand, is viewed as advancing against the fortress of the language of faith. The enemy is growing, while the narcissistic group is battening the hatches. The enemy, therefore, becomes all bad, while “we” are all good.
It is a short step from there to “good” nations and “evil” nations.
Application to the Christian Right and Zionism
The Church as a Group:
The church has the option of becoming a fortress against foreign ideas, or it can be its intended living, breathing presence of a
The universal reduction of faith to a correct, audible sinner’s prayer stands as a rebuke of the power of God to convict and regenerate. It places the power of conversion in the hands of the evangelist and the converted and requires the application of certain religious language to the process. Studies have shown that some 94% of public conversions, where people repeated the sinner’s prayer, asking Jesus to come into their hearts and forgive them of their sin, never took hold in the life. This suggests that perhaps 94% of these prospects were moved more by peer pressure and emotional appeal than by conviction.
Nevertheless, the evangelical culture has lowered the bar to professed faith over visible works. The language of faith being the litmus test for belief, almost anyone with a working knowledge of the language will qualify, if not for membership then for inclusion.
Thus begins the accumulation of peculiar doctrines, the defense of which moves from individual conviction to group-think.
Group-think, however, is effective only so long as the group is capable of defending its language and peculiar, select doctrines.
Into the gap rushes the
The evening news then emerges as the evidence of an encroaching attack on the language of faith. The Christian faith degenerates into a world of soundbites and popular slogans where the behavior of others outside the faith is the rallying call to action.
The local church, where a few people struggle with doctrine, is the living example of failure for its lack of popular appeal and success. Enter the megachurch, where money and marketing skill engage the war against religious language.
The Mighty Arm of the Law:
Whatever the vehicle for defense of religious language, it is inevitable that insecurity creeps in as the phantom enemy fails to be slowed in its perceived advance against the narcissistic group. No religious ghetto, no matter how large and powerful, is able to turn back the attack against a culture immune to critical thinking. The God who is away and distracted is insufficient to protect His people against assault. The American Dream ethic of God’s blessing on the faithful remains threatened.
Simply put, the Overcomer who said, “Greater is He who is within me than he who is within the world” was just plain wrong. The world is deteriorating with time, and God is unable to stem the tide of attack on the fortress of faith.
Having selected certain gross violations of Christian faith and practice as evidence of a world gone mad (abortion and homosexuality), the only possible defense remaining for the narcissistic group is the arm of politics.
The Christian Right turns to, or seizes, the Republican Party.
God’s man in the White House is comfortable with the correct religious language – the idiom of evangelical faith. Qualities and qualifications are cast aside, and he becomes God’s ordained man to clean up
The attack on “other than us” begins with 9/11. Pregnant women and children are killed by the tens of thousands, with nary a word from the language of pro-life faith. Natural disasters are a direct result of the hand of God against the degradation of public life. Narcissism is fed by voter turnout and the evening news.
With 51% of the American public in agreement – for a season, at least – with the narcissistic group, zeal breaks out into hatred and abuse, but not for long. Sex and corruption creep into the annals of power, and Republicans begin to lose their effectiveness as defenders of the language of faith. The hoped-for codification of select biblical precepts (absent the Sermon on the Mount) into law begins to fade.
Christian Zionism, and Back to the Land:
With the fading of hope within the Republican Party, insecurity creeps once more into the narcissistic group. Hope in
The doctrine of the
The Promised Land for American Evangelicals comes only in three shapes and forms – physical Zion as promised to Abraham and his descendents, America, a “city on a hill” and spiritual Zion, the Kingdom of God, which has been futurized out of reach.
Narcissism demands the security of protection against the perceived assault on religious language, referred to as Christian values.
Unable to see the world objectively and to testify to the active presence of God and His Kingdom on the nations; feeling hemmed in by an increasingly hostile culture, the narcissist wants out.
Feeding the frenzy to escape the challenge to fixed ideas is the Christian Tele-Zionist. No attempt is made to offer Jesus as the remedy for human woe and alienation. Instead, the Christian Tele-Zionist feeds into the insecurity of the individual by playing on the perceived vulnerability of the group. Checkbooks are opened, and hope is redirected from the nation-state to the Millennial Reign of Christ.
We’re Outa Here!”
Three major obstacles stand in the way of the Millennial Reign – where, when and how. The question of “where” has long been settled by nineteenth-century Premillennial Dispensationalists. The Millennial Reign of Christ will be within the boundaries of the land promised to Abraham, a territory that the Tele-Zionist has declared at minimum to be defined by the borders of the 1967 Six Day War.
The “how” of the Millennial Reign also has been settled. All Jews must go back to
In order to accomplish this, the Dome of the Rock must be destroyed and the temple rebuilt in its place. This cannot be done without first wiping out the Arab nations. The Narcissist Group seek to accomplish this through the agency of the
The “when” is problematic. Tired of waiting for God, it is the mission of the Christian Tele-Zionist to create such chaos in the
Profile of the Christian Zionist
I was a presenter at a conference recently, where a young student from
The irony is that it is acceptable for the Christian Zionist group to attack liberals, Democrats and non-believers. It is unacceptable, however, for other believers to criticize the theology and agenda of the group. The reason for that, I suspect, is the gnawing insecurity that plagues those who have stunted their own spiritual growth in the face of a dynamic and shifting world. To be questioned by one of their own is to do damage to one’s comfort zone.
Evangelical criticism, therefore, is a form of intifada that interrupts the Christian Zionist from the security that he seeks within his narcissistic group.
I suspect that Eric Fromm would find this phenomenon a natural result of group narcissism, where one’s own security, protected by the group’s political power and money, overrides the interests of neighbor. This is a theology that runs absolutely contrary to Christian doctrines laid down in the Gospels.
The grassroots Christian Zionist is a politically conservative, somewhat paranoid individual with low self-esteem. Rather than fight to overcome these pathologies both psychologically and spiritually, he takes the easy route by connecting with groups who formulate his paranoia into scapegoats and sound bites. By so doing, his esteem is restored until the group comes under attack, whereupon his insecurity propels him toward a larger, more powerful group.
Ultimately, the individual narcissist seeks escape from his own hostility, anger and depression by projecting his defects onto the group, thus contributing to the narcissism of the group. Propelling this pathology is a perpetual search by the alienated for a Promised Land which, for the Christian, is the
Once the hope of local church, Para-church, political party and nation-state have failed to satisfy the hunger for acceptance and peace, it is back to the land to create the ultimate Utopia. For the Christian Zionist, that Utopia is the Millennial Reign of Christ that can only be inaugurated by throwing the Middle East into chaos, flushing along with it
The Christian Tele-Zionist is a charlatan who feeds on this insecurity. Rather than pointing to Jesus as the remedy for human woe and alienation, the Tele-Zionist points to the evening news as evidence of a deteriorating condition. Every disaster becomes the outpouring of God’s wrath on a disobedient and liberal nation, translating into a direct attack on the group.
When the group is under attack, the only option is to go into recovery or find a larger, more powerful group. For that latter, the charlatans of the faith stand ready to oblige.
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