It was also what “they” were. Those non-believers were secular; church-goers and believers were not. Of course, secular could also be used as a kind of condemnation of believers, an accusation that you had backslidden into secularism.

As a Christian and later as a pastor, I realized that I did not share the view of quite a number of congregants or fellow ministers when it came to what secular meant. I did not see, in my faith and experience, a divide between the sacred and the secular. I also came to think that insisting on the divide was a way of self-sanctification for the church and exclusion of everyone else.

Was your “non-believing” neighbour secular?
Were they more secular than you?

I also saw an apparent contradiction. There was a stated rejection of the secular at the same time that almost entirely secular methods of organization and growth were pursued.

Recently, I came across a book that explained and articulated much of what I was feeling. Dr. Henry Walter Spaulding III (he asked me to call him Hank when I interviewed him this week) has written a book called Between Two Gileads. It contrasts the fictional Gilead of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments with the fictional Gilead of Marilynne Robinson’s series of novels.

Have you seen the television series The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments? They are highly disturbing. There is a lot of mention of God in them, statements of faith over and over, and tons of scripture. Atwood’s Gilead (that’s the name of the theocratic state) though is entirely unlike Jesus in every way. It is authoritarian, intensely hierarchical, full of fear and hate and coercion and violence.

Could something that declares itself to be Christian actually be the opposite? I think that Atwood is clearly and sharply answering that question.

There is a line in The Testaments, voiced by someone who subversively reads the Bible (it is outlawed for women to do so). She says that she has come to conclude that “You can believe in God, or you can believe in Gilead, but not both.”

Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, on the other hand, is a place where, though imperfect, love is patient and kind and not self-seeking. It is a place where God’s presence is evident not in some political system, but in the lives of people and between people.

One Gilead is authoritarian, brutal, psychotic, and violent—all while claiming to be Christian. The other Gilead does not claim to be Christian but demonstrates God’s grace and love in tangible ways.

One of the key points that Hank Spaulding brings out, in his consideration of the two Gileads, is that fundamentalism is secular. If you think about much of the evangelical fundamentalism in our world today you might notice at least a couple of key things:

1. It (especially the nationalistic versions) seeks to impose its way on others by acquiring power and establishing a “Christian” state or, at the least, extensive political influence. This leads to suspicion, fear, and even violence against people from other places, people who believe differently, or Christians who see the faith differently. This is a secular method and plan.

2. It (fundamentalism and much of evangelicalism) uses performative and technologically-dependent spectacle (think stage-heavy, emotionally charged worship music and megachurch tech’d-out “sanctuaries”) to generate a guaranteed feeling of collective effervescence.
   

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Have you seen online short clips of arenas or stadiums filled with people with a caption on the video that says something like, “10,000 (or 37,000) people for Jesus”?
If you took away the lights and the huge stage and the definite formulaic composition of the music would you have the same result?

It might, indeed, be that God is present in some huge stadium moments, but to be clear, there is a response guaranteed not by God’s presence, but by the careful, technological manufacturing of the moment by those in leadership. In fact, historically, huge stadium moments of collective zeal have almost always proven to lead towards totalitarianism. This is secularity.

The moment does not need God. The response is guaranteed by planning and when the emotional effervescence is felt by the crowd (the bigger the better) those in charge can declare that what people are feeling is God. Then they can marshal the crowd to their perspective and views of politics and faith, eventually to violence against enemies.

There is a longing that has been expressed by many people familiar with such spectacle. Many have been part of it and have moved away from it. They describe the highly organized, choreographed planning and implementation and goal setting. Maybe it is not only a taste thing. Some people love the arena-type “worship” experience. Some people do not. Maybe it can also be a desire for faith that moves us away from the secular methodology of mass religion.

The problem becomes that the movements dependent on secular methodology, like Atwood’s Gilead, tend to have appeal. They can draw crowds and become popular. They then gain power (again a secular kind of power) and then often condemn any expressions of faith that do not line up with theirs politically.
There has to be a better, more hopeful way.

Hank Spaulding, in our conversation, quoted Jacques Ellul, a 20th-century professor, philosopher and sociologist. I loved the quote. Here it is, “At the heart of this vision is the paradox of non-power—the decision, even when capable, not to dominate. It is the strength of presence of spectacle, humility over triumph, love over efficiency. In a world (and a church) seduced by the allure of power and measurable success, non-power bears witness to the God revealed in Christ crucified, the one who enters human history not with force, but with flesh, not to conquer, but to redeem.”

AMEN

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Are you a conservative or a liberal?
Are you right wing or left wing?
Are you a believer or a non-believer?

The choice seems to be one side or the other and the temptation is to choose a stance on every issue according to what group you are part of rather than by way of thoughtful discernment.

It might be helpful to ask better questions.
In what ways are you conservative? In what ways are you liberal?
How do you, in your life, experience belief? How do you experience unbelief?

You have, no doubt, seen the phenomenon whereby a particular group clearly defined as on one end of the polarization line actually changes a position. They were fully for something that they are now fully against. This usually occurs because a particular leader or champion of the movement requires such a move.

An example? It might be that one end of the political spectrum speaks incessantly about moral and “family” values, insisting that these are of importance in voting or choosing a candidate.
Until.
Until they crown a candidate who does not, and seemingly cannot, embody such values. Then the stance of the group changes. There is significant accommodation made.

Do you want to be part of a particular group, in terms of the polarization, in this world? Is it helpful for you to identify as such and, then, adopt the current views of the group? What happens if you hold an opinion on an important topic that goes against the view espoused by the group with which you identify?

I think that we might do better in this world if, rather than criticizing and attacking the views of those on the other end of the political or religious spectrum, we regularly considered the inconsistencies and shortcomings of our own treasured groups and communities. The church would be better if it wasn’t fixated on what was wrong with “the world”. Believers (whatever those are) would be better if they weren’t fixated on what was wrong or missing with unbelievers.

As Karl Barth pointed out, those of us who value religious faith would do better if we dropped the believer/unbeliever lens of seeing people. In fact, he said, if we insist on using the term unbeliever, we should use it only to refer to ourselves. In saying this he was countering the temptation to divisiveness. We so often see the world by way of division. That is why polarization matters. Saying that “I am a conservative” or “I am a liberal” or “I am a progressive” depends upon identifying other people by our own categories. Conservatives need liberals. Believers need non-believers. Otherwise, what would their project or mission be? Convert or destroy calls us back to primitive tendencies. Consider and collaborate calls us to hope for all.

For those of you who claim some kind of religious faith, particularly those of you who claim Christian faith, I suggest an imaginative exercise.

Imagine that you are having an encounter with Jesus. I mean not simply the prayerful, faithful encounter that you have known, but an actual in-the-flesh-and-spirit encounter. Jesus is sitting with you. There is silence, perhaps awe, and a contented comfort. It might seem that any words you would say would not match the height of the moment.

Now tell Jesus your political persuasion.
Tell him that you are a conservative. Or a liberal. Or a libertarian.
Can you imagine His response?

I find the whole thing quite hilarious, actually. These things that are so important to us in our lives become almost ridiculous in the sweep of faith and history. Maybe He would congratulate you for your faithful political devotion. I am, of course, just joking.

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I came across a column in the New York Times recently that presented the argument that our culture is not really polarized. It is worse than that, or at least more intense.
Here is the description: “Some social scientists and cultural observers are increasingly considering a more extreme concept (than polarization): atomization, or the scattering of people—not into two opposing factions, but into countless smaller tribes.”

The atoms form, and then dissolve and leave people in “even-tinier bubbles, devoid of connection with one another and the larger social fabric.”

Are you polarized or atomized?

There is, likely, truth in both as diagnostic of what is going on in our world. The author of the column pointed out the dangers of atomization. There is disconnection, distrust, and division. An atomized culture is rife for exploitation by authoritarian figures and regimes. Sometimes, what is positively referred to as “big-tent” might simply mean a collection of disgruntled atomized people and movements. They don’t agree on much, except what and who they hate the most.

In evangelical circles, we have long had a vivid version of atomization. It has been more specifically referred to as denominationalism. Can you imagine forming an entire denomination over views of whether God chooses us or we choose God? It is a question which —thanks be to God—is defiant of an answer, but that does not stop the dividing and atomizing.

I hesitate to speak of evangelicalism as being ahead of the times; it is usually decades behind. However, recently, various denominational atoms, by way of necessity or dwindling numbers, have been coming together. There is a new(ish) trend whereby large numbers of people lose interest in interpretive atoms of belief and turn to non-denominational churches that don’t stress such things but have super great video screens and kids programmes and celebrity pastors.

I am all for the smashing of polarizations. Some of my favourite things are ideas with which I disagree. Hopefully, though, the coming together of our various atoms can be by way of something better than spectacle and entertainment, particularly in regards to faith and religion.

What if we could start to be thankful, as liberals, that there are conservatives?
What if we could begin to both appreciate distinction and laugh at the labels?
You say that you are a conservative? Is it okay if I both respect that and find it hilarious at the same time?

The hope, whether our world is polarized or atomized, is that healing would come by way of seeing the humanity of one another, especially of those with whom we disagree.
That is what is comedic about the labels.

You know when you are doing some daily mundane task, say grocery shopping or just walking down the street, and you come across a parent pushing a stroller with a baby in it? Beside the stroller is an older child of the parent, maybe four years old, and that four-year-old is bounding alongside and up ahead. They are wearing a Spider-Man costume, or a princess outfit, or something similar and they are both a regular four-year-old and superhero or a regal presence. You smile. You love it, but you don’t take it entirely seriously.

I think the Spider-Man costume or the princess outfit might be more real than our beloved political and cultural persuasions.

“Look at me, Jesus! I am a (conservative or liberal or progressive or believer or …).”

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How is your algorithm?
Did you ever have anyone ask you, particularly if you grew up evangelical, either of the two following questions?
“How is your heart?”
“How is (insert name here) today?”

Some people, I suppose, like this style of conversation and the same two questions can be from a non-religious context. In my ear these questions sounded weird. Like they were breaking some kind of social convention. That was likely the point for some who asked them. They may have been people who disdained “small talk” or they may have been able to ask those questions without them feeling strange.

In the evangelical context the questions sometimes fit into the frame of “accountability”. Maybe, “How is your algorithm?” is the evangelical accountability question of the current time. I wouldn’t know.

Recently my algorithm has been feeding me content that includes comedic interactions with Artificial Intelligence. Mostly this content is one person posing a question or asking for assistance from AI and the hilarity that ensues. For example, they might ask, “Can you hear me from 100 metres away?”. That seems like a simple question. I keep getting fed these little reels because I have lingered on them, sometimes laughing my face off. Like when the person asked AI to vouch for him at a job interview. AI tries so hard to be human. That is its promise and its threat. Of course, it is not hard to notice some of the quirks in the AI apps that the person is using. One of these, which I think is shared across AI platforms, is the incessant use of the word “absolutely”. Over and over and over again this word is used. No doubt it is used a lot because whoever is behind the wizardly screen thinks (or has been programmed to pseudo-think) that this is how friendly, non-threatening people talk:
“Can you help me with a quick question?”
“Absolutely. Just tell me how I can help out.”
I am no champion of “absolutely” and I never really bought how the concept of the absolute was used in evangelical circles. Many leaders and pastors made it a key mission of the church to maintain absolutes. Of course, absolutes were mostly whatever they believed, particularly about cultural or social issues. Now, the word has become more of a filler word used to disarm in banter. It has actually come to carry more of a “Yeah. Whatever. Sure.” tone than a real declarative statement. It has moved in the lexicon to the realm of the curious use of positive and negative together, people saying “Yeah no.” to mean “Yes”, that kind of thing.

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To my Evangelically Departed point:

My encounter with the AI “absolute” brought to recollection how in evangelical circles being absolutely sure about your faith was seen as a virtue. There is the passage about faith being “sure of what you cannot see”, but that does not necessarily mean being absolutely sure. It is still faith after all.

There is another passage with which you might be familiar that says “Always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that you have.”

Considering how evangelicalism operated, you might think that the verse said, “Always be prepared to give a reason for the absolute certainty that you have.” There were actual courses in evangelical churches coaching people on how to pivot to religious, evangelical ideas in otherwise non-religious conversations. AI tries so hard to be human. So did evangelical witnessing.

Can you imagine an evangelical preacher, of the “uphold absolutes as mission” variety counselling absolute honesty? For example, in a conversation about faith a person might say, “I believe in (insert religious concept here), but I could be wrong. I believe it on faith.” The person might go on to outline a reason for the hope that they have, but if what they believe is true, they don’t have to insist upon it. It does not require the word “absolutely”.

I think that there is a possible way forward for conversations about faith in this. Many people winced and felt discomfort at injunctions to “witness” or “share their faith” in the world of evangelicalism. When this was the case those people might have come to believe that their faith was weak. They may even have been accused by leaders (intent on “building the church” their church, their empire) of not being a good Christian. Maybe one of the ways forward, that might open up rather than close conversations of faith and belief is to drop the absolute insistence.

I believe this so much that I don’t have to insist upon it.

You can’t believe something absolutely. Once it has become absolute, it has ceased to be belief. It is the semantic reason why “I believe in science” sounds odd. I don’t think science is asking you to believe and I don’t think that faith is insisting on absolutes.

Or as Isaac the Syrian said (I used AI to look it up, but then also checked my notes):

“He who has tasted the truth is no longer contentious on its behalf.”

To which AI said -“Absolutely! That’s a great point.”

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I've written before about one of the stranger pastoral situations I encountered while serving in a fairly mainstream evangelical church.

There was a woman who was respected by many in the congregation as a “prayer warrior”, someone who was very serious about her faith. In a church with a Plymouth Brethren heritage, in other words, a background that included suspicion and some denial of supernatural religious expression, this woman was all about the POWER. Her request to me and to the church board was that she needed “covering” as she wanted to drive a demon out of a person in the church. The person in question was a young girl who at the time was, as I recall, around 8 years old.

I happened to know that the little girl’s mom had been going through a difficult time. She had lived a number of years struggling with addiction and had found herself, before her pregnancy, living on the street. She determined to find her way out of the depths of those struggles before her daughter was born. Part of this determination included becoming part of a church and this was a great blessing to her. The woman who wanted to drive a demon out of her daughter had been one of the many people who had helped her. By the time the request (which was denied) came, the mom was once again struggling. Some of the terrors of addiction were rearing up once again and there were relational challenges in her life as well. At this time the woman’s young daughter began presenting with more noticeable and sometimes difficult behavioural challenges. It was from these behavioural incidents, from a newly expressed kind of defiance, that I suppose the woman who had befriended the family decided that a demon was present and the way to help was to pray a prayer of deliverance over the child, a kind of exorcism.

There was, with the woman, a whole lexicon of belief that some of you might recognize. "Prayer warrior” was a relatively benign term in this lexicon. Other terms included “generational curse”, “spirit bond", and “entry point”. Entry point referred to one of the myriad of ways that evil or a demon could enter a person. Perhaps they read Harry Potter or played Pokemon. Maybe they participated unknowingly in some kind of ritual where the demonic was present.

Is this what Christians believe?

In my experience, this kind of fixation on evil, the building of an entire taxonomy of the demonic was present in some circles, but it was pretty much fringe. These days, it seems that for some “believers” there are demons under every rock, in every airplane and certainly in political gatherings and campaigns.

Last week I wrote about an article from The Atlantic that was published in July. The article called “The Demon Next Door” uses a particular example of demon battling in the United States as a way of considering how this particular expression (or distortion) of Christian faith is growing.

The article mentions political opponents being labelled as demons. It presents how in many cases this is not a metaphorical statement being made. JD Vance stated that he did not think that UFOs were aliens, but rather that they were demons. It has become quite fashionable, in some communities that call themselves Christian, to take up the consistent identification of demons. And, as one of the leaders in this movement says, “You can’t pet a demon.” In other words, there is no spiritual or moral mandate to love a demon. If the person who thinks or believes differently than you is a demon, then you don’t have to love them. It is a politically and socially convenient way of thinking. It requires no self-examination beyond a consideration of how right you are.

