The Heresy of Alignment

I have been doing community development work and political advocacy all my adult life. I have advanced degrees in the topics, and have lived and worked in several American cities. But I have settled in Denver, CO, and notice some trends here that amplify an issue I’ve been mulling for a while, the heresy of alignment.

Where I live is an unusual place, socio-politically. Very different types of coalitions and tables exist here. Alliances shift and new circles are drawn. Some councils and such have expectations of permanency or requirements of confidentiality, but these are fewer in number than I’ve encountered in other places. Essentially, I have found it to be a place where if you can show up in any of a variety of ways, it’s noticed and appreciated. Showing up matters, actions speak, and first impressions are regularly adapted.  It’s possible that these characteristics be appropriately claimed for more of the state as well; I suspect this to be true. I just don’t know yet for sure. #ComingSoon.

But one of the as of yet unchallenged realities of political life here can be a dizzying array of authenticity tests and purity warrants. These proscriptions are especially strong in the social media realms. I think one reason coalitions and communities are formed here more easily than in other places is that schism is also a matter of course.

We know that a significant obstacle to quality broad conversation in current American culture is our siloing, our thought-segregation, our echo chambers. A major engine of this inward movement is our desire to find for others who think like us, and who agree with our basic sense of ethics. There’s nothing wrong with this, not really.  But alone, it’s dangerous. Drawn lines -which may or may not ever be put aside- are often present but invisible and unspoken until transgressed. Sometimes, a desire for conformity and alignment supersedes the need to act. 

Even the “search for common ground” can become fuel for growing and nurturing only like minded conversations when common belief dominates common action in whom we ask to the next table, in who is deemed worthy. Our larger works would benefit if we sought out differentiation among stakeholders, if this were an ethic for all collaborative work, if we formed coalitions with a high value on difference instead of an insistence on alignment. What if we sought out varying assets, skills, mindsets in an attempt to build something new from the intersections of where these things meet?

It’s not that finding like-minded allies is a bad thing. In fact, doing this is necessary for any movement or endeavor. We each need peers and colleagues and our organizations and programs need a wider community. But even within a themed or wholly aligned circle, different bodies do different things, have varying specialities and opinions. Clearly, there is no collaboration where all parties can have completely the same function, nor any group of people wherein all members believe precisely the same thing. 

We also seek like-minded groups because they make us more comfortable. And again, nothing wrong with comfort in and of itself -we all need it at times. Yet an underlying tension to comfortableness as a goal is always the reality that growth, development, and change only happen when we are at least slightly uncomfortable, where there is conflict of some kind.

We also seek ‘alignment’ when at some level, we honestly believe we know best, have the best solutions, or the most appropriate resources. When we believe these things, we confuse understanding with agreement. When alignment or agreement are not immediately forthcoming, we reiterate our facts (or process, or model, or rationale) again and again, ensuring even further the inability to hear each other. There is also a fundamentally toxic miasma of paternalism, colonialism, privilege, and hubris enshrouding arguments for alignment. It takes a certain amount of arrogance to assume YOU are the one with whom others must align.

It is also incredibly frustrating to be the one who believes you yourself have failed to communicate well or thoroughly or in just the right way. This is happens easily when agreement from others is your goal. Understanding is deeper, requires acceptance, and doesn’t always lead to consensus. You can truly understand a thing you don’t agree with, and may never align with. On the basis of understanding and acceptance can come respect, and an increased capacity for common work.

Behaving like any heresy, alignment taken too far perverts the concepts of solidarity themselves. If the betrayal of an idea -a heresy- be, as my first spiritual director proposed, simply a good idea taken too far, I would agree and add an important second. Presence of perversion. I know a heresy for truly dangerous when this twisting of a core concept or tenet happens. The search for alignment is pushing all my buttons pressed by other deadly heretics of our age: Joel Osteen and the Heresy of the Prosperity Gospel, Franklin Graham and the Heresy of Male Exceptionalism. We know them, these figures who preach such abominations. I don’t have a primary heretic on whom to hang this obsession with alignment.

Instead of establishing impossible vows of alignment, we must establish undeniable areas of common good, common work, and common appreciation. A friend recently told me a story of playing in a long established orchestra in the only urban area within a large consevative section of the state. These musicians have been playing together for decades, and know each other well. They are also all over the political and religious spectrum -Trump voters, Green party advocates, the apolitical, churchgoers, and atheists all sharing scores, rehearsing and performing. These orchestra players have done the common work of showing up and making something transformative and generative. They are aligned only by purpose and intent and not belief or opinion. They make music. 

We undermine the Heresy of Alignment by leaning into a theology of difference, a celebration of the wild diversity of Creation. We must adopt those unlike us into our ranks, seek out divergent models that overlap ours but aren’t contiguous, find entities and voices far too long left out or dismissed. We must put aside the seduction of being “right” or “better” in any competition and instead focus on what can be built. This does not mean abandoning any principles of justice or discernment. Not everyone will be able to be a part of every collaboration; not every entity can sit down with every other. Sometimes, the divide might be too wide, damage done too deep. Not only is this alright but it is to be honored and heeded.

But like any orchestra, we all have voice, and we can never really tell how our voices will blend with an instrument completely foreign to our usual repertoire. The Heresy of Alignment crowds out the difficult and uncomfortable, and sabotages the deep and sustainable change our world requires.