American culture: a 'negative world' for Christianity?

My friend Charles pointed me to an NYT profile of Aaron Renn, a businessman from Indiana who gained attention for framing current American culture as being hostile to conservative Christianity, a “negative world” that developed somewhere around 2016.

Renn lives in Carmel, Indiana, a city he describes as proof that “we can have an America where things still work”. Ruth Graham, the author of the profile, compares it to Mayberry or Bedford Falls. The references seem clear enough: this idyllic community hearkens back to 1950s white middle-class America, a golden age in the minds of conservative Christianity. (Less of a golden age for, say, African Americans.) Carmel is an 80% white suburb in the middle of the 70% white Indianapolis metropolitan area. 95% of its residents are US Citizens. Renn describes this environment as “diversity that works”.

Why 2015?

As a child of evangelicalism who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s hearing that the culture was evil, biased against Christians, and an appropriate target for boycotts and hate, it surprised me that Renn’s viral idea was that the “positive world” phase of America lasted until 1994, and the “neutral world” lasted until 2015. What, in this version of history, was the magic event in 2015 that suddenly made America a negative place for Christians? Oh, of course: Obergefell. Because while Mayberry and Bedford Falls may have had a token minority from time to time, they for sure didn’t have any gay folks.

I have some questions.

The unstated assumptions in Renn’s view are begging to be examined. Is it good for Christians to be the dominant culture and dominant in politics? Does that make for a healthy, Jesus-like faith? Why does a Christian position need to be actively opposed to gay marriage? Why can’t Christians simply live with tolerance of their gay neighbors?

I suspect that Renn’s personal beliefs may be more interesting than the profile lets on. He seems very fond of nice public infrastructure and public funding for special education programs - things that are quite unpopular in the current conservative movement.

It’s not clear from this profile where Renn’s theological sympathies lie. Culturally he seems to be wishing for an Eden free not just from gays but also from boorishness, gambling, legalized drugs, and tattoos. Those issues don’t appeal widely enough to gather steam as a movement. But evangelical Christianity is apparently quick to latch on to the trinity of “sex, gender and race” as touchstones of a “secular orthodoxy” that make America a negative place for Christians.

The theologians quoted in the profile come largely from the neo-Reformed movement. Renn apparently got really into Tim Keller for a while, but concluded that Keller’s approach to culture is “insufficient” for the “negative world”. So now he wants to get more aggressive, pursuing societal and political power in a move he likens to the Hebrews conquering Canaan. It should come as no surprise, then, that Josh McPherson is the first pastor quoted in this profile. McPherson, who is hosting a podcast series to help pastors to minister in Renn’s “negative world”, was a primary disciple of Mark Driscoll, the pugilistic, misogynist church planter from Seattle who preached a gospel of (tattooed) hyper-manliness before eventually blowing up his church in scandal and eventually reemerging as a MAGA Pentecostal in Arizona.

It doesn’t add up.

I wish that Graham’s profile had dug further into some of Renn’s inconsistencies. Consider his opinions on his local town:

Carmel is thriving, in Mr. Renn’s view, because its Republican leaders have focused on things like public safety, low taxes, and excellent infrastructure and amenities, while avoiding the distractions of what he called “extreme ideologies,” like D.E.I. hiring practices or banning gasoline-powered lawn equipment.

How in the world do “excellent infrastructure and amenities” and robust public education (from which Renn’s son benefits) align with the current conservative push to get rid of as much government as possible?

And if I’d had any hair left to pull out, I would’ve lost it at this paragraph:

It is a familiar theme: Things may be bad, but liberals started it. The election of Mr. Trump as president is only possible in “negative world”, Mr. Renn said. In “positive world”, an extramarital affair tanked Gary Hart’s presidential campaign. In “neutral world”, Bill Clinton was damaged by his infidelity but survived politically. In “negative world”, with the safeguards of “Christian moral norms” out the window, it was too late for liberals to make any coherent critique of Mr. Trump’s open licentiousness.

On one hand, his point about the relative political damage of marital infidelity has decreased over the decades. But let’s stop and remember for a moment that Gary Hart and Bill Clinton were attacked by conservative Christian Republicans, claiming moral outrage against the infidelity. Why is it suddenly incumbent on the liberals to muster the moral outrage against Donald Trump?

There is no Mayberry to go back to.

Renn sure seems to want to return to his “positive world”, a utopia where you marry a nice church girl, have 2.5 kids and send them to school on their bikes down perfect sidewalks and trails past manicured lawns and picket fences, but where you don’t have to pay taxes to provide those amenities. A community that’s predominantly white, straight, and Christian, with a few token minorities to let you feel diverse and tolerant, and even fewer gays because you’ve run them off so you can feel righteous.

Just one problem: this utopia has never existed. And in the brief slice of 1950s America that Renn idealizes, the white Christian middle-class paradise was built on the backs of the poor, the minorities, and 95% marginal income tax rates for the wealthy.

