Pride includes the feeling that “we” can create a “tribe” by “definition”.

Classic American historical cases of pride-filled “belonging to a tribe by definition” revolve around defining what the member is not.  For example, I am not a black man.  I am not a woman.  I am not a homosexual.  These definitions put Negroes, women and homosexuals outside “the tribe” and subject to emotions reserved for “people who do not belong to our tribe”.

Today, such cases would be called “racism”, “sexism” and “homophobia” by other “tribes by definition”.

Ironically, these latter-day “tribes by definition” fear the one “tribe that just wants to be left alone”: southern Baptists.

All branches of Progressivism feel that southern Baptists are “people who do not belong to our tribe”.  But at the same time, it is not enough to say: “I am not a southern Baptist”.  But it almost is.

This brings me back to the old timey pride of “not being one of those unfortunate creatures”.  That old timey pride is gone.  Why were the racist and homophobic patriarchs able to change?  They were able to change because they had dual identities.  They were oppressors.  But they were also Christians.  As Christians, they could repudiate the sins of their old timey pride.  They repented. They asked God for forgiveness.  They were made whole.

At the same time, the newly constituted “tribes by definition” have to insist that these folk never changed.  They must claim that these folk are unrepentant.  These tribes preserve “the sins of old timey pride” in their Museums of Perpetual Grievances.  They are constantly on the lookout for fluke instances that they can display (see Ann Coulter in this regard).

Thus, pride leads to escalation, not repentance.  The Progressives do not suffer the vulnerability of a dual identity.  They are not Christian.

So one wonders, can they repent of the sins of their own group excesses?