When I first began to explore conversion to Christianity, some of the most common frustrations I heard from Christian communities in Oxford centered around the loss of religion in modern society, the rise of secularism, and the inability of Christians to attract others to the faith. Though I was originally unable to understand the root causes of secularism and the erasure of religious belief in modern society, slowly, I began to see that, all along, the answer was staring at us Christians right in the mirror.
A few months after my conversion to Christianity, a healthy dose of self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and judgement from the self-proclaimed religious caused me to feel disillusioned with religion as a whole. And, after being informed that my gender barred me from a particular act of religious service, I began to question if I had made the right decision to convert.
After reaching out to a prior college chaplain for guidance, she put me in touch with another Christian around my age to provide some support. I hoped that the conversation would alleviate any concerns I had about Christianity and work to convince me that I had made the right decision to convert. While the conversation was meant to do one thing, it managed to do the exact opposite.
Instead of convincing me that Christianity was in fact good and that I had made the right decision to convert, my fellow Christian’s words and outlook pushed me further away from the exact place she was supposed to push me toward. During the conversation, she suggested that the reason that I did not understand traditional gender roles in Christianity was because I was black and black women are more likely to be single mothers, an “untraditional” family structure. Further, after explaining to me that Christianity was both right and good, by this logic, if I had a kid that was non-heterosexual, she insinuated that I should treat him differently. In sum, I came out of the conversation feeling like I had lost both my faith and my mind.
Now, while one of the most common grievances within religion is the loss of its influence on society, one of the most common grievances in the larger society is the hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed religious. These two grievances, posed by both the staunchly religious and irreligious, seem entirely unrelated, but are actually fundamentally intertwined—they are two sides of the same coin. However, the truth lies between the two grievances due to a subtle but critical distinction in the understanding of the word hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is simply defined as when an individual’s actions misalign with his beliefs. This simple definition, however, fails to take into account the nuances and complexity of hypocrisy—in particular, that of conscious and unconscious hypocrisy. While conscious hypocrisy requires an acknowledgement of the discrepancy between an individual’s beliefs and actions—through cognitive dissonance, self-justification, or excuses, for instance, unconscious hypocrisy does not. Unconscious hypocrisy, instead, is rooted in a lack of self-examination, wherein one is a hypocrite not because he actively chooses to behave in a way contrary to his beliefs, but because he neglected to look in the first place. Thus, the individual remains unaware of any inherent contradictions.
Despite many who may believe otherwise, “real” hypocrisy, that is, conscious hypocrisy, is not the main issue in Christianity. The discrepancy between beliefs and actions in Christianity instead comes from the inability of Christians to look in the mirror, thus placing themselves in a state of “moral aloofness,” where they do not engage with and reflect on their thoughts and actions because it is simply easier not to. While it was easy for me, especially as someone who had continually felt pushed out of Christianity, to see that my fellow Christian’s behavior, marked by racism and bigotry, did not adhere well to the Christian principles of love, understanding and inclusion, she likely did not. And it might simply be due to the fact that she never looked in the mirror and thought about it.
While the issues posed by Christians’ unconscious hypocrisy appears to stop there, that is far from the case. In addition to the unconscious hypocrisy of Christians serving as an impediment itself to the faith, it also creates a loophole for Christians to not explore their own role in the rise of secularism and the loss of faith in modern society. Now, while I have only been Christian for a few short months, my experiences in the faith have been dominated by Christians scapegoating issues such as materialism and individualism for the loss of religion in modern society. It was only after this experience, rife with racism and bigotry, that I began to think that instead of pointing the finger at something or someone else, Christians needed to start pointing a finger at themselves, as they are guilty of far worse evils than those they blame. And because Christians do not often self-reflect, they do not recognize the role of their own internal issues in the rise of secularism and the loss of faith in modern society. As such, in my opinion, they are content to keep blaming the wider society for their own failures. And thus, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on who you ask, nothing changes.
Now, while this might be a harsh and humbling critique of modern Christianity, I think it also might be one of the most important. If Christians want to work to bring people into the faith, I think we need to take a cold, hard look at ourselves. It is time for us to realise that we are the root cause of our own issues and that our actions are, more often than not, the reason why Christianity gains a bad reputation. If we want Christianity to be a home for all, as we say we do, we might just need to start turning the finger around to ourselves. In doing so, we might just recognize the deeper truth: that we Christians are certainly Christianity’s best friend, but we are also its worst enemy.