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Cutting Personal Ties Over Ideological Differences
It seems that Progressives have a harder time having personal relationships with people with whom they disagree than do conservatives. Why?
In this post, I am using “Progressive” as shorthand for a broad range of left-ish people and policies on ideological, political, and cultural issues because that seems to be the term the people with those views prefer, even though the true definition may be narrower. And I’m using “conservative” as shorthand for a broad range of right-ish people and policies even though there is lots of debate about who and what is properly covered by that word.
Surveys and anecdotal stories seem to show that if a friendship or interaction with a family member is ended over ideological, political, or cultural differences, the ending is more likely because the Progressive (or leftist or modern liberal or Democrat) does the ending. Democrats say they are less likely than Republicans to be willing to initiate a friendship or to date a person of the other political party.
Are “Progressives” really quicker to sever personal ties over ideological differences than do “conservatives”? If so, why?
In my church congregation, Progressive-oriented members are leaving the congregation (thereby functionally ending many of their relationships with other members of the congregation) after the congregation voted by a wide margin to reject a “Progressive” path on church policy and rules and to follow a more “conservative” path.
The United Methodist Church denomination (UMC) is in the process of splitting up. The history of the split is a bit messy to explain, but I’ll try to keep it brief. Strong internal forces in the denomination are driving more “Progressive” policies and rules of operation into the UMC denomination. “Conservative” congregations that object to the yet more Progressive direction the UMC denomination is going and seems certain to continue going, are leaving (“disaffiliating from”) the United Methodist Church denomination. There are other Methodist and Wesleyan (John Wesley was the founder of Methodism) denominations to which the conservative congregations can go, and in some cases have already gone. According to some temporary denominational rules, there is a brief time window in 2022 and 2023 in which a congregation can leave the denomination while keeping the real estate the congregation uses. Before and after that window, a congregation that leaves the denomination does so without the real estate, and possibly subject to some other financial penalties. So if a congregation thinks it will ever want to leave the UMC denomination, now is the time to do it. (I realize that the conservative congregations are leaving somewhat contradicts my thesis, but in discussing my thesis I am focused on personal relationships, not institutional associations.)
Our United Methodist congregation voted at the end of January 81% to 19% to leave (disaffiliate from) the United Methodist Church (i.e., 81% voted for the “conservative” outcome). The denomination’s regional body for our part of the country will in June confirm that vote, and our disaffiliation will be finalized in August. Hundreds of congregations in our region are working on the same timeline. Our congregation has about 300 adult members. So it’s large enough a person could worship somewhat anonymously, but small enough that with some effort a person could put faces and names together for most of the people there.
Many of the 19% of congregation members who voted against disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church (i.e., support a more “Progressive” direction) have already left our congregation to seek a congregation that is staying with the United Methodist Church. This baffles many of us who are staying with the congregation. Nothing about the congregation has changed because of the vote, nor are there any plans to change anything in the future, other than removing the word “United” from the signs in front of the building. In its 160-ish years of existence, this congregation has been part of at least three different Methodist denominations. The current pastor has been at the congregation almost five years. He is also leaving the United Methodist Church, and wants to remain with our congregation, so preaching and teaching aren’t changing. So why do so many of those who favor more Progressive policies feel the need to leave the congregation immediately, functionally severing many personal ties they had to other people in the congregation?
Many of the people who favor more conservative policies have said that had the vote gone the other way (i.e., if the congregation had voted to stay with the UMC as the UMC moves on a more Progressive path), most of us would have stayed with the congregation unless or until some new Progressive denominational policy directly affected this congregation (such as hanging a “pride” rainbow banner, a new pastor performing a same-sex wedding, or preaching a heresy like Jesus isn’t really divine, or Jesus didn’t physically rise from the dead, or any of a number of other elements that have appeared in some UMC congregations but not in ours). But until something local changed, “conservatives” would see no reason to leave the congregation, with the accompanying disruption to personal relationships.
Mrs. Tabby and I were worshipping with a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation as that denomination came apart in the 2010s, also over a conflict between Progressives who were relentless in their demands for significant changes in denominational policies and rules, and conservatives who insisted denominational standards should remain closer to traditional church teachings. As the denomination moved decidedly in a more Progressive direction, Mrs. Tabby and I resigned our formal membership, but continued to worship and participate in congregational life with our local congregation. We had strong connections with the people there. For a while, the Progressive denominational policies had no discernable effect on the local congregation. But then the pastors became more overt in preaching from Progressive perspectives so that it became harder and harder for us to encounter God in worship. But it had to go pretty far before we finally stopped participating because it was painful to interrupt the relationships with the people there, even those with whom I had significant disagreements.
