The world, we are told, is in “polycrisis” – a mutually compounding collapse of socio-economic, environmental and geopolitical security on multiple, interlinked fronts. We have overwhelmingly many reasons, you would think, to lament.
But we won’t get anywhere with that sort of attitude, we are also told.
According to social critic Barbara Ehrenreich, the US is locked under the grip of a diversely-expressed “positive thinking ideology” that, at minimum, imposes positivity as a moral obligation and, in the extreme, ascribes it magical powers. She traces the emergence of this ideology to the 19th century New Thought movement, whose eclectic ideas about mental states manifesting in the material world helped to birth the self-help industry. Early self-help writers extended New Thought’s predominant focus on bodily health to matters of material prosperity and social status, inviting readers to “Think and Grow Rich,” per the title of Napoleon Hill’s 1937 classic of the genre. President Trump’s childhood pastor and life-long mentor, Norman Vincent Peale, propelled the idea towards ubiquity with his 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking, which taught methods for receiving power from God through visualisation and the repetition of Bible verses. Twenty-first century belief in a supernatural “law of attraction” that rewards positive thought is most archetypically represented by Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006), (in)famously favoured by Oprah Winfrey. Following a trend within the genre, Byrne appeals to quantum physics in an effort to boost the scientific legitimacy of her proposals.
But not all expressions of positive thinking ideology take such ritualised mystical forms as “visualisation and declaration” practices, or presume religious, spiritual and/or pseudo-scientific mechanisms for success. Proposals for the efficacy of positive thought have also been offered on the basis of psychological and sociological factors. Positive psychology has become a flourishing research field, providing a more academically respectable case for positive thinking, and thereby helping to secure its ideological diffusion. As Ehrenreich notes, its claims are not uncontested and are often overegged (Smile or Die, chapter 6), but its reach is widened and strengthened by press coverage that itself is biased towards amplifying positive findings, and by its serviceability to corporate interests.[1] Workers who have internalised the belief that upbeat resilience is the key to their personal success can be made to work harder and to endure cost-cutting erosions of working conditions and rights without complaint. As such, the motivational industry readily finds a large and wealthy business market for its books, conferences and training courses. Positive thinking also serves the interests of corporations and wealthy elites via neoliberal politics: it is much easier to secure consent for austerity policies from voters who are willing to blame their own and others’ lack on a lapse in resilience or a failure to “think and grow rich.”
The UK might seem – on its sardonic, self-deprecatory surface – to have spurned this particular US export. But the caricatured “stiff upper lip” that commits Brits to “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life” can be similarly harnessed towards victim-blaming narratives that deflect attention from structural injustice and help to normalise austerity and worker exploitation. Moreover, one sphere in which US-style positive thinking has taken overt hold is (I suggest) UK Christian culture. In neocharismatic circles like my own, internationally-influential groups like Bethel Church encourage habits of self-policed thought, selective information intake, and declarative prayer that bear strong resemblance to quantum mystical techniques for manifestation. But even within the wider mainstream where such teachings remain controversial we have bought in to the idea that good vibes get good results (as measured in audience numbers and customer satisfaction). We can see this in the way that Christianity is “marketed” to outsiders – promo videos that intersperse stunning aerial cinematography with soundbites from beautiful successful people whose happiness was made complete by an Alpha course. We see it in our filtered fragmentation of Scripture (Lamentations 3:22-23 fridge magnet, anyone?) and the worship songs that get popularised (if there’s always and only “Joy In the House of the Lord” where are our grieving and hurting household members to go?) We also see it in the way that “bad news” stories, including abuse revelations, are covered up – leading to perversions of justice, further traumatisation of victims, and continued safeguarding failures. As one CofE priest told the Makin investigation into the four-decades-long open secret of John Smyth’s abuses, “I thought it would do the work of God immense damage if this were public.” And we see it, on the flip side, in our uncritical enthusiasm for “good news” stories that are more complex in reality than we choose to investigate.
For example, even in the act of retracting the much-celebrated Quiet Revival report due to the recent discovery of flawed data, Bible Society has been keen to preserve the optimistic message at its heart. But the question marks over that research have, since its publication, been qualitative as well as quantitative. Granting a perceived atmosphere of increased openness to the Bible and to Christianity, particularly among young men, there is a pressing need for cautious discernment regarding the source, form and implications of this openness. Because not only does the apparent increase coincide with the emergence of a Christianised far right, attracting much the same demographic; it has also been associated with at least some of the same prominent influencers. Jordan Peterson, for example, is mentioned in the original report as a “key public figure” whose open engagement with Christianity has encouraged interest among his many followers. He has also been described as part of the pipeline to the far-right, and played an instrumental role in growing the support base of islamophobic former-EDL leader (and recent Christian convert) Tommy Robinson.
None of this is at all to say that churches should withhold welcome from those whose curiosity for Christianity has been kindled by the likes of Tommy Robinson and Jordan Peterson. But the twin tasks of encouraging them to disentangle faith and Scripture from ideological baggage, and standing in solidarity with those victimised by that baggage, are going to take stronger stuff than positive thinking. They’re going to take the type of courageous realism that is only possible from a place of deep, God-trusting hope. Because the so-named polycrisis that the far right is leveraging to mobilise support is real, even while their scapegoating deflections of blame are absurd. And for the church to feign cheerful ignorance or pious innocence or naive optimism is to treat the “wounds” that we helped to inflict carelessly; to say ““peace, peace,” when there is no peace,” like the false prophets of Jeremiah’s day. People (those being radicalised, those being victimised, those experiencing loss from a diversity of more or less entitled starting points) need a place to go with our grief that is neither hatred, nor despair … nor either the immobilising self-deception of obligatory positivity that the Christian mainstream all too often seems to mean by “hope.” As Walter Brueggemann recognised, true hope begins in lament: the courage and honesty to grieve like Jeremiah did, discerning the heart of God, breaking the numbness of denial, offering and inviting solidarity, and making way for new beginnings – even ones we don’t yet have the imaginations to “visualise” and “declare.” For the sake of ourselves, our neighbours, and the living world we share as home, it’s time we turned away from the bright side.
Carolyn Whitnall is a PhD student with the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence. You can find out more about her work here: https://www.carolynwhitnall.co.uk/
[1] This is not to deny the potential for positive psychology, in both its clinical and popular forms, to have real psychotherapeutic benefits for some individuals when appropriately matched with needs and circumstances.
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