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Stephen Wolfe: The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Elite

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Stephen Wolfe has an excellent new article on the downfall of elite evangelicalism in Chronicles.

Chronicles Magazine:

I converted to Christ in the year 2000, leaving behind my atheistic contrarianism. I entered American Protestantism completely unaware that something unique was occurring. In the 1980s, Calvinism reemerged as a potent intellectual force in evangelicalism, spearheaded by Baptists John Piper and John MacArthur and Presbyterian R. C. Sproul. In the early 2000s, young Gen X seminary graduates and writers who were influenced by these men became a movement known as the Young, Restless, and Reformed (YRR). New personalities and publishers emerged, and megachurches were formed. Centered on Calvinistic doctrines of salvation, these Baby Boomers and Gen X Calvinists achieved a good deal of theological unity. 

Their cross- and intra-generational unity was most evident in the Together for the Gospel conferences (T4G), which began in 2006 and held every other year. It was organized by four friends, already well-established in their own  circles in the pre-social media days—Mark Dever (Baptist), Ligon Duncan (Presbyterian), Albert Mohler (Baptist), and C.J. Mahaney (Charismatic), along with three invited speakers: Piper, MacArthur, and Sproul. What unified them were belief in biblical inerrancy, male headship of families, and the “five points” of Calvinism, which can be reduced (albeit simplistically) to the traditional Reformed doctrine of predestination. Thus, they were opposed to feminism, modern “critical” biblical scholarship, and the freewill doctrines of Arminianism. The conference grew over the years to include younger pastors such as David Platt (Baptist), Matt Chandler (Baptist), Kevin DeYoung (Presbyterian), Thabiti Anyabwile (Baptist), and others. …

The politics-as-witness model has, however, remained in place among the evangelical elite. With LGBTQ becoming social dogma, elite evangelicals began shifting hard with the culture to focus gender and race. Thus, in 2016 and throughout Trump’s presidency the evangelical elite apparatus relentlessly attacked Trump and his evangelical voters for being insufficently sensitive to cultural prejudice. For example, Christianity Today editor Russell Moore (promoted early on by Al Mohler) wrote an article, “A White Church No More,” for The New York Times, in which he accuses Trump supporters of “nativism” who will be “shocked” to see the “dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking ‘foreigner’” on His heavenly throne. Trump’s supporters are not on the “right side of Jesus,” Moore claimed. Since it appeared in a paper not widely read among average evangelicals, it was clear that Moore wrote the article not for evangelicals but for the secularist elite and his leftward social network.

Dozens of political articles appeared from all corners of evangelical elite outlets, including on the TGC website, reflecting the same theme: only racist, angry, sub-Christians would vote for Trump. Also, a bizarre theme of white deference to racial minorities began appearing. One TGC editor, Brett McCracken, tweeted in November 2016, “White Christians in America must partner with, listen to, defer to nonwhite & nonwestern Christian leaders. We need humility, hope, revival.” …

The first two lines of this deeply resonate with me.

In the early 2000s, I went through a brief New Atheist phase after being raised in a nominal Methodist household. I bought a bunch of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett books. Some of you who have been following me since those days may remember this.

At the time, I was alienated from the Protestantism that I saw blooming around me, which I associated with George W. Bush and televangelists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, Christian Zionists like John Hagee and megachurch prosperity gospel types like Joel Osteen. I had a shallow understanding of Christianity. It didn’t take long for me to discover though that I was even more viscerally repulsed from the secular humanist progressivism of New Atheism. Whatever I was (a lapsed Southern Protestant from a non-attending family), I knew that I certainly wasn’t that. I would later discover that non-attending Southern Protestants are light years away from atheists in their cultural attitudes and politics.

