Let’s talk about being proud. It’s something Americans are exceptionally good at. Sure, pride is the first deadly sin, but what the hell, pride is always a matter to shout about, and proud rhymes with loud, right?
I don’t know where the pride mania came from, but it resonates in opposite corners of the political wrestling ring. Raucous Proud to Be an American rallies feature duded up cattle-ropin’ cowboys, while June, Pride Month, gathered bellowing LGBTQ+ folks in equally colorful costumes, including the cowboy variety. Not that there’s any contradiction there.
Pride is clearly a popular notion enjoying a high level of social approval. Except perhaps among Trappist monks and the Amish, although I’m betting even they worry about it when they learn that they prosecute the purest form of their faith.
First, a definition. Pride as a culturally affirmed phenomenon refers to the conviction that I need not be at all shy about some aspect of myself, that this aspect is to be celebrated, that people who do not realize this are the lesser for it.
When I come upon other members of my “pride,” people like me who are also proud of the alikeness, I high-five them and shout witty epithets, like, “Yeah!!” with at least two exclamation points. I might even hold up a placard proclaiming the pride I feel. Or wear a baseball cap with a similar proclamation. I might appropriate a color or a rainbow of colors to signify my pride.
When theologians talk about pride, the deadly sin, they set it opposite humility, because pride the sin is a declaration that I am special, extra deserving, super endowed, and I’m totally worthy of all that. Humility is seen as a recognition that this declaration is false. I’m not a special recipient of God’s favor; God’s grace is showered freely.
When LGBTQ+ folks or black folks talk about pride, they do not see its opposite as humility; they see its opposite as shame. This turns out to be a significant difference. Pride here is a potent way of saying, “I don’t care if you like what I am or not, I won’t be feeling bad about it.” More positively, I am professing that it’s actually pretty wonderful being who I am.
This self-affirming sort of pride can coexist with pride the sin, but it is also consistent with the virtue of humility. I can be black and proud and yet humbly acknowledge my debt to fighters before me who made my pride possible, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, John Lewis, countless ancestors who endured and rebelled and made the strides that have brought us here.
I can be LGBTQ+ and proud, yet humblhy gaze down to see those on whose shoulders I stand, the Stonewall rebels, Harvey Milk, Megan Rapinoe, Pete Buttigieg, whose courage make pride not only possible but impossible to contain.
Still, pride, the sin, can slither into the picture. Any concept that ends up with “I am better than you” runs the risk of going deadly. From such tendencies evolve evils like white supremacy and heteronormative hegemony. The truths we hold as self-evident involve the idea that we are all created equal, all endowed with rights from which no one can be alienated, all granted access to justice at every moment of our lives.
Those principles drive from my life any sense of shame clouding my self-portrait and leave ample space for humility as I contemplate my equal, not superior, status with all humanity. Of this I can be proud, proud that I and my kind have finally grown to the mature acknowledgement that our common bond is far stronger than any deadly saber or deadly sin can divide. Out of many, we are one.
