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George Yancey - Dehumanizing Christians: Cultural Competition in a Multicultural World

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Dehumanizing Christians: Cultural Competition in a Multicultural World
Author:
George Yancey
Publisher:
Transaction Publishers
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Books / Politics
Year:
2014
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Right-wing authoritarianism has emerged as a social psychological theory to explain conservative political and religious movements. Such authoritarianism is said to be rooted in the willingness of individuals to support authority figures who seek to restrict civil and human rights. George Yancey investigates the effectiveness of right-wing authoritarianism and the social phenomenon it represents. He analyzes how authoritarians on both the right and the left sides of the sociopolitical spectrum dehumanize their opponents.

Yancey details earlier research on the phenomena of right-wing authoritarianism, asking whether its characteristics are inherently linked to religious and political conservatives. He presents his Christian dehumanization scale, and shows that those high in right-wing authoritarianism differ from those high in Christian dehumanization in one key aspect: they did not support authoritarian measures against conservative Christians.

Yancey argues that authoritarianism is a tool of a larger phenomenon of dehumanization. He notes that dehumanization is sometimes used by conservatives who wish to use authoritarian measures against political radicals. Dehumanization is also used by progressives who would like to use authoritarian measures against conservative Christians. Yancey paints a bold picture with troubling implications about our understanding of society; he also considers the possible public policy dimensions of his work.

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DEHUMANIZING CHRISTIANS

Cultural Competition in a Multicultural World

George Yancey

First published 2014 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2013012618

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yancey, George A., 1962-

Dehumanizing Christians: cultural competition in a multicultural world / George Yancey.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4128-5267-8

1. Authority. 2. Authoritarianism. 3. Christianity--Social aspects. 4. Multiculturalism. I. Title.

HM1251.Y36 2013

241.2--dc23

2013012618

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-5267-8 (hbk)

Contents

We have been warnedwarned about the direction our society is going. We have been warned that the enemies of freedom1 seek to take away our personal rights and set up an authoritarian government. We are warned that the authoritarians are followers easily led and manipulated to support the revoking of our rights. These followers inability to engage in introspection and tendency to employ double standards in their thinking makes them susceptible to hand over power to an enterprising politician who will manipulate a situation to gain governmental power at the expense of our rights. This is the message emerging from those conducting research about right-wing authoritarianism. Much of this message is readily seen in the work of Robert Altemeyer, but it is a message one may receive from other researchers and social thinkers (Blass 1992; Luck and Gruner 1970; Rubinstein 1997; Thomsen, Green, and Sidanius 2008).

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) has emerged as a popular social psychological theory to explain conservative political and religious movements (Altemeyer 1996; Duckitt and Fisher 2003; Hunsberger 1996) and the behavior of the individuals involved (Altemeyer 1988; Cohrs et al. 2005; Hunsberger, Owusu, and Duck 2009; Leak and Randall 1995; Van Hiel and Mervielde 2002). It is a theory arguing that a certain personality traitauthoritarianismis linked to a series of individual and social dysfunctions. Among other things, authoritarianism is argued to be linked to the willingness of individuals to support authority figures who seek to take away our civil and human rights. Individuals with high levels of RWA will arguably help authorities to take away the rights of unpopular minority groups. Proponents of RWA argue that a significant number of other dysfunctional characteristicsinability to critically think, intolerance, self-righteousnessare connected to this basic characteristic.

The popularity of RWA crossed from academic musing to acceptance in popular culture largely due to the book Conservatives without Conscience by John Dean (2006). Dean used this theory in his attempt to explain why conservative extremists were taking over the Republican Party. He argues that these extremists exhibit authoritarianism that produces intolerance, obedience, and governmental interference in our lives. The popularity of Deans work makes it important to fully investigate the arguments embedded within RWA. If RWA is accurate, then we have a powerful way of understanding one of the two major political parties and, according to proponents of RWA, religious conservatives. If it is inaccurate, then we have a lot of people being led astray by some excellent writing.

A funny thing happened on my way to understanding RWA. I conducted a study on cultural progressive activistsindividuals who define themselves as opponents of what many call the Christian Right. As I read their answers to many of my open-ended questions, I saw them characterizing their opponents in much the same way Altemeyer characterized right-wing authoritarians. They saw Christian conservatives as unable to engage in critical thinking, easily led by corrupt leaders, looking to take over society, intolerant of the opinions of others, and essentially as what is wrong in society. The similarity of their view to how Altemeyer described right-wing authoritarians was so striking that there are only two answers to this observation, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. One answer is that Altemeyer is right, and these other individuals are smart, too. They have made the same observations but just have not done the scientific study Altemeyer has done. The second answer is that Altemeyer is part of a general subculture predisposed to see certain people they disagree with as possessing negative traits (irrational, intolerant, etc.), and his work reflects that bias. If this is true, then it is possible that the theory of RWA is built more on subcultural ideals than observed social reality.

This book will investigate the effectiveness of RWA to explain the social phenomenon it claims to explain by constructing an alternate theory and testing it against RWA. In doing so, I hope to see if RWA is the reflection of the biases of a certain subculture or if it is the accurate concept some claim it to be.

A History of RWA

The theoretical foundation of RWA likely began with the work of Fromm (1941), who articulated that individuals turn to authoritarianism to relieve the anxiety experienced as they gained freedom in the emerging modern society. He envisioned authoritarianism as the source behind the rise of Nazism. However, Fromm only theorized about such a concept. Adorno et al. (1950) further developed Fromms ideas with empirical work indicating that acceptance of fascism and ethnocentrism is linked to a set of personality traits that they called the authoritarian personality. Adoreno et al. envisioned this as a personality trait developed during early socialization. Those socialized to uncritically accept the commands of authority figures grew up to continue to accept those authorities when they persecute minority groups. However, the original authoritarian scale was found to be seriously flawed in that it attempted to assess nine elements of personality that were neither sufficiently theoretically related to each another nor well-defined (Altemeyer 1981). Not only did the fascist scale (or F-scale) originally used suffer from low construct validity, but its unidirectional wording allowed it to be subject to agreement bias .2

To address these weaknesses, Altemeyer (1981) revised these measurements and eventually conceptualized what he termed right-wing authoritarianism. He argued that the nine dimensions of the authoritarian personality were not empirically sound. Dimensions such as cynical or superstitious were not useful for exploring the attitudes of authoritarians (1996), and his work reduced the dimensions down to three dimensions: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionality. He also questioned the Freudian basis of the theory.3 Rather than early socialization, he argued for a generalized social learning model as a better way to explain the development of authoritarianism. Not only did the relationship with ones parents help create authoritarian ideas but also experience with others and events that reinforce, or refute, notions of authoritarianism led to the development of right-wing authoritarianism.

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