3.2 Loading the Cultural Weapon (radical evangelicalism)

3.1 You're Seeing Things
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3.2 Loading the Cultural Weapon
6. Neo-evangelicalism was birthed in the context of a religious war. You have likely heard of the Scopes Trial in 1925. A teacher was taken to trial for teaching the theory of evolution. It marked a sort of turning point in American culture. From that point on, evolution would be the culturally dominant theory of human origins.

Evolution was just one part of "modernism" that these new evangelicals were responding to. The late 1800s had seen all sorts of theories come out of Germany about the Bible. They questioned everything from the inspiration of the Bible to the divinity of Jesus.

Neo-evangelicalism was founded in part to fight for the Bible. New seminaries like Fuller Theological Seminary would be founded. Christianity Today would be sent free to almost every pastor in America, including a regular diet pushing back on these modern religious ideas. In 1976, the editor of Christianity Today, Harold Lindsell, would call this "the Battle for the Bible." [1] In 1972, Josh McDowell would write a book similar in its feel: Evidence That Demands a Verdict. [2]

The fight against evolution similarly started to ramp back up in 1961 when Henry Morris published a book called The Genesis Flood. [3] I have some friends who just returned from the Grand Canyon, and they overheard a Christian high school teacher presenting some of the ideas from that book to some high school students. "Scientists think the Canyon developed gradually over millions of years of erosion, but it was really created as part of the Flood less than 5000 years ago."

7. These are all part of the battle lines drawn in the second half of the twentieth century. Lindsell would stir up the "inerrancy debates" of the 1980s and 90s. He was strongly disturbed that Fuller removed the word inerrancy from its statement on the Bible. Over time, a purge would ensue among conservative evangelical schools and institutions, with the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) setting the boundary lines of orthodoxy. Faculty who couldn't sign it found themselves without a job.

A couple observations. While these "fighters" were growing a larger and larger following, they did not hold power in the larger society. Later on, some fought to get "intelligent design" in the public schools but were eventually rebuffed as "religious" rather than "scientific." Similarly, those who ran the biblical studies programs at the most powerful universities and the Society of Biblical Literature largely did not give Lindsell's ideas the time of day.

I would say that, in general, these forces were dismissed by the power centers of culture for fifty years and more. When people feel dismissed and mocked for decades, they don't just look for truth. If they manage to get in power, they often get pay back.

8. The Reagan presidency marked a major shift in the religious culture wars. Reagan was the hero. While Jimmy Carter had been personally religious, Reagan embodied cultural Christianity. He revived the spirit of the 50s, when "In God We Trust" was put on the dollar bill and "One Nation Under God" was added to the pledge of allegiance.

But for our purposes, the most significant outcome was the fusing of evangelicalism with Republicanism. Evangelicals had always leaned Republican. They had overwhelmingly supported President Nixon, for example. Kristen Kobes du Mez has argued that there was always a tendency for evangelicals to like strong men. [4] Reagan embodied the cowboy of evangelical culture.

How did this fusion happen?

It happened in large part through the efforts of fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell. Prior to Reagan, Falwell had spent most of his political energies pushing back against the government's attempt to integrate the South. For example, he weighed in heavily on the IRS' threat to take away Bob Jones' tax exempt status because of its rules against interracial dating and other similar policies.

He framed this opposition to the government as religious freedom. Bob Jones used verses from the book of Ezra to argue that God opposed the integration of the races. Of course Ezra was addressing the mingling of Israelite faith with the religions of the surrounding peoples, not making a manifesto on racial separation.

9. Segregation was not going to be a winning issue. But the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision on abortion in 1973 provided just what the doctor ordered. Southern Baptists like Falwell had not originally been opposed to abortion. Nine days after the decision, the Baptist Press hailed the decision as a win for religious liberty. That year, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, W. A. Criswell, wrote, "I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person." He would radically change his position a decade or so later. 

In 1979, Jerry Falwell started the "Moral Majority," and a movement was born. Abortion became the key issue, but the movement also pushed for having prayer in the schools and having the Ten Commandments prominently displayed in schools and courthouses. Clearly, the overwhelming majority of evangelicals today genuinely believe that abortion is wrong. But the birth of this movement did involve some political calculation. [5]

Over time, this would become the issue that made it impossible for the majority of white evangelicals to vote for a Democrat. It also would become a path toward villainizing the Democratic Party as the party of a new Holocaust. Democrats would understandably be thought of as "baby killers" by millions of evangelicals. 

It is easy to see how over time, the Republican Party could virtually have a blank check to do whatever it might want -- evangelicals would never vote for the other side.

10. Another key player in the late twentieth century was D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale and so spent my teen years in the shadow of his growing influence. Kennedy held to a soft form of what might be called "dominionism." He believed that Christianity should work hard to "reclaim America for Christ." [6]

Note the word "reclaim." There is an assumption here that America was founded as a Christian nation. The Puritans of the 1600s feature large as America's true origins. The Enlightenment influence on the Founding Fathers is largely dismissed as they are portrayed as deep men of faith. A key figure in this interpretation today is David Barton, a popular Christian speaker and writer on the subject.

Much of what is happening currently under the second Trump administration is the enactment of these goals that have been simmering and growing under the surface of American culture within evangelicalism. The famed Project 2025 is a roadmap to see many of these values enacted within American society from the top down. It can be seen as the culmination of fifty years of hoping and planning.

The question for us in this chapter is, how much of these developments was truly biblical, and how much is actually cultural?

11. Evolution, inerrancy, abortion, reclaiming America. The family. Here, the main figure beyond question was James Dobson, whose organization Focus on the Family is still going strong almost fifty years after its founding in 1977. Although he started giving parenting and family advice (e.g., Dare to Discipline, and Love Must Be Tough), he would increasingly wade more and more into the poltical arena, especially on the question of abortion. [7]

Then the Supreme Court would legalize same-sex marriage in 2015. This change in the culture had been percolating in movies and the arts, but it suddenly became the law of the land. Evangelical Christians experienced this as a seismic shift, and the issue would end up ripping several denominations asunder, most recently the United Methodist Church.

The question of transgenderism followed swiftly at hand. Evangelicals felt like the culture was rushing headlong down a cliff like the pigs in the story of the Gerasene demoniac. For those who believed the United States was once a Christian nation, the decline seemed especially precipitous. Now Democrats were not only baby killers but "child mutilators" as well.

The question of gender has awakened another of fundamentalism's earlier streams, namely, the question of what a man and a woman actually are. As early as 1961, Bill Gothard had founded the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, which had presented a strongly patriarchal view of the home. [8] Some of these views have come back with a vengeance in this current climate.

They were always lurking. In 1987, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was founded. The debate over women in ministry and leadership has become especially acute in these last years. Views that were far out of the mainstream about women in the military or the appropriateness of women in leadership have suddenly come under discussion in the public sphere. 

Pete Hegseth, the current "Secretary of War," for example, has said that women should not be in combat, and his ties to the dominionist pastor Doug Wilson are well known. Wilson was recently asked to preach at the Pentagon at Hegseth's personal invitation. The alignment of the second Trump administration with these fundamentalist streams is striking. For many if not most evangelicals, it is a matter of celebration. For many others, it is very alarming.

Clearly, we are living in a time of an immense cultural torrent. These forces are swirling around us and coming at us from every side. Humans are not good at complexity or nuance. We are prone to group thinking and binary thinking, "us-them" thinking. So we will often find ourselves on one side or the other -- sides whose contours are constantly changing, often without us even realizing it.

But what does the Bible really say? What should a citizen of the kingdom think about these things, rather than a cultural Christian swept away by the tidal forces? 

[1] Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible (Zondervan, 1976).

[2] Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith (Campus Crusade for Christ, 1972).

[3] Henry Morris and John Whitcomb, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications (P & R, 1961). In 1970, Morris founded the "Institute for Creation Research," which has been sponsoring debates and literature for over fifty years. I've attended or listened to a few. In more recent times, Ken Ham founded Answers in Genesis, the organization that created the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum in Kentucky. 

[4] Kristen Kobes du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2021).

[5] Francis Schaeffer and Catholic opposition to abortion also played a significant role in turning the tide of religious opinion against abortion. See Schaeffer's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Crossway, 1979). 

[6] In this, he was significantly influenced by Rousas John Rushdoony, who thought that America should be governed by biblical law -- including Old Testament law. Rushdoony was thus the father of "Christian Reconstructionism." 

A parallel movement is the "Seven Mountain Mandate," going back to the 1970s. Christianity should not only dominate religion but the family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment, and business.