Have you heard about the woman, Whitney Lynn, who is building a social media following who calls herself an “Influencer evangelist”? Multiple videos (filmed by her or her partner) show her in settings such as the cabin of an airplane or an airport shuttle or a line-up at Chipotle. She will loudly insist on getting everyone’s attention and then pivot to what she says is a presentation of the gospel. For example, she might refer to how hot it is (this is for real) and follow that up immediately with reference to hell being so much hotter and forever and the only way to get out of that is to come to Jesus. I have seen maybe 5 or 6 videos of her doing this kind of thing and I feel like that is too many already. My reaction to her videos would have her label me a “cupcake Christian”.

One of the reels that stood out to me shows her walking outside and approaching a group of teenagers. She begins hollering at them about Jesus and hell. They let her know, with smiles and discomfort, that they don’t want to speak with her and that they don’t want to be filmed. One of them asks why she has to talk or act like that. She responds with immediate attack, loudly declaring that she is allowed to film. As one of the young women in the group moves towards her (with no evident aggression) she declares that she “binds the demons” all around the girl. When another young person tries to provide a moment to de-escalate, Whitney starts shouting “Hallelujah!” and then loudly says “Glory to God!” trampling over any word that the young people are trying to say to defuse the tension that has been created entirely by the influencer evangelist.

Here is a direct quote from the exchange. Honestly.
“It’s a free country. Thank you. Bye. I bind you.”

@whitneylynn123Brooo! This girl! They approached me while I was already out evangelizing and recording, so my camera was already on. They came over and started asking me what I believed. As you can see, I tried to go right back into street preaching, but they stayed there trying to antagonize me. Then the girl literally told me she was going to fight me and came at me twice. The boys held her back. That’s when I started praying and taking authority over what was happening because it was clear there was a spiritual battle taking place. Part 2 drops tomorrow. Whitneylynn.org, Igniteyourlightkidz.com, Spotify. #jesus #jesuschrist #baltimore #preach #teens

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In all of the videos that I have watched, any pushback that the woman experiences at all, no matter how friendly or calm, becomes occasion for her to proclaim that the gospel is being outlawed in America. For some reason she thinks that Christians (defined entirely by her) are the only ones who are not allowed to holler and yell and accost others verbally. She seems blind to the fact that anyone saying anything in this manner would be upsetting and would be asked to stop. She says that if Pride parades are allowed then what she is doing should also be allowed. You have to abandon reason to see this as a valid argument.

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There is a tendency to want to ignore this kind of thing. I get that. Most of the time this is perhaps the best way to deal with it. Help the woman towards some kind of self-examination. Maybe find a way to help her to see that her particular brand of Christian faith is actually a very small version historically.

However, the rise of a particular brand of Christian faith, often one that gives energy to nationalist movements is part of the fastest growing expression, interpretation of Christianity. This brand has a ton of crossover in otherwise mainstream expressions of faith and this brand has begun to consistently identify any people who do not share the belief as not only lost or unsaved, but in many cases as demonic. You might see how this is an easy leap to make. If you identify people who don’t believe what you believe as “lost” then how different is it to believe that they might be demonic. Either way, they are not like us and this must, in the way of believing, be remedied. They must convert (lost) or be done away with (demon). There is never room for the other. Such ways of faith are too small to put up with, let alone value, difference.

The interpretation of faith gives a kind of spiritual, religious sanction to not only persuade but indeed to attack.

In the Atlantic article, “The Demon Next Door”. The wife of the pastor, whose church spends a huge amount of time battling demons, takes up the fight. She attends “seminary” at a place called “Global Awakenings”. Her studies focus on demons and demonic hierarchy and she is taught to do what is called “spiritual mapping”. This includes driving around her neighbourhood and taking notes whenever she feels “uneasy”. This might be in front of a library or a local business or at a park.
Of course, the spiritual mapping is intended to lead to identification of the demonic.
And, as you can anticipate, the demonic is always expressed in things and people that the woman and the church disagree with or see as political or religious adversaries.
Perfect. Now fight them for God. In Jesus’ name.

This “commit-myself-to-the-battle” way of faith is often thought of as particularly strong or serious or “all-in for Jesus”. I find it to be most often juvenile, pre-adolescent. In human development we go through milestones when we realize that we are not the center of the universe. A child sees that there are other people in the world. Later they come to terms with the fact that those other people have emotions, a will, and desires apart from them. These desires, wills and emotions sometimes line-up with theirs and sometimes don’t. As we move into adulthood we come to terms with the fact that there are people, a lot of them, who don’t believe what we believe. If we stay at a childish stage we will see them as people who are simply misguided. If we are Christian and they say that they are Christian but they don’t believe what we do, then we say that they are not really Christian. If they say that they don’t believe in God then we might see them as dangerous, sinister in some way. This is not faith, it is stunted growth.

Maybe, especially if their politics are very different than ours, they are agents of evil.

My interest in speaking about this is not to try to change the radical soldiers of the movement. If that is even possible, it is not what I feel compelled hope for. Rather, I would like to invite you to consider your own beliefs, your understanding of Christian faith.

Do you believe that every person who has ever lived who believes something other than what you believe is bound to eternal damnation? Do you think that this is what Christians are supposed to believe?

Is it uncomfortable for you to watch videos of aggressive evangelism in that they remind you of what you heard about sharing faith or witnessing for Jesus? In other words, in what ways did this influencer evangelist simply take ideas similar to what you may have been taught and run with them?

Is a faith that is not fear based, not exclusionary, not demanding that others come to think what we think even possible? Could such a faith be more faithful, not less to the hope we have in Jesus? Could such a faith be faithfully Christian?

Without hollering at anyone that they are not Christian because they don’t think like me, I am convinced that hopeful, non-exclusionary faith is possible and that it is in fact what we are called towards.

When Jesus tells us what his command is, he says that it is to love one another as he has loved us. Love trumps belief.

This is the case for the influencer evangelist. It seems apparent that for her what is most important of all is proper belief and the only proper belief is belief like hers.

This should, if we have gone through basic milestones of human development be self-evidently juvenile. We USED to think that way. We USED to think that everyone thought like us or should. A faith that does not demand the acquiescence of everyone else is by definition more mature, not less, - and it has more, not less to offer the world. I happen to think that it also opens more, not fewer, possibilities for engagement with the transcendent or to put it in evangelical terms - meaningful, “quiet time encounters with God”.

Reflector Project is hosting a conference in Vancouver in November of this year. The working title is “What on Earth is Happening with Christianity?”. Our intent is to help one another drop exclusionary, fearful concepts of faith and to outline other faithful ways of seeing. One of the keynote speakers is André Gagne, Department Chair of Theological Studies at Concordia University. Gagne is a leading voice on the fastest growing expression (or distortion) of Christian faith and he will help us see what the movement is and how it is having a huge impact on the church and the world.
Other speakers will help us to consider the state of the church, some currents in Christian faith and understanding, and will invite us to a hopeful view focused on the future. Registration for the conference will be open soon.

I have indeed watched too many influencer evangelist videos and I haven’t even watched that many. I am confident that it would be next to impossible to engage in conversation with someone who takes this approach. Imagining such an attempt at conversation, I anticipate the following: the second I began to say that I hold faith differently I would be spoken over, shouts of “Hallelujah!”. It is probable that I would hear the words of how the demons around me, or by implication inside of me, were being bound.

In other words, there would be no interest in listening, in any kind of mutual change.
A faith that is closed to other people is not a biblical faith or a Christian faith.
It is also a faith that, while being shouted with bravado and “courage”, actually proves itself to be weak because it cannot even consider that it is worth listening to strangers. In Jesus’ name.

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Part One: When something is seen in the world of politics and culture that awakens a meaningful, religious consideration. (But it is the world of politics, so, if you want to skip to Part Two, scroll down to the paragraph that begins, “For much of the last year, I have been injured…”)

Some people are tired of hearing about Donald Trump. Some people are tired of hearing from Trump. Some people are tired of hearing criticism about Trump. Some people are tired of it all.

I have seen a tendency, particularly in conservative evangelical spaces, for some people to emphasize the idea that, though they are evangelical, they are not like Trump. Many Canadian evangelicals go to great lengths to point out that Canada is not the United States.

The fact remains that Donald Trump has a larger impact on the Canadian economy, on trade, on what Canadians feel about being Canadian, even on culture, than any other person in the world. He also has a huge influence on what evangelicalism means in Canada.

The fact also remains that without evangelicals Donald Trump would never have been President of the United States.

Here is David French, a conservative evangelical, writing in yesterday’s New York Times:

Donald Trump’s presidencies are the evangelical church’s unwanted gift to America.

You don’t have to rehash all the events of the last decade to make that case. A single statistic tells the tale: In 2024, Trump received 82 percent of the white evangelical/born again vote. He lost the rest of the vote by a whopping 18-point margin, 58 percent to 40 percent.

French’s column is written to address a recent poll by the Billy Graham Center Research Institute that found 48% of Gen Z (people now in late teens through late 20’s) adults said that Christian’s support for Donald Trump made them less likely to attend or connect with a church.

Whether or not we are sick of hearing about Donald Trump, it is the case that, for large numbers of people, Christianity, in general, and evangelical Christianity, in particular, has come to be associated with Trump and Trumpism.

I write this in Evangelically Departed because, as someone who was a pastor in the evangelical church for decades, I can see how the almost comic-book extremes and even vulgar tendencies of Trump and Trumpism have been present in evangelicalism long before Trump became President.

Trump, and many of his followers and supporters, quite literally demonize those who think or believe or vote differently than them. This might not be happening in evangelicalism as a whole, but, in my experience, this “othering” tendency was present, even in much more benign forms of evangelicalism.

How far is the leap from seeing others as people who need to be converted to people who need to be defeated? Have you felt discomfort around questions like this?

Some expressions and ideas that used to be on the fringe of evangelicalism have become more mainstream in the age of Trump. Podcasts and political commentary from popular content producers or even from political leaders, such as JD Vance, directly identify some political opponents not as ideological adversaries, but as demonic. What is called for, then, is not political engagement, conversation, argument, and compromise, but rather attack, battle, and defeat.

When you start by calling people “secular” (in any derogatory way), “lost”, and “unsaved”, you begin walking down a road that can lead to using “demonic” and “enemy” to refer to some of the same people.

To get a clearer picture of this, I highly recommend reading the article “The Demon Next Door” published in The Atlantic earlier this month. It describes a case in which a pastor felt called to battle what he identified as forces of evil in his community. His church took up the call to wage war against evil. This might sound familiar even to non-Trumpy evangelicals. The difference, in the case identified in the article, is that one such enemy was identified as the bookstore across the street from the church and the owner of that bookstore.

The most extreme manner in which to “other” those who are different than us is to identify us as on the side of good and God and them not only as on the side of evil and the devil but as a manifestation of evil and the devil.

This is, potentially, the most un-Christian thing that we can do. Jesus’ most direct teaching on evil was the parable of the wheat and the weeds1. The lesson of that parable is that in taking up what we identify as a crusade against evil, we wind up doing the work of evil. We cannot be trusted to properly identify or remove only weeds. We will wind up tearing up the wheat and won’t effectively clear the weeds.

Every “let’s defeat evil around us” voice in the evangelical Trump connected world has entirely left the parable of the wheat and the weeds behind. It has been clear to me that, for some time, such voices have found the example and teaching of Jesus to be inconvenient to the movement. They know better than Him. They can tell Him the way that the world really works. They rely on people not knowing that Jesus was about letting go of earthly power, not taking it up. They gladly use the name “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus”, over and over again in service of a political agenda, apparently, confident that people will not see that much of their agenda stands in utter opposition to everything that Jesus taught.

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For much of the last year, I have been injured. I have been in a season of injury, medical tests, surgery, and recovery. Not long after I started to feel, as they say, more myself again, I unfortunately was in a cycling accident. My surgeon had okayed me to cycle, but did so with the proviso, “Just don’t crash.” I hadn’t crashed outside on my bike for 15 years or so, and then, I did. It was rough, bruised ribs, lots of what is called “road rash”, but—thanks be to God—my back, which was where the earlier surgery was, seems to be unscathed.

There is that moment after an accident or injury, in which you do the first quick assessment of how bad it is. Is anything broken? How much injury, how much bleeding? After that initial assessment comes the longer term settling in and plan of remedy or treatment.

During a recent time away I read a striking book. It is by Maggie O’Farrell, the author of Hamnet. The book is called Land, and though some reviews I have read find the writing to be excessively descriptive, I think it worked. It was evocative or, as one review said, “cinematic”. It doesn’t hurt, for my evaluation, that the book has at its core a tension between a controlling, fearful expression of Christianity and a more open, accepting way of seeing the world. If you like interesting novels, you should read the book.

One scene in the book brought to mind my cycling accident. I was reading it as I nursed the significant wounds that resulted. A central character in the story suffers a terrible accident and, as he is awaiting emergency medical care, he is described by the author in the following manner, “As the sky above Tomás turns shade by shade, to purplish-black, the chainboys sit by him, damply telling him, it’ll not be long now, and Tomás acquaints himself with the pain.”

There it is—“acquaints himself with the pain”. The pain and injury were not expected or invited. As I healed from my own accident, I thought about how perfect the expression was. I had become acquainted with my injuries. They had become part of my body and my life and defined much of each day for me. The word “acquaint” was haunting to me. I mean that in a good way. Acquaint has a, somewhat, friendly tone to it, generally, but the character’s injury, and indeed my own, were not friendly at all. I was presented with a choice. I could deny the injuries, which would cause only more trouble, or I could acquaint myself with them. I could monitor and manage, change the dressings, and adapt my days in a way that might facilitate healing.

You may know what I am talking about. Even now, you may have illness or injury or uncertainty that you have not welcomed. There it is, though. It won’t let go of you. Part of the healing, of moving forward, of coming to terms, is becoming acquainted with the pain.

All of this, in how my mind sometimes works, brings me back to “The Demon Next Door” article. I don’t mean to equate a person with an injury. Instead, what I want to consider is how anything outside of ourselves, a different way of seeing, a person who believes differently, an unexpected difficulty invites us, by their very presence, to become acquainted. The word itself—acquaintance—implies some kind of mutual knowing or interdependence that is admitted or accepted. That which came from the outside may not have been welcomed at first but, by some grace or providence, it opens us up to know more of the other, and ourselves, and God.

Conversely, labelling something or someone as demonic implies that, at best, we should “know our enemy”. This is different than becoming acquainted. It is why the way that Maggie O’ Farrell described the injury was haunting to me. It invited me to attentively and prayerfully compile the injury and pain of my last year in a manner that opened up the possibility that healing might be spiritual as well as physical.

The evangelical church of my experience did not call me to become acquainted with much in this kind of way. Missions and evangelism, sharing faith, and fulfilling the great commission used getting to know people in an instrumental manner. Get to know people so that you might be able to evangelize them. Get to know them so that you might “lead them to the Lord”. The possibility that knowing them might change you was not held out as an outcome worthy in and of itself. Sometimes, it was even declared as dangerous.

Let me say this from my Christian faith. I hope you’ll be able to hear it.

I want to be influenced by my non-Christian friends. Actually, they can be as positive an influence, sometimes more so, on me than my fellow Christians. Even if this were not the case, I can’t think that I am loving as God loves if I love only to get a result.

I don’t know how you can truly love someone without being open to being changed by them. I do not believe that God sees us in an instrumental manner. God truly sees us, loves us as we are and invites us into dynamic relationship. Labelling someone as other or lost, inadequate or spiritually threatening means love is not required, only strategy, only battle.

If you label a bookshop owner across the street to be a demon then you can convince yourself that they are not to be loved. In fact, in service of loving others, even of loving God, you will convince yourself that it is a religious duty to defeat them. Then, if you are a pastor or a leader, you can enlist others to your crusade and you can sanctify the very spiritual weed pulling that Jesus told us not to do or else we would be accomplishing the work of the adversary.

In my mind, this is anti-Christ. It is why religion, so often through the centuries, can become sinister and terrifying, oppressive. It is why it is easy for storytellers and movie makers to depict the church as the real evil time and time again through history. It wasn’t the faith part of it. It was the power and control and labelling enemies and dangers part of it.

If you insist on talking about evil, let me say this: If you want to identify demons, know that, throughout history, real evil and destruction has almost always been proven to be the work of those who are almost gleefully identifying the demons all around them.

