An intrinsic problem in liberal and progressive-dominated professions such as academia and journalism is systematically overlooking or diminishing conservative pain. I’m not asking for sympathy for myself here, as I’m not a conservative. Each day I watch in horror as much of what has made my life pleasant or possible is destroyed and generation-spanning work to build this country is vandalized in the name of conservatism, while people who call themselves conservatives look on with indifference or glee. But Jesus’ command to mourn with those who mourn and bear one another’s burdens explicitly includes those who despitefully use us. Not only political prudence but also Christ’s gospel requires us to see conservative pain.
(This is of course true of all kinds of pain, but there are particularities of conservative pain that have not been addressed here, while the challenges faced by liberals or progressives have gotten more airtime over the years from my esteemed co-bloggers.)
I was struck by the invisibility of conservative pain while reading a pandemic-era opinion piece from a doctor who made it a point to ask every patient for their preferred pronouns, a practice that helped address the suffering of her trans and gender non-conforming patients. As for her older or traditional patients who might find the question disconcerting, the author wrote that their discomfort was insignificant compared to her non-conforming patients’ pain and something her traditional patients could easily deal with.
But this is a mistake. Pain is pain, and we can’t rank someone else’s pain for its severity. At a time when estimates of conservative-coded ‘deaths of despair’ reach up to 200,000 annually, we have to take everyone’s pain seriously. That does not mean agreeing with conservatives or assenting to all their wishes, but we have to acknowledge the authenticity of their pain and account for it in attempting a fair response.
Charlie Kirk’s murder was an awful tragedy. I don’t have anything to say about Kirk personally, as I never clicked on his videos, although I would have likely disagreed with his politics and his methods. But the brother who mentioned Kirk in priesthood meeting last week was deeply affected by his death, and I can at least mourn with him. It’s better if people share their authentic sorrows at church, just as it’s better if they share the things they are authentically thankful for. We can share in others’ joy, and share the burden of their mourning, even if we find the hagiography for Kirk excessive, or are appalled by Republican politicians’ divisive rhetoric and instrumentalization of his death.
At church, conservative pain can be overlooked because it is the pain of people who do not as a rule complain about the Church, or at most between spouses behind closed doors, never in front of the kids, and certainly not online. Without access to a representative sample of those private conversations, based only on hints gleaned in passing, I think the primary pain of traditional Church members is that they will someday become as unwelcome at church as a Latin mass in a Catholic cathedral, relegated to the status of unwelcome relics of an embarrassing past in a modern Church that has left them behind.
That may strike you as a ridiculous fantasy, but watch closely how online discussion can instinctively treat traditional beliefs – Joseph Smith was a prophet, the Book of Mormon is based on real history, the Church is true, God hears and answers prayers – as simple-minded and unworthy of serious consideration. The conservative fear is that after loyally supporting the Church and its truth claims for decades, filling the pews and sending children on missions and accepting time-consuming callings, they will be thrown under the bus as hindrances to progress.
Now it is true that the pain of church members with doubts or who differ from traditionalists on some points of belief is also very real and should not be overlooked, and no one’s pain outranks anyone else’s. But over the last half-century, nearly every change has moved the Church in a leftward direction, from greater acceptance of women’s careers and inborn sexual orientation to increased representation of women on ward councils and today’s goal of inclusive language in our new hymnbook. You might not be able to tell from the muted response, but it is significantly easier to be a liberal or progressive or nontraditional member of the Church today than ever before.
Those changes haven’t made the Church perfectly welcoming to nontraditional believers of various kinds, but we should not ignore how traditional believers have been asked to adapt and to do some things they may find uncomfortable. You don’t need to thank them for their sacrifice, but you should thank Jesus, the head of the Church, for his sacrifice, and mourn with them and help bear their burdens, as he has asked you to do.
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