Operation Reconquista and the Unconscious of Inclusion

“Operation Reconquista” (aka. Operation Reformation [OR]) refers to a group of young Gen Zers intent on saving mainline Christianity (think Presbyterians, Methodists, the United Church of Christ, Episcopalians) by making the mainline church great again; that is, by returning mainline Christianity to “theological orthodoxy.” It was founded in 2023 by the YouTuber Richard Ackerman, better known to his followers as Redeemed Zoomer.

More interesting to me than OR—or the manifestly ridiculous notion that institutional mainline Christianity is controlled by a progressive deep-church (you’re a tool, Mark Tooley)—is the unstated question (because the answer is so obvious?) behind the OR movement: Why are people leaving, and in droves, progressive mainline churches?

The obvious answer is that the leadership of mainline churches is progressive, while the butts in the pews are not; at least, they are not as progressive as their leadership. But is that answer so obvious?

Of course, that’s a classic progressive move: to ask a question rather than to provide an answer to a question. As important as questions are, I am rather certain that people are looking for answers. So there I go, agreeing with OR!

But here is the problem: I have learned the hard way that people are not just looking for answers; they are looking for their answers (i.e., what they already think or believe) to theological questions. Their answers are always orthodox ones.

Several years ago, I served a conservative congregation (down from 400+ people to around 20 active worshippers)—and one of the choir members decided not to like any of my sermons. She would always say (usually to others or anonymously—but things always have a way of revealing themselves in a small church), “He doesn’t preach the word of God.”

I’d hear this and roll my eyes (internally, of course—actually, I can’t be sure about that). My answers to pressing theological questions were simply not the ones she imagined to be orthodox (although, by almost any measure, they were). She was not a thinking person.

The spirit of unthinkingness, if you will, is not just a conservative one. I can think of several sermons I have given in genuinely progressive churches that were just too fucking clear. How dare I give an answer to any (orthodox theological) question?!

Too many progressives enjoy “poetic sermons” (and too many progressive pastors are too good at giving them)—sermons that can mean whatever the hearer wants them to mean. The poetic sermonic style may be good for job security (and maybe even for church growth!), but it’s not good for much else. Even so, it is another piece of evidence that points to what the two Christianities share.

The so-called orthodox and the supposed progressive want to hear what they already think. Both Christians idolize authority; both Christians are their own authorities.

The difference between the two Christianities is this: liberal culture = true church for progressives, while the church = true culture for conservatives.

On the one hand, if the church is not mirroring liberal culture, progressives can find their image in the Democratic Party, the book club, etc. On the same hand, if society is not mirroring the church, conservatives can take refuge in “the boat of salvation.” From there, they can try to remake the world (by the force of norms and laws) in their image (think Associate “Justice” Samuel Alito).

Unexpectedly, the reason progressives are leaving the church may be the same reason conservatives are joining it: self-obsession. Either way, the church—and the rest of creation—suffers for it.

The church suffers because self-obsession—whether as moral decadence or as fundamentalism—is inconsistent with human being and life in the world. I’ve already written about the latter. So here, the former:

The decadent form of faith is one of disdain for our material reality (how ironic!). It is the poetic sermon (unconsciously) promoted to doctrine: teaching built to mean whatever the listener wants, and therefore to ask nothing of them, ever.

I propose that the biblical and theological work of Brandan Robertson is a specific example of a decadent, progressive form of faith. And to be clear, I appreciate Robertson’s commitment to spiritual discernment. I am, however, less appreciative of his resistance to Christian specificity.

Robertson insists that doctrinal standards of almost any kind are inherently exclusive. Thus, almost any doctrine violates his commitment to inclusivity.

The Christian, he argues, is simply someone who confesses faith in Christ and believes in the value of inclusivity—going so far as to suggest that the Bible is a collection of books telling a single story about inclusivity (See, for example, True Inclusion: Creating Communities of Radical Embrace; The Gospel of Inclusion: A Christian Case for LGBT+ Inclusion in the Church; and, Queer and Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table).

Lee Edelman has clearly and persuasively shown that line-drawing (= definitions, doctrines, or identities) creates a zone of exclusion (see No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive and Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing). The exclusionary force of doctrine or identity is not a matter of how many lines one draws; it is a matter of line drawing itself.

Contrary to Robertson’s claims, his project excludes (one exception: he explicitly excludes the excluders). But is exclusion inherently bad?

Adam Phillips points out that the

primal scene leaves the child with fundamental questions. What am I being excluded from? What next? Either the child tries to get in, with all that that entails, or he has to do something else with the intense feelings stirred up by the parents’ sexual relationship. Meanwhile – and this is development – the child will have to wait, until puberty at least, to find someone for himself, someone sufficiently like and unlike his parents. But what he can include in his life will depend on what he has been able to make of his first and formative exclusions (83).

Human development is intertwined with exclusion. Exclusion makes every life possible.

Exclusion is an unexpected opportunity. “Exclusion may involve the awakening of other opportunities, Phillips writes, “that inclusion would make unthinkable. . . . Once there has been an exclusion, a catastrophic loss, the story can begin.” Exclusion, I further contend, makes a queer (theological) life possible (if not livable).

What does this mean for my reading of Robertson? It means that his gospel of inclusion has an unconscious, and its unconscious is exclusion.

But even if one ignores that, and all that entails, to what does a radically inclusive, minimally circumscriptive faith in Christ refer? Whatever you want it to.

Robertson is right to argue that boundaries, lines, and habits are not the same thing as justice, so when they don’t serve human life, they should be discarded. That’s quite orthodox. Paul clearly teaches that Justice exceeds the law (Romans 3:21-26).

But boundaries, lines, and habits are not inherently bad, anti-queer, or unjust. Another Pauline lesson (Romans 1). And I risk that citation because I argue that the orthodox interpretation of Romans 1 is not the homophobic one.

I also think Martha Nussbaum’s critique of Michael Warner’s book, The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, is equally applicable to Robertson’s books: “Habit dulls perception and hobbles thought, but we need a lot of habit in order to live. Otherwise we would die from the pain of seeing” (“Experiments in Living” in Philosophical Interventions: Reviews 1986-2011 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012]:223-233. Citation is from page 232, emphasis added).

Whatever else they are, habits, lines, and boundaries are very human things. They are the kinds of things that make (queer) life—and (queer) faith—livable.