Prepare the Way of the Lord: Unlearning Neoliberalism in White Progressive Churches

Research Questions: How does neoliberalism, as a political theology and corresponding spirituality, impact the ability of the white progressive mainline to participate in radical movements for justice? Subsequently, what theological and spiritual formations can disrupt neoliberalism’s grasp on the white progressive mainline?

Drawing on one of the author’s experiences in organizing white churches and clergy to resist the white nationalist Unite the Right Rally that took place in Charlottesville, VA in 2017, the authors explore the theological and spiritual roots of the refusal by these clergy and church members to join in counter protest. Neoliberalism serves as a political theology with corresponding spirituality in these white progressive Christian spaces, a theology that draws on a foundational myth of peace and progress that promises salvation through unity and globalized harmony. Alongside a belief in cosmopolitan humanitarianism, this predominant ideology undergirds a form of economic and social elitism with preferred practices of charitable giving and abstract justice-oriented rhetoric that hinders rather than cultivates enactments of solidarity and support across difference. A theology and spirituality formed by neoliberalism atrophies the muscles required for experiencing or holding hurt and harm and the social stamina needed in situations that require conflict, risk, and endurance, such as our current political environment. 

By way of a neoliberal formation, the progressive white church has acquiesced to a secular humanist worldview that is intertwined with colonial forms of being, doing, and believing. This leads to an orientation towards peace and progress that is not at all peaceful, but rather an enactment of violence against those engaged in forms of resistance deemed unacceptable, such as the direct action called for in Charlottesville, being concerned that somehow confronting and resisting violence is in fact participating in its continuation. Neoliberal relationality, which is premised on competition, decorum, and fear, disrupts the possibility of community and the deep relationality needed to sustain work for justice. The desire for respectability and appropriateness overrides the willingness to show up and visibly counteract existing structures of evil.

We propose three moves to unsettle the underlying theologies of neoliberalism and cosmopolitan humanitarianism in progressive white mainline churches: 1) identifying neoliberalism’s ideological presence and impact on spiritual formation, 2) disrupting that formation through processes of disorientation and estrangement, and 3) engaging in alternative formations for a different kind of relationality and imagining different futures together.

Considering these moves, we turn to normative wisdom from freedom fighter Ella Baker, whose radical Black humanism counters ineffectual cosmopolitan humanitarianism with a different kind of religiosity and spirituality. Her work combines relational mutuality and reciprocity with a precise political analysis of economics and power (not unlike that of intersectional feminist, queer, and radical Black power movements) that is often missing from white progressivism in the mainline Protestant church. Her form of religiosity develops different capacities for engagement and resilience while preparing the ground for the challenges that may come. The kind of formation that her work generates is an example for what is needed in the spiritual formation of white progressive churches, not for specific acts (although that can be helpful), but for the ability to anticipate and welcome a different future that is on its way.

Thinking about Ella Baker, we notice that the white church could be working with something other than neoliberal peace and progress myths. We find that a spirituality of Advent may be a helpful reorientation in the white mainline. Not only the bright imaginings of an apocalyptic future that ushers in a more just relationality between the earth and all its creatures, but also the humble concrete acts of vulnerable incarnation that can birth the divine. A critical figure in the Advent season is John the Baptist, whose wild embodiment and calls for repentance to prepare the way of the Lord were no doubt experienced as strange and uncivilized by the religious establishment that raised him.

Not unlike John the Baptist, Ella Baker, and another of our ancestral wisdom figures, Lillian Smith, were educators and activists whose values and relational ways of being were deeply formed during their religious upbringing, yet they had to leave the church to perform their radical reorientations toward collective liberation. Baker and Smith found the institutions that formed them limiting because of the experiences of patriarchy, exclusion, hierarchy, and idolatry that they found there. Our hope is that the white progressive church can provide the type of formation necessary to anticipate and prepare for a different world, yet we know, through many stories similar to those of Baker and Smith, that Christian theologies and spiritualities that enact collective liberation can root down and sprout up elsewhere.

At least two interventions will be necessary in enacting a spiritual formation that creates possible conditions for a church people to be open to radical manifestations of justice and belonging. First, the spadework preparing the way for different foundations and rootedness to take hold will require a radical disorientation and denaturalization of the myths of peace and progress and the spiritualities of safety, comfort, and appropriateness that attend them. Second, the development of a radically new relationality that allows us to hold one another in accountability and care through moments of conflict, uncertainty, disorientation, and risk. Practicing mutuality and vulnerability will be essential to this work.