"I Have a Theory, But You Have an Ideology!"
23rd Annual Prophetic Voices Lecture聽
Jason Blakely
Pepperdine University聽
Date:聽Thursday, October 23, 2025
Time:聽5:30 - 7pm
Location:聽Stokes Hall S195
Americans across the political spectrum do not recognize their own country anymore. Instead, they often experience themselves as strangers or outsiders to their own land. At the same time there is wide recognition that the old certainties and institutions of liberal democracy are growing shaky. Perhaps even a change of regime is afoot. This lecture begins from the premise that much of the disorientation and disarray of our present moment is ideological in nature. Yet Americans fail to realize this fact because they聽have assigned聽ideology as something that only afflicts their opponents.
To escape this ideological vertigo, we need not only to understand the ways in which we all have ideologies, but also learn to view the world through the eyes of our political adversaries. This lecture offers a basic conception of ideology and explains how it might be used to help both experts and ordinary citizens begin to reorient in politics.
Jason Blakely聽is a political philosopher and professor of political science at Pepperdine University, California. His books are widely read and include:聽We Built Reality,聽Interpretive Social Science聽(with Mark Bevir), and most recently聽Lost in Ideology.聽His essays have also been featured in leading public venues like聽The Atlantic聽补苍诲听Harper鈥檚 Magazine.
Anderson, Robert M., and Tiffany K. Loo. 鈥淗ealing the Ideological-Political Divisions in America.鈥� Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 36, no. 1 (2024): 127鈥�45.
Buchanan, Allen E. Political Tribalism: How it Hijacks our Minds and Diminishes our Humanity. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2025.
Chatfield, Sara. 鈥淚deas of Power: The Politics of American Party Ideology Development.鈥� New Political Science 46, no. 4 (2024): 444鈥�46.
Johnston, Christopher D., and Gabriel J. Madson. 鈥淣egativity Bias, Personality and Political Ideology.鈥� Nature Human Behaviour 6, no. 5 (2022): 666鈥�76. 听听
Kleinfeld, Rachel. 鈥淧olarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says.鈥� Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 5, 2023. 听听聽
Lewis, Hyrum S., and Verlan Lewis. The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Joel Achenbach wrote an article for The Washington Post titled 鈥�,鈥� which discusses the rise of political polarization and tribalism in American politics. He mentions how a variety of data reveals that America is more politically polarized than ever, which he argues is largely caused by a rise in tribalism and inflammatory rhetoric. He describes this phenomenon as 鈥渁ffective polarization,鈥� which is polarization based on one's feelings toward another, not based on extremely divergent policy preferences. Achenbach posits that technology and media fragmentation are major contributors to affective polarization because they allow people to 鈥渟ort鈥� their information, leading to selection bias. Additionally, American politics is viewed as a winner-take-all game, which reinforces the 鈥渦s versus them鈥� mentality that fuels polarization. Politicians know that by using in-group-out-group rhetoric, they will tap into a well of resentment and mobilize voters. However, this rhetoric fuels tribalism as people increasingly view the other political party as radically different and inferior, coming from a place of emotion rather than fundamental policy differences. He states that research shows that affective polarization is intensifying across the political spectrum, with more than half of republicans and democrats reporting that they view the other party as a threat. The same survey found that nearly half of republicans and democrats would describe the other political party as evil, and thirty percent of respondents agreed with the statements that members of the other party 鈥渓ack the traits to be considered fully human鈥攖hey behave like animals.鈥� Thus, the article reveals that political polarization is an emotion-driven phenomenon, rather than merely a matter of policy disagreements. At his lecture, Jason Blakely will discuss how understanding political ideologies can help reorient people in politics, as well as the importance of viewing the world through the eyes of our political adversaries.聽
On October 23, 2025, the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life welcomed Jason Blakely of Pepperdine University to give the 23rd Annual Prophetic Voices Lecture. His talk, 鈥淚 Have a Theory, But You Have an Ideology!,鈥� explored the current political crisis in American society as a crisis of ideology.聽
Blakely began by discussing the current crisis plaguing American politics. Specifically, he noted the ways in which Americans have become increasingly polarized. In some cases, this has become so extreme that some are unable to view the political other as fully human. He argued that when facing political opponents, many experience a disfigurement of the opposing community. He cited the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk as an example of this, as it highlights the implications of dismissing the humanity of the other on ideological grounds. Blakely asserted that amidst the current crisis, the boundaries of the human have become almost coterminous with one's own ideology, fueling polarization.聽
As a way of explaining this phenomenon, Blakely posed that ideology engages our core ways of meaning-making. Many people's most foundational beliefs are at stake when they discuss ideology, and the deeper one goes into an ideology, the more these core beliefs come to the surface. Blakely related this to Clifford Geertz's concept of ideologies as 鈥渕aps.鈥� According to Geertz, ideologies give people a way to guide themselves through life and serve as world-making tools. However, these maps can be problematic when they restructure concepts of social and political life to such an extent as to make them incompatible with someone else's map entirely. Guided by maps as our meaning-making tools, Blakely argues that we come to share less and less of the world with the ideological other, pushing us into circles where echo chambers confirm our ideologies. This becomes particularly dangerous when people鈥檚 ideologies become their ultimate source of meaning and identity, which slips easily into willingness to engage in violence against the ideological other. Blakely remarked that the key to solving this intense polarization is to get a critical distance from these maps. This can be done through engaging with rival sources of meaning, which can be found in art, ethical sources, and religion. He notes that the world's religions, in particular, are older than ideology and could pose a promising alternative to these maps as meaning-making tools.
Toward the end of his lecture, Blakely engaged questions from the audience. One audience member asked a question about why it is more difficult now than in the past to get inside and understand someone else's ideology. Blakely agreed that it has become more difficult to break into ideologies and cited online orbits as fueling this ideological divide. Once a person becomes exposed to a particular online orbit, most of the messages consistently reinforce one particular 鈥榤ap鈥� and set of facts. The internet makes this worldmaking effect stronger, as there is an incentive to keep the other out through denouncing, scapegoating, and trolling them. Within one鈥檚 own orbit, an 鈥榰s-verses-them鈥� mentality is reinforced. Overall, the lecture offered a rich conversation and reframed how one might understand the current political divide in America.