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On occasion, I used to include in sermons a line that I would usually choose to censor.

“If you read the Bible cover to cover and you are more of an asshole when you are done than when you started, you have not really read the Word of God.”

The invitation in the sentiment was not to learn how to become more of an asshole by reading the Bible. Rather, it was to consider the concept that, in hopeful Christian theology, the Bible is “The word about the Word”. It is possible to read the Bible and not encounter the Word of God. In Christian faith, Jesus matters in biblical interpretation and in life. If, as you become more religious, you become less Christ-like, then your religion is far from Christian. From the current vantage point, considering the state of Christianity in many places around the world, it seems that the becoming-an-asshole branch of faith has picked up a great deal of steam and energy. As I look around, I see some movements and some churches and some leaders who appear be saying that being an asshole is virtuous and that you can’t be a real or strong Christian otherwise.

We can admit it, right? Some people were just better and nicer and so much more likeable before they became religious.

My thinking along these lines was prompted this week by what has, so far, been my favourite article that has anything to do with the FIFA World Cup. The article is in the Times of London and the, somewhat offensive and obviously cheeky, headline reads, “If We Pray Like a Gringo, Then We Play Like a Gringo”. It is about the failure of the Brazilian National Football team to advance beyond the round of 16.

Apparently, some people in Brazil have an explanation for why their team has been knocked out of the tournament. According to the article, it’s “the growth of evangelicalism over Catholicism”.

Over the last few decades there has been a trend in Brazil, and many other countries, of people experiencing a kind of conversion from Catholic Christian faith to Evangelical Christian faith. In many of these places, as in Brazil, the dominant form of evangelicalism is neo-charismatic Pentecostalism, a highly experiential, holy-spirit centered expression which tends toward quite particular moral and political ways of seeing.

Here are some stats from the article:

• When Brazil last won the World Cup, in 2002, almost 80% of Brazilians described themselves as Catholic. That figure dropped to 55% in the latest census.

• In 2002, 15% of the population described themselves as evangelical or Protestant, now it is more than 25%.

• Of the current national team, 20 out of 26 players are evangelical Christians.

There is a fantastic description noted from one online commenter, “Brazil was better when their players were womanizers, drunkards and slightly out of shape. In other words, when they were behaving like Catholics. Evangelical Protestant sterilisation has flattened their ball, ruined their samba and obliterated their swag.”

Amazing!

I feel ill-equipped to weigh in on whether Catholics or evangelicals are better soccer players, but the article, aside from making me smile, brought to mind some thoughts about religious conversion and identity.

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If you grew up in or around evangelical church culture, you are familiar with some of the many conversion slogans that were employed. Common were statements such as “God loves you too much to leave you as you are.” Does that sound nice? It does not sound nice to me. Let me explain.

I heard these kind of statements often in my years as a pastor in an evangelical church and they were, clearly, seen by many people to be innocuous or loving and inspiring. There were entire religious campaigns with names like “Power to Change”, the assumption being that right from the start we are all bad.

When I heard those slogans, I heard them as judgmental and dismissive, at best, or manipulative and self-serving, at worst. These statements are still used by religious marketers today. They function as a kind of hook—“God loves you, BUT…”, God loves you, but you are bad and deficient and—surprise—we can help. All you have to do is become part of our community, listen to what we have to say, and really, to be safe, you should sign up to volunteer on our Serve Team and start giving us some of your money.

I have seen how the same kind of statement is employed by very different kinds of people and ministries. One type is a kind of therapeutic, sweetly nice, and comforting presence who says this kind of thing and then writes countless books. If you just purchase the books, you will feel better. Another type is the angry or swaggering presence that is constantly telling you what is wrong with the world, and with you. Thank God, however, that you are listening to them now because they are courageous—we often confuse being arrogant with being courageous—and strong. They’re not afraid to tell you who is terrible or wrong. Which is pretty much everyone but them. But don’t despair, they can help you change because, before you heard what they had to say, you were terrible, too. In fact, you must make sure that you keep listening to them, like and subscribe and attend and tithe, because without them you will be terrible again. If you do happen to part company with them, by your own choice, it is often the case that this break is explained as an indication of your falling back morally or spiritually.

As it happens, at the same time that FIFA World Cup has been dominating the sports world, I have been part of a book club that is discussing The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.

The book is not overtly religious, but it offers a much more hopeful way of seeing than the God-loves-you-too-much-to-leave-you-as-you-are approach. My consternation at slogans and worldviews like that is that they start with deficiency. The statements appear to be about God’s love but they are mostly about our deficiency. They are bleak statements. This way of seeing then becomes endemic in religious systems. As a pastor, I think that these kinds of statements actually hinder us from seeing God.
You NEED to be part of the movement or the church—or one similar—or else! Or else you are lost, or damned forever, or misguided. Churches and leaders begin to set themselves up as indispensable.

The Christian truth is God loves you as you are. Full stop. If we right away attach any kind of religious program or service or plan to that statement then we betray the love as conditional. If love is conditional then it is not Christ-like.

“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” is not a once upon a time statement in the Bible. Rather, it is a truth in time and a truth above time. Jesus does not love us only for what we might become. If we even insinuate this then we diminish the strong and eternal love of God.

If you, as a parent, say to your child, “I love you too much to leave you where you are”, you might be communicating a kind of derision more than a kind of love.
“I wish you were different.”
“There is something wrong with you because you don’t believe what I believe.”
“Why do you have to dress like that?”
“Can’t you be more like…?”
Loving someone’s potential is a failure to love the person right in front of you.

It is much different to simply say, “I love you. No matter what.” This is not weak. It does not mean that you are blind to what it means to be a loving and helpful parent, or friend, or pastor.

The reason that I brought up The Correspondent is that there is one character in the book who seems to embody this unconditional kind of approach. The main character in the book is an aging, cantankerous, judgmental, sometimes caring, and often funny woman. The character who embodies a hopeful love is a neighbour of hers. He is also aging and his gentleness is much more visible than hers. One participant in our book club spoke of this man and said that he never forces himself. He never insists that his neighbour change or even accept his kindness. He is not blind to the sharp edges of her character but he does not say, “I love you too much to leave you as you are.” That would be judgmentalism masquerading as love. He simply sees her. He seems to see her beauty and the spark of life in her. He seems, also, to see her sorrow and pain, even before he knows what she has been through. In religious terms, he sees the image of God in her.

Interestingly, this kind of love, this unconditional love, is far from weak. It is a weaker love that, right from the start, insists on change. It is a stronger love that, in the Christian tradition, sees the other as made in the image of God NOW, not only later. The image of God is evident now just as much as it will be later. You are not made in God’s image more when you are religious or when you undergo some kind of conversion.

The Incarnation, God becoming flesh in Jesus, is not “for the creation of a possibility”. This term, from theologian Karl Barth, is a critique of a kind of self-centered Christianity. The incarnation and sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus did not simply create a possibility. The statements that say, “God loves you too much to leave you as you are” actually put the focus on us, not God. There is an “unless” to them. Unless you do something, unless you change, unless you take up what we have to offer then nothing really happened.

God’s love is better than that.

Conversion in a frame of hopeful faith is not about morality, it is about awakening to the truth that you are known, known by God as made in God’s image. It is awakening to the truth that you are not alone in this, that everyone, even now, before some moral reform, is made in God’s image.

The love of the neighbour in The Correspondent is exactly the kind of love that provides a security and strength that enables epiphany and change. It, however, does not insist upon it. This is what makes the change possible. If Theodore Lübeck (that’s the neighbour) can see Sybil Van Antwerp (that’s the main character) in this light, then perhaps Sybil Van Antwerp can come to see herself, and others, in such a light as well. This is the heart of redemption. Theodore Lübeck’s love is invitation, not coercion. So much of evangelicalism depends on coercion. “Believe—OR ELSE!”

The most intense example of religious coercion is the holding onto the concept of eternal conscious torment. Medieval concepts of hell are troubling not only for theological reasons, but more so because as long as they are present they are dominant.

If you say “love me or else you will be damned forever” it makes the damning more central than the love. The one receiving love has to doubt whether the love is real as long as the threat remains. The one who is loving has to doubt whether their love would be received if it existed entirely without the threat.

As long as coercion remains as a religious tactic we will not get near to being able to conceive of the height and the depth and the width and the length of the love of God.
There is a current form of religious coercion that is friendlier. Pastors say “Friends...” with a slight head shake and then address their congregations with a kind of religious and moral disappointment. This is easier to stomach, at times, than the old time fire and brimstone, but it is just as weak. It is pathetic and feeble love, not confident enough to exist without disappointment.

Telling someone that “God loves you, but…” or that “God loves you so…” bases the whole realm of faith on deficiency. Builders of religious empires need deficiency. That is how they gain your allegiance and make their money.

God doesn’t need deficiency.

God is love.

God’s love is unconditional. There is no proviso or stipulation to it. And, in the end, unconditional love opens up truly transformative spaces without coercion, without fear.

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Whether you have been following the World Cup or not, you may have heard of some of the ways in which religion has shown up. One manifestation of faith has been the prayer circles that have formed after some games. In some instances, the circle is made up of players of one team. In other instances, the circle includes players from both teams. These circles subsequently give rise to some kind of social media shout-outs, often comments about how wonderful it is to see athletes demonstrating faith in such public ways.

What do you make of all of this?

If you grew up in evangelical circles, you are aware of the almost automatic approval and even celebration of public displays of faith and devotion. Celebrities and athletes were affirmed for saying something like, “First of all I want to give all glory to Jesus…” in response to a reporter asking a question about how the game went or about the success of their recent movie or television show.

Were you among the many who celebrated such responses? Do you still?
Is it assumed that, if you are a Christian, you will have a positive reaction when you see such displays?
Have you felt something less than positive, perhaps conflicted or even negative?
Does that mean that you are less faithful? Or more?

It can be a curious and, at times, uncomfortable feeling to respond differently to some event or statement than the majority of your church or religious group. The very fact that you are reading Evangelically Departed might mean that you have occasionally found yourself saying “Well, hold on a second…” to something that is assumed to be Christian. If someone really loves those post-World-Cup-match prayer circles and has their faith bolstered by them, is it appropriate or helpful for you to express whatever consternation you may feel?

It is an important aspect of being part of a faith community, the ability to appreciate and even be grateful for how the faith of other people is edified and encouraged by things that don’t do the same for you.

So, maybe I can say it now—I don’t really love the post-game prayer circles. I don’t get why they take place on the field. They could take place away from the cameras, but there are, apparently, some reasons why ensuring public display is optimal for those participating.

You might recall the passage on prayer from Jesus’ longest sermon (the one on the Mount). As recorded in the book of Matthew, Jesus says, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”1

I am not aware of Jesus mentioning some kind of exemption to this direction in the case of professional sports or the FIFA World Cup.

Jesus was not always great at “using his platform”. There are actually multiple cases of Jesus, after healing someone, instructing them not to tell anyone about him. Can you imagine that?

There is a section in the collected sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers called “That Nothing Should be Done for Show”. Here is an example from the section:
“They said of Abba Arsenius and Abba Theodore of Pherme that they hated reputation and praise above everything. Abba Arsenius avoided people likely to praise him. Abba Theodore did not avoid them, but their words were like daggers to him.”2

I think that my consternation about public displays of religious devotion is heightened in times when Christian faith has been hijacked by movements of politics and power. When this context is present, even well-meaning actions can be marshalled towards divisiveness. Authentic religious devotion can be turned into a symbol for a government or a political or cultural movement. Politics as spectacle. Faith as spectacle. In the end, this is often about power.

However, just because I have a response of reservation to the prayer circles does not mean that I don’t see how they are encouraging to other people.

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In the many years that I have been preaching in church, something occasionally happens that helps me through this tension. After a service, when I am greeting people, someone might gleefully remark on how much they liked the sermon. They might say something like, “Thank you so much. I really liked the sermon today. I especially liked it when you said…”. The trouble is what they say that I said is not, in my mind, accurate, at all, to what I intended to say in the sermon. In fact, they are making a point in opposition to what I said, taking the sermon to mean exactly what I hoped it would not.

Should I correct them, then? Sometimes, I suppose.

I don’t want people to think that I believe the opposite of what I believe. However, more frequently, I do not correct their impression. I do not seek to encourage it, but I, more or less, let it be. If they were to hear me preach consistently on other Sundays, then they would more clearly, I hope, see where I was coming from.

In the same way, even as I feel some reservation about the post-FIFA-World-Cup-game prayer circles, I can find my faith encouraged by something I don’t really like all that much. More specifically, I can find my faith encouraged by the people doing the praying.

One of the social media accounts that regularly features the prayer circles is called “Ballers in God”. My, often too quick, skepticism and sarcasm can be ignited by such names. I am not proud of this. When I searched for more information on Ballers in God I found two articles in The New York Times sports page, The Athletic. One focused on the recent prayer circle phenomenon and another offered a biography of the person who started Ballers in God. His name is John Bostock and he is a soccer player, himself. He was identified as an up and coming superstar when he was younger, but, like many players, his career has found him moving from team to team, country to country, league to league.

Here are some things that Bostock said that are noted in the article,

Whether you work in an office, on a building site, whatever…we all need the same things. We all need community, we need help and encouragement, we all feel emotion. But in this game, one minute you are on the highest of highs, the next you are…not.

My faith is the biggest thing in my life. It is who I am. As a kid, I was trained to think one way. I hear kids now say ‘football is life’. I get that. I understand it. But if football is life, what happens when it is gone? Are you dead?

Coming to know Jesus Christ…the Bible says he is the same yesterday, today and forever. He does not change. Football will always move around. A team will do well, it will do poorly, players will come and go. But my faith has been consistent. It is a rock I have built my life upon. Jesus changed my life.

And Mark McKenzie, a player for the United States who has led prayer circles at FIFA World Cup 2026, said that he hopes to pray in a way that is “as unifying as possible… to try to spread a message of love, to spread a message of peace.”

When I hear reflections like that my skepticism and consternation find some correction.

Perhaps, one way to think about how to most lovingly and charitably respond to the prayer circle phenomenon is to consider the prayers after matches by another team - that of Morocco. Many of the players on the Moroccan team move into the Sujood after the match has ended. This is the Islamic posture of prayer and prostration that is often taken up by people in formation. It is an act of prayer and humility.

If we are hoping to have a faith that is not defined by “us and them”, we will seek to hold gratitude not only for the Christian prayers, but for the prayers of other faiths.

There is no doubt that spectacle can be tempting. Maybe Jesus’ words about not praying in public can help us to see. However, I find myself grateful for the athletes and their apparent desire to consider what ultimately matters.

Enjoy the World Cup.

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Many years ago, when my sister and I were living with my dad, who was a single parent at the time, I remember he brought a book home called Character Sketches. What I did not know was that the book was produced by an organization called the Institute of Basic Life Principles which was founded and led by man named Bill Gothard. You may have heard the news that Gothard, now 91 years old, was hospitalized and is in a coma after a recent heart attack.

Hearing the news, I recalled my dad bringing that book home. I remember a generally positive feeling. The book was a series of sketches of animals with corresponding writing on what lessons we could learn from them. I recall a chapter about bees, something about how bees communicate. I don’t remember the spiritual lesson.
My dad never really got into the Character Sketches series in any serious way. He never seriously followed the path of Bill Gothard and the subsequent Basic Youth Conflicts and other material.

I grew up amidst a lot of family struggles, challenges, splits, and trauma, but I did not grow up influenced in any major way by Gothard’s way of seeing the world and by Gothard’s way of distorting Christian faith. I find myself, decades later, being thankful to my dad for rejecting the teaching of IBLP. I carry a sorrow for those who did grow up in a Gothard influenced home. I consider, now, where the pressure might have been coming from, in my father’s life, to listen to Gothard and what it might have cost him that he resisted that pressure. I recall that not long after the Character Sketches book showed up, my dad seemed more interested in a book called Pscyho-Cybernetics. He had read the book about self-image and recommended that I should speak about it for a fifth grade public speaking contest. I did and I advanced to regional finals and came second there. I suppose this is the beginning of me becoming a preacher. Blame it on Maxwell Maltz and not Bill Gothard. Thanks be to God.