[7] Almost ten years later in 1986, Randall Terry would found Operation Rescue, which took an even more aggressive stance toward stopping abortion.

[8] Gothard himself was forced to resign from his own organization in 2016 amid serious allegations of sexual harassment and abuse.

_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover 

2. From Club to Conversion

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
2.4 Joining a Club
2.5 The Mixed Church
2.6 Citizens of the Kingdom

Notes Along the Way Durham 1 -- Spying Out England

continued from last week
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1. In the spring of 1993, I took a trip to Durham, England to spy out the land and interview with St. John's College. I think by then Dunn had more or less sealed the deal. As long as I wasn't a serial killer or someone outside British Christian allowances (which were quite broad frankly), I would be a Residential Tutor there.

This was my first trip outside the United States on my own. I had been to the Philippines with my parents to visit my sister in 1976 or 77, who was a missionary at that time. I had been on a missions trip to Bolivia in 1988 with a singing team from Asbury. But this was me by my lonesome.

My high school humanities teacher, Mr. Stock, had told us in the twelfth grade that some of us would later travel to Europe and remember that class. We would remember flying butresses, the art, the architecture, the history. At that time, I had no imagination that I might ever visit Europe. Now, it's hard to imagine what I was thinking then.

Living in England and Germany for some three years would broaden my perspective. Perhaps I will mention when I talk about Africa my thoughts on how visiting another country doesn't necessarily broaden a person. Two people visit a foreign country. One person sees him or herself more clearly than they had before. The other is more entrenched in their biases than before, inoculated against a broader view of the world. [1]

My mind was blown once again. Over and over again, it seemed, the boxes my view of the world was in exploded. When I would return, so much of American thinking -- particularly those of my own circles -- seemed so small. Just as I was glad I was raised in a more diverse south Florida rather than Indiana, I was glad to live overseas long enough to see so many things about America in perspective.

I took it as a compliment those years in England when I was repeatedly told that I didn't seem like the stereotype they had of Americans -- loud and relatively closeminded, while thinking I knew everything about everything.

2. On that first visit, I met with the Principal of St. Johns -- David Day at that time. I remember him being a little delicate on the faith question, which I found amusing. In my world, faith boundaries were everything -- far more important than scholarship, to be frank. Yet St. John's was an evangelical Anglican college (British style) with an Anglican/Methodist theological college associated with it at that time (Cranmer Hall). The Christian faith boundaries were fairly broad, but they existed.

Cranmer Hall was a unique partnership between the Anglican Church and the British Methodist church. It was an honor 20 years later when Jimmy Dunn included me on an email including several important Methodist influencers like Richard Hays, urging us to use whatever influence we might have to stop the British Methodists from stopping the use of Cranmer Hall to train Methodist ministers. Unfortunately, the Wesley Study Centre there was closed in 2014.

Although I didn't realize it at the time, the partnership between the Anglicans and the Methodists had only begun about five years earlier in 1988. I would get to teach a little at Cranmer my second year in England after Bruce Longenecker left, as I recall.

I also met with Margaret Masson, who had only been Senior Tutor for a year at that time. She would go on to work as Senior Tutor at St. Chad's in 2004 and then become Principal of St. Chad's in 2016. Chad's was the only other college at Durham that had its own theological training school. More on the structure of Durham in a moment.

I found all the staff at John's and Cranmer superb. The word that comes to mind is respect. They modeled a respect for everyone, a posture of listening. 

It was fertile soil for young people to grow in. Other than this boundary of mutual respect, the young plants weren't constrained in how they might grow. I knew both fervently Christian students alongside fervent atheists there. All of them spreading their wings.

3. The difference in what an evangelical college in Durham was and what an evangelical college was in America was striking. In America, Christian colleges were generally bounded sets, characterized especially by their boundaries. At Durham, St. John's was a centered set. The leadership was meant to be Christian. Every opportunity was given for worship. But it was an influence rather than a coercive model.

Neil Evans was the Chaplain, then an Anglican minister (he would later convert to Catholicism). He would become my best friend at Durham. His was the first face I met on my visit. Every morning and evening he held prayer in the small medieval chapel across the Bailey.

Later, when College Wesleyan asked me to facilitate a "Cathedral Service" venue, it was my brief encounter with the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) here that would serve me well. I wish I could say I was disiplined in my attendance. I had not yet had the pets and children that forced me to become a morning person yet. In those days, I would generally roll out for morning tea around 10am.

On Tuesday nights, there was a worship service with the Eucharist every week. I became a regular cantor for the service, singing the appropriate bits of the communion service. Hopefully I'll remember in a later post to talk about the singing and acting I did at John's.

But these Christian elements were meant to attract students to faith and deepen those who already had it. You were not forced to be a Christian to attend, nor were you forced to adopt a Christian ethic -- outside of the baseline of mutual respect and all that it entails.

4. The structure of an old school British university is quite different from that of an American one. In the US, if a university has colleges, they are purely by discipline: "College of Arts and Sciences." In the old days, places like Oxford and Cambridge were made up of somewhat independent colleges each with its own faculty.

At the University of Durham, there are now centralized departments like the Department of Theology. John's and Chad's are the only ones that still have their own faculties but only for ministry. Students in John's get their classes from the university at large now. In fact, the more advanced ministry students even in John's took classes with the Department of Theology.

5. I suppose I'll talk about my travel to and from England later. As I recall, I flew in on this occasion to Manchester, thinking it was closer on the map. I often did this sort of thing -- overconfident that I could figure things out without asking. Then finding out I didn't know what I was doing.

Yes, Manchester was closer on the map. But it wasn't faster by train. To get from Manchester to Durham you stopped at every little place in between. And Manchester was not a particularly attractive place from the train view. I would never fly in there again. Meanwhile, there's a three hour train from Kings Cross to Durham that only makes about five stops.

I was to fly out of Gatwick. Seems rather a rather strange route now. I suppose we must have booked it through a travel agent. I think my dad had given me traveler's checks to cash if necessary.

I spent the night in Islington at a Salvation Army place that the Wesleyan Church often used for missionary transit. I believe the London Honors students from Houghton still stay there when they are in England in the spring, although I don't think it's Salvation Army any more. Angie and I would stay there after we were married too.

On Saturday, I walked London from the Tower to Buckingham Palace. I had some guide to England that I had bought at some bookstore. By chance I happened upon Aldersgate Street on my way past St. Paul's. I felt my heart strangely warmed.

I believe I briefly hit the British Museum. In typical Ken fashion, I was wearing the dress shoes I had brought for my interview. They were ruined by the end of the day.

6. In the morning, Sunday, I was quite convinced I had figured out the Tube. Once again, not asking directions, I made my way to Kings Cross and studied the Underground map. Which line did I take to get to Gatwick? I had not seen it on the map in my guidebook.

Finally, I found an arrow at the bottom of the map with an arrow pointing toward Gatwick. Ah ha, I said to myself, I take the Victoria line to the end.

Nope.

I got to the last stop on the line, disembarked somewhat puzzled, asked the man at the booth how to get to Gatwick. Then he looked at me somewhat puzzled and said, "You need to take an above ground train, the Gatwick Express. It leaves from Victoria station."

That made me a little nervous, but I wasn't too worried yet. I was a strange mixture of overactive looking and leaping without looking. I don't know how these fit together. As my friend Micah once said, "Ken, sometimes you look. Sometimes you leap. But you never do them at the same time."

I took the tube back to Victoria, found the Gatwick Express. But by the time I got to the gate at the airport, they had just closed it. There was my plane, right there. It was still a half hour before departure. But rules were rules. I missed the flight.

7. I called Dad, as I usually did in such circumstances. I can't remember if he had given me an emergency credit card. Seems unlikely. But I was able to use whatever emergency means he gave me to stay at a Bed & Breakfast. Being the sort of person that wanted to try the culture where I was, I had steak and kidney pie that night for the first and last time. 

Yuck.

I might add that those were still the days before things were open on a Sunday in England. It must have been food served at the Bed and Breakfast. I think I was the only one there.

[1] A family friend and her husband did a bus tour through England while I was in Durham. I met them at the chippy near the bus park when their bus stopped at Durham. He had no interest in seeing another castle or cathedral, but he did complain that they didn't have any ketchup for his "fries."

"It's all true," I said to myself. Americans are imbeciles.

When my sister was a missionary, some visited her. As I recall, the expectations of the visitors were unreasonable for Manila. They had no sense that the appropriate move was to eat the normal food and sleep under the normal conditions of the country. Don't bother visiting the mission field otherwise. 

