The Log of Politics in the Exvangelical Eye
Six Takes About Evangelicals and Exvangelicals, and one about Alistair Begg
Oh, look! It’s April and there’s a dusting of snow over the daffodils. That’s charming.
One
I enjoyed the astonishing delight of getting to see my name in Not the Bee underneath the Andrew Walker tweet that went viral. The whole Twitter, sorry X, experience over the week has been so interesting and fun. For years I’ve been promising myself to “tweet more” and then Monday, in my post-Easter stupor, I launched forth. The results have been extremely satisfying.
There is, I have discovered, a fairly predictable pattern that unfolds. The first round of engagement is friendly and agreeable—people liking and reposting because they mostly agree. The second round represents the gritted teeth poster, people who disagree in direct, but, more often, passive-aggressive, ways with what you have actually said. Like: “Do you really think you know everything there is to know about every exvangelical?” And then the third round is when things begin to be unhinged. The “I can’t honor my parents because I’ve been ‘abused’ by being taught stuff in the bible” crowd. The final and most exciting phase arrives when the anonymous poster with pronouns in the bio and three followers swoops in to say, “You worship Trump” and “Get Bent Anne.” I feel, now, that I have definitely arrived into the real world of virtual “engagement.”
Two
I think what I’ve been reacting to—if reacting is the word I really want—is the iconoclastic inclinations of exvangelicalism.
It must be said, again, that evangelicals—as the term has been widely understood for a while—navigated the same seismic cultural shifts endured by the rest of the West. Their assumptions about the world, about God, about the Church, and worst of all (for the exvangelical), about America were not strange or exceptional when they held those views. They weren’t abusive and crazy and bad. But they were, as has been noted by many, one of the few meaningful (and strongest) pushbacks on the sexual revolution, on the entrenched assumptions of atheism, communism, feminism and so many other isms.
Were the evangelicals of the last forty years good and pure and perfect? Of course not. Did they suffer great theological lacks? Of course. Did they fall into certain kinds of generational sins? Undoubtedly. But if people today believe themselves to be right and good, and their parents evil because they tried, however embarrassingly, to protect them from these isms, that betrays a terrible kind of foolishness. The best term for that kind of rejection of the past is “anti-culture.” That’s what I mean when I say that a “culture” wouldn’t countenance that sort of thing. A real culture honors parents and grandparents and, while making necessary corrections, passes on their values and beliefs. It does not throw over the people of yesteryear who believed slightly different things. A real culture honors the gifts given and keeps them, even as they might choose to do things differently.
Three
Because this is so personal for everyone, and everyone gets to integrate cultural critique with memoire, I would just love to point out that many people today (though I’m sure not all of them) who want to blame evangelicals for being wrong haven’t noticed how the church tried to engage effectively with the culture while maintaining her integrity. Sure, she failed at that in various ways, but it was a good-faith effort.
My extended family has been solidly evangelical and missionary for three and four generations. My ancestors went to Africa to spread the Gospel and translate the Bible. When they came “home” to America, they found cultural malaise and the rising tide of unbelief. But they built up the church here. They sang and prayed and worked. When their children chose to go to different kinds of churches—different denominations even—they didn’t fuss, too much, nor take the trouble to feel rejected.
And those of us in latter generations who didn’t go on being Baptist and Assemblies of God did not look back at their laboring in the church with a sneer and a cry of pain. Though we did feel sad when the pews were ripped out and the choir and organ banished and replaced with a band and a coffee bar. But even the people who did that did it for reasons that, at the time, seemed obvious.
Four
The books that I’ve read by people who claim to be leaving behind a great evil, who suffered “harm” by having to endure Purity Culture, teachings about hell, and sermons on the role of the woman in the home lived through nothing extraordinary or traumatizing. Christians have talked about those things since the time of Jesus, because he himself, and also Saint Paul, had much to say on those subjects. It is not “abuse” to be taught to obey one’s parents and to be anxious about the lost.
