Jerks for Jesus
This past couple of weeks has revealed much about American Evangelicalism. Both how insular and dismissive and how hypocritical it generally is. Two things stood out to me, the response to New York Mayor Zoram Mandami’s Good Friday and Easter proclamations, and Pete Hegseth’s “Protestant Only” Good Friday service (and worse!) at the Pentagon. Many will not see the epistemological assumptions that underlie both of these things so let me explain why both aren’t just “bad” but symptoms of views about “truth” that have allowed Christian Nationalism and hypocracy to flourish in American Evangelical culture.
“Exclusive Truth Claims”
American Evangelical apologetics has been taught as a matter of presuppositional argument for the past 70 years at least. This means most Evangelicals have been taught/discipled to approach most issues in matter of “absolute/exclusive truth claims”. For example, someone who says “Jesus was a great teacher” cannot square that with the Christian statement “Jesus is the Son of God”. Evangelicals have been taught, from an early age, that you have to assert the greatest “truth” publicly.
A part of this demand comes from a misunderstanding of late 19th- early-to-mid 20th century culture both here in America and in England. What had arisen with the embrace of modernism and post-Enlightenment Christian Liberalism (which isn’t “liberalism”) was an assertion that of course Jesus was “a good teacher” and that asserting that he was divine was simply absurd. What you had by the mid 20th century were people who either considered themselves “Christian” by culture or claim that repeated this idea utterly convinced they were expressing the “modern” and “enlightened” expression of Christianity. Apologists like C.S. Lewis in his famous “Lunatic, liar, God” argument were arguing to people who claimed to be Christian that their beliefs were not just out of step with historical orthodoxy, they were somewhat nonsensical.
However, from an apologetics standpoint, by the 1970s-on, Christians were trained to argue through “exclusive truth claims”. The goal would be to corner the opponent into admitting Christianity is the only “rational” expression of “truth”. Normally this starts with the Resurrection as being factually historical and then moves to the “lunatic/liar” argument. The intention is to get the other person to admit Christian reasoning as reasonable and therefore authoritative.
This is compounded with the impetus that assumes if someone doesn’t hear the “truth” they will spend an eternity in hell. Thus an encounter with someone with differing beliefs becomes a crisis of correcting their “truth” paradigm, no matter if it is welcome or not.
The problem is that no matter how much one appeals to “absolute truth”, someone has to believe it. A common post-modern reply is “I’m glad that’s what you believe”. This certainly applies to devout people of other religions than Christianity. The reality is that no one is readily convinced by reasoned argument alone, especially if it is demanded or “shared” in a belligerent manner.
This was recently perfectly shown in Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon. One would think that putting a member of a misogynistic, racist, and arrogant despite all evidence to the contrary cult would have negative outcomes. Threatening to establish a second Pope would not have been on my list. Hegseth first caused rumblings when his Good Friday service was for Protestants only ignoring the many Catholic servicemembers that also celebrate that day (and have no ability to observe because they are on duty). But this was only the tip of the iceberg. Reportedly Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting. In said meeting supposedly over the Pope’s seemingly pointed anti-war remarks that seem to have been targeting America Colby stated, “The United States, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” This heated exchange ended in the threat by one US official who brought up the Avignon papacy. This was a period of time when the French (especially the monarchy) in the 14th century declared their own pope. Imagine telling an envoy of the Catholic church (which is itself a sovereign state and who’s membership globally dwarfs American Evangelicalism) that it has to get on board or we might establish an American Pope!
“Selective Outrage”
An aspect of the above dynamic that gets weaponized in politics is the demand that only certain words or acknowledgement needs to be used or supposedly it’s better if the presenter not say anything (which will also be condemned if the person doesn’t say anything). Take Mayor Mamdani’s Good Friday and Easter proclamations. You had responses like this (and this was mild),
Similarly former President Obama posted a photo of himself, in a worship service and got responses like this,
The demand for a precise language that you and your culture control that without that exactness is worthy of complete rejection is a form of supremacy. And let’s not imagine that there isn’t a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” aspect to this equation. Say nothing and you’re condemned for not “respecting my religion”. Say anything less than a full confession of an Evangelical faith and you’re condemned for not saying it right. But that’s only towards certain people.
