The Article below was published in Vol. 136, Issue 7 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on April 2, 2021.
Caroline Warrick-Schkolnik ’22
Staff Writer
The events of the past four years have led to the unprecedented hyperpolarization of religious and political ideology in the United States, but recent large-scale events and uprisings like the January 6 raid on the United States Capitol, Black Lives Matter protests, and anti-maskers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have made this blatantly obvious. On a small scale, these same events are tearing apart families across the country.
Kalegh Warrick used to be very close with her mother. While Warrick admits they have had their political differences, this never stifled their relationship. Though they lived in different states, Warrick never had a problem visiting her for the holidays or a long weekend. That all changed when, in 2019, Warrick’s mother moved to Morningside, USA, a community nestled within the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and the home of The Jim Bakker Show. The community and television show was founded by televangelist Jim Bakker, who was sued in early March 2020 over a fake treatment for COVID-19, according to NPR. As NPR reporter Matthew Schwartz explains, “Bakker gained fame in the 1970s and ’80s as the host of The PTL Club, a Christian television program he hosted with his then-wife, Tammy Faye. He stepped down from PTL after a sex scandal and later spent several years in prison after a jury found that he had defrauded his viewers out of millions of dollars.”
After Warrick’s mother’s move to Morningside, visiting was out of the question. Warrick suddenly found their relationship became increasingly strained. “I respect my mother,” she said, “but I question her decisions even more now.”
The Morningside community’s beliefs in apocalyptic prophecies made Warrick uncomfortable. The Kansas City Star explains that “[t]elevangelist Jim Bakker suggests that if you want to survive the end of days, the best thing you could do is buy one of his cabins in Missouri’s Ozark Mountains.” Additionally, Warrick was uncomfortable with the community’s politically-motivated beliefs, which he related as being that the “Democratic Party is out to get them.” As Newsweek explains, “Bakker has repeatedly claimed that God willed Trump into office in 2016, saying in 2018, “This was a miracle, not by man—God called them to do it.” During the 2016 presidential election, Bakker said that video appearing to show Democrat Hillary Clinton fainting outside the 9/11 memorial was a divine judgment on her soul.
Warrick felt the religious and political beliefs of the community were intertwined sometimes, but not always. “There are probably Democrats and Republicans, but their agenda as far as what they think and feel religiously is similar to [that of] the Republican agenda.”
Warrick’s case is far from unusual. In a time of unusually heightened socio-political turmoil, the polarization of religious and political beliefs is creating rifts in all sorts of relationships. Dr. Susannah Crockford, an anthropologist who has conducted extensive fieldwork around the new-age spirituality movements in Sedona, Arizona, believes that this heightened polarization sharply intensified in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s election. “Trump exacerbated ‘us’ versus them,’” Crockford highlights. “It’s not like you have an issue and you have the Democratic position and the Republican position anymore,” said Crockford regarding the current state of American politics. “You have two sides that seem implacably opposed.” With issues like the coronavirus pandemic, racial discrimination, natural disasters, economic crises, and climate change bombarding the American public on a daily basis, there is plenty of fuel for this opposition.
Why, though, does there seem to be such a connection between religion and politics? Benjamin Zeller, associate professor of religion at Lake Forest College, says this is not always the case. “Some extreme religious beliefs can lead to a desire to separate from politics,” Zeller says, “but these are the minority.” Groups that come directly out of American Christianity, he explains, are more likely to link their religious and political beliefs. “It’s part of American Christian DNA,” Zeller says. There is a longstanding connection with American Christianity and the desire to control societal norms, dating back to the Puritans. Zeller teaches multiple courses about religion and politics at the College, including “Witches, Preachers and Mystics” as well as “Cults, Sects and Communes.”
Ellen McClure ’21 is taking Zeller’s “Cults, Sects and Communes” class this semester and describes herself as politically left-leaning. She offers some perspective on the effect of religious and political polarization on-campus, as well as some insight as to how Zeller’s religion course has informed her perception of fringe religious movements. “There are some people on campus…who I kind of assume are going to be conservative,” McClure said, “and I will not necessarily avoid them, but I will avoid any political topics. However, it’s not going to keep me from being friends with somebody or speaking to them.” When asked about Zeller’s course and its effect on her perception of fringe religious movements, she says, “it’s taught me to look at it with less of a negative judgement. It’s taught me to dig into why they are believing it.” With the world in seemingly constant turmoil, it’s no wonder people are becoming increasingly polarized in their religious and political beliefs.