The Institutes of Basic Life Principles became huge and had enormous influence in many evangelical circles. At its heart was a highly regimented view of relationships and power. God was above all, the man (husband) was below God and the woman (wife) was below the man and children were below the woman.

The world of IBLP and Bill Gothard became a kind of subculture within a subculture. If you did not grow up in this you can find out more about it in the documentary Shiny Happy People (available to stream on Amazon Prime, you can watch the trailer here) which is largely about the well-known Duggar family, but presents how their view of the world was dominated by Gothard and his teaching.

Below is an image from IBLP of what I think was officially called “The Umbrella of Protection”, but came to be known more often by the title “Umbrella of Power”.

Even as I see the image now I react wondering at the sheer scope of theological distortion and psychosis demonstrated in the image. If you were to give the assignment, “Draw an image that depicts the most unChristlike way of seeing God and humanity” you might well get this result. Ideas central to Christian faith; the incarnation, the self-giving of Jesus, are entirely absent from this grade 3 level understanding.

Aside from the obvious emotionally and socially juvenile concept of human relationships depicted, the image of God is more satanic than Christian. God winds up being the one from whom we need protecting. Is not God above all? Apparently not in this image. A split is formed in God in that Jesus protects us from God’s wrath, from a kind of terror. Aside from that, it would seem to me that only the one umbrella is necessary in the image as it is drawn. The man/husband umbrella and the woman/wife umbrella as depicted serve no protective purpose at all. What rain is the husband umbrella protecting anyone from? None, as it turns out.

Something in my dad, all those years ago, realized that the whole Gothard thing was not worth believing in, not worth following. I grew up knowing my dad as having real strength, as being a loving and caring father. He was not always sure of himself and experienced, at times, intense self-doubt, but having him as a dad solidified my suspicion that the people who were actually strong were not the ones who insisted on their own way or those who sought to impose their views upon others.

It won’t surprise you to hear that Bill Gothard became, what many people refer to as, a disgraced leader. He had multiple accusations of sexual harassment, assault and abuse against him from over 30 women. He eventually resigned from his position of leadership. As Pope Francis said, moral rigidity is always hiding something.

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Do you have people in your life who like to tell others, perhaps yourself included, how to live? What is it about those people? In some cases, perhaps, they see themselves as being helpful. What does it take to think that if only people thought like you and believed like you and acted like you that that all would be well in the world? Bill Gothard built an empire on his certainty that he knew just how people should live.

In my 30 plus years of experience as a pastor, I have come to see that the people who insist that they know what others need are more, not less, messed up than other people. This cuts across psychology, theology, and belief.

For example, the people who are most convinced that others need to be more open to charismatic physical healing have just as much, often more, emotional, psychological, and even physical illness than other people. The ones who demand particular hierarchies of power in families or churches are usually, in my observation as pastor, the ones who are most insecure, least able to have people follow them without some kind of coercion, insistence or threat.

The giveaway that Gothard’s way became more cult than subculture was the rejection of any possibility that it might be wrong or that there were other perfectly acceptable ways of seeing the world. If something is true, it is true whether you insist upon it or not. Or, as Isaac the Syrian of Nineveh (7th Century) said, “Someone who is considered by people to be zealous for truth has not yet learned what truth is really like; once he has truly learned it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf."

It is one thing to consider why people like Bill Gothard are like they are. It is another to consider why people so willingly follow. I suppose fear is often a motivation, or a sense of belonging.

Some people who have long ago rejected he harshness or prejudice or fear-based way of seeing from their past, nonetheless, still find a feeling of emotional security in returning to music or memory of decades previous. This might be relatively benign nostalgia or it might be demonstrative of how abusive systems can hold on in ways for decades or indeed for a lifetime. Abusive systems, like that of IBLP, directly or indirectly communicate that you are only ever safe within them and the distorted feeling of safety that they use as currency can linger for many years.
Abusers almost always cast themselves as protectors. To build an entire social/religious structure using an “Umbrella of Protection” is to build a system totally dependent on fear casting itself as loving.

I have commented before in Evangelically Departed that there should be theological and religious DNA kits (here’s one such post). You think that you discover a lot about yourself when you find out your ancestry? How much more could you learn about yourself when you find out where the beliefs that you grew up in and around came from? Who determined them? What were the possible motivations?

In your religious upbringing, can you recall leaders or teachers or preachers saying to you something along the lines of “Well this is what we believe, but there are other Christians who see this very differently?” Or, were you simply taught that the only acceptable way of belief was the way that your church or your pastor or your denomination believed?

I would hope that anyone who listens to me (that’s a scary thought) would know that, while I have ways of seeing, while I hold theological views, I don’t insist that you have to think like me or even that my way of seeing is always the best way. The more that I see preachers and leaders insisting on their way or (and this would be hilarious if it wasn’t so damaging) conflating their view with God’s view, the more that I lose trust in those leaders and what they are saying.

That is why the Mark Driscolls and Bill Gothards of the world look, to me, like little boys. When little boys walk around with an overly self-assured and largely ignorant swagger, it can come off as cute. It’s not cute when men, who are supposed to be grown-up, do the same thing. We wouldn’t put that swaggering little boy in leadership of a church or a nation or a company would we? Yet here we are.

The word “pathetic” comes from the root pathos, which points to some kind of suffering or emotional disturbance. It would seem, to me, that the way in which such leaders struggle with their own disturbance of self or emotional suffering is to insist that they know just what is wrong with the world and the country and everyone else—and you, and me, I am quite sure. I don’t begrudge the toddler level of emotional development on display. I just don’t think that we should ever want to emulate it or consider it as worthy of our allegiance. To think that we would ever uphold it as an example of success or strength might say as much about us as it does about the little boy leaders.

What comes to be most evident, if you are willing to look, is not the system or worldview that such weak leaders are perpetrating, as garish as that may be, but their own need for emotional, psychological and spiritual healing.

My advice, for what it’s worth, is to not spend a lot of time listening to the bluster and pathetic certainty of such leaders. Even if your only interest was their healing, such healing can come only with the collapse of whatever empire their fear has built.

May it be so.

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If you have not, here is, briefly, what happened. It has been a practice over the last number of years for professional sports teams and leagues to have a day or night when they recognize Pride in support of LGBTQ+ people and groups. This practice, while common, has, in some leagues, been curtailed recently in response or reaction to conservative cultural and political backlash. Some athletes have also felt emboldened to take a stands against the stance that they feel they are being forced to take. Amidst this tension, there have been stories, some real and some clearly internet driven fabrications, of players on teams pushing against one side or the other in some kind of claim of personal expression of personal belief.

Recently, three players on the San Francisco Giants, during Pride Night, protested. Pride is only one thing that Major League Baseball recognizes. There are also days to highlight military sacrifice or to recognize the contribution of players in the struggle for integration. There are days when every player on the field wears the number of Jackie Robinson. For Pride Night, the team logos on the players hats were stylized with a rainbow design. The protest of the players, who, I assume, felt that Pride Night was some kind of insult to their belief, was to add to their hats the chapter and verse marking of a Bible passage. This particular passage was Genesis 9:12-16.

If you are wondering, this passage comes after the famous Noah’s ark flood account.
It describes God issuing a covenant to never again wipe out the people of the earth by way of a flood. As a symbol of this covenant, God points to a rainbow in the sky. When people see the rainbow, they are to remember that there will not be another cataclysmic flood ever again.

I won’t go into detail about what the passage might be saying about God and about humanity in the context of Jewish and of Christian religious texts. The observation that I want to consider is a practice, a kind of tactic of cultural battle that has been taken up by evangelical culture lately. The tactic is a kind of “That’s not yours - it’s OURS!” It is attack and hatred masquerading as insight and understanding.
It’s also worth considering that Christians have had zero problem through history in co-opting the symbols of other faiths or worldviews. Do you put up a Christmas tree in December?

Consider that the passage is not one of those normally cited by people who, for one reason or another, think that it is Christian to oppose rights for gay people. Rather, it is a passage that gives a particular religious consideration of an exceptional and beautiful phenomenon. It is lovely for that. We could give the meteorological answer to the question, “Why rainbows?” or we could give a reason that speaks to concepts of the relationship of God and humanity.

Of course, the explanation for the symbolic act of writing a verse in protest of a symbolic act is simply some form of saying, “I am a Christian and as a Christian…”, but what is actually happening is “That is not yours - it’s MINE!” It’s a well worn tactic of myopic religion or cultural exclusion cast as an innocent or even loving gesture.

Consider the backlash to the words, “Black Lives Matter”. What was it that fueled the quick, and somewhat belligerent, responses to issue some kind of play on the words, seeking to neutralize them while claiming to simply be expressing the same kind of sentiment? “You say black lives matter, well I SAY ___ lives matter!” It’s a way of sanctifying prejudice or bigotry. “You say that the rainbow is a symbol of acceptance and love that has been part of your emancipation from fear and judgment? Well I say that it is mine! It is a symbol of MY FAITH (even though it was clearly Jewish before it was in any way Christian) and indeed a symbol of my particular view of faith that I believe says you are less than fully acceptable.”

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I am part of a book club this spring/summer that is reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. The book is a narrative written in letters and emails to various people. By way of these letters, we learn about the life and character of one particular person. Sybil Van Antwerp is older, opinionated, often gratingly aggressive and judgmental, prone to say wildly inappropriate things. It’s a great book that has become a bit of an “it” read for individuals and for book clubs.

In an interview with the New York Times, Virginia Evans fields a question that is frequently posed to her. The question is along the lines of what she thinks about Sybil Van Antwerp. The character is upsetting and offensive in many ways, but she is written in a way that invites sympathy or understanding. In response to the question, the author said, “I met her, when she arrived, I thought, okay, this is the way she is, everybody’s the way they are for a reason.” The book finds its energy, largely, in the invitation to the reader to consider why Sybil Van Antwerp is the way she is. The larger hope is that we might do the same for one another.

So, back to the baseball players who protested Pride Night. Why are they the way they are? Why do they think that what they are doing is particularly Christian? As a Christian myself, I happen to think that what they are doing is particularly un-Christian. So, who gets to say?

In the first session of our book club, my contributions took a turn that I was not really expecting. I mentioned a few times that what I felt when I was reading the book brought up feelings of what I felt when I was a child and young adult. That is, in many ways, especially the offensive ways, Sybil Van Antwerp was like my mom. My mom would have (and did) said many of the offensive things that Sybil Van Antwerp said. My mom was able to charm people all through her life and she was often generous and helpful like Sybil Van Antwerp could be. Also, like Sybil Van Antwerp, my mom had a very troubled relationship with her own children, including me.

I shared a couple of examples with the book club of incidents that could have been in the book. One that I did not share was of a day when my mom demanded that I, in my late teens at the time, obey her by inconveniencing another person.

It had snowed a lot that winter and the street we were living on had steep driveways that became mostly useless and somewhat dangerous by the cold and ice and snow. People in the neighbourhood thus dug out parking spots on the street and parked there, but there was not quite enough room for all the cars.

One of my chores (is that still a word?) was to shovel the snow on the front stairs and to shovel out parking spots for my mom and step-dad’s cars. Much to my mom’s consternation, a neighbour (somewhat elderly and therefore unable to clear a parking spot for themselves) had parked in one of “our spots”. When my mom arrived home she was livid, first assuming that I had not done my job and then, when I protested, turning her angst to the neighbour. She told me that I had to get a snow shovel and move some snow, clear another spot. Further, and clearly more important in her mind, I was to take the snow I shovelled and pack it around and onto the neighbour’s car so that they could not get out of the spot. I refused. My mom was now angry at the neighbour and at me. She complained to my step-dad next and he wound up shovelling snow to encase the neighbour’s car. Though my recollection is that he moved just enough snow to tell my mom he had done what she said, but not enough to in any way block the neighbour’s car.

I don’t recall my Mom ever asking me to be good. What I mean is, my mom, I think, did not think that people were good so why would she ask me to be a good person in the world? She did ask me to behave. That is different than being good, and a child will grow up with some kind of confusion to overcome when these things are put at odds.

There was a kind of opposition to the world that my mom carried, even as she could be engaging and friendly. I often wonder at what abuse or tragedy led her to see the world as she did. Laden down, somewhat, by the misogyny of the era, like so many women from her time, she used her looks to get her through the world. As she got older this became more and more difficult though she never stopped trying. She fought. She fought misogyny, often, by taking up the very tools it employed. She became powerful in many ways, fighting for her children, myself included, always making sure that we were provided for. It is clear to me now that the fight she took up on our behalf wound up costing us so much more than we could imagine.

Who told my mom that this was the way to be in the world, that this is what it meant to be human? Who told the protesting baseball players what it means to be Christian?

I hear the words of Virginia Evans, “Everybody’s the way they are for a reason.”

And now, even though I wince at what Sybil says or what my mom said and did, I begin to be able to see their humanity. I can see the humanity of the baseball players, even though I will say that I feel what they are doing is un-Christian.

I happen to be taking a course right now on Evagrius Ponticus. It’s been a while since Evagrius has been around, he died in 399 AD.

You are likely familiar, however, with some of his writing and thinking. He was key in conceptualizing what eventually became known as the Seven Deadly Sins. Be careful about casting him as a religious bigot, however. His talk of passions and demons is not an “us and them” talk. Rather, he outlines some early understanding of emotional and psychological thoughts that can assault us and distort how we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we find our humanity. Evagrius calls these assaulting thoughts demons. This is a very different idea than what the word demon conjures for most people today.

Amidst the fascinating thoughts occasioned by Evagrius, is a warning about absolutes in life and faith. Absolutes become seen as important in religion when we misunderstand the nature of Christian faith. That which we declare as absolute becomes unholy, an idol. The purity culture of 1990’s evangelicalism is a clear example of this. Stay with me for a minute. As David Goa, the instructor in the course, re-iterates, Christian faith is not about morality, it is about epistemology, the theory of knowledge. That is, it is not about right and wrong, it is about how we know. You can hear this in biblical references to a “depraved mind” or to the “renewal of the mind”. Further, we only know in and through love. Love is what renews our minds. Moralism is, thus, a form of anti-Christ. We become unable to encounter the other, unable to encounter God, unable to know God or one another because we hold onto our precious absolutes. As David Goa says, “All sin should lead us to tears. It is not a misdemeanor requiring judgment, but a tragedy requiring healing.”

I don’t know the protesting baseball players. I assume that they think they are “standing up for Jesus” because some pastor or leader told them this is what it looks like. I assume, also, that there are many Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, who have celebrated their protest and congratulated them for their supposedly faithful action.

I see what they are doing as tragic. It reminds me of the healing that we need in order to see one another. My reactive self sees their faith as a juvenile faith of absolutes, an “us and them” that sanctifies division and fear and tells people that being Christian means standing against other people. However, I hope to check myself. My self-righteousness is easily ignited and my insistence on what I consider holy and Christian can wind up cutting me off from others and from myself.

So I pray - Dear God, show us your mercy. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Post-Script:
In a class session subsequent to when the above was written, we were directed as students to some words of Macarius the Egyptian spoken to Evagrius Ponticus in the 4th Century.
Macarius said that when we keep in mind injury done to us by people we destroy the faculty of memory in our souls. When we remember the injury done to us by demons (negative thoughts pressing on people) the faculty of memory remains intact.
This is a concept that helps me to love my Mom. Macarius’ words might have an ancient, almost scary sound, but in contemporary terms they mean this.
If we recall over and again how a person has hurt us our memory and our mind become distorted. If we recall the hurt done to us by someone who has themselves been assaulted by negative even evil outside thoughts and trauma, then we can acknowledge the hurt while hoping for freedom and redemption both for ourselves and for the one who has hurt us.
Not bad for people who had no phones, or internet or AI or Substack or church as we know it.

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If you grew up in evangelical church culture, you are, no doubt, familiar with the concept of “quiet time” or a “devotional”. Evangelicals were (still are?) encouraged to read the Bible daily, spend time in prayer, to give focused attention to God. It might well be that your recollection of this is positive.

Such daily discipline became a significant part of my life before I was a pastor and in the decades that I worked in evangelical churches. In some ways, I feel like I found myself in these times. What I mean is I felt most grounded, as if those times of prayer and meditation (some evangelicals would not use that word, some might) steadied me and called me to an awareness of God’s transcendent kindness at the same time.

