Deana Naal has written a column in the Columbia (Tenn.) Daily Herald about the angry faith in which she was raised. She writes:
At some point back in my early church years, I realized the anger I saw around me was a defense mechanism. The angry church people I knew had their convictions all lined up in neat black-and-white rows. If they stopped being angry long enough to try to understand the changes going on around them, they might realize that some of the things they had always been against just might be OK after all. And that would mess up all those neat little rows, and the black and white might become a murky gray. And gray is unsettling. Terrifying, even. Gray can make us feel uncomfortable. It can make us hurt. It can force us to ask questions we never dreamed we would ask. And it makes us afraid of the answers we might get.
It’s easier to stay angry. It doesn’t require as much soul-searching on our part, and we don’t have to think as hard.
If we can stay angry with people of other religions, or people who have no religion, we don’t risk realizing they are a lot more like us than we thought.
What kinds of anger do progressive Christians need to let go of?