Where is Jesus?

Notably absent from Renn’s arguments: any hint of concern about being like Jesus. Renn’s ideal apparently isn’t found in the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, or the Good Samaritan; rather it’s in Mayberry.

But a Christianity void of Jesus is no more than a moralistic shell designed to reclaim a bygone cultural hegemony. Indeed, the most Jesus-like perspective in the whole piece comes from a Muslim commentator:

…as a member of a religious minority for whom the United States has never been “positive world”, Muslim commentator Haroon Moghul said he did not see neutral- or negative-world occupancy as catastrophic.

“Just because wider society isn’t embracing me or rejoicing over me doesn’t mean I get to lash out in response,” he said. “The culture may be opposed to you, but that doesn’t mean you’re not legally and politically secure.”

Ironically, the new Christian hegemony forming under Donald Trump, praised by Renn, is working to ensure that those whom their culture opposes are in fact not legally or politically secure. Or even financially or physically secure.

I am wearily reminded of the trendy evangelical question from my youth: what would Jesus do?

Beck: Nationalism and the search for meaning

Richard Beck, on his Substack today, on American nationalism resulting from the need for deep meaning:

…for most of human history, we achieved deep meaning by a connection with an ancestral people. Our tribe, kin, and clan. These relations gave us a history and roots.

But with the rise of the modern nation state, especially with such a rootless nation of immigrants like America, our identities have become increasingly associated less with a tribe than a state, a flag, a country. I am who I am–I matter, I have worth–because I’m an American.

It’s an easy observation that American nationalism is characterized by pride in the country, but Beck’s piece pushed me to think more about how Americans, and especially Christian Americans, could be helped away from the more vitriolic forms of nationalism by finding more meaning in other parts of their self-identity—perhaps specifically in their Christian faith.

Beck, again:

Without deep meaning Americans achieve self-esteem via the status of the nation. You elevate the stature of the nation and you elevate the worth, value, and dignity of its citizens. Make America great and you make its people great. There is a primal pull here, rooted deep in the limbic system. It’s not abstract, but a raw, visceral ground of dignity.

How can I encourage other Christians to find more deep meaning and identity in their faith instead of (or even more than) their country?

A 'Christian' nation without empathy

twitter.com/jonrog1/s…

In case the tweet gets deleted: an embedded tweet from John Rogers (@jonrog1) saying: “People mocking 1/6 cops’ emotions and Simone Biles Olympic decision really brings home that we’re way past partisan divide and dealing with the fact that somehow, over the last half century, our predominantly religious culture raised a hundred million Americans without empathy.”

This tweet has made the viral rounds in just the past 24 hours, and it’s got me thinking, because I resonate strongly with the message. I have seen it very frequently among the Christian circles—particularly the evangelical Christian circles—that I have lived in my entire life. The disdainful comments about people on food stamps. The anger at immigrants that “won’t learn the language”. Snarky, hateful comments about “the gays”. An insistence that poor mothers should get benefits cut off if they keep having children. And on and on and on.

What makes it more jarring is that these same Christians, when provided with a specific in-person opportunity to show empathy, will almost always respond in very compassionate, empathetic ways. They will give money, make meals, house people, literally give you the shirt off their back. But when talking about a generic “them”, or an individual that they don’t know personally, that sense of compassion and empathy quickly disappears.

Why is this so? Why do we have such a failure of compassionate imagination that when we think of the generic other, we assume the worst and by default make a critique?

As I ponder this question, my mind is drawn to the incongruity that has nagged at me a thousand times in a thousand different sermons and ‘gospel presentations’. Why is it that the same people who will insist that salvation is 100% God’s work, that we are wretched, helpless, despicable people, and that every act is determined by God, will also be the loud voices preaching that you better shape up your life, and that if your sin doesn’t bother you enough, you’d better think hard and long about whether you’re “really saved”? (As if that theological framework would allow that you could do anything about that status, anyway.)

Then I connect a dot or two related to the predominant theme of “the gospel” from that vein of evangelical Christianity: penal substitutionary atonement. Specifically, that God’s wrath against sin is burning so hot that if you (yes, you) don’t accept the gift of salvation He offers, He is right and just and praiseworthy to torture you for all eternity. (Sure, there’s a hint more nuance in the systematic theology books, but this is the way you hear it from the pulpit. And Sunday School. And VBS. And AWANA. And on and on.)

A conundrum

So what happens when an evangelical tries to make all of these line up? Maybe evangelicals, when they look at these “other” people, subconsciously find it easier to live with the belief that God will torture those “other” people eternally if they can point to reasons why those “other” people are bad. They will deserve it, after all—that little Gospel presentation tells me so. After all, there has to be something different between me and them, right? Because even though that Gospel presentation tells me it’s 100% God and 0% me, there has to be something better about me, right? Because otherwise why is it great and good and praiseworthy that God arbitrarily chose to reward me, but to eternally torture millions of others?