Gradually, it began to dawn on me that American Protestantism was severely warped by time and place and that what I was reacting to was just a passing phase. The suburban megachurches with bands, bucket seats and jumbotrons, which I found so ridiculous, were catering to a peculiar type of American consumer who is “seeking” a religious experience. The roots of Dispensationalism only go back little more than a century and only developed a mass following among American Boomers. Similarly, the televangelists and radio preachers were just entrepreneurs who seized on the new technologies of the 20th century to build mass audiences. Prosperity gospel types are a throwback to the American Christianity of the 1920s when Jesus Christ was often presented as businessman instead of as a social worker like around the turn of the century. Most people who immigrated to this country came here to get rich. It makes sense that entrepreneurs like Osteen would emerge to cater to this American sensibility.

Once upon a time, Protestantism was hegemonic in American culture. In the 19th century, Protestant ministers like Henry Ward Beecher were major cultural figures. Over the course of the 20th century, however, this changed as Protestantism fractured and was demoted from the dominant culture to a sub-culture. Elite evangelicals are now nothing more than sub-cultural elites who attempt to climb the social ladder by kowtowing before the dominant secular liberal elites who are now above them. The winsome witness of people like Tim Keller was predicated upon this change in relative position. Status seeking is a constant in human behavior. This is why elite evangelicals are always punching Right and parroting the latest fashionable leftwing trends. See every David French column.

Anyway, it is refreshing to see that Stephen Wolfe grasps this. The postwar consensus is not Christianity. American Christianity has been molded to suit the needs of the liberal establishment. The American Protestantism of the last generation is dying as their world collapses.

In related news, Rod Dreher has reviewed The Boniface Option, which is another hilarious example of the generational change currently roiling American Protestantism.

Rod Dreher:

The Boniface Option is a strange book. I’d say eighty percent of it already appeared in The Benedict Option (I’m certainly not accusing author Andrew Isker of plagiarism; I’m simply saying that the ideas are not new). But this book is just over half as long, and the ideas have been re-imagined here as pugnacious and resentful. If you had ever wondered how The Benedict Option would have been if its author were a late-millennial Calvinist Memelord Of Moscow, Idaho, well, now you have your answer. …

I get all that. These are interesting points. But simply as a matter of rhetorical choice, it is hard to take seriously a book whose author points to the decadent culture around us and sneers, “It’s fake and gay!” The Boniface Option is not a book that tries to win readers over — except for those capable of being insulted and humiliated into capitulation — but rather to rally the already-converted. And men. Isker laments the fact that women gained the right to vote, because it violates his ideal of patriarchy. He implicates women’s suffrage in the outbreak of child transgenderism. It’s that kind of book. …

I can’t emphasize this enough: The Boniface Option is a book for angry young men who enjoy being angry, young, and male. …

Yet it is striking how over and over, Isker exhorts his readers to cultivate hate. Literally, he does this. “The need of the hour is to teach especially Christians to hate the fake and gay globohomo cinematic universe,” he writes. Of the “fake and gay world,” Isker says, “in order for Christendom to return, it is a world you must learn to hate.” And: “You must teach your children to love the things you love and hate the things you hate. You must overcome your aversion to hate.” …

Those are the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., commenting on the command of Our Lord to love those who hate us, and to pray for those who persecute us. Is this the Gospel of Globohomo, according to young Pastor Isker? …

I’m dying here.

Rod is quoting MLK back at Isker.

As I was reading this, I kept thinking about what Neil Howe said about generational archetypes. In Rod’s case, you see someone whose instinct is to flee political combat, light a candle and retreat inward to cultivate personal piety. He wrote a whole book about it called The Benedict Option. In stark contrast, Wolfe and Isker are both laser focused on remaking the external world.

In politics, religion and culture, there is a big split between younger and older people on the Right. The world is remaking itself again. It is going to come as a surprise to a lot of people. Just five years ago, I was scolded by a writer at First Things who insisted that the Alt-Right and Christianity are incompatible. White Christian Nationalism has gained major momentum though over the past two years.


Source: https://occidentaldissent.com/2023/09/02/stephen-wolfe-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-evangelical-elite/


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