Like anything else, if I sensed that leaders encouraging me to this spiritual practice were using coercion then what was a positive quickly became a negative from which I recoiled. However, when my skepticism, my curiosity, my desire for lasting meaning and even a sense of humour were allowed into the space of the quiet time, then there was a strengthening that was, for me sometimes, most needed in the mundane, upsetting, and all too human context of church life.

So, if you can take the time, I would like you to consider watching a news story from CBC in Canada. This was on The National newscast last night. The reporter visits a recent gathering of Turning Point USA. TPUSA is the organization founded by Charlie Kirk who was shot and killed in the fall of 2025. Charlie Kirk is credited with leading many young men into the Republican/Trump fold. Since his death, the organization has pivoted somewhat now that it is led by Kirk’s widow Erika. The news story reflects this shift.

My wife Jennifer and I watched the news story together and both of us reacted repeatedly with a “Is this for real?” kind of look, even though we are both well aware of the political and religious currents of totalitarianism in the United States these days.

What seems most striking is the number of women in the story who think that the right to vote should be taken away from women. A 21-year-old social media influencer—800,000 plus followers. That is what gets you to be a speaker at a large faith/politics convention in many evangelical spaces. Maybe be careful who you listen to—argues that, because women generally vote on the left of the political spectrum, she supports denying all women the right to vote, including herself. She is willing to give this fundamental right up because doing so would ensure a conservative, and to her, Christian government.

Consider the logic and the kind of power/celebrity dynamic that this 21-year-old social media influencer demonstrates in her words to the reporter, “Now is that a hill I’m going to die on and run for office and try to complete? No. Um. That’s not my main message. That’s just one of the opinions that I hold because I think it would be better for society.”

What I found scariest in the news story were the words of a woman who was not nearly as young as the social media influencer. When the reporter asked her why she was so convinced that the government needed to be conservative/Republican she said that it was because she did not want a political party telling her son that he could cut off his penis. Those aren’t even the scary words. The scary words were in reply to the question about women having the right to vote. This not so young woman replied by saying that she too would give up her vote to ensure a conservative government, “My husband is the head of the household. I am the neck and we work very cohesively together so I would imagine if he was voting on behalf of our household I would be fine with that.”

The reporter followed up with another question which occassioned the words that I found scariest of all.
Reporter, “Do you think your daughter should have the right to vote?”
Interviewee, “I’d be okay if she didn’t because I also know that she is going to marry a biblical man. That they would also be in line.” (You may be asking along with me, “What is a ‘biblical’ man?”)

Is this for real? How did we get here?

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I mentioned off the top of this post that I would point to more reasons as to why you should pre-order Kristin Kobes du Mez’ new book. Kobes du Mez writes a compelling, very interesting, if at times upsetting, historical account of how we got here.

We can see how we got to a place where a 21-year-old social media influencer can be platformed as someone who should influence politics and social policy and religious understanding. Kobes du Mez skillfully describes how celebrity culture impacted evangelicalism revealing how without this there would be no 21-year-old social media influencer platformed at a huge convention. I appreciated how Kobes du Mez was willing to identify this celebrity culture on the left as well as the right. This willingness helps me to trust the historical account more.

I often say that left-wing fundamentalism is not a helpful response to right-wing fundamentalism. When reading the book I thought, as well, that progressive celebrity culture in faith and politics is not the best response to celebrity culture in Christian nationalist circles.

In the larger “how we got here” analysis, however, I found the end of the book to be insightful, provocative and somewhat healing. The book is not short and almost the entirety of it is made of history. Kobes du Mez is an historian, after all. In the end, though, the book is for such a time as this.

The conclusion points to current day trends, names, and movements. The chapters of the book ask us to consider that particular past. You will learn about a past of which you may have been unaware. If you grew up evangelical in any time between the 1950’s and the 2000’s, you will recognize some names in that history and will likely discover political and religious power alliances of the time. This might give you a new perspective on your growing up, maybe even on some of the things that you saw only as a positive, things like “quiet time” or “spiritual formation”.

Kobes du Mez’ conclusion is compelling to me because it shows how we got to where we are by means of an evangelical ecosystem that was not sinister and that used some consistent components of faith and a particular view of spiritual growth to shape people and culture. Kobes du Mez quotes author Robert Callahan in saying that there was no “brainwashing”, but there was “mentoring and discipleship”. “There was no hypnosis, but there was prayer and worship and quiet time.”

As Kobes du Mez points out, theologian Johannes de Kock expresses something similar in recalling his upbringing in conservative Afrikaner religious culture in South Africa. She says that when de Kock witnessed deportations of immigrants from the United States in 2025 he was reminded of the “virus of purity” that was the engine for apartheid policy in South Africa. He was raised to believe that a good Christian was a good Afrikaner and spiritual formation became part of this structure.

Here is how Kobes du Mez quotes de Kock, “Invoking family values, officials tore families apart. Paying lip service to religious liberty they claimed the right to discriminate.”

Finally, Kobes du Mez points to the work of Wade Mullin, a researcher into abuse in evangelical circles. Noting how evangelicalism used apparently benign or even positive ideas like spiritual formation or “quiet time with God”, Mullin says, that words like “shepherding”, “disguised pressure as guidance, coercion as protection and compliance as faithfulness,” making, “what is dangerous appear holy, what is protective appear sinful and what is abusive appear loving.”

By some grace, or by my own, often contrarian, personality, the “quiet times” in my own life did not constrain me to follow the culturally evangelical script. In fact, they did the opposite. I came to let go of may evangelical ideas BECAUSE I was reading the Bible and praying. In times of quiet, solitude, and prayer I came to find strength to speak against what I found unChristlike in local evangelical expressions. This was enlivening to some people and upsetting to others.

Listening to God, seeking an awareness of God’s presence should not be instrumentalized by political and cultural movements. The “revivals” claimed in the evangelical hagiography of Charlie Kirk were, and remain, politics masquerading as faith. Consider what leaders of these “revivals” might say if a new convert said, “I found Jesus, so I am becoming a Democrat.”

Turning Point USA, as I and no doubt many others see it, was never about turning people to Jesus. It was always about turning people to a political party. That this determination has come to the point of people being willing to abandon democracy is astounding, but if you read the history it might not be as surprising as you would have thought.

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Belonging is a word of comfort and consolation, right? Of course it is. To be told that we belong, that we are not left alone or excluded, is to be recognized and acknowledged. It can be bring an alleviation of fear. It can allow us to steady our stumbling gait or to breathe deeply when feeling uncertain or afraid.

Most of us can remember times when, as a child, we thought that we were lost. I can feel the angst in me as I recall losing my mom in a department store and being unable to find her for long enough that a stranger helped me to the customer service counter and an announcement was made over the store sound system. Until I saw my mom, I felt alone in the crowd of people. I needed to see the one who represented my place of belonging.

I think of it from the other perspective as well. I took my two sons to a Seattle Mariners baseball game when they were 7 and 5 years old. We were in a crowded washroom and I was keeping a close eye on them, but, somehow, Matthew (5), in a quick second, exited the other side of the sink area from Aidan and I. Then we couldn’t find him. Looking around, back to the seats, back to the washroom. It felt like such a long time. It was, maybe, 10 minutes. That is a super long time in such a circumstance. And then I found a help centre, a little desk area with stadium staff. And there was Matt. He had tears in his eyes. I still feel it.
I still feel a sadness over the truth that somehow, as a parent, I lost my child. I never want that to happen again, even as being a parent is so consistently about letting go.

Most of the time we don’t want to be alone in the world. I don’t mean the blessing of solitude or time to ourselves. I mean that we don’t want to feel abandoned or forgotten or excluded. This is where the word belonging finds its consoling energy.

It has become a word of marketing and sales for everything from fitness classes to church: A place where you belong. My skeptical nature kicks in when I hear such slogans.

Mostly the marketing seems to work. However, if you have been part of a high control religious group or if you have been in a controlling or abusive relationship or if you grew up in an enmeshed family system, then when you hear the word “belonging” you might cringe a little.

You belong—to us.
You belong—to me.

This is belonging as threat and control. Once these lines of control are established, the prisons that are built can have thin or mostly invisible, but impenetrable, walls.

Evangelicalism, as it has existed over the last one hundred plus years, has offered multiple expressions of both the good and the bad of belonging. I have heard from many people who having come out of emotionally damaging, high control religious systems, nevertheless, look back with some form of nostalgia for the community. They felt that they belonged—in a good way—even as they felt a kind of terror over being controlled and condemned. I think that this emotional nostalgia often contributes to hanging on to damaging theology because to abandon such theology would feel like another step in abandoning the community.

Abuse does so many terrible things. The horror of it is that it often uses something beautiful, like belonging, as the very weapon of terror and control. Emphasizing belonging, right from the beginning, to a child or to a new member of a religious community, can be wonderful and energetic, but it can also be the genesis of control and abuse. Soon the person being told that they belong becomes aware that such emphasis can also carry a kind of cutting warning, You belong (so don’t even think about not conforming) or You belong (but it is possible that you will be abandoned if we find you to be deficient or different).

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I am thinking about this because this coming Monday, Reflector Project (the non-profit I help to run) is hosting an event in which we will consider ideas of autonomy and community in decision making. Our speaker is a retired neurosurgeon who has also completed a PhD in law focusing on dispute resolution. Richard Veerapen has also worked with Indigenous communities as a health and social development director. He continues to teach in Public and Global Health at SFU in Burnaby, BC and at the University of Victoria.

The topic of the upcoming event arose from a conversation that Richard and I had some months ago. What does autonomy look like in decision making, particularly in regards to medicine and treatment? What does it mean that we are individuals, but at the same time are part of social systems that matter in our lives?

For so long, in evangelical circles, I heard decision making spoken about as if the primary consideration was right and wrong. This might be true in some circumstances but most often the lines are not that clear. Taking hard stances on issues often means that we treat people like ideas rather than as people.
I repeat, over and over, something that I have seen to be true in my life and in the lives of many parishioners I have known over the years, “We do the most damage in life when we are right.”

I had lunch this week with Richard and his wife, Kiran, who is also a physician. We spoke about the upcoming event and I mentioned that, as a pastor, I have seen that in decision making it seems that we want to know that we can make decisions for ourselves, but we also do not want to be abandoned. We want to be autonomous, but not abandoned. We want to be allowed to be who we are without being ignored or condemned. The most attentive and loving people in our lives know how to hold both of these ideas in mind as they care for us.

Richard and Kiran spoke to me about the decision making they go through as doctors. Richard described a scenario:

You are operating to remove a cancerous tumour. This tumour is close to the brainstem, connected to areas crucial for various functions. He told me that surgeon’s heart rates, during even a 6 or 7 hour surgery, are often elevated to the level of rigourous exercise. Toward the end of the long surgery, you note as a surgeon that you have been able to remove the tumour almost entirely. There is just one small piece left, a half of a thumbnail. Removing that piece brings risks, including loss of some function or facial paralysis. As a surgeon you have the patient in mind. You also have the family in mind, the people who are a supportive and caring part of the patient’s life. You imagine the conversation:

Family member: Did you get all of it?
Surgeon: Almost all of it. I was unable to remove one small part as the risk was too high.

Or
Did you get all of it?
Yes. I was able to remove all of it.

Or
Did you get all of it?
Yes, but unfortunately…for the rest of her life…

Richard told me that he thinks a skill that would be fantastic for surgeons would be to be able to diagnose family systems. It would help in caring for the patient and in helping them decide what treatment to pursue. It is not simply an illness or injury that is diagnosed, it is a patient and, even, a larger social system of which they are a part.

If we are to be honest about the religious systems (evangelical or otherwise) in which we may have grown up, we can acknowledge that so-called discernment and apparent belonging could be more cudgel than consolation at times.

True spiritual discernment is never just about us as individuals. It is also never just about what is right morally. It is about who we are, and who we are in our humanity is always connected to others.

Hopeful faith holds neither individual autonomy nor group identity as a deity. If God is personal then God allows (even celebrates?) my personality as well. The most trustworthy spiritual guides in my life always seem to invite and even enjoy me being me. They smile at me, even when, or especially when, I frustrate them. I can be a lot. I know that. They let me be me, while at the same time never making me feel excluded or abandoned.

Hopeful faith has this about it. It is life giving. It is consoling. It recognizes the blessing and possible distortion of what it means to be told that we belong. When we feel the security that comes with healthy belonging we find the freedom to be who we are even at times in opposition to the larger group.

For this, I can say in freedom—“Thanks be to God.”

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I have read James K.A. Smith’s Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark, which is a wonderful, engaging book about the limits of knowledge in life and faith. It draws heavily on the tradition of Christian mysticism which Smith outlines well, even if you are new to the rich history.

I have started a book on wisdom by the American philosopher Ryan Holiday, Wisdom Takes Work. It is lovely to see important virtues discussed and presented in ways that can reach beyond an academic or religious audience.

Since I am unable to ride my bike, which I have done pretty much every day for years, I have borrowed a book from a friend on the current superstar of the cycling world, Tadej Pogačar, Tadej Pogačar: Unstoppable. It’s good if you like the world of cycling and a kind of hagiography of sport. There is not a lot of tension in the book, pretty much just - “This guy is almost superhuman!”

From reading a newspaper column, I heard of a book that sounded interesting to me so I downloaded an audio version. The book is called, Making a Career in Dictatorship. My interest is not aspirational. That is, I don’t intend to learn how to make a career in dictatorship for myself. Rather, the big idea in the book, from extensive historical research by the authors, is that authoritarian regimes often depend on pressure exerted over mid-level officers/employees to hold on to power. It is not necessarily some grand, well-thought out ideological plan that maintains power, but rather pressure exercised over mid-level (even mediocre) masses of people who wind up “detouring” from expected or expressed values and practices in order to protect their own immediate well-being.

Finally, and most significantly for the context of Evangelically Departed, I have been reading Kristin Kobes du Mez’ new book, Live, Laugh, Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. It is fantastic. It is fascinating and enlightening and upsetting. Kobes du Mez is an historian. You may have heard of her very well received book Jesus and John Wayne: How Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, published in 2021. As that book looked largely at concepts of masculinity and their impact on evangelicalism and society, Live, Laugh, Love takes a similar historical lens to concepts of femininity. I received an advanced copy of the book, which comes out in September. I highly recommend pre-ordering it.

The word “secret” in the subtitle is important. The book reads like something of an exposé. As someone who was a pastor for decades in an evangelical church, I knew something of the history described, but did not know of many of the connections that Kobes du Mez brings out. The revelation of the secret shows that what became accepted and assumed in evangelical circles. For example what it meant (or means) to be Christian, what God wants of us, what we are to think about power, authority, gender, and culture, were never inherently biblical or godly. Instead, the stances and moral perspectives of all of the above were highly curated by politics and by empire building and money making.

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Do you remember Christian bookstores?

I am Canadian. If you are American and you are reading this, let me say that our Christian bookstores were generally not as bad as yours. Ours had books. As a young Christian serious about my faith, I frequented Christian bookstores. I think that my first point of contact was in order to buy contemporary Christian music (CDs and cassettes). As I grew in faith, I became interested in the books. Even early on I noticed that many Christian bookstores did not have a lot of books and often featured a few very popular titles. Usually I found that the more popular also meant the less thoughtful. Books that were featured in display tended to be ones along the lines of those that Kobes du Mez highlights; new packaging of principles of spiritual or moral success or a novel or series from a well-known Christian publisher.

In the American Christian bookstores I saw more figurines and flag trinkets than I did books. Was it possible to find a commentary on a book of the Bible in such a store? Likely not, but there would be Precious Moments figurines.

There was a Christian bookstore in my neighourhood, North Vancouver.

Even here, in godless, secular (I can’t stand either of those terms) North Vancouver, there was a store called Sign of the Fish. For those who know the city it was in the lowest block of Lonsdale (now a high end neighbourhood). I loved visiting the store and spent a lot of money there. They sold some of the trinkets as well, but they also sold books—and not just Christian self-help books, but actual commentaries and thoughtful books by qualified, educated authors. As it turns out, the woman who owned the store for quite a number of years was a member of the church that I would eventually pastor.

Oh, the good old days!