So I have trouble understanding the people who are already leaving our current congregation over a vote that has no discernable practical effect on their personal church experience.
One point of explanation I have gleaned from some conversations with people who have left the congregation is that some of the people with Progressive views were surprised at the lopsidedness of the vote in the “conservative” direction. And some of those Progressives are certain that holding conservative views on church policies and rules is a clear sign of an intolerant bigot. So the vote revealed to some of the Progressives that they were worshipping among a congregation full of intolerant bigots. And unless they’re going to convert those conservative intolerant bigots into the better ways of Progressivism, they’re better off not being around such a concentration of people with such odious views. [The people who favor the more Progressive UMC describe the split as solely about whether to endorse same-sex romantic arrangements, so they see conservatives as inherently bigoted. People who favor more conservative policies point out that whether to endorse same-sex romantic arrangements is merely the currently most visible symptom of a push to discard a whole raft of church teachings and traditions. So the two sides can’t even agree on a description of the issues.]
I know conservatives are leery of being among significant concentrations of people who hold views or behave in ways the conservatives consider undesirable out of some concern that we or our children be led astray or corrupted. Conservatives who seek a sober life stay away from large concentrations of drunks and users of illicit drugs. Conservatives advise their children to cultivate relationships with people having admirable traits, and to stay away from people with traits that the parents see leading to problems. So I understand the concern about being “corrupted” by the influence of those around us. But it seems Progressives have a much lower threshold when they fear people with conservative views will “corrupt” them.
Is fear of being “corrupted” by the “intolerant bigotry” of “conservatives” what keeps “Progressives” from associating with people who disagree with them?
Or do “Progressives” just feel “icky” being around people who disagree with them on fundamental points?
And why do “conservatives” seem so much more willing to associate with people who disagree with them on such fundamental points?
I suppose I should really ask this of actual Progressives, but my questions often seem to come across as accusatory rather than seeking information, so they often are not productive.
Published in Culture
We have experienced the same. It’s a source of real sadness to be fired by long standing church friends. I don’t understand the anger that’s often expressed – along with disdain.
Boy I really thought this was the case but I fear that with rampant tribalism taking hold of both sides this isn’t in fact true anymore. It used to be the left that politicized everything in their lives and demonized anyone who disagreed. Conservatives were either crazy, evil or some combination of the two. Now the right uses the same terminology and demagoguery for the left. Progressive’s rational for breaking personal ties seemed to be that you can’t in good conscience be friends with someone who is actually evil. Well, just read this site and it’s easy to see many people here characterize the left the same way and feel the same about relationships with them. Sad
I suspect that it’s weakness, and feminization, among the so-called “conservatives.”
They do tend to take Biblical teachings more seriously, and there are important teachings about unity. There are also important teachings about, well, rejecting false teachings, and on the current issues of perversion and sexual sin that are driving church separations, there are specific teachings about expelling immoral church members.
I think that it’s difficult, because when a congregation faces an issue of sexual sin, there are examples pointing in both directions. Paul said something like “flee from sexual immorality” and gave instructions to the church in Corinth to expel an unrepentant, sexually immoral member. Jesus offered forgiveness to the woman caught in adultery. For some people, it seems easier to remember the latter example and not the former. My impression is that such people are unwilling to make a decision about whether or not a particular sinner is repentant and teachable, or intransigently unrepentant.
I think that there’s a political issue, also. The so-called “conservative” side, politically, includes people of the traditional Left and Right, in the original, French Revolutionary senses of these terms. There is an idea that emerged from the so-called Enlightenment that toleration was an important virtue, maybe the most important. That is not a conservative idea, from my point of view, but I guess that it depends on what you want to conserve. Many people seem to want to conserve the radicalism of the so-called Enlightenment.
There may be a rhetorical issue of importance, too, particularly with the use of the term “intolerant bigot.” People on the Progressive Left view those who disagree with them as being bad, with “bigoted” or “prejudiced” being two of their main terms of derision. Strangely, many people who think of themselves as “conservative” seem to think that it’s perfectly OK for people to disagree with them, which is quite contrary to Christian teaching. For a Christian, everyone who disagrees with important doctrine is heading for the lake of fire.
My own impression is that it has been the weakness of the “mushy middle” that has led us to the perverted state of culture in which we find ourselves. Many people just wanted to avoid conflict, and therefore postponed taking a stand when the Progressive radicals moved in and the staunch Conservatives opposed them. They wanted peace, peace. But there is no peace. Jesus said that he came not to bring peace, but division. This has not been a popular teaching.
