Sick of Politics ... Literally
Politics is making us sick.
That’s what Professor Kevin Smith says in his latest article for the scientific journal Plos One. He concludes: “Politics is a pervasive and largely unavoidable source of chronic stress that exacted significant health costs for large numbers of American adults between 2017 and 2020. The 2020 election did little to alleviate those effects and quite likely exacerbated them.”
If you’re like me, you probably read that conclusion and think, “Did we need a study to tell us this?” Writing for the NYT on Smith’s study, Michelle Goldberg points out two stats that show the utility of this study. One is that 40 percent of Americans report that politics is a significant source of stress in their lives. The other is that 5 percent have considered suicide due to political outcomes.
It’s worth saying again — politics is making us sick. Smith’s study fuels Goldberg’s comments that politics is taking a toll on American mental health. Goldberg notes that she has “long thought that widespread psychological distress — wildly intensified by the pandemic — contributes to the derangement of American politics. But maybe the causality works the other way, too, and the spectacle of American politics is taking a toll on the psyche of the citizenry.”
In other words, it’s not mentally unhealthy people that are producing deranged politics. Instead our deranged politics is bad for our mental health. And this is not just a right or left issue. It’s not just a QAnon or Antifa issue. Partisanship, tribalism, and an over-emphasis on the importance of even minor problems inflate the importance of politics to the average American and wreak havoc in people’s lives.
Writing for the Washington Post back in November of 2016, Michael Wear and Carolyn Davis wrote about our political sickness and what we can do about it. Their big solution is one that we would all do well to consider: We need boundaries. As Wear has said in numerous outlets, we need boundaries because politics was never meant to fill the role it currently plays in our lives.
Politics is, or should be, about how we work together as citizens to form a more equitable society for all. The American form of politics has long fallen short of this goal. But even acknowledging that shortcoming, it’s not hard to look back in history and see times when politics did not cause the harm it deals out today. When families were not strained because fathers and sons had differing political ideas. Or when friendships were not ruined over whether someone wore a mask or not.
We do need better boundaries around what we will allow politics to control, but beyond that, Americans would do well to recultivate a sense of value for our fellow Americans. We need to understand that people of sound minds can see the same issues and come to different conclusions, not because they have nefarious intentions but because we are all different. Reasonable people can come to different conclusions. And yes, some will seek to use politics for their gain, but that is not a reason to treat them as other. That will only keep us on this path of deranged politics.
Four More Things
There was an anti-vax rally over the weekend in DC. The Washington Post has good coverage of the event. One thing that stuck out is the number of people WaPo talked to who were first-time protestors. Wherever this anti-vax movement is going, it’s clear more people are joining, and it’s far from over.
David Bumgardner, writing for Baptist News, has a sobering read on a sad new reality: pastors who lost their jobs for speaking out against Trump and/or the Jan 6 insurrection. Not that we needed more proof that politics is playing an outsized role in American life, but we have it here in the examples of pastors being fired or forced to resign because of partisan politics.
Over at Religion in Public, Paul A. Djupe writes about a development he’s tracking in the politics and religion space: The connection between certain prophecy beliefs, Christian Nationalism, and political extremism. He found the highest levels of extremism among those who scored high on both prophecy and Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalists who scored low on the prophecy scale (a small group) were the least supportive of extremism. Djupe notes more research is needed here, but his work lays a good foundation for understanding how certain religious conservatives can get swept up in ways that seem to go against their convictions and values.
In the New York Times, Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner make a sound case that the illiberal left does not excuse the actions of the illiberal right. Their overarching argument is that freedom is worth defending from all who would come for it. Something like cancel culture on the left does not justify a cancel culture on the right. (For more from Rauch and Wehner, check out their webinar with AVC.)
Upcoming Events
An upcoming Faith and Science in an Age of Tribalism webinar put on by Faith Angle Forum looks promising. Speakers include former NIH director Francis Collins, NYT and Atlantic writer Peter Wehner, Biologos president Deborah Haarsma, and Faith Angle Forum director Josh Good.