Little did I know that the time in which I frequented Sign of the Fish was the setting of the sun of an era. Sign of the Fish has not been around for decades.

Kobes du Mez mentions that there were, largely in the Mid-west, Deep South, and Sunbelt of the United States, roughly 3500 Christian bookstores. These stores were a vital part of disseminating a particular view of faith and culture that presented itself as the only truly Christian way.

I have been thinking about this in regards to the book on dictatorship that I have been reading. The authors present an argument that is compelling, both in description and by data, that any totalizing or authoritarian system depends on masses of people feeling pressured to maintain its power.

What were those masses of people in evangelicalism?

As a pastor, I observed that the places where some ultra-conservative, moralistic, theologically questionable views of Christian faith were propagated were in, the often gender specific, Bible Study meetings led largely by laypeople. The people who led such studies tended not to be theologically educated, other than in the tradition and bubble of their context. Their knowledge was supported and largely made up of ideas from the ecosystem that Kobes du Mez describes. The lay leaders were often caring and generous, giving of their time and energy, and they could pretty much be counted on to tow the evangelical party line. In my experience, the presentation of differing ways of seeing or believing either did not happen at all or happened only in order to set up a way of refuting difference. This was often true all the way up the theological ladder to places like Regent College in Vancouver, which I very much liked and appreciated.

Kobes du Mez, in her book, mentions totalistic or totalizing worldviews. There is no doubt in my mind that evangelicalism was and remains a totalizing way of seeing. Kobes du Mez quotes Robert Jay Lifton who, in the 1950’s described “how absolute purity, rigourous obedience, and ritual confession created one of the most powerful efforts at human manipulation ever created.” Lifton was describing totalistic political regimes but later pointed to fundamentalist Christianity as another example. He did this because he saw that fundamentalist (evangelical) Christianity functioned as a closed system that explained to its adherents how to evaluate everything in the world. It functioned as a closed system, “perpetuating a division of the world into insiders and outsiders. Participants were recruited through evangelism, bound through mutual confession and accountability, and controlled through self-monitoring and hierarchical lines of authority.”

As I have said already, I highly recommend pre-ordering a copy of Live, Laugh, Love. I am grateful for the book and for Kobes du Mez work from a place of faith. That is, I have somehow also sensed that Christian faith is better and more open and compassionate, less fearful and more hopeful than many of its evangelical presentations.

Did you know that what was presented to you as “Christian” may have been largely about politics and marketing? Did you attend some of those Bible Studies in which perhaps well meaning foot soldiers of the movement dutifully presented the party line? Did you suspect that they might not be telling you the whole truth? If you attended such Bible studies, did you internalize a kind of enforcement system, giving responses and answers according to what was expected more than according to what you actually felt or thought?

The way I see it is that books like Kobes du Mez’ do not tear down Christianity. Rather, they expose a shoddy, but highly popular, theologically thin scaffolding that has hijacked a good deal of Christian expression in order to promote one political and social view while making a ton of money for those leading the charge.

As you read books like Live, Laugh, Love may you not only appreciate how the work of a good historian can reveal to you things about your own history, but may you be inspired to move forward in hope.

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In my experience as a pastor, I have known some people who seem to have a love for God that is beyond belief, somehow apart from it.

What is more important, belief or love?

The fundamental way of understanding in evangelicalism has been clear on this question. In the evangelical world belief trumps love. As long as this is the case, may the church continue its decline.

You pray a prayer, accept Jesus into your heart, you say what you believe and then you are saved. There are Bible verses that can be made to support this formula. There are many more Bible verses that put love as supreme.

What if our supposed belief, our statements of faith, are clanging gongs and resounding cymbals. Go to some evangelical websites and read such things. They often sound very clang-y to me.

Did you get the scripture reference? I Corinthians 13 gives us the answer to the question of whether belief or love is more important. It answers the question by saying that belief that can move mountains, or speak supernatural languages, or lead to holy martyrdom is actually just annoying noise without love.

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to how we might speak of God in a culture of disbelief. What if disbelief is okay? I might ask Paul, the writer of I Corinthians 13, “Okay, I get what you are saying. Love is important. So, let’s go back to the belief thing for a moment. Imagine a scenario where someone has a lot of love, but not a lot of belief. How do you feel about that? Or, since you fancy yourself somewhat of a spokesperson, can you ask God how God feels about that?”

Does God damn a profoundly loving, but mostly non-believing person?

Now, switching from asking Paul to asking you, reading this—if you love God, how do you know that you love God? Are you religious enough to give the Bible-y answer—“Well, Jesus said that if you love him you will do what he commands.”

So, I reply to that, “You Bible person you…exactly, but he did not stop there. He said that if you love him you will do what he commands AND THEN followed it up by immediately saying that his command is that we love one another.”

Love of God is demonstrated by love of people.

I have read The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky a number of times (impressive, huh?) and I have underlined and resonated on a lot of passages in the book. I came across one of those passages in a post by Skye Jethani, an author and co-host of Holy Post Media, recently. They are words spoken by the lecherous, but nonetheless insightful, father in the novel, Fyodor Karamazov. Dostoyevsky clearly saw himself in the figure of Karamazov. He wrote in such a way that you likely see yourself in him as well:

The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.

Russian novels are known for being long and each character has 5 or 6 different names depending on social and professional context. They are a lot. But, they tend to be funny as well; humourous as they make the hardest points. You get what is being said above, right? You get it because you feel it. We so often judge ourselves by our intentions while judging others for their actions. We intend to love. We like to think of ourselves as loving, we might even say that we love someone as majestic as God. Perhaps, we become caught up in spiritual ecstasy. And then we are jolted out of the religious cloud by the cutting bark of the neighbour’s dog, yet again, yet again; and then we curse that idiot animal as he barks stupidly at the sky and nothing else.

Universal truths are revealed in particular realities and actions. The less particular we get the more loving we get.

“Love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength…”
No problem. I am praying right now for the peace of the world and for friends to be healed. Would that Jesus had stopped there, but He did not.
“…and love your neighbour as yourself.”
F*#!

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I have another favourite quote from another favourite writer. Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a novelist who reveals theological truth. Karl Barth is a theologian who reveals truths of humanity.

Here is one of the things that Barth said about love. I think of it often when I think about the love of a parent for a child, but it is revealed as true in any relationship.

We cannot insist too sharply that we do not love for any external reason, with any ulterior motive, or in the extent of any design or purpose. The one who loves does not want anything, except to love, except more fully and seriously and perfectly to give themself, to enter into a relationship with the loved one. If they have any other plan or project, however noble, it means that their love is betrayed and ended.

So, I have a confession—it is not new to anyone who reads Evangelically Departed or to anyone who knows me. I wince at anything that emphasizes religious division— “us/them”, “the lost”, “believer/unbeliever”, “are they a Christian?” —that kind of thing.
I am well aware that many churches are built upon these divisions whether they emphasize them in damning or in friendly ways. Sometimes I wince more at the friendly ways because they are creepier. “We love you! Wouldn’t you like to become one of us?”

I find more faithful the expressions that emphasize what is common about our humanity. I mention this because this matters when considering the importance of love over belief. Evangelicalism is built upon the supremacy of belief. Largely, though I am everyday grateful for my Christian faith, it is this supremacy of belief that I wish to depart from. In the leaving, I find I can speak of God more faithfully, not less.

I can consider this amazing possibility. What if my “non-Christian” (whatever that means) friends and loved ones show a love for God? What if they (even unknowingly) are following Jesus one stated command? “This is how you will know that you love me. That you love one another.”

Is that enough?
Is your evangelical/religiously-conditional mind now telling you, “It can’t be enough. Without belief we are damned.”
Did Jesus say, “If you love me you will pray the prayer?”

Tomáš Halík, Catholic theologian, in The Afternoon of Christianity, asks, “Who is an ‘authentic believer’?” He answers the question right away by saying, “One who loves.”
He further points out that God is not an “object”, but rather transcends and is present in everything at the same time.

Our love for God, then, ought to be thought of as disconnected. You cannot love God by being caught up in worship, though being caught up in worship might well be a good and gloroius thing. You cannot love God by having a faith so impressive that it moves mountains, though such a faith is truly impressive. You love God by loving God’s world, the people, the creation—each of them and all of it.

Now to get really churchy, this is the love of Jesus. Not that God stayed at a distance, loving as an idea. Rather, that hopeful Christian faith sees in the incarnation that God became flesh and loved us in our humanity before and apart from whether we believed.

Karl Barth says that Jesus is the “one true human”. Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s character and shows us the blessing of what it means to be human. This is the blessing of loving others, without design or purpose. He loves from who he is, wanting nothing but to love.

Evangelicalism gave me a lot of gifts for which I am grateful. These are things that helped me to see God and to see the world in particular ways. It also gave me some things that have prevented me from seeing God. I think that one of those unfortunate things is that it told me that what God wanted from me, primarily, was belief. (My faith has become, I think, more faithful, as I have let go of that restraint).

An honest assessment of much of evangelicalism is that it maintained (and maintains) that you are blessed for right belief and damned for wrong belief or non-belief. It seems to say that the first thing God wants from us is belief. What God really wants from me, though—I know this and can feel it in faith and see it in life—is love. God offers me love and calls me to love.

Belief is much less impressive, though the people trying to build cathedrals of belief or church empires so often rely on lines defined by belief to get you to join the club.
What if belief is not for God, but for me, for us? What if it is belief that, in some ways, helps us to see the primacy of love?

Think of your “unbelieving” or “once they believed” friends or loved ones. What if the way that they love others shows a love of God that is even more profound than your desire that they believe what you would like them to believe?

Maybe you can see God in that.
May it be so.

Two quick postscripts:

Referring back to the Dostoyevsky quote…I am still laughing my face off at “In 24 hours I begin to hate the best of men.”
Amen. Glory glory hallelujah!

and

Evangelically Departed will be off for a few weeks.
I am going in for back surgery in a few days and have been told that I must take the recovery seriously. I wrote a while back about my MRI experience. Perhaps God will bless me with some spiritual ecstasy amidst the indignity of being a patient.
One can only hope—and pray, and believe—or love.

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Do you believe in supernatural gifts such as prophecy and speaking in tongues?
Many Christians have and do. Some Christians do not, believing, instead, that such gifts have ceased.

Do you believe in the rapture? Do you know what that is? It’s freaky. It includes faithful Christians disappearing from the earth all at once and the non-believers being “left behind”. Some Christians consider the rapture an obvious part of Christian belief. Most Christians in history had no concept of the rapture. It was outlined as a belief in the late 1800’s and, even since then, the majority of the Christian denominations and expressions have not held it as important or not believed it at all.

Do you believe in transubstantiation? Do you know what that is? It is the belief that, in communion, the bread and the wine become the actual body and blood of Jesus. This belief has been held by a huge part of the Christian church in the world and rejected, at times with great hostility, by other portions of the church.

Do you believe that Christians should observe the Sabbath? This seems self-evident to most Christians, but there have been Christian movements in history that have considered Sabbath observance to be pre-Christian, not something that should be part of the faith.

Evangelically Departed considers the world of evangelicalism in the relatively recent past. If you grew up as part of an evangelical church, you likely consider the beliefs of that church to be what Christians believe. In fact, if you said “I am a Christian”, you may have meant that you believe things that evangelicals believe. You may not even have known that evangelical belief was not and still is not, in many ways, what most Christians in history have believed.

“Evangelical” is not a denomination. It is not a church. Rather, evangelicalism is a movement with roots from the late 1800’s (in other words, very recent historically) that has impacted many, but not all, Christian churches in the world. Evangelical belief and culture can be seen in many non-denominational churches. It is prevalent in Baptist churches and has impacted churches that might not even use the tag evangelical. This includes some Presbyterian churches, some Christian Reform churches, some Anglican (Episcopalian) churches, etc. etc. etc.

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Recently, I gave a presentation for Reflector Project on “A Short History of Evangelicalism”. Many of the people at the event were from an evangelical background. Some spoke with me afterwards commenting that they had assumed that to be “Christian” was to believe what evangelicals believed. They seemed consoled by the fact that some of the tensions they were feeling in their faith were relieved, somewhat, when they heard that some key evangelical beliefs were certainly evangelical but not necessarily what all, or even most, Christians believed.

For example, the notion of personal, individual salvation. You may take it as obvious that this is a core Christian belief. The idea that you “ask Jesus into your heart” and that salvation is primarily about your sin and repentance and the idea that “Jesus died for your sins” is prevalent in many churches. Some form of this belief is present in many non-evangelical Christian circles, but the emphasis on the individual is particularly evangelical and not always helpful or even not, always, Christian.

Theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who articulates a theologically hopeful Christian vision wrote that, “‘I accept Jesus as my Saviour’ diminishes the gospel into an introverted and self-centred individualism.”

Do you see the truth in that? It might help you in faith. You can appreciate and be grateful for the evangelical emphasis that there is a personal aspect to salvation while also seeing that this emphasis can cost a lot, can actually diminish what salvation means.

Many Christian concepts of salvation have had a sense of the personal regarding salvation. That is, we are included in the redemption that is in Jesus, but it is never only individual and is lessened, turned inwards, when considered in such ways. Hearing the word “salvation” can and perhaps should give us eyes to see beyond ourselves to humanity and creation and to Jesus reconciling of creation and history.

From the early days of evangelicalism, key figures in the movement began referring to it as traditional, even original, meaning the pure form of the faith. Below is a clip of an early evangelical superstar. Billy Sunday was an ex-baseball player who preached like he was hurling fastballs. I think that he would be a devoted social media content producer if he were alive today. Even in the 1920’s, he clearly worked hard on his image, his look, his style, his delivery, and his message. Part of his message was that his way of belief was the “old-time religion”. Perhaps, it was in some ways, but mostly it was an innovation, both culturally and theologically.

Evangelicalism made the common move of rejecting a way of belief from the past and then declaring its new system of belief as faithful to the original. It then said that any further change or movement was unacceptable or even heretical.

So, then, the average church-goer, hearing the words of an evangelical preacher would have at least two things in mind:

1. What is being preached here is Christian.

2. Any questioning or difference or further movement is by definition non-Christian.

Both of the statements above are troublesome.

If the idea of encountering the presence of God or hearing the voice of God brings you to think only of your particular tradition then there is at least some idolatry present.
What I mean is, God must be beyond our definitions, beliefs, and constructions.

God is not an evangelical. Thanks be to God.
And God is not Christian Reformed. (or a Catholic, or an Anglican, etc.)

Whatever system of belief was or is familiar to us as in Christian faith can be seen to be helpful for our understanding and spiritual growth, but it should not be taken to be the whole truth.

God is bigger than our belief. At least I hope so. Don’t you?

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A local GP, Dr. Maryam Zeineddin, was the key person/connector. Dr. Zeineddin, has started a wellness brand called Zili Care and the event was under this brand’s umbrella with corporate sponsors including TD Bank, RBC Wealth Management, and The Vancouver Art Gallery. The heart of the message of the evening, voiced in different ways by the various speakers, seemed to be that wellness and health is not simply the absence of illness. Our wellness is social, communal, and connected with nature. The calls were to move towards ABC, “authenticity, belonging, and care”, and to realize our connection to one another and to the natural world. The structure of the event was clearly intended to emphasize the message.

For me, there were parts that seemed to bring about a recollection of evangelical church events or of being present at studio recordings of well known talk shows. The emcee, a morning show anchor from a local news television station, started the event by confidently walking onstage to the accompaniment of loud and upbeat music. She motioned to the crowd and most people understood that the prompt was to stand and, if you were so inclined, to “whoo whoo” a little or a lot. It was, in some ways, the start of a lifestyle television show and, in other ways, the exuberant worship music in an evangelical church before the pastor gets up to speak.

The emcee’s opening words could have (with minor tweaking) been taken directly from very many church gatherings I attended in the past. “We are SO glad that you are here. Every one of you is here for a reason and everyone who needs to be here is here” (That kind of thing). There was reference to “how you got here, where you have come from”, which meant not what mode of transport, but rather, what emotional, psychological or spiritual space you were carrying with you when you arrived.

At an evangelical event it might be pretty much the same language with the insertion of God into the mix. “Every one of you is supposed to be here. God has brought you here and knows that you needed to be here for this…” There may have been some drama added such as, “It might have been a battle for you to get here today. That just shows that (either or both) God wants you here/the devil tried to stop you from being here.”