At least, these are my views on the issue. It is frustrating to see it happening.
Off topic of the OP, but they forget Our Lord’s final command to the woman: “Go and sin no more.” (Emphasis mine.)
Related: Dating Dealbreakers for women. (at Twitter)
74% of college-educated women would be “less likely to date” someone who is a Trump supporter, 72% someone who “does not trust vaccines”, 52% “is a Republican”. For comparison, the number is 69% for “lives with their parents”, 89% for “is unemployed”, and, interestingly, 48% for “is a feminist”
And honestly the progressive “church” doesn’t want forgiveness for sexual sin. They want you to stop calling it sin and to encourage people to continue in that lifestyle, and if God doesn’t like that, well then He is the one with the problem, not them. So no, you cannot have a Biblically based church with people who feel that way. You are not worshipping the same thing.
As for political, rather than theological, differences it is possible to have friends with different views. I think it is getting harder as the government moves into more and more aspects of your life. It is one thing to disagree about the tax rate, and quite another issue when someone wants to teach your son that he is an oppressor and tell him he might not even be a “he”.
Unfortunately true. We don’t act like the left, thank God, but we act more like it than we used to. The urge to find and punish alleged ideological traitors was “their thing”. Now it’s ours, too.
There are conservatives of all sorts. They don’t all fall along a spectrum. `I’ve read a bunch of R> posts over the years that have a funny way of looking in the mirror and seeing only a soft, timid bunch of go-alongers and get-alongers, so afraid of not getting invited to exclusive cocktail parties, friendly to a fault even when someone is peeing on their leg.
I always wonder, does this really describe you? It doesn’t describe me, so I wonder if the authors include themselves in this pathetic, masochistic portrait.
Yeah, we’re still better. Give us time, though. We can mess this up.
The UMC is different in detail but follows a roughly similar set of events in the ELCA Lutheran church. In 2009, the ELCA convention narrowly passed a change permitting openly gay, non-celibate people to be ordained. At or about the same time the synod published a document outlining how everybody could differ on this matter — the big tent story. There were four legitimate positions any individual and any local church could maintain; one was the orthodox Christian view of sexuality, one was progressive; the other two were sort of blended views.
Individual churches could disaffiliate, but the rules were complex and costly and at the whim of the local bishops. Nevertheless, some of that took place.
Over time, all the important church offices became occupied by progressives, and then all official pronouncements came from that point of view. Congregations who wanted a traditional minister often didn’t get offered any from the local bishop. Slowly the screws tightened all around until everything is now progressive. Progressives will never leave you alone; they keep moving the goalposts.
There is a famous tweet by the great Iowahawk that describes this quite accurately:
The membership of the ELCA in 2008 was 4.63 million; in 2021 it was 3.08 million.
For the longest time, I did struggle with this question. There were two hard lines for me: I won´t be called a racist or a Nazi, not even by implication, by anyone who has known me for more than five minutes. For years, that was sufficient to keep friendships going with my more left-leaning friends. Then, at some point in the Obama years, that started to change. Speculate freely about the relationship between correllation and causation on that development.
Conservatives think progressives have bad ideas.
Progressives think conservatives are bad people.
Same for me.
I’m not so sure that being friends with someone who supports – through their votes if nothing else – things like chemical and/or surgical mutilation of children, is something to be lauded as “tolerance” or what-not.
I have seen a lot of signs pop up around my neighborhood saying “Protect Transgender Kids”. My question is, from whom?
I’m reminded of what Dennis Prager used to say – and maybe still says – about Europe, that they learned the wrong lesson from WW II. Instead of learning to fight evil, they learned that fighting IS evil.
The problem with many “conservatives” is they somehow came to believe that all shunning is wrong/bad. Shunning itself isn’t bad, it’s just that we need to shun the correct people. The left doesn’t shun the correct people. But neither do too many “conservatives.”
[Erroneous comment deleted – sorry]
I think that progressives are bad people with bad ideas. This is the Christian teaching, isn’t it?
It’s strange, but your attitude is actually “Progressive,” theologically, isn’t it? It denies that people are sinners.
It’s Leftist ideologically too, I think, as it seems to be a manifestation of Rousseau’s idea that we are born good, and taught to be bad.
Today’s progressives are not the liberals of twenty or thirty years ago. One can still find old-school liberals, but the progressives, as far as I can tell, hate them as much as they do conservatives or even GOPe types.