I heard the same complaint from nationals in Sierra Leone when I was there. The missionary doctors, one person said, lived with their higher standard of living separate from the people they worked with and ministered too. I'm sure that wasn't universally true, but I can believe it was true too often.

3. From Culture Wars Back to the Bible

3.1 You're Seeing Things
1. While I was in seminary, I once had a conversation with my mother about some topic or another. I was saying things like, "Wesleyans think the Bible says this, while Baptists think the Bible says that."

At some point, I could tell that the way I was talking about the subject bothered her. She suddenly exclaimed, "We just read the Bible and do what it says!" In other words, our group -- Wesleyans -- just read the Bible and do what it says. Other groups -- like Baptists -- don't. By implication, they read the Bible and either don't believe it or don't keep it.

I always smile when I remember that conversation. My mother was totally unaware of all the assumptions she had absorbed over the years from her childhood to her sixties. She had no idea that she had grown up with Wesleyan glasses that colored the way she read the Bible.

These are some of the greatest insights of my studies of the Bible -- realizing what actually happens when we read the Bible.

For one thing, most Christians probably don't read their Bibles very much. And if they do, they do not read it on a very deep level. They see what they already think in the words.

2. Here's how it works. We often don't realize how much of "us" is in what we see in the world. We start out naively thinking, "What I see is what I get." We don't realize how much cooking our head is doing as we interpret the world.

You might say we all have "dictionaries" in our heads. Someone says something. We use our dictionaries to interpret what they said. I was basically telling my mother that, because we had grown up in the Wesleyan Church, we brought a Wesleyan "dictionary" to the Bible and, voila, the Bible taught Wesleyan truths and ethics.

To be blunt, a lot of Christians see things in the Bible without even reading it. When I taught a survey course on the New Testament, I had students take a position on a biblical issue in their final paper. The amazing thing was that some of those papers didn't cite a single verse in the Bible.

It got to where I had to warn them. Your paper needs to engage the Bible. I would tell them about papers I had received about abortion that didn't quote a single Bible verse. Those papers often had good statistics in them but, as Bible papers, they were hard to grade because they often didn't mention the Bible. They were Christian papers but not Bible papers.

The bottom line is that what people often call "standing up for the Bible" is really standing up for their Christian beliefs. And these beliefs are usually a mixture of Bible with their Christian subculture and their Christian traditions. They have been taught that something is Christian or biblical. 

Maybe it is. Or maybe it isn't exactly. Or maybe it isn't at all.

3. Beyond what we think verses in the Bible mean, there is also the question of which ones we think are "clear" and which ones we think are "unclear." This usually means which ones we find important and which ones we -- intentionally or unintentionally -- ignore or downplay.

I was talking to a high school student recently who goes to a church with some interesting beliefs. For example, they celebrate Passover but not Easter. I asked the young man if they believed in the resurrection of Jesus. He said they did. He thought his pastor might have preached on it sometime in a previous year. 

Now I understand that someone might think that Easter itself is based in something pagan, but the resurrection? The resurrection is the very heart of the Christian faith. Without the resurrection, there is no Christianity, Paul said. I have no problem with someone celebrating Passover -- many Christians do. But it seemed really odd to me not to celebrate Jesus' resurrection every year -- at least at some point even if not when others celebrate Easter.

It's a reminder that our Christian subcultures not only have their own interpretations of individual verses but that we connect those verses to each other in different ways. Knowingly or unknowingly, we prioritize some and subordinate others. 

Take the question of whether women should be ministers. Those opposed take 1 Timothy 2:12 and read all the other verses of the Bible through that lens. "See, it's obvious," they say. Others look at all the women who minister in the New Testament -- Priscilla, Phoebe, Junia -- and look at passages like Acts 2:17 and Galatians 3:28. They see 1 Timothy 2 as the ambiguous passage, with all the other passages -- about Deborah, about Huldah -- as the clearer ones.

So there are disagreements over what individual verses mean, and there are disagreements on how to connect all the different verses to each other. The result is LOTS of different ways people see the overall meaning of the biblical texts. There are thousands upon thousands of Christian groups and individuals who all believe in the Bible -- and believe a lot of different things. 

You can't dismiss all the people who disagree with you as unspiritual or rebellious. This flexibility of the biblical texts themselves is why throughout history Christians have come up with a lot of different beliefs and practices.

4. The final piece that drives all the differences are the differences between biblical times and our times. Most Christians don't apply the verse about not boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk (Exod. 23:19). To be sure, most of us don't have baby goats. But for reasons we probably don't know, we have this "common sense" that these verses addressed a time and situation much different from ours. 

The command possibly engaged a pagan religious practice. Nobody really knows for sure. (People often act confident about things that are uncertain like this one. We just don't have enough evidence to be sure.)

In Judaism, this verse is applied by not eating meat and dairy in the same meal, which is certainly not what the verse was originally about. I was in Old City Jerusalem in the early 2000s and a couple were there who wanted to eat together. He wanted a gyros (lamb meat), and she wanted pizza. But when he came into the pizza restaurant, he was immediately shooed away. You can't have meat in a dairy place.

It's an example of the principle that "doing what they did" isn't always "doing what they did." We could stop eating cheeseburgers, but it wouldn't have the same meaning as the practice 3000 years ago.

All Christian groups pretty much do this. If a verse seems genuinely strange to us, we find ways to explain that we are keeping it without necessarily keeping it. Most Christians don't worry about wearing clothing of mixed thread (Lev. 19:19) or not trimming the edges of their beard (Lev. 19:27). 

It often is not that we are being rebellious or that we don't care. It's that in one way or another, we have an intuitive and often subconscious sense that the verse doesn't fit.

And sometimes we're right. 1 Corinthians talks about women wearing head coverings in worship when they prophesy. But the situation in Corinth 2000 years ago was quite different from today. We generally don't meet in house churches. We don't usually prophesy at random in church. And there isn't as much sexual tension being around people of the opposite sex in a house.

So if we don't wear veils or prayer bonnets, it's not that we are disobeying the Bible. It's that the specific practice in view doesn't play out the same in our contexts. We intuitively and collectively know this, so most churches do not practice head coverings, although some do. Those that do probably aren't really "doing" what this practice originally "did" because the meaning is different in our world.

5. At the same time, many Christians today feel perfectly fine about ignoring teachings that don't fit with their view of the world but that actually are very relevant to today. What does the Bible teach about caring for the poor or the dangers of wealth? What does the Bible teach about loving your enemy or respecting the immigrant? 

While there are culture-specific dimensions to these biblical teachings (there alway are), they stand more on the level of principle rather than specific practice. The practice of not sowing your field with different kinds of seeds (Deut. 22:9) seems very specific to ancient Israel. But the practice of loving your enemy is a core value of Christ. 

Yet some evangelicals today would seem be more concerned to keep the first kind of command while dismissing the second as some form of "toxic empathy." Indeed, it seems like the teachings of Jesus himself are some of the easiest for contemporary evangelicals to dismiss as "liberal" values.

And while this is sometimes done by calling it the influence of "culture" on Christianity, it is actually the influence of a certain kind of Christian subculture on evangelicalism. We are not talking about a minor mixture of hay here. We are talking about values that contradict the teachings of Jesus himself. In other words, they put the very foundation in danger (1 Cor. 3:11). 

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he said it was the love of God and neighbor (Matt. 22:36-40). All the commandments of God are covered by these (Rom. 13:9-10). Clearly, these are the center.

So why is it that so much of evangelicalism feels perfectly fine ignoring them? 

_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover 

2. From Club to Conversion

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
2.4 Joining a Club
2.5 The Mixed Church
2.6 Citizens of the Kingdom

2.6 Citizens of the Kingdom (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
2.4 Joining a Club
2.5 The Mixed Church
_______________________
2.6 Citizens of the Kingdom
26. So, what is this kingdom again that true converts to Christ are becoming part of? What is its nature and what are its values?

It is, more than anything else, the kingdom of God. It is not ultimately a visible church, and it certainly is not a visible state. God is its only king, and its only high priest is Christ. 

It has other priests, but these are all the women and men of the invisible kingdom (1 Pet. 2:5, 9). Yes -- women are priests in the kingdom of God, despite what the current flavor of Christian nationalism in America might think.

It has no earthly king. From time to time, earthly kingdoms have had earthly kings, but these have never been Christ. Indeed, they rarely have had the spirit of Christ, who reigns as a servant, who "emptied himself" of the status and power of the Son of God to walk among us (Phil. 2:6-7). He was born virtually unknown and unseen in a humble place surrounded by animals (Luke 2:7).