From there, both in church circles and in wellness circles, there is a move to why it matters so much. What will be presented and discussed is life-changing, world-changing, even. Now, to be clear, I quite liked the event that we recently attended. It extolled human connection. It invited a consideration that we are not who we are alone. It reminded us that disconnection is central to so many of our ailments and that trauma experienced in the context of our relationships is at the heart of much of our alienation, mental health challenges, and addiction. It offered what I feel as a hopeful concept of wellness, one that is not about individual measurement and social media comparison, but rather human connection.

So why did it feel like church at times?

Some of it, for me, is that it was making “we know” statements. In no way am I against this, I simply see the parallel between wellness and church. “Here is the truth. We know this. If only we live this way, things will be so much better. This is the way to wholeness or peace or fulfillment.”

At the wellness event, I happened to be in agreement with most of the “we know” statements. Many of them were presented as things that are known from scientific studies, but that we often fail to act upon. For the most part, then, the event was what it set out to be. It brought people together, offered comfort and knowledge, and called for a way forward.

So, knowing can help, but what are the limits of knowledge?
Is knowledge enough?

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Philosopher James K.A. Smith has a new book out with the title, Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark. It is about the way of unknowing.

Early in the book, as a good philosopher would, Smith quotes Aristotle, who said that all people, by nature, desire to know. Our lives are often defined by knowledge and what we can assume is that, if we know the right things and act accordingly, our lives will be experienced as meaningful and even fulfilling. Smith presents the possibility that knowledge is not enough, not adequate to the task of helping us see and embrace our humanity. The way forward might not be knowing more or knowing better, but rather entering into the dark.

I mention this because Evangelically Departed often finds its way to people who have, in some ways, departed from previous places of knowing. You may have, in the past, been part of a religious community or church that largely defined how you saw the world. In moving away from such communities or churches there is much that can be experienced as loss. There might be a loss of consistent community, a loss of commitment to a group of people that gave definition to your weekly schedule, a loss of confidence that you had somewhere to turn. There might also be a loss of knowing.

Religious communities and churches often tell you what to know and how to see the world. You might agree or disagree with this, but the “we know” statements can come to exist as anchors in how you see. You either accept and agree or react and disagree, or anywhere in-between, but the bold statements dictate much of how you see yourself and others.

Unknowing means having nothing to which to tether your agreement or disagreement. It can feel like being lost. If you have moved away from a particular expression of faith, then you may experience a kind of displacement. In turn, you might seek out other things to know.

And there is never a shortage of people willing to tell you what they say you need to know. As Gary Saul Morson points out in Minds Wide Shut, “It has proven eerily correct that ideologies promising the greatest freedom and equality have produced the greatest despotisms.”

Morson identifies something else that you may have seen, the act of feeling certain about something is very appealing to some people. You may have seen such people move from one way of thinking to a completely opposite way, from one political or religious persuasion to another with vigorous commitment. What seems most important is to be all in for the knowledge they have now even if they were committed to its opposite before. In Eyes Wide Shut, Morson and his co-author, Morton Shapiro, speak of a Christianity of assertions. Assertions is another way of identifying “we know” statements. They point out that, for Martin Luther, Christianity was defined by assertions while Erasmus maintained that we need not “unwavering assertions” but rather provisional conjectures.

But what Wellness influencer is going to say, “This is one way of thinking, but it might not be the best way”? What pastor is going to say, “This is how we interpret this passage, but you should consider how other people or denominations see it”?

Unknowing takes provisional conjectures much deeper. It is a letting go. If you have moved away from one way of seeing and from a church or community that defined how you saw the world and yourself, it can be tempting to seek what feels like the solid ground of new assertions. Maybe, however, the way forward is the way of unknowing.

There are many helpful guides in this forest of uncertainty. In Christian tradition, there are people James K.A. Smith speaks about in his book, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and others. Many people before me and before you are familiar with unknowing.

I have just started reading Smith’s book, but it is not too far in where he asks if Aristotle’s assertion was not entirely correct. Maybe every person desires by nature not to know, but rather to be known.

In Christian faith, is it possible that God is present in your life beyond your belief or assertion? What happens when your belief falters or your assertion meets its limits? What happens when your knowledge is not enough?

A friend is putting together a few presentations for Reflector Project, the non-profit that I help to run. He has entitled one of these presentations “Somebody that I Used to Know”. You might remember the Gotye song from 2011. The song is written as a kind of break. “Now you are somebody that I used to know” spoken the context of a relationship that has ended, a kind of declarative, “I don’t even know you anymore.”

For my friend’s presentation, the title, instead, prompts a looking at himself in his younger years, deeply involved in evangelical church life and leadership. From his vantage point now, what does it mean that he used to be that person and how does he come to peace with who he used to be?

How do you come to terms with letting go something, even somebody that you used to know? Maybe this comes, in part, from a way of unknowing. How do you discover faith when you have let go of a particular religious past? Maybe this discovery comes in a trust that God is with you even, and particularly, in unknowing and in letting go of assertions—even religious ones.

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This image seems to have upset a lot of people.

This image seems to have upset a lot of Christian people.

This image seems to have upset a lot of evangelical Christian MAGA people.

So this is where they part company?

I have never been one to be upset by these kinds of images. This is not to say that I don’t react to images. I can find photos or visual art calming or beautiful or striking or thought provoking or disgusting or vile. It is just that my faith is not usually offended by such images.

Some of the reaction to Trump posting an image that includes himself as Jesus is religious offense. You may have heard the term “blasphemous” or “sacrilegious”. It is as if this is a bridge too far. I find it curious that such reaction is not about something that has happened. That is, by posting the image Trump did not actively work to overturn an election. He did not enact policy that led to the murder of American citizens. He did not enable his proxies to act violently against immigrants. He has done all of those things, worthy of condemnation from those who claim the name of Jesus. This time, he simply posted an image.

As I have thought about the image, I have found my offense to be marked by a couple of things.
1. It is “A.I. slop”
2. It is an example of the dehumanization of society

One of the best considerations of the image that I read comes from Philip Kennicott, a style columnist for the Washington Post. In the article he wrote, Kennicott goes through the image as a fashion editor would go through items from a seasonal exhibition. He mentions the icons of American patriotism that are found in the image, including a flag and a bald eagle in the foreground and the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial depicted in the background. The image is crowded with people and with militaristic icons; jets and bombs and “soldiers marching magically, or celestially, through the firmament”.

Kennicott, rightfully, points out that the people, however, are not really people at all. They are archetypes and basic archetypes at that. They are “awe” and “rapture” and “resilience” and “determination”. And they are “dependence”, reliant upon the central figure.

I think that Kennicott is onto something that is worthy of generating offense. The image is dehumanizing. It is dehumanizing to everyone in it, even, and particularly, to Trump.

Trump seems to hate his humanity. I surmise this from his behaviour and history. He has an apparent need to be something more or bigger—a winner, the best negotiator, the best at words, the most stable genius. It is not enough, never enough, to be simply human. To be human is to be a loser. This is how he seems to see it. He can’t stand himself. So he will post an image of himself with light radiating from his hand. Kennicott points out that this touch that restores health is known as “thaumaturgic touch”. I did not know that is what it was called. I don’t think that Trump knows that either. There; something we have in common. That, and our humanity.

I read of another “image” this week. This one is a statue outside of the new V&A Museum in East London, England. It is by Thomas J. Price and it is called “A Place Beyond”. The statue is is 18 feet tall and it depicts a contemporary young black woman, phone in hand, anonymous, wearing a t-shirt tucked into her jeans.
Price has been commissioned for installations like this before. Last year, Price’s “Grounded in the Stars” was installed temporarily in New York’s Times Square.
That was a 12 foot tall depiction of a black woman with braided hair. It set off something of a controversy, with the Fox News crowd calling it “DEI” and others taking up racist tropes.

Price, himself, has talked about how he would like his art to help people to discover and see ourselves. He says that “A lot of people, they’re not used to seeing people who look like them. And I mean that not just in terms of race or gender, but people just being people.”

I suppose that this is what Trump feels as a kind of curse—“people just being people”. He seems intent upon us not seeing his humanity. He seems intent upon a disdain for humanity, including his own. To be worthy of consideration people have to be characters, not people. They need to be from “central casting”. And he, apparently, unceasingly, casts himself, a real-estate baron, a successful businessman sought after by others. And now a divine figure, miraculous, elevated—anything but human. And then the masses oblige, seeing him as a representation of something, something victorious for those who are part of the MAGA cult and something hideous and sinister for those who oppose MAGA with all that they have. He is, however, counter to his own sensibilities and to those of his cult members and critics, a person.

As is the anonymous woman represented in Price’s art.

Oh, that we would have eyes to see.

This is, for me, the primary offense of Trump’s self-aggrandizing post. We have chosen symbols over people, for others and for ourselves.

My friend David Goa writes that “When we invoke divine justice (or divine worship) on others, they are no longer our fellow human beings sharing in the divine image. Rather they become mere symbols, unrighteous (or unassailable) and immoral spiritual enemies whose sole purpose is to ignite our fear (or idolatrous worship). The place deep within us that faith has vacated is filled with belief, morals and purity.”1

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Trump is sunsetting, to be sure. This is evident. He is aging and is diminished in whatever physical and cognitive functions he once had. Will he be able to see his own humanity in this time of lessening? The minions around him will mostly not help. It would appear that he has lived a life where he has not benefitted from any consistent presence that has seen him in his humanity. He has done his best to prevent this possibility, but it is the only way that we develop spiritually and morally. He has demanded to be seen as a symbol and most people, especially the religious zealots who got something from him (conservative anti-abortion policy and societal power), have gleefully given in to this demand.

It might be naive to hope that before he dies he might see others as human and maybe even come to embrace his own humanity. He has, of course, done tremendous damage that cannot be restored in this present age.

Still, it would be something.

I don’t particularly care if he casts himself as Jesus or the Pope or “a doctor”. I just wish that he might be able to see his own humanity and, maybe in course, the humanity of others.

In the end, I find myself grateful for the Thomas J. Price installations. I find the people that he depicts to be more interesting than Trump. I have always found statues of people to be somewhat funny. They are posed, posturing—“Look at me, chin up, enemies vanquished.” I walk by smiling thinking, “Well, aren’t you something!” The Price installations do something better. They value humanity, over assigned heroism. Their humanity is what is evident and, in seeing it, we are invited to see our own as well. Trump, no doubt, would love a statue of himself to be erected. Those who knew of him in this life, in seeing such a thing, would almost certainly, when walking by, find such a statue to be partly or entirely hilarious.

Christian faith is best expressed in solidarity, not separation. The Christian leaders propping up Trump have been experts in the separation version of the faith—always emphasizing who is in and who is out; who is saved and who is damned. Jesus moves towards us in our humanity, not away from us. He calls us to move towards others, not away from them. Their humanity is a reminder of our shared humanity. This is why the Price installations are compelling to me. There is no posturing, just an invitation to see what is there, to see the worth and beauty and strength of another ordinary person.

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On various social media feeds I have noticed an increase lately in posts from churches that are media/image savvy promotions for their church. They are made up of a set of professional looking photographs with a caption that reads something like “Sunday at The (Rock or River or Bridge or similar) Church. We had a great time gathering to celebrate” or “worship” or similar.

The photos include at least a couple of shots of earnest vocalists, eyes closed, on a black stage with a prominent screen and stage lights. There is at least one image of the kids’ area (sans kids, of course, for safety reasons). This, then, includes a smiling children’s ministry staff member or volunteer and a table with crafts or crayons. The majority of the photos are of people standing in the foyer or narthex, which is, of course, no longer called a narthex. It is now the Welcome Center or Coffee Shop. Smiling people smiling at each other having a wonderful time. There are also at least a couple of images of the pastor on-stage preaching, serious but also engaging and approachable and so very funny.

What if the lasting work of ministry is done in places that are not appropriate for images? That same pastor, smiling on stage in the photo, sitting, instead, by someone in the final hours in hospice, crying with a family in distress?

A friend of mine says that he needs to go through his day with the letters “AITA” repeatedly in his head. They stand for “Am I the Asshole?” I hold these letters in mind as I make a confession - I don’t so much like the social-media-happy-church, you-should-be-here, promotional posts.
AITA?

You might not see these posts. The algorithms feed them to pastor types like me. The assumption, I would think, is that I like them. I get fed more because I linger on them, wondering why they bother me. I roll my eyes. I roll my eyes at the posts and I roll my eyes at myself.

I came across one set of images promoting a local multi-campus church. There were a lot of photos as the classifications I mentioned above (vocalists, kids’ area, pastor, welcome area) were required for each campus. Special attention was given to make sure that the viewer was aware that there were quite a few campuses.

There can be a sense that the old cathedrals were built to be noticed. There was also the idea that they were built to be astounding and beautiful as an act of worship.
When you see a prominent old church in an old village it can stand out. There is a definite “look at this” declaration in the scale and architecture. They are there to draw attention.

Have influencers and social media replaced that?

Churches are adapting to the media and technology landscape. Historically, some churches and religious movements have been among the first to harness new media. Radio and television played a big part in the growing evangelical movement in the United States. These more recent social media posts are more current versions of the same impulse. There are people going to church now because of online influencers.

This might be a “some follow Apollos, some follow Paul”1 kind of thing, but I do wonder if the image has become more important than the content. How much is simply packaging?

Wherever you are at as you read this, you have likely been in a situation in which you have experienced the social media/Instagram effect. That is, you have been somewhere in which crowds of people gather simply to get the image. In the part of the world where I live, you can see this in many places. There are hikes and walks or even suburban streets where people gather in numbers that are beyond the capacity of the place to handle and beyond what used to be normative. There have been multiple news reports lately about people damaging trees just to get the perfect image of the cherry blossoms. There are maps and guides online about the roads which are lined by such trees and these roads get clogged up with visitors, some shaking the trees in order to get images that include falling blossoms. There is even a local Instagram account dedicated to showing the cherry blossom madness. The church you-should-have-been-here posts are drawing from the same energy.

I was talking to a friend the other day who was a pastor for many years. He recalled that there were a significant number of years in which pastors and priests did not have to spend so much time wondering how many people were at church, strategizing about how to draw a crowd. The job of pastors was not easy then, but these days, for many ministers, this is the primary preoccupation. This, I assume, is a key reason for the social media posts. Some churches have entire departments now to make and manage such images. When that becomes the case, attention turns to getting the right photos, creating the right image.

I like church, I really do. I go to a lot of services. I am just very skeptical of the images.
One of the churches that I help out with is a generally older, smaller congregation. The preaching is really good and if I were advising a younger person what kind of church might make a positive difference in their life, I would advise attendance at such a place. You will meet older people there who will care about you. I don’t know how much you will like the music and there are no stage lights. You won’t get a “vibe” aware Instagram image that could be posted online, but I guarantee you, God is as present in that place as God is present in the image conscious churches you see online.

My experience is that in the larger churches, who are very aware of image and attractional presence, things are pretty cookie cutter. To be fair, the places can feel good - nice welcome area, good coffee, slick presentation.

Vibe? Check!

However, I have not heard better sermons in bigger churches. I am not saying that big church sermons are bad (some are, some aren’t), but, almost without exception, I have thought to myself, “If you took this sermon that people say is great and placed it in a small church with worse coffee, it would be average at best.” Likewise, I have heard sermons in smaller churches that were much better than most sermons I have heard in big churches. What the big churches seem to do well is the image and media stuff. They make it look like it was really something to be there.

We are in the week after Easter. If you are the church-going type you have likely heard many of the post-resurrection stories from scripture. These include Jesus appearing in the upper room and Jesus appearing on the road to Emmaus. There is also the famous scene of Jesus appearing on the side of the lake, in the morning when the befuddled disciples have gone back to fishing. It is a beautiful account.

Jesus restores Peter, who had denied him three times. Jesus knows that Peter loves him, but Peter has come to doubt his own commitment. Jesus reminds Peter by asking him three times, “Do you love me?” Peter replies positively. Jesus offers Peter a way of purpose by saying to each affirmation, “Feed my sheep”.
If you love me, you will know by this call, this purpose.

