Maybe Not be an Activist?

Perhaps you’ve noticed how often people are described, or describe themselves, as “activists” of one sort or another? They may be introduced, before speaking at a rally or fund-raising event, as an “environmental activist,” a “political activist,” or a “pro-life activist.” Or in their biographical notes a person may describe themselves as an activist, say an “climate activist,” or an “anti-racism activist.”

There’s a faint, or perhaps not so faint, sense of moral rigor and superiority that attaches to the activist designation. We are to admire the activist. Unlike the rest of us who are muddling through life’s multiple calls and commitments, and struggling with the “it’s complicated” nature of things, the activist has committed, declared themselves, taken sides. The activist is someone who is doing something.

What are you if you’re not an activist? A passivist?

Let me suggest an alternative. Rather than being an activist (or a passivist), be a citizen.

In a recent essay on higher education at the Persuasion site on Substack, the writer and former Yale professor, William Dereseiwicz, considered the differences between the citizen and the activist and the role colleges and universities are playing to foster activists.

On campus, writes Dereseiwicz, citizenship as a goal of education, “has given way to mere utility, salaried servility, veiled, at selective schools, beneath the drapery of ‘social justice,’ the language of changing the world, which bids young people be not citizens but activists.

“Yet to imagine oneself as an activist is, in important respects, the reverse of regarding oneself as a citizen. The two entail divergent aims, virtues, attitudes about this country that we share.

“An activist is a soldier in a social or cultural war. A citizen is a member of a political community, a group of individuals who recognize that they have responsibilities to one another.

“Activism divides: us versus them, the good guys and the bad guys. Citizenship unites: we speak of ‘fellow citizens’ or ‘fellow Americans.’ Activists see those who oppose them as enemies to be defeated and, ideally, eliminated, if only through reeducation (though also, more and more, through violence). Citizenship demands toleration, the acknowledgment that even those you hate the most possess an equal share with you in the political collective: an equal right to speak, vote, advocate, educate, organize, assemble, and, if elected, govern. Activists say, go away; citizens say, we’re all in this together, dammit.”

On Sunday, Tim Burgess (former Seattle City Council member and recent deputy mayor) and I concluded our two part series at Seattle’s Bethany Presbyterian Church on “Church and State at the Nation’s 250th Birthday.”

A key element of the our nation’s founding ideas and ideals, and I would argue its genius, is pluralism. It means learning to live, agreeing to live, with law-abiding people, who see the world differently than we do. “Pluralism,” as a heart-pumping, rallying cry falls short. I get it. But that may be the point. It means, as Dereceiwicz writes, “seeing one another as ‘fellow citizens’ and ‘fellow Americans,’ not as ‘enemies to be defeated’ or ‘eliminated.’” Pluralism is a way that a democratic republic protects minorities, including religious minorities, from the tyranny of a majority. As such churches, and Christians, ought to care about democratic pluralism, and resist the siren song of any sort of theocracy or alliance of church and state.

At that series members of the audience asked, “Given the state of things in our country these days, where do you find hope?” I don’t think we can, nor did we, offer glib or platitudinous answers to that question. There are days, I for one, feel pretty discouraged. (See my last post, “Stranger In A (Very) Strange Land.”)

But I did suggest, that amid the dark clouds of the present moment I see glimmers of light and hope. Where? The times in which we live may be — I hope they are — driving us, perhaps shocking us into, paying new and renewed attention to things of which we have been too long forgetful and neglectful. The term “citizen” and the practice of “citizenship” would be one such. I know, compared to “activist,” “citizen” doesn’t sound exciting, sexy or cool. But, again, that’s sort of the point. Turn down the temperature.

The term “citizen” has, to me, a simple, yet profound, dignity. A far greater dignity than the way today’s pre-dominate culture currently invites us to think of ourselves, i.e. as “consumers” or “tax payers,” (that is consumers of government services). “Citizen” means that we are participants in our democratic republic rather than subjects of “the powers that be.” It means we have the right, and obligation, to speak our minds, but with a catch. We are also to listen as others speak theirs.

“Citizenship,” as Dereceiwicz writes, “is a concept in long-term decline (along with republic, for that matter).”

Such long-term decline explains why we find ourselves in our current alarming straits and why we have a wanna-be tyrant like Trump doing whatever strikes his fancy without any recourse to, or consultation with, the people’s elected representatives.

Dereceiwicz’s essay is an argument that higher education, and though not only higher education, should be, among other things, “citizenship education.” That people —at least some people — are, increasingly, arguing for the importance of “citizenship education’ and “moral formation” for citizenship is something I find encouraging and hopeful. Also true.

Construing politics as war, pace Hegseth and Miller and many others, including some on the left, may sound terribly exciting. “To the barricades! Destroy the bastards!” It is an invitation to a most delicious feast, the feast of revenge. But in the end this bloody and intoxicating feast is one at which who and what we end up consuming is ourselves.