Pentecost – Beyond Tribalism

By Father Casey

In 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Johnson. The next year, Congress approved the equally landmark Voting Rights Act, which President Johnson signed into law. Both were watershed moments in American history, when a great movement for justice resulted in major, positive change in the daily reality of our nation.

Then, as now, in order to become law, both of the bills needed filibuster proof support, which meant that passage of both bills required significant bipartisan support. In our bitterly divided current time, it seems that every single vote in Congress falls neatly along party lines (I am struggling to remember a significant piece of legislation in the last many years that wasn’t almost perfectly divided between the parties.) But amazingly, when it came to those two enormous votes in the 1960s, the vote did not fall neatly along party lines. In fact, you may be interested to know that a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats in Congress voted in favor of these society-transforming pieces of legislation. As divided as we were in the 1960s, and as contentious as these bills were, when it came to voting for what was right – to making more real the nation’s founding principles of “liberty and justice for all” – we were able to climb out of the tribal trenches and get it done.

Tribalism is slowly killing us. Our tribal allegiances – most perfectly expressed in our political party – have come to define how we see the world on nearly every issue. We spend less time thinking about complex issues in light of our core principles, than we do cheerleading for whatever the tribe says is right – because it’s right if our tribe says it’s right, and it’s wrong if our tribe says it’s wrong. And woe to the person who leaves the tribe, or speaks a critical word against it, for they are not just countering voices; they are traitors who need to be destroyed. And it doesn’t take long to look around and see what we’re getting as a result of all this tribalism: a dysfunctional government that it is hard to imagine passing bills as transformational as the Voting or Civil Rights Acts.

I don’t know how to solve the crisis of tribalism in our society, but I know that God desires it. At the outset of the Church, just a few weeks after Jesus had been raised from the dead and mere days after he had left their presence to ascend into heaven, the disciples were gathered together, wondering what to do. Should they return to their fishing boats and tax booths? Should they go back to old lives and ways? Should they circle the wagons, turn inward, and preserve the tribe? They could have enjoyed one another’s fellowship and remained content with the affirmation of their little group. If so, Christianity would likely have stayed a small cultural and ethnic group in Palestine, sort of like the Samaritans today.

But God had other plans. A fiery wind blew through their midst, and suddenly everyone was speaking in different languages from faraway places and unfamiliar cultures. Chaos and disruption was everywhere, because God was making a crucial, world-changing point. Tribalism is not the way of Jesus. The Church would not be “for” anyone if it wasn’t “for” all people everywhere. Boundaries that divided were illusory, because the Spirit would move right through them to bear the goodness and mercy of the Kingdom to every corner and every life.

With hindsight, we can see what the Spirit was up to and where it would lead them, but I imagine there were some hard conversations in the days after Pentecost, because they were being asked to change. They would have to shake off the shackles of tribalism. They would have to look at people they’d long viewed with suspicion and believe them worthy of friendship and love. They would have to look beyond the tribal boundaries to the much bigger and better reality God desired.

Importantly, the work of de-tribalizing doesn’t mean forsaking our principles. When the early Church moved outward, beyond the old boundaries of culture and language, they didn’t just go along to get along with everyone everywhere. They were witnesses for Jesus, and wherever they went they remained true to his way, truth, and life. But the core principles that emanated from their faith were not a wall to hide behind that prevented from engaging with others who did not share those same principles. Which is to say, we can leave behind our tribes without forsaking who we are and what we hold dearest.

And the reason we can do this hard, vital work is because the Spirit is still with us, which means that we have the wind of God at our backs whenever we seek to move beyond tribalism. We really can get past the political battle lines. We really can listen to each other carefully and respectfully. We really can acknowledge the faults in our tribes, and the virtues in others. We really can determine what is right based on more than what the leaders of our tribe tell us. We really can be the sorts of people who are capable of coming together to do what is right.