More on one of those “Three common arguments” from Climate-Crisis-Denial Land,  the one that objects by saying “Oh,  that’s being political”,  as if that is grounds for an automatic bypass of the argument. It’s a dog-whistle,  with the “preaching to the choir” meaning being that this is a “liberal thing” and a part of the “plot to destroy America by redistributing the wealth”.  Here’s the thing.  This kind of argument is actually participating in a classic theological heresy.

These “you’re ‘being political’ ” kind of dismissals are symptomatic of the “gnostic problem” in Western Christianity. The separation of the physical and the social systems we construct to negotiate a “common good” from the “spiritual” is the classic gnostic problem. That people are immediately seeking to “reclassify” my observations as “political” (and therefore, “dismissible” without further discussion or actual attention to my point) is clear evidence of this problem. Churches have done a horrible job of steering people AWAY from such things. We’ve lost the sense of why this would even be considered heresy by the early church.

(This was a comment I posted this morning here on a Facebook photo posted on The United Methodist Church Facebook page,  which I posted about yesterday. It was prompted by yet another of the “you’re being political” methods of disengagement from the Climate Crisis)