The patterns of the zealot mentality - Sienna Mae Heath

What Certain Social Justice Warriors and Crazed Christians Have in Common

The zealots of my small Christian town would bend their knee to look me in the eye and ask: “Are you a believer?”

I was a non-Christian daughter of an Iranian immigrant surrounded by generational businesses, modest pizza places, and many, many churches in rural Pennsylvania. And every time the school or the state would ask me to identify myself, I would check the ethnic category ‘Other’. 

My answer to the zealots was also mysterious, in the form of awkward silence or perhaps a mysterious smile.

Fast forward from the 90s to 2021, it seems a similar demographic has seen the light. Some children of these zealots have grown out of organised religion and found something else—Social Justice.

Now, they bend the knee and join a different mob and still ask the same question in essence: 

 “Do you believe in science?”,

“Do you believe in white privilege?”,

“Are you a believer?” 

Being an independent in a polarised world and of mixed ethnicity, I’m often torn. I like to think I’m a relatively quiet rebel. But I’m not a fool. I can see something the mob can’t: Ideologies like binary politics, activist science, and critical race theory lump Americans today into believers and non-believers- saints and sinners. 

A starry-eyed profession of love for Biden or one’s favourite Instagram influencer might as well be professing undying love for our Lord and Savior. It’s churchy. May I, daresay, Trumpian. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been called a “true leftist” lingering in the ‘maybes’, and I’ve seen others who are more outspoken be called “traitors” for checking ‘other’ on divisive issues. 

It makes sense that we are divided. There is so much injustice and there are moments where I, too, must take a side. On this journey towards justice, a lesson I’m learning is that just because someone is being persecuted doesn’t mean they need to be worshipped. When Trump led his supporters in chanting, “Fire Fauci, Fire Fauci…” my spine shivered, but it didn’t change my complicated view of Dr Fauci because I ‘believe’ in science. I know that science is fundamental and bigger than any one person.

I keep in mind the words of gender-focused neuroscientist Dr Debra Soh: “Activist science, no matter how well-intentioned, is not science.”

I don’t ‘believe’ this. It is not a matter of faith. I know this to be a fact. Otherwise, activist ‘science’ would not need an adjective to set it apart from science. Activism in itself has a cause, an agenda, a goal. Science is free to explore and scientists need the freedom to remain unafraid of what they might find. 

Researchers like Dr Debra Soh have been demonized by the loudest of the trans activists. It seems anything outside the Social Justice orthodoxy is at risk of being cancelled, even science.

Cries for help come across in the form of conditional love: “You can’t [show the wrong support or stay silent] and tell me you love me.”

I believe this all comes from good hearts with mostly good intentions. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t put forth my authentic intentions— to encourage the loudest voices to listen more and to empower the increasingly less silent majority of questioners to speak up more, and to question with more than blind belief in inconsistent ideologies. 

During this witch hunt, I am not qualified to do what the woke are asking me to do which is to denounce scientists whose findings may not meet their reality of existence. 

So when someone asks me, “do you believe in science?”,  I’m struck by this question as if one part of science is worthy of religious worship. Ironically, the question is sometimes posed by someone who has put their faith in a doctor, who might be in the pockets of politicians as much as, if not more than, in God.

Avoiding truth through blind belief is where the Left loses me, and I’ll tell you why this mentality hurts me so deeply. 

It has little to do with science and more to do with critical race theory. When a starry-eyed white progressive asks, “do you believe in white privilege?”, I’m transported to my childhood when I was figuratively naked to that small town of church-goers, known widely by all as a foreigner’s daughter and a non-Christian. Then, I used to check ‘other’ for racial identification, and if prompted also for religion. Now, when asked about my belief in white privilege, I offer a similar answer: sometimes.

Did my white skin protect me from my peers othering me? Did it protect me from seeing things differently? Did it save me from the depths of loneliness?

No, it did not.

I was torn apart by the rhetoric of President Bush who said after 9/11: “You’re either with us or against us.” Additionally, I feel rather torn in half today as the racial tensions righteously boil over. 

Now, it seems some of those same children from my high school have grown up, swung to the Left, rebelled against their God-fearing parents and put their church language to use in the form of critical race theory, which asserts we are a society of the oppressed and the oppressors. 

As I’m exploring this framework as freely as possible, I found that signs of white supremacy include “objectivity, the right to comfort and worship of the written word”. What does that tell BIPOC*? That they are not capable of being objective or comforting a white person? And what message does that send to Asians and Middle Easterners who are not always included in the BIPOC monolith?

Followers of this theory are insisting we stop treating one race as a monolith while speaking in monolithic tongues. There is a failing logic here, and if you dare question it or explore it in a way that is deemed dangerous, you risk being excommunicated.

Jodi Shaw, who is courageously speaking out about the overwhelming racism through the way critical race theory has been implemented at Smith College, has come to similar conclusions based on evidence and experience. When asked, “do you believe in white privilege?” she noticed, too, it seemed to be “a matter of faith.”

In my life, my skin colour has done little to hide my ethnicity, my spirituality, or really anything that makes me stand out from the crowd because I choose, as my mum did for my family, to be vulnerable. I choose not to hide. So there may be an element of privilege in being able to choose in certain situations, but it doesn’t really change my experience or my reasonable hesitation of the label of white privilege. 

This is why I choose not to succumb to the towering ideological monoliths of our time and the rampant illogical beliefs that do not meet my full experience as a human being, and I still recognise that there might be truth to it on a larger scale and welcome anyone the freedom to explore what that means for their role in pursuing justice and healing.

I believe it is every person’s right to think and believe whatever they choose to. With freedom comes responsibility. When our rights to freedom or the fight for such rights infringe upon another’s rights, that’s when responsibility comes in. That’s when self-reflection is necessary no matter what the colour of your skin or how you worship.

My heart rests heavily for so many who, when asking if I am a believer, seem to really be asking “do you believe in me?”

Of course, I do. I believe in everyone’s right to live fully and freely. The truth is made of all of us. So if we are to live fully as a people, as a nation, we need to seek ways to open up the dialogue, not close it. While there may be limits on questioning, I’d rather be exposed to something that encourages excessive questioning rather than something that insists on excessive believing. 

Therefore, I will answer the two questions with two more questions: Do you believe that all scientists deserve to be heard equally? Do you believe that critical race theory is a theory that people of all races and ethnicities have the right to question freely? 

By Sienna Mae Heath

Instagram: @artists_against_abuse