If some earthly figure uses Christianity to gain power or weath for themselves, they are an antichrist. Let them be accursed (Gal. 1:8).

27. It thus goes without saying that if we "convert" someone into a church in which God is not truly king or Jesus is not truly Lord, then we have inducted someone into a club and not the Church of Jesus the Christ. We have brought someone into a tribe but not the people of God. We are leading them to worship an idol of some kind.

What does this look like? It is any context where God is not truly all in all.

We reflected earlier on the fact that the earthly church often mixes the hay and straw of earthly culture in with the gold and silver. As long as Jesus is ultimately and truly Lord, this is not fatal. As long as God is the one worshiped, the church can survive some stubble to be singed on the Day of Christ's return.

But when a church becomes a hero cult, it is encroaching on Jesus' territory. Pastors and leaders are meant to be servants, not kings. Certainly the church has no room for an idol of the state or an idol of any kind. God must be all in all.

Protestants are not meant to have saints, and even Catholics generally wait until after someone has died to declare one. No, in the biblical way of thinking, all believers are saints, holy ones (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:2). The word saint never appears in the singular in the Bible. Paul gives us the Christian perspective when he notes that God especially highlights the lesser parts of the body in the body of Christ, which is the church (1 Cor. 12:22-24).

We humans love hype and we love heroes, but the ordinary person is the earthly hero of God's story, and Christ himself is the "head" of the Church.

28. So when the church becomes a circus and a spectacle, with worship becoming more like entertainment, we are beginning to create churches of straw and hay. We are bringing people into more and more of a club rather than the kingdom. There is nothing wrong with emotion. There is nothing wrong with enjoyment. There can be substance in the midst of all-too-humanness.

But the focus must always be Christ. 

It's fun to join a club. It's fun to watch a movie. It's fun to go to a concert. But if Christ is not the feature show, it is not the Church. 

The Corinthians had this problem with the Lord's Supper. It was very enjoyable for some -- they were getting drunk alongside a gluttonous feast. Meanwhile, others in the assembly had no food at all. Paul says it starkly -- that isn't the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:20). 

In the same way, a church is only a church if Christ is the true center of the show. Are we praying to the Lord or are we just talking to ourselves. Are our prayers monologs or even secret sermons? Are they performances? True prayers are spoken to God, empowered by the Spirit.

29. Then there is the sermon. In the next chapter, we will explore truly biblical values in more detail.

If people are attracted to our church because we are reinforcing the political rhetoric they are hearing from secular media, something is wrong. If they are joining us because we are reinforcing the culturally progressive or conservative talking points they like, something is wrong.

As we will reflect in the next chapter, the kingdom frustrates both the right and the left of the political spectrum. The person on the left says, "I like what you said here, but I'm upset at what you said there." And the person on the right standing next to them says, "I feel exactly the same way. I thought you were on my side when you said this. But then you said that!"

The kingdom of God is neither culturally conservative nor progressive. It is rather the measure against which both right and left are ultimately evaluated.

What we don't want is for God to have to call prophets to say to us, "What to me is the multitude of your baptisms? Your fog machine is an abomination to me. I cannot endure your performative worship and superficial assemblies. 

"Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Learn to do good. Seek biblical justice, oppose oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah 1:11-17).

"He has showed you in Scripture what is good and what the Lord requires of you. Do biblical justice. Love mercy and empathy. And walk in humility with your God, your only King" (Micah 6:8).

30. How can we "make evangelicalism great again" in relation to conversion? First, we are not the ones that can make it anything. It is a matter of surrender to God and his empowerment.

But we can get our heads on straight. If our church looks almost exactly the same as some secular group and its values, we should be worried. If becoming part of our form of Christianity has no cost, we may be a church of rocky soil. We may be setting up our "converts" to be scorched during the next heatwave.

If coming to faith in our church requires no difference from what we were before, then we probably are more of a club than a true church. We have simply found group members who have come home to their tribe. They are attracted to us because they already had our values and already thought the way we thought.

But true "conversion" means change. It means passing from death to life. It means dying to ourselves and becoming alive again in Christ. More than anything else, it means being filled with the Spirit so that we can be led by the Spirit and bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. 

We are not our own. We are bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

2.5 The Mixed Church (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
2.4 Joining a Club
_______________________
2.5 The Mixed Church
20. If the baptisms and conversions of the church right now are not inductions into a church club, what are these individuals supposed to be joining?

The answer is of course the people of God. They are joining a kingdom. It is the kingdom of God and his Messiah, Jesus the Christ.

This may seem all too obvious, but it's inevitable that there will always be some hay, straw, and wood mixed in the gold and silver (1 Cor. 3:12-13). While the true church is invisible, it always meets in visible form. The word of God is pure, the word of the preacher will inevitably be mixed.

It is a sacred charge for those who lead the church to do their best to permeate it with the "pure milk of the word" (1 Pet. 2:2) and to reduce the inevitable cultural baggage to a minimum.

21. But it does regularly get mixed with all-too-earthly stuff. Sometimes the mixture is fairly harmless. At other times, it can be mixed with the truly vile. It is important for us to know the difference.

I am always struck by a story from 1899 when white people living around Atlanta went to church and then took excursion trains afterward to participate in the lynching of Sam Hose. They tortured and burned him. They took souvenir body parts. Photographs were taken. Hose had killed a white man, quite possibly in self-defense, but sensationalized reporting turned his death into a public spectacle.

You have to wonder what was preached that Sunday morning.

22. In this current climate, a fair amount of politics is being mixed into in the pulpits across America right now. No doubt positions are being taken on all sides of the political spectrum. Some of these sermons are no doubt truer to Scripture than others. It is important for us to be aware of what we're mixing.

In normal times, pastors have tried to stick more to the principles of Scripture and to let the individual Christian apply them in terms of specifics. For example, a pastor might preach on abortion without explicitly saying, "Now go vote for the Republican." There is definite value in keeping such implications more implicit and allusive than explicit. For one, it allows a church to minister across the political spectrum.

But in these polarized times, preaching has often become more specific on both sides. In response, you hear different reactions. Some say, "Don't get political, preacher" -- often because they don't like the angle the preacher is taking. 

I have mixed feelings about this response. There is surely a point where a pastor should call out explicitly the ungodliness of its leaders. For example, shouldn't the pastors of Nazi, Germany have said something about what was happening there? Those who did were often arrested. So, we can all surely imagine a point where preachers should call out political evil.

Yet, in more normal times, you surely want to minister to both Republicans and Democrats. Isn't it best most of the time to try to point out good and bad values on both sides? Yet, again, there is also the danger of drawing a false equivalency. Aren't there times when one party is more unbalanced than at others? I can hear "both sides" saying "YES!"

23. So how can we do our best to baptize new converts (or young people returning to the faith of their childhood) into the kingdom rather than into a club or tribe of human making? 

First, let's make it clear that it is a heavenly kingdom. Paul tells the Philippians -- some of whom may have been Romans citizens -- that their real citizenship was in heaven (Phil. 3:20). [16] Hebrews 11 also emphasizes that we are seeking a heavenly city and country, not an earthly one (Heb. 11:10, 16). 1 Peter calls believers "aliens" and "exiles" in the earthly country they live in (1 Pet. 1:1; 2:11).

Hebrews 13:14 puts it starkly: "We don't have a city here that will last."

We're thus mixing hay in with the gold when we confuse any earthly country with our heavenly citizenship. No earthly country is pure enough. Even ancient Israel, while intended to be a theocracy run directly by God, failed miserably at the goal. Only for a brief time under Moses and Joshua did it seem to work and even then the people repeatedly failed their God.

24. Part of the dross of American Christian culture is to confuse America with the kingdom of God. It sounds outlandish to say so, but it's true. We have American flags on our pulpits right next to where the word of God is preached. Why would we think that was an appropriate place for the flag of an impure, earthly kingdom? We treat soldiers like saints, and some almost treat fallen soldiers as Christian martyrs. 

But you don't automatically go to heaven because you die for your country. You go to heaven because you put your faith in Jesus Christ. 

The American church is more likely to celebrate July 4 than Advent or Lent. Our church calendars pay special attention to Memorial Day and Veterans Day. They are less likely aware of periods that have been on the Christian calendar for almost two thousand years.

