Since the 1980s, Judicial Committee hearings for Supreme Court justices have provided a window into cultural changes in the United States. The postmodern turn in Western culture involved moving from a modernist understanding of truth as objective to understanding truth as local and constructed. In modernity’s period, justice presumed the accused to be innocent until proven guilty. A good judge interpreted the law correctly: there was a belief in the facts of the case and in right readings of the written laws.
Postmodernity removed the notion of right interpretation based on the meaning of the original authors. Words could be bent to new purposes. Laws were freed from the tyranny (!) of the original authors. This created an overreach of the judicial system into the legislative system of governance, what people now called ‘legislating from the bench.’ What is ‘true’ became what is ‘true for us.’ Meaning would no longer be established by interpreting texts according to their intended meaning; it would now be interpreted according to the significance it had for the present audience. If the legal system was the product of the wrong system, set up to support the wrong groups, it needed to be bent and twisted to give voice and protection to the newly empowered groups.
Times have changed, however. We are in a post-postmodern era, an era I have termed ‘tribalism.’[1] Postmodernity wished to deconstruct the tyranny of controlling interpretations (what Jean Francois Lyotard called ‘an incredulity towards metanarratives’).[2] Compare the overthrow of Apartheid in South Africa, where the deconstruction of one abusive power did not remove all abuse but only allowed another group to step into the role of abusive power. Jesus warned, after all, that a person delivered of one demon may well experience possession again by the same demon along with seven other demons.[3] Postmodernity did not lead to a place at the table for all views; it led quickly to an aggressive preference of particular views over others that were not preferred for their strengths but for the preferences and privileges they afford to particular groups. Senator Teddy Kennedy’s rant against judge Robert Bork, in his unsuccessful bid to be appointed to the Supreme Court, amounted to a postmodern attack: if confirmed, argued Kennedy, Bork’s rulings would not support certain groups.
A particular aspect of tribalism has, by now, emerged from the shadows. At first, the form of tribalism was predictable enough: a preference for those groups that had been marginalized in modernity and highlighted in postmodernity. It then took the form of destroying the authorities of previous eras, whether Christianity (for its once privileged status in the West and opposition to post-religious morality) or figures representing past wrongs in American history. This involved marches for certain groups, such as the so-called ‘LGBT community’ and tearing down statues of past slave owners. An even more recent form of tribalism involves casting the newly privileged groups in the mold of victimhood. The term ‘intersectionality’ has been invented to identify a hierarchy of privilege among victim groups: the group that can claim the greatest number (intersections) of victimization is awarded the highest status. The very latest form of this trajectory accepts the claim of victim status to equate to truth if it serves the right agenda. In other words, lying about victim status is acceptable. Instead of presuming innocence until proving guilty, the presumption is guilt until proving innocent if one is a member of the wrong group (white men in particular). Unabashedly, around the present hearings for judge Brett Kavanaugh to be appointed to the Supreme Court, numerous people have publicly stated that they automatically believe ‘the woman’ over the man in cases of allegations of sexual crimes. The accused has to prove innocence instead of the accuser having to prove guilt.
In tribal justice, the other tribe is always wrong. There is no objectivity that stands above both tribes. Being from the other tribe in Western tribalism involves being a white person with European heritage versus a person of another colour from the developing world; being a woman instead of a man; being something other than heterosexual; being from another faith than Christianity; being an alien (preferably illegal) than a citizen. The biggest loser in the world of tribal victimhood is the white, Christian male. What is more, tribalism always carries a threat of violence. So far, the violence is mostly in the casting of aspersions, the impugning of character, the suggestion of wrongdoing, and so forth in a context where the outside tribal member is guilty by association. The guilt or innocence of the individual is irrelevant; what counts is the assumed corporate guilt of the group.
[1] See: ‘The Seven Demons of Western Tribalism’ (28 May, 2016); online: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2016/05/issues-facing-church-55-seven-demons-of.html; ‘Public Toilets and the New Rationality of Western Tribalism’ (4 May, 2016); online https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-church-18-public-toilets-and-new.html; ‘The New Tribalism of post-Postmodernity and Christian Mission to the West (23 April, 2016); https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2016/04/issues-facing-missions-today-49-new.html; ‘The Changing, Cardinal Virtues of Western Society’ (8 August, 2017); online: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-changing-cardinal-virtues-of.html; ‘Abortion, Culture, and the Church: Moving from Questions of Viability to Concerns for Vulnerability’ (5 May, 2017); online: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2017/05/abortion-culture-and-church-moving-from.html; ‘Modes of Enquiry and the Gender, Sexuality, and Marriage Debate: From Teacher to Lecturer to Dialogue Partner to Tribal Warrior’ (12 September, 2017) https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2017/09/modes-of-enquiry-and-gender-sexuality.html; ‘Understanding Western Culture and the Church’s Mission, in 1,000 Words’ (4 May, 2018); https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2018/05/understanding-western-culture-and.html; ‘Conscience and Freedom’ (8 April, 2016); online: https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-church-17-conscience-and-freedom.html. See also Rollin G. Grams, The Church and Western Tribalism (available for purchase at https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/p/bookstore.html).
[2] Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Theory and History of Knowledge, Vol. 10; University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. xxiv.
[3] Luke 11:24-26 "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' 25 And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. 26 Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first."
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