Five
But this is an election year, of course, and the real crime is that a lot of those Christians who constituted evangelicalism through the 80s and 90s turned around and voted for Mr. Trump in 2016. And many of them are promising to do it again. And so, you see, what they have done is so wicked that it is acceptable to throw them over, to burn down the heritage of Christianity in America, to—and this is actually where the rubber meets the road—become “affirming” of the LGBTQ anachronym and come out righteous in the end. So many contradictory thoughts and beliefs are bundled together, and so many false choices are forced upon the hapless evangelical today.
When, in fact, you don’t have to deconstruct your faith in favor of your politics. If you still want to participate in this “democratic” choice, at least observe that both candidates are pro-abortion, pro-trans (one more than the other), have not lived honorable lives, and manifestly don’t believe in God.
Six
One final thought on this subject. The reason most exvangelicals aren’t worth listening to, on the whole, is because most of them cannot articulate the gospel. They confuse politics for faith but then accuse others of that sin. They lean over to pluck the shard of politics out of your eye and inadvertently bash you over the head with the entire godless assumption of progressivism.
Nevertheless, if I can hear just one so-called deconstructionist articulate the gospel in its glorious fullness, who can also somehow explain how they have been transformed by said gospel in historically Christian terms, I might be prepared to listen. But since I still haven’t ever heard it, I remain completely unmoved.
Seven
Totally forgot to mention it here, but I wrote a piece over at CRI on the Alistair Begg dustup from a month or two ago and the general question of whether or not a Christian should go to a gay wedding if you’d like to check it out:
“Can I attend a Gay Wedding?” This question has been bubbling up in Christian circles for almost twenty years. However, since Obergefell became the law of the land in 2015,1 it has become ubiquitous and unavoidable, dividing churches, families, and friends. Inherent in the question is a knot of theological and cultural threads tangled together — matters of identity, the gospel, the Scriptures, the nature of a celebration, evangelism, and all before you come to personal conviction. For some, the question is abstract and theoretical, though the number of people for whom that is true is diminishing at an accelerated rate. Recently, a study was released that just under 30 percent of professing Christian Millennials identify as one of the letters on the LGBTQ acronym.2 Most faithful believers are asking the question because they love someone who is planning to get “married.” They don’t want to blow up their relationships any more than they want to disobey the Scriptures.
Like so many others, about two months ago, my heart in my throat, I stood listening to a sermon by a preacher whose thoughtful and deft exegesis of the Bible over a lifetime has sustained me in innumerable ways. I was wandering around Aldi, trying to do my weekly shopping, distracted by my phone, when the link appeared in my feed. The preacher was Alistair Begg, and this was going to be his answer to the enormous pushback he received from the advice he gave on the subject of whether it is acceptable for a Christian to attend a gay or trans wedding.3 To a grandmother agonizing over what to do about the upcoming marriage ceremony of her grandson to a transgender person, Begg advised her to go.4
What astonished American evangelicals about his advice is that Begg is so persistently biblical in his preaching. He does not veer off text. He has never succumbed to progressive ideology. He has never minced words about anything the Bible says about contemporary American culture.
And yet, serious cracks show in the interaction Begg reports having. “Does your grandson understand your belief in Jesus?” he asked. She thought the grandson did. “Does your grandson understand that your belief in Jesus makes it such that you can’t countenance in any affirming way the choices that he has made in life?” continued Begg. The grandmother believed that was so. “Well then,” counseled Begg, “As long as he knows that, then I suggest that you do go to the ceremony. And I suggest that you buy them a gift.”
Read the rest here.
And check out the podcast I recorded with Melanie.
Have a lovely day!
A little push back on this point, Anne:
"When, in fact, you don’t have to deconstruct your faith in favor of your politics. If you still want to participate in this “democratic” choice, at least observe that both candidates are pro-abortion ..."
One of the two candidates said during a Republican Primary debate in 2016 that his Supreme Court choices would likely tend toward the overthrowing of Roe vs. Wade. He was elected. He appointed (and saw confirmed) pro-Life SC Justices. Now, Roe vs. Wade has been overturned.
I would ask you to remember and be thankful for that. It means something. Children are alive who would have been murdered without that candidates actions.
I was thrilled to your name pop up at Not the Bee! And this post is on fire--Take 6!!