Most of the time, I have personally found these mixtures somewhat innocuous.  Robert Bellah called these dynamics of American Christianity, "civil religion," the elevation of our country to religious status. [17] The key is that the reverence for country not reach the level of the worship of Christ. It's like the veneration of Mary in Catholic circles -- as long as it doesn't cross the line into actual worship, it's iffy but God will probably be merciful.

25. In our current moment, civil religion has blurred into what is often called, "Christian Nationalism." [18] While civil religion might innocently (and unreflectively) think of America as the modern equivalent of ancient Israel, Christian nationalism tries to make it so. Its goal is to force a particular Christian vision on the country and set up a sort of "theocracy" or rule by God as they see it.

I grew up with pastors occasionally quoting 1 Chronicles 7:14 in relation to America. We needed to humble ourselves, repent, and pray for God to heal our land. Like Jeremiah 29:11, no thought was given to the fact that this verse was for ancient Israel rather than contemporary America. Also missing was the realization that America has never technically been a Christian nation, although you could argue that some Judeo-Christian values undergird its Constitution.

There is a lot of mixed faith in here. If the church itself is a mixture of gold and straw, then the attempt to fuse it with a political vision is even less likely to be pure. The mixture of church and state has rarely moved a nation closer to God. It is truly shocking to see what happened when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. [19] You had monks murdering people because they didn't have the right view of whether Jesus had one or two natures.

In England, it led to multiple people -- both Catholic and Protestant -- being burned at the stake. Henry VIII made himself head of the church and burned Catholics who questioned him. Then Bloody Mary burned at the stake Protestants who opposed her. Then Queen Elizabeth similarly put to death those who undermined her. Europe fought for thirty years in the 1600s in what basically laid out as a struggle between Lutherans and Catholics for political control.

Puritan New England is often the model for Christian nationalists, but the Puritans came to America because they had failed to take over England. The English ousted them from power after they dethroned the king and tried to rule for a short time. We like to say they came here looking for religious freedom, but what they came here for was a place where they could impose their vision of a Christian rule on everyone within their purview. In the process, they both murdered and exiled those who disagreed with them.

This background explains why the Founding Fathers forbid that America would have an official religion in the First Amendment. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Christian nationalists would like to remove that from the Constitution.

When worldly authority is confused with heavenly authority, there is always dross. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." [20] This is true no less of the church than a nation. Almost inevitably, the fusion of church and state doesn't turn out to be the true Church at all, just a twisted version of the state pretending to be the Church. An idolatrous kingdom gets substituted for the true one which, again, is ultimately invisible.

[16] Philippi was a Roman colony. If you were a citizen of the city, you were a citizen of Rome. In fact, it was like living in Rome itself, as far as citizenship was concerned. This makes Paul's statement all the more striking.

[17] Robert Bellah, "Civil Religion in America" Daedalus (1967), reprinted in Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World.

[18] For a more detailed analysis, see Miranda Cruz, Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters (IVP Academic, 2024).

[19] See Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years – Violence, Politics, and the Origins of Church Authority (HarperOne, 2011).

[20] A famous quote from a letter by Lord Acton in 1883.
_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

2.4 Joining a Club (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
_______________________
2.4 Joining a Club
12. My first real adventures into sociology came from my study of the New Testament. [13] I became exposed to how differently people thought in Bible times than how I thought growing up in America. I learned that the ancient world was a group-oriented culture, while I had grown up in an "individualist" culture. I learned that, while my culture emphasized being "true to yourself" and thinking independently, the ancient world was an "honor-shame" culture.

Honor-shame cultures prize being true to your group. You wanted to bring honor to your group and avoid bringing your group shame. Meanwhile, I had been taught that ethics were the same for everyone. As an American, I had been taught that there should be "equal justice under the law." I had been taught that every citizen gets to vote and that everyone's vote should count.

Even more, I had grown up thinking that these were biblical, Christian values too. Love your enemy meant that you treat those outside your group with respect. "All truth is God's truth" meant that truth was truth no matter who was saying it or where it came from. If an atheist says something true, it's true, and if a Christian says something that's false, it's false. Truth is truth, no matter where it comes from.

Group cultures value loyalty. But I grew up thinking -- both as a Christian and an American -- that the real truth trumped your group's interests. Right and wrong involved absolutes, and absolutes apply no matter who you are or what group you belong to. But in group cultures, protecting the reputation of your group is more important than the truth. "We protect our own."

13. As I've observed humanity in the course of my life, I've come to believe that Western individualism is really the exception. Most cultures in history -- in fact, most people even in the West -- are group oriented. We are tribal by default. As a philosopher, I have come to think that humanity is a "herd animal" -- at least fallen humanity. Aristotle put it more tactfully -- we are a "political" animal.

I've come to believe that we have to be trained to be individualistic. Now, we don't have to be trained to be selfish -- that's something different. But we have to be trained to think in categories like universal rights or universal values. We have to be trained to think that I get to decide what I think and what I should do. The human default is to think like your group.

The human norm is peer pressure. The human norm is what in 1 Corinthians we might call a "party spirit." "I am of Paul." "I am of Apollos" (1 Cor. 1:12). In short, my group is better than your group. "You can't be a Christian and be a Democrat." "Trump supporters are deplorables, clinging to their guns and religion."

Racism is the human norm -- my race is better than your race. The same with sexism -- men are smarter than women. Paul surely didn't really mean that "in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, not 'male and female'" (Gal. 3:28). The human norm is to put our groups into a hierarchy, not to form judgments on individuals based on their individual merits.

14. Sociology calls this "in group/out group" dynamics. [14] My group is good. Your group is bad -- or at least inferior. When someone in my group does something good, I point that out as exactly what my group is like. If someone in your group does something bad, I point that out as exactly what your group is like.

I used to visit my elderly mother a couple times a year and a particular news outlet was always on. It seemed to me that there was a regular stream of news segments with a person of color or an undocumented immigrant doing something bad. I thought to myself, "If I watched this channel all the time, I probably would end up thinking that all illegal immigrants were evil criminals." Of course, the statistics don't bear that conclusion out. [15]

15. Like every country, America has always had its groups. High-minded thinkers might say things like "all men are created equal," but the ordinary person has more typically lived in groups. When I was a boy, we told Polack jokes and blond jokes. The public school tried to train "group think" out of us. I didn't realize it, but the reason there were black students and teachers at my middle school was because of desegregation. For me, it was just normal.

But the human default -- group identity -- has always lurked there, below the surface.

In America today, group culture is very much on the rise. Indeed, it seems to me that, at its heart, the Trump phenomenon is not really so much a conservative versus liberal phenomenon as it is an individualistic versus group culture conflict. Many conservatives have repeatedly critiqued the Trump administration. The response has been to call them "RINOs" -- "Republicans in Name Only."

In other words, you are being disloyal to the group. Those conservatives are evaluating Trump according to universal truth and conservative principles. His response is, "I am the leader of the group and you're being disloyal." As is the case with group cultures, the truth is what's true for my group, not some universal truth.

16. Let me give an example from a recent post made by the president:

You can see the "us-them" nature of the post, expecting total loyalty from his group. Any lack of conformity by the "in-group" will be met with expulsion from the group. Meanwhile, the out-group is depicted as thoroughly evil.

This is classic group culture. What is true is what the President says is true. The good people are, by definition, those who are part of his group. Disloyalty to the group will not be tolerated.

Mind you, these underlying dynamics to group culture are often clothed in rational argument. Indeed, it can take great feats of intellect to find explanations for claims or behaviors that on the surface seem to obviously point to a different conclusion than the one your group wants to think.

Yet the most loyal to the group will believe such explanations every time. What's important is that there is an explanation, not whether it actually makes sense.

17. You may be wondering what this has to do with the church. The church is not immune to group culture. Indeed, it has fewer guardrails against it than the Western world. The American Constitution is meant to preserve individual rights and values. I believe these actually reflect some of the Judeo-Christian fumes of our founding.

But fallen human nature pushes us to form groups. We are Baptists and Methodists and Lutherans and Catholics. Our group has the right answers -- the right interpretations of the Bible, for example. We make creedal statements and then insist that you must agree to them to be in our group. If you fall out of line, we'll kick you out.

Free thinkers don't do well in these contexts. We really don't want people reading the Bible and coming to their own conclusions. We want them to read the Bible and assume our conclusions.

18. You might say, "That may have been the past, but people don't care much about denominations any more." That's true. The group identities have changed. They're still there. They're just different.

I always smile when people say, "I go to a non-denominational church. We just follow the Bible." Tell me what your church teaches. Tell me how and when you baptize. Tell me whether tongues are approved or rejected. 