An alternative idea…

What if, on the other hand, I understand salvation as being a part of God’s redemptive story for all people and creation? An act of restoration that will, in C. S. Lewis’ words from Narnia, make all sad things become untrue? A cosmic work of reconciliation that will restore right relationships between all living things? And that Jesus’ death was not God punishing God to pay for some select few a penalty that God arbitrarily set in place, but rather was a demonstration of God’s love for all creation, proof that the effects of sin in the world will bring death to even the most undeserving, but that God’s redemptive power is stronger even than death itself?

With that view in mind, might I (who up until very recently claimed to be an evangelical Christian) have more empathy and compassion for those struggling with the effects of a broken world? Might I see them — even the general, “other” them — first and foremost as image bearers in need of restoration? Might I see that the good works I can do to help those in need are not some work of “social justice” at odds with “the gospel” but rather the very foreworking of reconciliation and restoration that Jesus will eventually return to complete?

A closing comparison

Ever since dispensationalism took hold, the evangelical church has looked askance at themes of environmental care. Not everyone would say it so bluntly, but the underlying theme is something like this: if it’s all going to burn eventually anyway, why does it matter so much if we take care of it? It doesn’t feel like a stretch to think that for many, the same principle might unconsciously apply to the general “other” person: if they’re going to burn in hell for eternity anyway, why should we care now?

May the church repent and return to compassion, empathy, and care for everyone who God loves — which is to say, for everyone.

Richard Beck: Political detox for evangelicals

Richard Beck has a wonderful post up today, describing American evangelicalism as “addicted to politics”, with a need to detox. He lists “three simple steps” to get free and sober of the addiction.

1. Do not vote in an election for the next ten years, or even ever again.

Basically, go cold turkey. An evangelical who stops voting is like an addict flushing pills down the toilet or emptying bottles down the sink. Break the connection between God and country. 

2. Abstain from or delete social media, cable TV and talk radio.

Stop going to the drug dealers. Avoid the street corners where they are pushing their pills. 

3. Invest in an apolitical local ministry that cares for the hurting or marginalized.

Sobriety requires a new lifestyle. So stop haunting the crack houses. Find a service, organization, or ministry in your town that cares for hurting or marginalized people. Invest all the hours you used to spend on social media into looking some hurting person directly in the face. Keep doing that until you know her or his name. And keep going until the names become your friends. 

Beck notes that these same steps would be appropriate for politically-addicted progressives, too. I dunno if I’d call them “easy”, but it’s helpful to think about the kind of radical steps that would show the problem were being taken seriously.

Recommended Reading: Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

How could the vast majority of white evangelicals support Donald Trump in 2016 and again in 2020? To understand it as Dr. Kristin Kolbes Du Mez tells it, there’s a clear, direct line to trace between the muscular revivalism of Billy Sunday, the virile energy of Billy Graham crusades, the Religious Right’s embrace of the American military in the 1980s, and the eventual election of the 45th president.

In Jesus and John Wayne, Dr. Du Mez (a professor of history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan) details American evangelicalism’s attraction to the rugged manliness epitomized by the actor of classic westerns and the corresponding clearly delineated male and female gender roles. Whether manifest in Phyllis Schlafly’s fight against the ERA, the ascendancy of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, the religious right’s embrace of Iran-Contra conspirator Oliver North, or the later “Biblical manhood” emphasis of John Eldridge and Mark Driscoll, a common emphasis on manly men and submissive women threaded through it all.

Dr. Du Mez traces through politics, theology, and also education. While men like Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips are less well known outside of conservative evangelical circles than, say, Jerry Falwell or Tim LaHaye, Du Mez makes a case for their estimable influence. This embrace of patriarchy then makes its way to popular TV like Duck Dynasty and the Duggar family’s 19 Kids and Counting.

I grew up in evangelicalism. The picture Dr. Du Mez paints of the late 1980s and 1990s is very familiar to me. The details she fills in provided some “aha” moments, too. The devastating penultimate chapter details how so many of these champions of Christian manhood and patriarchal gender roles ended up in personal disgrace. Jimmy Swaggart. Jim Bakker. Ted Haggard. Paige Patterson. Mark Driscoll. C. J. Mahaney. Bill Gothard. Jack Hyles. Jack Schaap. Doug Phillips. Whether it’s fair or not, it seems almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that the message these men taught about manhood and gender was frequently cover for deep, unaddressed sin.

Where evangelicals go from here is an open question. Just this week pastor Andy Stanley said in an interview with The Atlantic that the Trump era of evangelical history will all fade “into a bad dream” within “a year or two”. After reading Jesus and John Wayne, I’m skeptical. The plant that sprouted Trump’s presidency has hundred-year-old roots. It’ll take more than a year or two of faded memories to banish it, if American evangelicals even take up the task. I’m thankful, though, for historians like Dr. Du Mez who at least tell the story.