I figured a catchy title is essential for any self-respecting diary, so there you have it. Now, to tell you what I mean.
But first, context – I grew up evangelical. Went to Bible college, 3 years. Even worked for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship during grad school. Went to Urbana. I’ve got the evangelical street cred, in other words.
And, I haven’t identified myself as evangelical for probably 20 years at least. Started drifting away during Bible college, and even more so while working for IV. Do I still identify as Christian? Yes, no question. Just not evangelical.
So why not? Quite simply, because it became clear that evangelicalism makes you stupid. Note that I'm not saying that all evangelicals are stupid. Definitely not. Some smart people out there, and some of them contribute to dKos. But there is an aspect of evangelicalism that smart people have to fight against in order to be smart, just as there’s an aspect of being American that many Americans have to fight against. For Americans, it’s a certain version of reductive individualism. Not everyone in this country ascribes to that, but it’s so pervasive, and so much part of every cultural experience, that one has to make a deliberate effort to not see the world solely through that lens. Many people, including many on this list, have done that. But it’s always deliberate work.
For evangelicals, it’s something else. Evangelicalism’s history is rooted in a series of revivals in the 19th and early 20th century. It exists in resistance to 19th century German theology, which all but naturalized faith. It exists in resistance to the rise of science, really as a kind of alternative to science (the Bible is turned into an alternative to science, with the same reliability as the world has to scientists). And, it exists in resistance to social gospel movements in various countries, which threatened to turn faith into good morals. In other words, despite the claims to the contrary among evangelicals, the intellectual roots are not in first century Palestine, but 19th century Europe and America. Those intellectual roots have largely been covered over and ignored, since questions of epistemology (what is knowledge, and what counts as truth?) and metaphysics (what exists, and what are the processes of reality?) never come up. They are more than irrelevant, they are suspect.
The central issue for evangelicals (and this is something inherited from earlier) is sin. In fact, this is something that most Christians on the left don’t really get either, since the central problem for the left in general is not sin, but ignorance. You can see it on this blog, and in many other places – the most common insult toward those on the right is that they are ignorant. Their most common insult to those on the left? That they are unrepentant sinners.
Generally, the charge of “sinner” doesn’t mean much to those on the left, even those who identify with some faith, since their faith often isn’t about sin but about personal and social progress. And, the charge of ignorance doesn’t matter much on the evangelical right, since there is a narrative about child-like faith at work that supersedes the arrogance of human reason.
So why does evangelicalism make one stupid? Simple. Think about stupidity – it’s not the same as ignorance. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge of facts, while stupidity is the inability to use reason well, which means in part to use it self-critically. One can be stupid without being ignorant, and vice versa as well. Now, if one buys the right-wing version of evangelicalism (and, it should be said, that’s where it all starts, Jim Wallace notwithstanding), one also buys several other doctrines. For instance:
1. Inerrancy of the scriptures, or something close to it.
2. The belief in verbal plenary inspiration, or the idea that the Holy Spirit guided the many writers of the Bible to write something that has intrinsic unity and truth, and is the word of God.
3. The idea that the Word of God is the Bible (other versions of Christianity would say that the Word of God is Jesus – “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God”).
4. A belief in catastrophism, that is, that personal and social change happens not incrementally but suddenly. This is where the belief in being “born again” comes from.
5. The belief that God’s hand in the world means the direction of the events of history and of the present. It happens, it is just our job to figure out how it happens.
6. Reason is tainted by the fall, and even after conversion, it is still cloudy. Reason can be used outside of a Christian context, but only as apologetics, that is, the attempt to show that reason leads to an evangelical version of faith. Reason, in other words, is not for questioning but for defending.
There's more, but that gets us started. This adds up to the following. The only reliable source of knowledge is the Bible. It is the direct word from God. But we can’t know it using reason, except reason that has been transformed by the Bible itself. Or (and this is significant), by those who are trained, such as pastors and other authority figures. We are “babes in Christ”, needing mature figures to direct us. The Bible is a blueprint for history and the present, which means that we can read the world through the Bible. This is not based on reason; quite the opposite. The reason that operates is internal to the system, and has checks and balances on it that ensure that “secular” reason doesn’t intervene. What we discover about the world is what we expect to find.
Notice that all this means that the processes of reason are closely tied to a particular outcome, which is confirmation of a particular world-view. This does not mean that there are no disputes – I remember when my dad move from a “pre-tribulation rapture” position to a “post-tribulation rapture” position. Evangelicals will know what this means; the rest of you may think this amount to angels dancing on the heads of pins. There are disputes, but there is no fundamental questioning. Apologetics doesn’t count as reason. There is no doubt that goes so deep as to threaten the overall structure. Those who doubt are prayed for, not listened to. I know, I was there.
I used to say that I got out of evangelicalism because they gave me all the answers but none of the questions. Real questions were never allowed, or at best, they were seen as evidence of immature faith.
