At Evangel, Sarah J. Flashing urges conservative Christians to reject the compromise of the “public language” they have resorted to in their defense of traditional morality. Basically, these Christians have assumed their “worldview” could compete in the marketplace of ideas, and have dressed it up in pragmatic reasoning in order to make it more competitive. This, Flashing summarizes, has weakend the theoconservative position even more, since divorced from their the exclusive Christian truth claims that underpin them, arguments for traditional Christian morality just seem ridiculous. She concludes that theoconservatives should examine the failure of their approach and realize that “moral revival begins with spiritual revival.”
No one will be surprised that I agree with Flashing that the theocon approach to conserving—the culture wars—has been a dismal failure on every objective measure. I’m glad someone—anyone—is talking about re-evaluating an approach I believe has rightfully resulted in deep, lasting cultural animosity to the Christian faith. I disagree fundamentally with most of the objectives of the culture wars, not just the tactics of the soldiers (though those deserve their own focus from Christians concerned about other Christians behaving Christianly in the public square.) But that aside, I want to look at one specific error Flashing reiterates, which I think is the fundamental one at the heart of everything that has gone wrong for the Christian right the past two or three decades.
Ugh. I never know how to feel when I read an article that feels, to me as an “insider,” so behind the curve. Like the subject of my last blog, a review in the New York Times Book Review of The Case for God, an article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times takes a subject we’ve all discussed ad nauseum and makes it a feature story.
For many readers, simply knowing the subject means you could probably go ahead and, without reading it, write the same article the LA Times. Rock music in church. Suburbs. Upbeat Biblical message. Saddleback. Non-denominational.
Yah, we got it
Admittedly, this is a rant, though it’s not against mega-churches (plenty of that going on, no need for me to add to it here), nor is it against the media reporting on issues of interest to Evangelicals (more, please), if anything this is a lament that the same story keeps being told over and over.
If it’s not a mega-church story, it’s a rebel church story or a Driscoll/Bell/Baker, Jr. story. Though, I guess it must be said, I’ll take this reporting about “new” trends in evangelicalism over the latest headline-attracting and painfully embarrassing statement by our old friends from the old school hard right.
There has to be a point here, and there is. You, Patrol reader, know better. You know what is really going on. You know what mega-churches mean and how they mean. You know we’ve moved on, we’re moving on. You know what story to tell. You know it can’t ever be just one story (borrowing here from the TED talk by the always amazing Chimamanda Adichie).
Tell our story. Join us. Make the media know who we really are by being the media. And, if that’s not your gift, not where you’re at, then please, at the very least, don’t embarrass us.
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