The Hypocrisy
At the same time Mamdani and Obama were getting excoriated the exact same persons quickly downplayed and diminished President Trump having a full melt down over the ill-conceived “war” he started. While there was mild push back when Presidential Spiritual Advisor (and heretical hack) Paula White blasphemed Jesus by comparing Trump to him, there wasn’t nearly a peep over Franklin Grahm praying a war mongering prayer at the same event. Then came Trump’s posts over the Easter weekend. The posts were deranged, nonsensical, genocidal, and promised the intentional commitment of war crimes.
This finally brought a tiniest bit of chagrin to Trump’s most ardent MAGA Evangelicals. Some like Joel Webbon surprisingly followed Tucker Carleson and Alex Jones (of all people!) in outright condemning Trump. But the main responses basically came down to two: “It’s still ok because…” and “He was the better of the two choices”. Of the first response we will not tackle because their condemnation is evident, but the second maneuvering is telling. Some pointed out it was simply selective pragmatism, that when it came to a Republican a thrice divorced, known fraud, sexual abuser was pragmatically overlooked for a sense of purity regarding abortion (even though Trump would eventually disappoint on that too). But I think there is more going on with those now trying to mildly distance themselves from the active dumpster fire of the Trump administration, namely- they’ve always known. You can’t tell me people like Tucker Carleson, Megan Kelley, Megan Basham, Eric Erickson, are REALLY that thick. These people made a calculation that hitching themselves to Trump would in the short term give them celebrity, status, and most importantly money. They’ve known this entire time this was a gamble. What we are seeing now is them hedging their bets that the “golden age” of White supremacist Evangelical theocracy that they hoped would happen is by the tool they choose probably not going to happen. The gravy train is beginning to see the cliff at the end of the tunnel and the sooner these people retreat into obscurity with their shame and whatever 401k’s they’ve invested in the better.
Paul at the Areopagus
The “Jerks for Jesus” obviously at this point aren’t going to change, but is there a better way? How do we engage promoting “truth” to a multicultural idolatrous and pagan society? Is there a better way than “competing absolute truth claims”? Well, there is Paul at Athens (Acts 17). I am convinced that if Paul was a modern-day preacher the vast majority of Evangelical influencers would consider him “woke” for how he engaged with the Greeks. First Paul doesn’t start with the Greek “truth claims”, he praises their culture! Paul doesn’t see the Athenian religiosity as “opposed” to God, rather as devotion that lacks a true source. Paul essentially says to the Athenians, “Your religiosity and dedication are good things, they just need to be placed in the proper place.” He doesn’t say “You’re wrong and you need to submit to the truth”, he says, “Your own poets have described who God is.(Acts 17:28)” And when he is rejected and ridiculed because Greeks cannot fathom why anyone would want to be reincarnated in the flesh after death, he simply goes back to those willing to hear the message. And some wanted to hear more. Paul didn’t go back to the fledgling church with a plan to “take Athens for Christ” and seek to establish schools that taught a “Christian worldview” to combat Greek philosophy. He just built a church.
Learning the Hard Lesson
What we are seeing now on so many fronts is the fruit of an Evangelical theology/philosophy/epistemology that intentionally cannot exist in a pluralistic (real) world. It isn’t a “passion for the truth” it’s a passion for supremacy. In so many ways we are seeing what people who just assumed their dominance do with that presumption. And it’s ugly. What’s scary is the reality that Evangelicals for all their money and power are literally in the minority in every practical way. At some point this culture and the world is going to get tired of the arrogance. We are already seeing a global order that is growing more and more willing to tell America to go F*ck itself. I believe those of us who really love the Jesus shown on Easter need to be prepared for a public that rightly tells us to do likewise. May we then be more like Paul than so many who have publicly claimed to represent Jesus.
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