Now, like I said, this is the natural tendency for evangelicalism. Does it preclude real informed intelligence? No, it doesn’t. But it’s an inbuilt tendency, like a prevailing wind, that one must consciously address or just be carried along by. Plenty of evangelicals are willing to be carried along – it’s emotionally satisfying, and there is all kinds of reinforcement for this. It’s also fake Christianity. If questioning doesn’t threaten one’s being, and continue to do that, it’s not questioning yet, and you haven’t got to the real existential issues yet. Far from being an avenue to Christianity, I would say that the Christians able to do this from within evangelicalism do it in spite of evangelicalism, not because of it. They’re there, and some of them are here. They’re just few in number. A faithful remnant, if you will. And, there are plenty in other faith traditions, both Christian and not. And, they exist as atheists and agnostics as well, at least sometimes. Atheism isn’t, as evangelicals often want to portray it, just another religion, but it can be a form of radical questioning. Or, it can be as self-satisfied and unquestioning as anything else. No guarantees for any of these menu choices.
Well, so what? For one, pointing out on this site that evangelicals are stupid is both true and pointless. Doesn’t matter to most of them. That’s not where the battle is waged. Of course, no one likes to be called stupid, but “the foolishness of man is the wisdom of God”, as they say, and calling an evangelical stupid gets parsed as “foolish”, which is a badge of honor.
Of course, that’s not the charge being leveled. The charge actually is that reason is not being used, and in fact, is being co-opted in the service of something outside of itself. That too would not be a huge issue – remember, evangelicalism is also a form of science envy which substitutes the Bible for an object of scientific scrutiny. It emerges in the 19th century, when science has all sorts of success in explaining the world, and begins to believe that it applies not only to the natural world, but to the social and even the human world. There could be a science of society (isn’t that what the charge is against the left – social engineering?). There could be a science of the self (the self becomes rationalized, and thus devalued, which is why “life” is a potent symbol that, in evangelical hands, is irreducible to any scientific object). There could be a science of morals (which is why there is so little interest in social programs that “work”, for instance, needle exchange programs, birth control, etc. – every program that works adds to the idea that morality is calculable, and takes away from the idea that morality lies in the realm of God).
But the hysteria in resisting these movements that were seen as corrosive on human meaning, ended up with an unfortunate consequence - gullibility. That's a form of stupidity - remember, reason is not self-critical. And so, any guy in a nice suit with confidence can engage in social control, either for his own profit or to build an empire. It's no accident that evangelicals got played by GWB and company - his "foolishness" was like theirs. They recognized him as one of their own. Except, as has been well shown, they got played for their votes. You'd think they would be embarrassed by this. They seem to be doubling down instead.
The issue is, what’s the basis for truth? That’s the fault line. If you’ve constructed an evangelical superstructure (and yes, I do use the term as Marx does) that says that truth resides in God in a very specific way, and is accessible only through enlightened reason or trusting those who have it, then it’s a battle ground. If, on the other hand, truth has something to do with the processes of science as most of us would recognize them, we run the risk of making humans insignificant, worthless, profane (at least, so goes the evangelical logic).
Let’s turn that around. From the left, if truth lies in something like community verifiability and falsifiability, we have something that the right would see as socialism, but which is actually the time-honored process of incremental knowledge. No catastrophes here. But, people could be wrong. What the right sees as hubris, the left sees as humility – any individual could be wrong. I could be wrong (and, no doubt commentators will line up to show me how). Truth is not known with laser clarity, as in evangelicalism, but inched toward. We live in perpetual doubt, if we’re honest. That doesn’t mean we’re handicapped and can’t act (although, sometimes, I suppose it does). It means that there are no easy answers. There are, however, good questions, and the better the questions, the happier we are. Questions are the basis of truth.
Is this just a kind of two-worlds characterization, where there’s no going from one to the other? No – I did. I remember what it was like to have that certainty, reinforced by a community. It felt good. And yet, I didn’t stay. I couldn’t. What got me out? Well, it happened incrementally. Some writing I would now think of as hopelessly evangelical (Os Guiness’ The Dust of Death, for instance) brought me along. InterVarsity brought me along further – questioning was ok, and thinking about the nature of my existence was ok. I found churches that were ok with questioning – the last one I went to was a very small one, populated by people who, if they hadn’t gone there, would not have likely gone anywhere.
Now, I don’t go anywhere, not because I don’t want to, but because where I live there’s little for me. They’re all either evangelical mega-churches or “old-money” churches, where people go to be seen and to network. I'm not much interested in either. I know, there's UCC - that's not working here either. None of that says anything about a questioning faith, which I still have. It’s just much more personal than it used to be.
The point of all this, though, is to add to the many good diaries that have been written on this site over the years about what it means to be evangelical, and what it means to come out of it. And, what it means to interact with it. I'm now paid to be reasonable - I teach philosophy. I often have evangelicals in my classes - they nearly always come in having heard that I'm going to destroy their faith. And in a sense, they're right. I'm going to destroy their comfortable little stupid world, and hopefully give them something better. They may stay as evangelicals, and that's none of my business if they do. But if they are able to ask real questions, ones tear at the seams of that tight evangelical logic, they might start down a more interesting path. One that will lead to real faith, of whatever sort works for them.