My church recently went through the same process and made the same decision to disassociate from UMC. It was also an overwhelming vote. I detected no hard feelings or anger, but again it would have been only very few who voted to stay. It’s a small Midwest town, so the issue of same sex marriage or gay clergy hasn’t ever come up in any big way. I, too, would have stayed with the church either way until something more came up. Just due to the people and relationships.
Our church has now joined the Global Methodist Church. So far, I’ve noticed no difference, but it’s early. I’m not involved beyond teaching Sunday school, so I don’t know what differences there may be higher up.
I generally can find something to like about everybody I meet. I can think only a couple of exceptions to that, and the problems had nothing to do with politics. So, I definitely wouldn’t end a friendship over it.
After the adult Sunday School class of which I am temporary president had a rather passionate dustup over the disaffiliation issue, as part of my efforts to calm things I urged everyone to look on each other as whole people, and not just as particular statements or positions on individual issues. When we see each other as whole people, we can almost always find something to like or something to agree on. One of the reasons I do not like an on-line world (as I participate in one here :) but Ricochet is the only on-line social thing I use) is that people are reduced to simplistic one dimensional characters. The move to almost all on-line life triggered by the Covid pandemic was a major (if not the major) contributor to the environment of friction and animosity that we live in today (in my opinion). But that’s probably a different rant.
If you know a person as a whole person, rather than just as a holder of a position on one or a few issues, differences are much easier to manage.
I think this used to be true but less so now.
And there you go…….cannot be friends with bad/evil people can we? Plus, tie it to Christianity! Everyone knows Christ taught shunning and association only with those who are likeminded. He never hung out with sinners or social outcasts…….oh
What’s a freakish introvert like me supposed to do? I don’t dislike personal interaction but when I do that it’s almost always one-on-one and it is only occasional and not necessarily likely to recur. It usually is mostly a discussion based on facts and not much opinion.
Well, He did “hang out” with sinners and social outcasts. But as I noted above, He told them, “Go and sin no more.” That’s the part you (and most who bring that argument) left out.
And Jerry is correct in saying Saint Paul told Christians to expel and not associate with Christians who repeatedly sin and are unrepentant. In the Orthodox Church, if one is sinning and unrepentant, one is barred from the Holy Mysteries. Heck, even if one confesses and is repentant, one’s priest may deny the Mysteries for a certain period of time. This is common.
“Hung out,” yes, but only in attempts to correct their thinking and behavior. Which tends not to be what conservatives do who continue to “hang out” with progressives.
Also, what MWD said.
Having coming from the Left, I had been taught to believe that those on the Right were far more likely to be bigoted against people of color.
That those on the Right had no members at all who supported gay marriage.
Meeting people here quickly dispelled me of those beliefs.
On economic issues, I had stood with Pat Buchanan for a long time – that immigration brought higher prices on items needed to fulfill all human needs, while lowering wages. And that social services’ grants to new arrivals was in flagrant disregard of Congress “must undertake no activities toward establishing a nobility.” (For 3 years my spouse worked in social services handing out such grants. Sometimes when he was finished approving of an immigrant family of 3’s brand new “income,” he was amazed to find that just by crossing the border, that family’s income rivaled his county wages of 50K a year. All for stepping across the border from Mexico to California.)
These are all good points, but I would err on the side of maintaining relations. I grant Paul’s statement about distancing yourself from the unrepentant, but I think you have to take that in the context of the unequivocal command of Jesus to love your neighbors and your enemies. And, after all, “love is patient, love is kind…” And “greater love has no man than this: that he should lay down his life for his friends.” And “do unto others…”
Given all that, I don’t think the “my friend’s gone woke (or Maga) so I assume they’re evil and I can’t talk to them anymore” really works. I don’t mean to include a situation where the other person becomes rude to you over it – then you may well need to reduce contact with them. Might be the kindest and most loving option. But then the issue isn’t really politics – it’s how they’re treating you.
I’ll note that Saint Paul’s statement is in reference to those members of the church who revert to sinning and then are unrepentant. Not to those non-Christians we may encounter.
Does that mean that Jesus should not have admonished “go and sin no more” unless the person was claiming to be Christian already?
Of course not! First, I was responding to the comment about Saint Paul’s instruction, which was addressed to the Church. Second, I was the one who brought up Christ’s command in the first place.
In liberal Calif, the politics and the “how they are treating you” happen to be the same.
I refer you to the recent insurrection at Stanford University when law students went ballistic because a fed judge came in to teach the class for a day.
Their behavior is how people in my county are treated by the Left. Some local leftists are out and out Antifa.