There is a difference between being somewhere to get a photo and really knowing the place. There is a difference between church presenting a social media image and the actual work of the church. The churches that are very aware of image might well be doing good work, but the image does not do anything to let you know whether that is the case. The image does one thing, it promotes.

The Canadian band, The Tragically Hip, had a song called “Long Time Running”. It has become for me a kind of reminder about the tendency to gather up experiences at the cost of being truly present,
We don’t go anywhere, just on trips.
Haven’t seen a thing. We still don’t know where it is.

The song becomes a soundtrack in my mind when I see crowds (sometimes of which I am a part) of people gathered to see cherry blossoms or happy faced people holding cups of perfect coffee in church welcome areas.

So, a shout out to smaller churches and pastors of such congregations.

You can prayerfully enter into the conversation of Jesus and Peter by the lakeshore.
“You know I love you.”
“Feed my sheep.”

Onwards - even without the photo to prove it.

I figured I’d just start with so that I don’t have to end with it.

Have you noticed that some Christians find non-belief to be a threat? What I mean is, it seems to upset them, as if those who don’t believe are, by definition, antagonistic to religious faith. Not all non-believers are against faith. Not all believers are assholes.

Recently, in the course of a conversation, I came across an unfriendly word. The conversation was about a co-operative housing agency and the panel that chooses who receives membership in the co-op. I was one of three people in the conversation that took place in a church lounge. The other two were people I know from pastoring an evangelical church years ago. I was somewhat surprised to find them in a non-evangelical church.

We were talking about how a family that we all knew was not chosen after a recent application for membership in the housing co-op. One of the people in the conversation said that she was not surprised they were not chosen as the applicants are Christian and the panel is made up of quite a number of people who are anti-Christian.

Side note—I will state my bias here: I generally do not respond well to accusations of anti-Christian bias. In my experience, the evangelical church holds more rigid opinion and bias about groups and the world than the, apparently, non-religious tend to hold. I am aware that some people are biased about religion and that there is, in culture right now, a wariness about what can be called Christian. Some of this is undoubtedly not fair. It can even be prejudiced. For the most part, though, I tend to see the accusation of anti-Christian bias more as evidence of nostalgia than a desire for justice.

Back to the conversation.

Person One: (something like the following) “They generally don’t choose people who are Christian. They have turned down a couple of pastors.”
Me: “Well, I can understand that. You don’t want pastors in the neigbhourhood.”
Person One and Person Two: (no laughter, maybe not aware that I was trying to joke my way out of this.)
Me: So, are you really saying that the panel is anti-Christian?
Person One: Yes. They actually are.
Person Two to Person One: It is called “Christophobic”.
Me: “So sorry. I need to go now.”

There is the unfriendly word I did not know - christophobic.

I can surmise what this means. It is being used, co-opting how words like “homophobic” or “transphobic” are used, to level an accusation of prejudice.
Person Two in the conversation is claiming a kind of persecution against Christians operating in the neighbourhood.

I am aware that I hold faith differently than these two people do. I don’t want to speak for them and their motivation, but as I went away from the conversation I did find myself asking what was happening. What was the posture to society and faith that was being demonstrated? Was there a lament in the complaint, a kind of longing to go back?

It is, undoubtedly, the case that in this part of the world (Canada, the West, etc.) over the last couple of hundred years Christians have been the ones being agents of “phobias” rather than the target or subject. Some people want to claim both that society is, at its root and at its best, Christian and that society is anti-Christian. It resonates as a kind of “We are the strongest and best, but we are always also the victim and the target.”

I wanted to say, “I think that they might not be christophobic. There is a chance that they are just asshole-phobic. It might be that a high percentage of assholes they have met also happen to be Christian.”

Instead I said, “I wonder if the people on the panel have had bad experiences with church or with some Christian people.”
Person one (with confidence). “No, they haven’t.”

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I have been reading Tomáš Halík lately. Halík is a Catholic priest who writes about the need for a new kind of Christianity. The old Christianity of certainties and cultural power was, in his mind, a kind of early stage. Halík argues that unbelief can be a gift to faith because it winds up calling Christianity out of a more childish stage towards something more mature, more Christian even, more like Jesus.

Halík quotes Irish philosopher Richard Kearney in speaking about “anatheism”. Anatheism means to “believe again”. The implication is that letting go of belief can help us move forward in faith. We come to believe again what we once believed, but we “believe it differently”. Kearney speaks of God, in Christian faith, in a way that I find compelling, “God approaches us as a possibility, as an offer, we are in a situation of free choice between belief and unbelief. God often comes to us as a stranger and confronts us with the decision of whether to receive him with hospitality or hostility.”

As I read those words, I thought of the person who was leveling the accusation of christophobia. I felt that, perhaps, she wanted to go back to a time when no one would think about being biased against a Christian. I am not arguing on behalf of anti-Christian bias, but my faith welcomes the disintegration of an old way of believing in favour of something new. There is a way of belief that I want to let go in a desire for faith.

We are in company together in churches and religious communities: People who lament the loss of something that used to be and people (like me) who are glad that things are not what they used to be.

All of the “phobics” when used to describe someone other than yourself are accusations. They don’t quite work. They are used to end conversation, to stop consideration. I don’t have to listen to your argument if I label you as “____ phobic”. Perhaps the person who used the term christophobic had, herself, been accused of being “phobic” about others in some way. If so, this was a strange way to reply.
It’s a kind of “No I am not, YOU are!” Even if it’s true, it doesn’t really get us anywhere.

Do Christians make better neighbours? Well, that’s a whole other question.

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It is not an unusual occurrence, in my life, to be in situations where someone is praising something from church culture and my reaction is reserved or even critical.

“Have you heard this worship song?”
“Did you see how that athlete spoke about Jesus?”
“Did you hear about the revival that is happening in Kentucky?”
“Look how God is working at such-and-such-a-church!”

It can happen in the negative as well.
This shows up as some lament on the part of another Christian or group. Expression is given to a sorrow about the state of the world, about how uninterested people are in God, or about how morally decrepit things are becoming. In those cases, I also find myself an outlier in many Christian circles. Most people are shaking their head in spiritual or moral condemnation or bewilderment and I reply, when asked (or sometimes not asked), that I don’t see what the problem is, or, even, that I support what they have just labeled as anti-Christian. The statements they are making that I am not backing up are some form of the following;

“This just proves that the government is anti-Christian.”
“Things are becoming worse and worse.”
“Our schools don’t teach Christian values anymore.”
“Those people are against Christians.”

My apologetic is twofold.
Firstly, I want to say sorry (in a way). I don’t mean to make you feel bad. I am not sorry for holding the perspective that I hold, but I mean no personal offence and in no way wish to injure or assault your joy. I also don’t mean to take the air out of, in the negative instances, what you must feel as a kind of spiritual devotion. It is, after all, religiously energizing to be against things. I know that you can feel very Christian when you are very angry or upset. I don’t want to quell your spiritual passion even if I don’t share your anger or consternation at the world.

Secondly, to the heart of the matter, apologetic as explanation. When I feel what I feel, that is, not really excited about some “Christian” cultural victory or not particularly upset by some secular advance, I am feeling that from my faith, not in spite of my faith. You may not believe that and I can’t convince you, but I am experiencing my motivation as a faithful motivation. That’s where the tension lies. I react against what has excited your faith because of my faith and we both call our faith Christian.

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Tomaš Halík, in his book, The Afternoon of Christianity, has recently named what I have felt for quite some time. Halík uses the Jungian metaphor of a day representing a life to speak about the church and about Christianity.

Let me explain. You can think about a human life as made up of morning, afternoon, and evening.

The morning of a life is youth and young adulthood into adulthood. This is the time of life in which we discover who we are and establish an identity in the world. We might forge a career, find roles in life that matter to us, and seek to achieve financial security. We find ways to improve our image in the eyes of others. We establish relationships and, in some way, make a household. We become who we are in relationship and society.

There is nothing wrong with the morning. It is just a kind of illness to try to have a life that is entirely morning. This is a lack of growth, not an achievement.

The afternoon of life is the time of mid to late-adulthood. It should be a time of deeper peace and appreciation for the world and for other people. Often, the invitation to afternoon comes through crisis. This could be health related, or relational, or any event or time that brings an awareness of our own limitations, mortality, and frailty. Afternoon is an invitation to spiritual and emotional maturity. If we can get there, we find more peace and freedom and joy, not less.

In terms of psychology, many people never make it to the afternoon of life. There seems to be a constant temptation to return to the morning, even though this is an impossibility. Attempts to do so wind up looking as garish as some forms of plastic surgery on the faces of Hollywood stars. “I know that they are trying to look young, but what happened there?” Sometimes the successful plastic surgeries can be more jarring. “I know that she is 70 years old so why do I find it troubling that she looks 27?”

In human psychological and social development, we need people in the afternoon of life to help us see the beauty of the world in ways that we cannot possibly see in the morning.

We also need to go through the afternoon of life so that we can reach a maturity to be grateful for the evening. The evening is the time of old age, the time that death becomes more real, imminent even. I think that it is a fear of the evening which often leads us to reach back to the morning rather than entering the afternoon. We know that the very idea of an afternoon means that the evening is coming. Moral and spiritual development, however, shows us that the evening is not to be feared. It is as much a part of life as the morning and in the evening we can be overwhelmed by the beauty of the world and the blessing of God in ways that we never could be in the morning.

Our humanity is as much about letting go as it is about acquiring. Check that—our humanity is much more about letting go than it is about acquiring. When we drop our expectations or judgments of other people we become open to seeing who they really are. When we let go of the morning stage of our lives, we see that we ourselves are more than our achievements or our projected image into the world.

Halík argues that Christianity has had a morning stage. This was when identity was established, cathedrals were fashioned, and empires were built. The morning stage became known as Christendom, a kind of political power and cultural dominance. Christianity started to strut.

Christianity was impressive. Eventually the crises came.

Often, secularism was viewed as a crisis. More and more people rejected the claims and culture of the church. Entire denominations, ministries, and movements were built in reaction to this. Rather than leaders helping Christian faith enter the afternoon they reached back instead to the morning. In my experience as a pastor, I think that I have heard more voices of leaders calling us back to the past. Many people seem to love big crowds and treat the cultural visibility of Christianity as if that were evidence of its legitimacy. There can be an assumption that Christians are supposed to fight for their voice in society. Where does this come from? I don’t think that it comes from Jesus. I do think that it is part of an idolatry of the morning. Is the world more Christian if Christians have more power? Is that what Jesus taught us? Was that the mission of his life? Is that what we observe in Lent and on Good Friday and Easter?

To go back to the psychological idea of morning and afternoon, it is “bad-aging”. This is a term that Halík uses to identify what the longing for youth means. As Halík wrties, “Bad-aging breeds rigidity, emotional upset, anxiety, suspicion, pettiness, self-pity and terrorizing one’s environment.”

So here is where my personal apologetic comes into view (I hope). When I react without enthusiasm to much of what is being called Christian it is, largely, because I see it as a kind of attempt to “return to the time before”. I don’t want that for the church and I don’t want that for you. Some of the most glittering and apparently impressive expressions of Christianity strike me as simply new decoration for theological paralysis. God is the same yesterday today and forever, right? Yes, but our understanding of God grows. The way that we believe changes. Is what you believe about God the same as common belief in the 12 Century, or in the 1950’s? My faith has no interest in and finds no energy from returning to a time before. I am not attacking the morning of Christian faith to say that I am glad that it is over. I don’t want to go back. I need faithful voices to help me to see the more mature afternoon of faith.

There is a verse in the book of Ephesians in the Bible that sounds beautiful and clunky at the same time. It also contains the word “head” as meaning “over all” which can cause some people to give up on the verse before hearing it.

“But let us follow the truth in love, and in all things, grow up into him, which is the head, that is, Christ.”

Our lives, and our faith, and even Christianity as a religion, are called to grow up.
The voices calling for this are most certainly not the loudest religious voices.

The morning of Christian faith might have been great for some, but it was not the full expression (and often it was the opposite) of who Jesus is. It is my opinion that the afternoon of Christian faith will celebrate smallness instead of crowds, giving up power rather than attaining power, and becoming less rather than becoming more. There are many inspiring examples of this in Christian history. Signs of afternoon are present even in the morning.

One more note—on the negative expression, an apologetic for why I don’t get upset about “the secular”. I think that without the secular we might be stuck in the morning of faith; and that would be grotesque. The secular was and is, as I see it, a gift and work of God to move us to greater spiritual maturity—to a faith that is not reliant upon division, fear, and childish declarations as to what is holy and what is profane.
Some of the most Christian things I have ever seen are apparently anti-Christian.

I don’t feel the need to explain myself and I don’t demand to be understood. I write this apologetic in the hope that it might help some of you who can identify with my feelings. It might also help some of you who wonder why people in your life don’t share the same joy or consternation that you hold in terms of religious matters. It might not mean that they are spiritually uninterested. They just might not want to go back to a time before.

I will end by saying that I am totally okay with people finding joy in the things in which I do not find joy. I mean no personal attack or injury. I often find myself inspired by the joy I see someone else feeling over something that I really don’t like. I try to listen at such times. I try to be open to the possibility that I might well be wrong and that even if I am right I do not want to quelch the joy of someone else.

God is good.
We are consistently given the opportunity to grow up, in our lives and in our faith.
And growing up, as it turns out, is pretty great.

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Questions such as:

• Has Christian faith become angrier, more aggressive?

• Why do I feel uncomfortable when I hear some “Christian” voices and views?

• Can I trust people who are referring to themselves as Christian leaders?

• Do I believe what I thought I believed?

• I am listening to my Christian friend about religion or some social issue. Why am I so uncomfortable in this conversation?

• Why does my Christian faith seem to be moving me away from, not towards, some cultural and political things that are being called Christian?

What, on earth, is going on?

These are curious times in which we live.
We can use all the help we can get.

I have referenced before, in Evangelically Departed, the work of André Gagné of Concordia University in Montreal. A podcast which I co-host, Rector’s Cupboard, includes an episode with an interview of Professor Gagné.

André Gagné is a thoughtful, helpful voice (an expert if you will) on how particular forms of neo-charismatic Pentecostalism have impacted religion and society. He has a podcast called Spirit, State and Society that takes a deep dive into the history of the movement as an explanation of how we have wound up where we are in culture and politics.

Gagné does not throw invective at a movement or a group of people. In fact, his analysis is both dispassionate (in a good way) and informed by personal experience.
Some of what he says actually offers clarification or defense of expressions of faith.

I hold questions in my mind as well around what is happening to Christian faith. I do find myself, at times, dismayed by what is being called Christian. Gagné’s work of history and education has been helpful to me in faith. I do not need that to be his intention, but I have found in his work a kind of company, a helpful guide through some of the questions I hold.

Years ago, when I was full-time pastor of an evangelical church, a couple who were seen as highly committed to faith and deeply spiritual by many people in the church came to me and other church leaders telling us that they thought a child in the church had a demon and needed a prayer of deliverance.

I have no interest in disparaging the couple, but in no way did I think that suggesting to a young child that they were possessed by the devil was a good thing to do. How did this couple come to the point where they held faith in such a way?

The answer to that question actually has to do with much of what Professor Gagné writes and speaks about. What that couple thought about faith and what is happening in the world right now (Iran, USA, megachurch culture, etc.), in many ways, share common roots.

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I have been hosting a group recently that is taking a look at different Christian views of salvation through history. One of the things I have noted is that, in my evangelical background, no one, not even people who made a positive formative difference in my faith, told me that the evangelical view of salvation was not the only one that Christians have held. No one said “We believe this, but there are other ways of seeing that are helpful. Our way of seeing is not the only way.”

Many of the questions you might hold right now, in faith, come up in part because some very loud voices, calling themselves Christian, are projecting the idea that the only way to hold Christian faith is their way.

André Gagné speaks about one stream of religious expression in Christian circles, that has come to have a huge impact of faith and politics and culture.

As it happens, Reflector Project is hosting a conference in Vancouver at which André Gagné is one of the keynote speakers. Registration is not yet open, but the conference is scheduled for November 6,7 this year. (“SIX SEVEN!!!!”)

I will be sure to include links in Evangelically Departed when more information is available.

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