Actually, you probably don't even need to tell me. Give me ten minutes at your church and I'll tell you which group -- which tradition -- you are part of without knowing it. Chances are, you're Baptist with a twist. 

For the most part, the new group is white evangelicalism. It has flattened out the old denominations into a gray Baptist melange. The fries are tongues and the charismata. "Would you like tongues with that?" This is your typical megachurch -- Baptist with or without the tongues.

19. But the kingdom of God is not a fallen human group. The kingdom of God is neither Democrat nor Republican. It is neither Trump supporting nor following any other human leader or figure.

The kingdom of God is the kingdom of, well, GOD. It is the kingdom of Jesus Christ. It cuts across all human loyalties and is oriented around the King of Kings. If any human group lays absolute claim on our loyalties, it is anathema. Let it be accursed.

Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar. Not my church. Not my political party. Not my family.

Jesus. God and God alone.

[13] Groundbreaking here was Bruce Malina's The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Westminster John Knox, 1981).

[14] There is an underlying reason why sociology has come under fire in Florida, and it isn't the surface reasons being given. Sociology exposes what's really going on in human culture underneath the surface. It lays bare the underlying motives and dynamics of human interaction in ways that bristle against group culture. It is no surprise that the "group" wants to shut it down.

That is not to say that there aren't group dynamics and extremes in much sociology teaching at state schools. Nor is it to deny that many state school subjects are taught with "anti-supernaturalist presuppositions." I am merely claiming that these political moves are likely more group driven than truth driven.

[15] Very common in present culture is what is known as the "you also" fallacy (tu quoque). You critique something on one side, and the response is "but you didn't critique the other side." It's a more sophisticated version of the "He started it" accusation of our childhoods. It's a deflection technique.

But the underlying dynamic I am pointing out here is the difference between group think and truth think. "Truth think" certainly involves bias, but its goal and method is universal truth. "Group think" has no universal standard for truth. It only aims to support the claims of its group by whatever means works. Unfortunately, the rise of postmodernism in the 1990s and 2000s has given a sophisticated green light for culture to be untethered from "truth think."

All media has bias (though probably some more than others). But not all media has as its aim the establishment and reinforcement of group identity. The rise of this sort of media in America has been a key feature of the twenty-first century.

_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

Notes Along the Way TF7 -- Diverse Traditions in the New Testament

continued from the previous post
_________________________
1. Knowing that I was going to Durham, I began to dive more into James Dunn's writing. I will have a hard time remembering when I learned which aspects of his thinking. When he passed in 2020, I did a series walking through his writings in twelve posts. That was when I still had an office at work and at home, and all my books were readily accessible. I have been living in book purgatory since 2021.

Sadly, my copy of Unity and Diversity in the New Testament seems to be in storage, along with Christology in the Making. I started working through the first in anticipation of Durham. I must have worked through the second at least by my first year there.

Unity and Diversity was eye-opening. For obvious reasons, Asbury focused extensively on the literary text of the Bible. Inductive Bible Study at Asbury excelled at the skill of observation of the text. I would tell my students for decades that these skills could enable them to critique world class scholars because of the attention to the text it cultivated.

Scholars sometimes fall into the trap of "parallelomania." You know a parallel from some obscure piece of ancient literature and you connect it to the biblical text. But of course it doesn't matter whether you know some obscure bit of text from the Talmud if it isn't likely to have had any connection with the biblical text.

Perhaps there has been an occasion or two in the past where a scholar has known too much. For example, Philo says in Embassy to Gaius that the emperor Caligula was mistaken to think that the "form of God" could so easily be counterfeited (110). Could Paul have known this when he said that Jesus emptied himself of the "form of God" (Phil. 2:6)? [1]

Probably not. But knowing these sorts of parallels has sparked many a creative theory.

Of course, with the internet, it has become more and more possible for individuals with no real sense of the relationships between documents to imagine completely impossible connections. The 1978 book, When God Was a Woman, is a good example of someone who knew a lot of parallels, but wasn't trained to be able to tell the difference between similarity and dependence.

2. So, while Asbury had done a spectacular job of teaching me how to observe the "world within the text," as Ricoeur put it, there was a tendency to flatten it. In other words, my background had been heavy on the unity of the text but not so strong on its diversity.

Dunn's book was quite the opposite. By the time he was "done," it felt like the unity he saw was fairly slim. But it was good to balance out the extremes of my own background. The biggest unity was the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

To be frank, there is something suspicious about the fact that various groups have electric fences that forbid you from drawing certain conclusions. If we are really interested in the truth, if the truth is what God thinks, then we would want to follow the evidence to its most likely conclusion most of the time.

England was a breath of fresh air in that regard. All opinions were treated with respect (sometimes I thought outlandish ones). The point was whether you could argue cogently for your positions, not what your positions were.

3. I'll talk more about Christology in a moment. What struck me was the concept of different social groups within the early church. Jewish Christianity. Hellenistic Christianity. Apocalyptic Christianity. Early Catholicism. I find these far too blunt of instruments now, but it was a fairly new concept to me then. [2]

I had never thought of there being creeds, hymns, and other traditions lurking in the New Testament. I had little sense of the tensions between the theologies of the Gospels or the other parts of the New Testament. And the sense that there were different ecclesiologies among different early Christian communities was a completely new thought. 

4. Christology in the Making was even more impactful. Basic understandings that I have of key Christological titles like "Son of God" and "Lord" flowed naturally from his thorough and "scientific" investigations of the text. Principally, he made it very clear that these titles found their locus in the resurrection of Jesus and were royal titles.

[As a side note, Dr. Wang at Asbury had first introduced the question of the timing of "Son of God" in Romans class. What did Paul mean in Romans 1:3 when he said Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection of the dead"? Wang emphasized the "in power" qualifier.]

Dunn was not unusual for the 60s and 70s to see the development of early Christology as a movement from resurrection to incarnation, from Paul to John. In 1988, Larry Hurtado would start a trend that continues to this day among many if not most scholars. Hurtado argued that a "high" Christology was present before any of the New Testament writings were written, present there in Paul.

Perhaps Dunn's most controversial claim in Christology is that the Philippian hymn did not refer to the pre-existence of Jesus. On this interpretation, Dunn has definitely proved to be in the minority, although less so when he first proposed it. He argued that the Philippian hymn of 2:6-11 was an Adamic Christology. Like Adam, Dunn argued, Jesus was in the image of God. But unlike Adam, who grasped at equality with God, Christ did not grasp. [3]

Few have gone with Dunn for this interpretation. I remember a brief conversation with Bruce Longenecker about Dunn's Christology (Bruce also studied with Dunn). He said he didn't feel the need to follow Dunn on that score anymore. 

But I found most of the book persuasive. And, indeed, I suspect there is much less pre-existence in Paul than many think. (I remember thinking his treatment of 1 Corinthians 15 was brilliant.) I always have found it refreshing when someone has been able to show me where I was unaware of the glasses I was wearing. Dunn opened my eyes to a third dimension to the Bible. 

What I'm talking about is the transition from reading the Bible from the standpoint of the story in the Bible to reading the books of the Bible in the story of history. This is basically what Hans Frei talked about in the first chapter of The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. The pre-modern reader reads inside the text. The "modernist" reader sees the biblical texts as moments in history. 

It's the difference between thinking the Gospels must be first because they are about Jesus (who came first), to realizing that the Gospels were written after Paul's writings, probably in the order Mark, Matthew, Luke, John. It's realizing that, as far as its dating is concerned, it doesn't matter if Job pictures the patriarchal period. When a book is written has almost nothing to do with what it's written about.

This is more of learning how to read the Bible in context.

[1] Larry Hurtado explored this on his blog in 2017 before he passed.

[2] I later found John Meier and Raymond Brown's, Jerusalem and Antioch much more helpful (Paulist, 1983). They suggest four groups as I recall: Jerusalem Christianity, Pauline Christianity, Judaizers, and Libertines.

[3] N. T. Wright had what was to be a very confusing examination of the possibilities in a chapter of his The Climax of the Covenant. I was enamored with Wright in those days for a couple years. In retrospect, I would love to rewrite that chapter for him to make it clearer.

2.3 A Lasting Conversion (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
_______________________
Lasting Conversion
8. So what is a lasting conversion, an eternal conversion? What is the conversion that ultimately matters?

Let me start by speaking practically rather than technically. The most imporrtant conversion is one that lasts to eternity. It is true that a person can be truly converted and yet fall away (Heb 6:3; Jude 24). But the end result is as if the person was never truly saved at all. They are like the seed along the path, scorched by the sun, or choked by weeds. They are Israelites that do not enter the promised land, "whose corpses fell in the desert" (Heb. 3:17).

