hypervigilance (noun): a state of or tendency towards being overly aware of one’s environment and the potential dangers it presents
After leaving our prior church during COVID (in part, due to the leadership decisions about early re-opening and lack of encouraging masks), I haven’t consistently gone to church anywhere. I consider myself spiritual, a Christian, but not religious. I no longer identify with any specific denomination. I sleep in on Sundays and study theology and the Bible throughout the week. I would just say, “I’m a Jesus girl”.
In the years since I left, it’s been truly remarkable to step back and reflect on what 40+ years in a conservative religious environment does to one’s psyche. And recently, that reflection has helped me make sense of some of the conservative, Evangelical backlash to social justice issues and the lack of congruence between what we read in the Bible and the behavior that we see from them.
If you spend any length of time in one of these Evangelical churches, you will hear sermon after sermon telling you just how hard your life is, how cruel the world is, that the devil is lurking everywhere you turn. You will hear admonitions to ‘not let your guard down’ so as not to fall to temptation. You will be told the world is against you, that you are weak, and you have so many storms to weather, so many burdens to carry, and so many dark days to navigate.
What you will hear from the pulpit, often in a space that looks more like a concert venue, replete with expensive lighting, fog machines, and loud contemporary music, will not drive you to think critically. It will not urge you to question things you don’t understand. There will be no room for nuance, for alternative interpretations, and most definitely not for disbelief. The pastor holds the real truth, “the Bible is clear”, and if you keep coming back, you will be renewed each week so you can keep fighting the battles out there in the world.
When we are subjected to week after week and year after year of messages that stoke our fears and reinforce our weaknesses, we become hypervigilant. Our nervous systems are constantly on overdrive. We are afraid to ask questions for fear of being wrong. The rules are: pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, anti-LGBTQ, maybe immigration (if they do it the ‘right’ way) …you get the idea. If you disagree, you are shamed, or worse, excluded altogether.
You are taught, implicitly or explicitly, that everyone not part of your church community is a potential enemy. You get wired to be mistrustful. And become desensitized to enemy and warrior language…from the pulpit and the Presidency. You learn to think of everything as a battle. And soon…hypothetical enemies become real people. The non-Christians, the ‘liberals’, the trans kid. And enemies get dehumanized. And then discrimination feels warranted, and violence doesn’t look so vile. When we are indoctrinated with fear, hypervigilance corrodes our souls.
I don’t disagree for one minute that life can be, and is, hard at times. And it’s absolutely necessary to acknowledge those times. To seek respite, support, and hope. And sometimes that comes from the church. But perpetually residing in the space that tells us that everything is a battle erodes the resilience that God built in each of us and keeps us tethered to the church, where we keep coming back for more of the same cycle. This is how we become victims.
But American Evangelicals are not victims. They live in the wealthiest nation in the world. They have freedom of religion and freedom of speech. No one is taking away their God or their Bible or their right to believe whatever they want. In fact, American Evangelicals are so NOT victims that they have been empowered to erode the freedoms and liberty of non-Christians. They are not victims. They are the privileged class. But when all you hear is that you are a victim, then you start believing it, and worse, behaving like it.
The key to breaking the cycle that leads to hypervigilance and victim mentality is spending more time thinking and looking outward. Look for the pastors who preach about our duty to the poor, the widow, the marginalized, and the children. Look to be challenged to give instead of receive. Look for words of gratitude and harmony, not enemies and battlefields. Look for bigger tents. And let go of certainty. Accept that a lot of things can be right at the same time and that not everyone is out to get us. Actually, there is so much peace and hope and love and community outside of the walls of the Evangelical church…all are welcome out here.
Suggested Reading:
The Separation of Church and Hate, by John Fugelsang
Jesus and John Wayne, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It, by Peter Enns
Disclaimer: My viewpoints are not necessarily reflective of my employer, or any local, regional or national organization that I belong to. As a matter of fact, I pretty much just speak for myself. Please keep that in mind.