9. How does a lasting conversion begin? It is ultimately a matter of the Holy Spirit. This is the repeated message of the New Testament. 

Repentance is a precursor to conversion. Faith is an essential lead up. All along the Holy Spirit has been involved, drawing you to Christ. Baptism is significant, an "outward sign" of God's working inside us.

But, according to the New Testament, the Spirit is the moment of conversion. "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they are not his" (Rom. 8:9).

The Spirit is God's "seal" of ownership on us (2 Cor. 1:22). The Spirit is the "guarantee," the "downpayment" of our future inheritance (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:14). Without the Spirit in us, we are not yet truly and fully converted.

We see this in the book of Acts. In Acts 8, in Samaria, a group of individuals have been baptized, but they have not received the Holy Spirit. This is a problem because Acts 2:38 gives the clear pattern: Repent, be baptized, and you will receive the Holy Spirit. Something was wrong.

By the same token, conversion can happen without baptism. In Acts 10, Paul has hardly finished presenting the good news to Cornelius and his men before the Holy Spirit has come upon them. In that incident, baptism simply enacts what the Spirit has already done inside of them.

10. How do we know if we have received the Holy Spirit? I suspect that, for most of us, it will chiefly manifest itself as a "peace that passes understanding" (Phil. 4:7). [10] As the hymn goes, "blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; oh, what a foretaste of glory divine."

However, Paul tells us explicitly what the presence of the Holy Spirit looks like, and this is true not only in me as an individual but in the church collectively. He tells us that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23). 

Are these the characteristics that most would use to describe the American church? Not likely. In that respect, we have to wonder how much of the American church is actually truly converted.

The Parable of the Weeds makes it clear that not everyone in the church is actually part of the Church (Matt. 13:24-30). The true Church is "invisible." It does not coincide with the people who hold up a Bible or quote Scripture. Indeed, Satan has the entire Bible memorized (e.g., Matt. 4:6).

Matthew puts it sharply, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 7:21). The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats also puts it starkly. Those who did not use what God gave them in the service of those in need turn out to be goats rather than God's sheep. They find their end in eternal judgment (Matt. 25:45-46). [11]

11. We have to conclude that either a good deal of the American church is either not truly converted or not fully converted. My pastor used to put it this way. "Don't worry. You're all still going to heaven. You're just not fully converted yet." [12]

I would put it this way. Some in the American church are not truly converted. But many others are not fully converted. Like Paul's description in 1 Corinthians 3, their faith is mixed with hay and straw (1 Cor. 3:12). 

That is one of the main purposes of this book, to call the American church to a truer and deeper faith. It is a call to recognize where our faith has been corrupted. And for those with fake faith, it is a call to genuine faith.

[10] There are individuals whose "peace receptors" are damaged. While 1 John 3:20 probably was not psychologizing originally, there is great truth to the fact that, when our consciences are not working properly, God knows the real story. Once upon a time, I found David Seamands' book, The Healing of Memories (David C. Cook, 1986) very helpful on this score.

[11] Note that the Parable of the Talents immediately preceeds the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. While this parable is often read as a capitalist manifesto, in context, the investment of talents would seem to be giving away what God has given us to those in need. We miss this context because of the glasses we are wearing when we read.

[12] Steve Deneff, College Wesleyan Church.

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1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

2.2 Dunk and Run (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
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5. In the Parable of the Soils, Jesus talks about four different kinds of soil that the word can fall on (Mark 4). Some seed is immediately snatched by birds -- the word of the gopel goes in one ear and out the other. Then there is rocky soil. The wheat springs up immediately but lacks depth and is scorched by the sun. The seed that falls among weeds is choked by the cares of life. Finally, some seed falls on good soil and not only grows but multiplies.

It's fairly obvious that not everyone who "comes in the door" of the church ends up in the kingdom. Different Christian traditions deal with this phenomenon differently. A Calvinist might say such a person was never truly a believer to begin with. My own tradition can take the text pretty much like it is -- some people start off in Christian faith but do not endure to the end.

I already mentioned 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, where Paul suggests that even he might not make it into the kingdom if he does not continue disciplining himself as a spiritual "athlete." Hebrews presents the starkest imagery of this sort in the New Testament. Hebrews 6 suggests not only that it's possible to fall away, but that one cannot return if one does (6:3-6). Such a person is like a field that, despite constant watering, only yields thorns and thistels (6:7-8).

However one wants to process this phenomenon theologically, the long and the short of it is that not everyone who gets baptized will end up in the kingdom of God. We see this happen in Acts 8, where many Samaritans are baptized, but they have not yet been truly saved (8:4-25). One of them, Simon the sorceror, is remembered in Christian history as the earliest heretic of Christianity.

6. In America, Baptists are the largest Protestant group, and they have had enormous influence on American Christianity. Every tradition has its potential weaknesses, and the greatest danger from the Baptistic influences on Christianity  is what I might call "dunk and run." The majority of Baptists in America believe in "eternal security" or "once saved, always saved." It's the belief that, if you get truly saved, you will make it to heaven no matter what.

In a popular form, it can reduce to "Read the prayer on this card and you'll make it to heaven no matter what you do." This is not official Baptist belief, but it's how the doctrine can play out on a local level. The result has sometimes been an emphasis on baptism in American Christianity without nearly as much attention to what comes afterward.

This flavor has made its way into the culture of the American megachurch. Although many such churches call themselves non-denominational, many are functionally Baptist or Baptist with a charismatic twist. [8] Of late, we have seen more and more "baptisms on the spot" in these churches. Appealing to the book of Acts, they bring out the tubs and baptize people right there on the stage, sometimes with little or no preparation.

The danger has always been that there would be no follow up. This was an early critique of Billy Graham's crusades. Many people came forward to give their lives to Christ, but initially there was no system in place to get these individuals into the ongoing discipleship of a church. Thankfully, in the later decades of his crusades, a structure of follow-up by various area churches was put in place. [9]

Similarly, most mega-churches today have created systems to try to get the newly baptized into small groups. Still, it is hard not to get the impression that these streams of American Christianity are "front heavy" with inconsistent follow up. The danger is that someone who gets baptized might think they are fully cooked and that they need not worry too much about their walk with the Lord thereafter.

7. Paul himself ran into the problem of getting baptism out of perspective with the Corinthian church. A man named Apollos had followed him to Corinth. Because he had formerly been a follower of John the Baptist, baptism apparently played a more significant role in his teaching than it did for Paul. Paul is frustrated enough that he said he was glad he only baptized a handful of people there (1 Cor. 1:14-17).

Why? Because they were getting things out of focus. At Corinth, they had come to view who baptized them as a matter of prestige. They missed the point of baptism. It represented the cleansing of their past sins and their inclusion into the body of Christ. It was a beginning, not an end point.

One danger with the current climate of Christianity in America is that we focus so much on getting people wet that we miss the long haul of faith, which is actually the more crucial part in the end. We don't want to miss "running with patience the race that is set before us" (Heb. 12:1-2). Because it is not starting the race that ultimately matters. It is finishing it. To use an illustration from the book of Hebrews, all of Israel started off the journey in the wilderness. But they did not make it to the Promised Land (Heb. 3:16-19).

The danger of evangelical "conversionism" has long been a lack of discipleship. This is one area where John Wesley excelled, one of the earliest evangelicals in the 1700s. His rigorous system of discipleship made sure that a new believer did not simply evaporate away. George Whitefield, another evangelical of that day, once remarked that those who had been saved under his preaching were a rope of sand in contrast to those saved under Wesley. He had no system for discipleship.

[7] "Eternal security" is actually a mutation of two quite distinct theologies. Its base is Calvinism, which holds logically that if you are predestined, then you will endure into the kingdom. But Baptist belief mixed this idea with the later idea of the "assurance of salvation." This is the quite distinct tradition that you can know now whether you have truly become a child of God. Mix the two together and you have a theological Frankenstein: 1) if you know you are saved now then 2) you know you will make it to the end.

[8] Even the Assemblies of God church, which is one of the largest denominations in America, could be said to have the flavor of a Baptist church with tongues and other spiritual gifts added in.

[9] Bill Hybels also lamented this about his legacy at Willow Creek.

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1. What is Evangelicalism?

• Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
• The "New" Evangelicalism
• The Poltical Takeover

2. The State of Faith in America (1)

1. What is Evangelicalism?

• Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
• The "New" Evangelicalism
• The Poltical Takeover

__________________
1. The big news in a recent Pew study was that the decline of Christian faith in America had paused. [1] The theme of previous years had been the "rise of the Nones," individuals who claimed not to have any specific faith at all. [2] A few years ago, that was the fastest growing religious demographic. In this more recent study, the percentage of young men in particular has held steady and was roughly equal to young women who professed faith.

The Devil is in the details, of course. What is this data really saying?

An intriguing theory is that the retention of male faith might have something to do with influencers like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and Wes Huff. [3] There is much talk about recovering masculinity within Christian faith, and these voices seem to be having an impact among young men.

However, it does not seem that they are bringing young men at large toward faith. Whom they seem to be helping are young men with some sort of background in Christianity. That is, they are helping a small swath of young men retain faith by inspiring them to live responsible lives.

Meanwhile, the fastest decline in faith would seem to be among young women. One of the more striking findings of the study was that young men and women had evened out in their faith -- as opposed to earlier days when the faith of young women significantly outpaced that of young men.

2. At the same time, we can ask what faith they are retaining or are being converted to. Here, the exit of women from the church may give insights. Why are they leaving? Are they leaving, for example, because the church has largely ignored them -- even as their voice has been empowered more and more?

Just a few years ago, the #MeToo movement called attention to the pervasive bullying and abuse that women get in society. According to one study, 82% of women have experienced sexual harrasment or assault in their lifetime [4] According to another study, almost half of all women (45.1%) have experienced some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetimes. 21% reported completed or attempted rape, and 39% reported unwanted sexual contact. [5] 

Did the MeToo movement change anything? According to the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University, no. [6] The question for the church is not merely whether male behavior has changed in society (it hasn't). The question for us is whether the church has offered women any reason to believe the situation is any different among believers (it hasn't).

3. A person saved is a person saved. If I genuinely come to believe in God because I thought I saw a unicorn eating lunch at Denny's, that is still a soul saved. It's important to keep that in mind. If a man keeps his faith because of a skewed version of Christianity, that's still a soul saved if the conversion is genuine.

At the same time, it is not enough to dunk and run. Paul is quite clear, despite protests to the contrary. "Run that you might receive the prize... I discipline my body and make it my servant so that I might not be disqualified after myself having preached to others" (1 Cor. 9:24, 27).

What we don't want to happen is to "inoculate" people to faith. We don't want to give them a taste and then for them to spit it out of their mouths. We want them to partake of genuine faith and to stick around for eternity.

4. I thus consider this a fair summary of faith in America at the moment. While it may have experienced a slight uptick or plateau in the last couple years, we do not know how the graph will continue. The trendline for the faith of young women is in steep decline. What is holding the demographic is that some young men who grew up in a Christian context are returning to the faith of their childhood.

Will that be a permanent return? That is another good question and one that should cause us to make sure that the faith we are advertising is genuine Christian faith. We would hate these converts to be seed on rocky soil -- or seeds among weeds or bird food (Mark 4).

Are we converting these young men to a club (while losing the young women) or are we bringing them to a lasting, well-anchored faith? That is a key question for this chapter.

[1] Religious Landscape Study, Pew Research Center (February 8, 2025), conducted from July 17, 2023 to March 4, 2024.

[2] Ryan Burge, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, 2nd ed. (Fortress, 2023).

[3] Cf. Anthony Delgato, "Comeback Christians."

[4] "Rates of sexual harassment and assault nationwide still high after #MeToo movement" (September 16, 2024).

[5] National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2023/2024 Sexual Violence Data Brief.

[6] The study quoted in n.4 is found here: #MeToo 2024 Report.

What is evangelicalism Part III (The Political Takeover)

1. What is Evangelicalism?

• Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
• The "New" Evangelicalism
  

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The Political Takeover
9. Most religions have their "fundamentalists." A fundamentalist is somone who is zealous for what they see as the fundamentals of their religion. In itself, this sounds pretty good. In fact, it's something like what I'm arguing for in this book.

But the word has a tone -- words aren't just what they say. Their meaning is really in what they do, and this word has a tone.

As we currently use it, it has a militant tone. It's a fight tone. It's a rigid tone in the sense that it refuses to consider that it might be wrong about the way it understands the fundamentals. It's anti-modern in the sense that it fights to preserve its traditions and imagined past. [7]

10. In the 1950s, "new" evangelicals like Ockenga and C. F. H. Henry wanted to distance themselves from groups they deemed "fundamentalists." They regarded those groups as less intellectual. These were groups like holiness revivalists, dispensationalists, and Pentecostals. 

They also saw these groups as separatists, Christians in retreat, while they wanted to "engage" the culture. One might say that they were ambitious to have a seat at the public table.

Seventy-five years later, the groups they considered inferior have taken over their movement. Eventually, the majority of "traditional" Christians would rule over the intellectuals. If you flash forward to today, mainstream "evangelical" thinking has become thoroughly political and extensively loosed from its intellectual and "respectable" beginnings. In my view, politics has become more central to the movement than theology, opening the door for the rank blasphemy pictured at the beginning of the chapter.

11. Jerry Falwell in the 1980s is as good a place as any to begin tracing this shift. Originally, he would not have identified himself as an evangelical, nor would evangelicals of that time have identified themselves with him. He deemed his movement, "The Moral Majority."

He rose to national prominence through the anti-abortion movement. Before that, his original fight was to preserve tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools. Suffice it to say, that is a less powerful origin story.

The Reagan presidency saw the fusion of Republicanism with conservative Christianity. The result is that, even today, many evangelicals aren't sure that a Christian can vote for a Democrat. This has to be one of the most impactful developments in American religious history in its fusion of politics with religion. The result is that, as the Republican Party goes, so goes evangelicalism.

Here are some examples of issues where you might expect some spectrum of thought among evangelicals, but you don't really get it. Most evangelicals oppose gun control. The single most significant indicator of whether someone will be opposed to climate change is if someone is a white evangelical. Opposition to universal health care, pro-immigration? You could easily argue that these are biblical values.

Yet evangelical Christians not only tend to be monolithic on such issues. They tend to line up strongly on one side. Why? 

Arguably because of the fusion of Republican politics with evangelical Christian faith. 

The Latest Evangelical Pillars
12. Bebbington, in effect, has proposed evangelism, the authority of Scripture, the centrality of the cross, and engagement with the culture as the cornerstones of historical evangelicalism. Let me suggest that these have largely morphed into club, culture war, conquest, and control.

Of course, not all evangelicals fit these descriptions. My claim is that the flavor of evangelicalism has nevertheless shifted dramatically in these directions in the last few years.

Club. We see a big emphasis on getting people baptized, but how deep does the transformation go, and what are people being transformed into? Might the prophets call out some of our baptisms the way they called out sacrifices once upon a time (Micah 6:6-8)? To what extent have our efforts to convert become tribal inductions rather than heart conversions? We are getting people in the club, but are we getting them in the kingdom?

Culture War. We are witnessing an amazing thing in this moment. You can talk Bible all you want to evangelicals, but the values of their subculture trump the real Bible. There is still talk of the Bible, of course. But it is a banner, a symbol. Get into the actual values of the Bible, and shields go up. Ironically, after thinking for so long that evangelicalism was pushing back against ungodly culture in a culture war, it is unable to see that its own subculture is in the driver's seat -- not the Bible.

Conquest. Ironically, the cross showed that losing one's life could be gaining it. Suffering could be victory. Losing could be winning. But evangelicalism is presently at war. It has no interest in "milquetoast" Christianity. It wants Bonhoeffer the assassin, not the real Bonhoeffer, who the vast majority of the time was a pacifist.

Control. The activism of evangelicalism wants to take over the state. It rejects and hates the very notion of the separation of church and state. It wants a theocracy, a Christian nation of its imagination. It is no longer Niebuhr's "Christ the transformer of culture." It is pure "Christ over culture" -- as in take over the culture.

Not sure you agree? Keep reading. In the pages that follow, I want to call evangelicalism back from the brink to its roots. I want to call us beyond the club to true conversion. I want to pull the rug out from under the culture wars by going back to the Bible itself. I want to suggest that conquest and control are the opposite of Christ's values. We will transform the world by becoming its servants rather than its lords.

Won't you join me on this journey to the roots of the "evangel," the good news of Jesus Christ?

[7] I realize my approach to fundamentalism is in some tension with some prominent names in this area of history, namely, Mark Noll (see n.5) and George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford University, 1980). We'll have that conversation later.