BACKUP of EMIND 2--February 2, 2006
PERSONAL MORALITY: When Billy Graham heard the Watergate tapes, his response was not shock at Nixon’s contempt for the constitution, but indignation at Nixon’s foul language. Graham’s response was prototypically evangelical. The Constitution? Secular gobbledygook. Foul language by one who passed himself off as an evangelical Christian? That’s scandal!
FUNDIES VS EVANGELICALS: Fundamentalists share the same assumptions as evangelicals. It is possible to see evangelicalism in its purest form in fundamentalism. Fundamentalists are more consistent, less compromising. The difference between the two lies not in the basic assumptions, but in the response to those basic assumptions.
INTERFACE WITH NON-EVANGELICALS: The evangelical responds to an attack on his political beliefs by dodging the matter and making the personal spiritual state of the accuser the issue. Their motive might appear charitable. In fact, this rape-like violation, this knee-jerk evangelical response to opposition--go after their solar plexus, hit em in the nuts, massage their shoulder and express concern that they are going to hell--is an essentially female approach to confrontation which evangelical males have adopted wholesale, to their eternal discredit. But I care so much about you!
MEN: Evangelical males sold out their masculinity when they converted. They are now hollowed-out, intellectually, and have become emotional neuters.
To evangelicals, God is the Individual, the atomized Individual, alone--apart. The only way to peace is by asserting one’s submission to authority--but in any case, the problem of individualism is one of ranking--and the obvious thing is to set up an individual who has all power--and make him your friend through whatever method possible. The Christian religion is a celebration of the individual. Evangelicalism is more individual than most. And it is built to salve the wounds inherent in individualism.
Jim Wallis says that evangelicalism is personal, not individual. I would dispute that.
IMPERATIVE: The implications of the basic imperative are so terrifying--no wonder thinking isn’t one of their priorities--burrowing to the depths opens a Pandora’s box of demands.
Shame--instead of decreasing shame, the evangelical imperative codifies it.
Missionaries tolerate a lazy laity if they support the missionaries with funds.
JESUS: Why does evangelicalism ignore the teachings of Jesus? To evangelicals, the main function of Jesus is as a sacrifice for the sins of man. In order to be a proper sacrifice, he had to be perfect. His teachings stem from his role as a perfect model of God on earth--however, those teachings aren’t practical, aren’t designed to be applied to the life of believers so much as they are evidence of the perfection of the sacrificial lamb. The logical result of such teachings is that one would be slaughtered on the cross--and we don’t all want that. Jesus did that for us. We don’t have to do it again. So, too, with his perfect teachings--they were quaint manifestations of his perfection, and that’s about all.
The main underlying force in evangelical culture is the need to buffer the demands of its theology.
Unlike fundamentalists, evangelicals spend a lot of energy not looking evangelical ideology in the eye. They prefer to avoid the theology’s implications in any way possible.
Jimmy Carter is an evangelical, but he behaves like a postmillenial evangelical, one who still believes Christians must work to create a Kingdom of God on earth.
Impetus for missionary activity: 1) to pave the way for the Second Coming of Christ. 2) to save souls 3) to easy the conscience of inactive evangelicals.
Dispensationalism gives a scientific veneer to an anti-scientific religion.
Evangelicalism works to confine emotion and intoxication to the church.
SEDUCTION: Evangelical Church from Bemidji came to the nursery, and the flirting began: “you have to be a believer to live in a place like this.” Of course, you don’t. But how do you respond?
“Blessings on you brother.”
SCIENCE: Belief in a literal six-day creation takes the wonder out of the study and contemplation of nature. It is a mere showing off by God of his handiwork, and really has no other purpose. The need to believe in a six-day creation robs evangelicals of all but a superficial interest in science. Science is evil, it smells bad, and involvement in the sciences probably would require an explanation to a fundamentalist.
SCIENCE: The hierarchy of scientific knowledge offends the evangelical mind as thoroughly as does the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Just as access to God is personal and immediate, the notion that access to scientific truth is earned, even hierarchical enrages evangelicals. Thus, the propensity for vitamins and health cures--the doctors are as evil as the priests! They try to get between me and my God and charge me for it.
Those who live a life of willful self-delusion view self-delusion as a high virtue and have a talent for recognize others as self-deluded as they.
APPARENT consistency is the characteristic evangelicals look for in a leader, the inner calm which comes from psychopathy or ignorance. It isn’t a dignified calm. It is the false assuredness of the ace real-estate salesperson, for whom confidence is an act. It is a gospel of gall, of pushing forward shamelessly through a sea of the shame-inflicted.
END TIMES: Evangelicals pull out eschatology when it is needed, but discretely leave it on the shelf when it isn’t needed. It comes in handy for converting others. The notion of the Rapture 1) introduces the needed sense of panic 2) makes one feel superior 3) scares the shit out of the non-converted.
Agnes Rolf writes in response to my column: You are treading on thin ice. She included a battery of Bible verses. Also, a warning that I should honor the tradition of my Grandparents, etc. Like most evangelicals, she knows how to go for the gonads. Threats of eternal doom aren’t kind.
Shadow evangelicals: For every active and convinced evangelical, there is one who holds the basic evangelical assumptions but is in rebellion, and another who has simply opted out of evangelical culture without escaping the creed. These shadow evangelicals are prone to re-convert at any time. Underneath it all, they still fear the evangelical God and long for reconciliation with Him.
BAWER points out the cruelty of evangelicalism towards children. Online, I found a website talking about a play put on in Texas by young people at Halloween--showing the fate of kids who weren’t saved; graphically depicting their sins, etc., ODDLY, some of them were sexually abused--the people in hell, in the end, were sexually abused, but there was no sign of their abusers in hell. The play is called “Hell House.” There is a documentary done about Hell House.
Good works are of the devil! Good is evil!
PRAYER: “Lord, we just ask...” Linguistic shorthand for yearning? For frustration? It isn’t really “merely,” it is more, “c’mon, this is all we want, please give it to us.” It is impatient. It is frustrated.
PATRIARCHY: The evangelical mind’s reverence for paternal authority extends to its male sexual abusers: They are quickly forgiven. The victims who blew the whistle are not.
FORGIVENESS: Evangelical forgiveness is often mere appeasement of brute force. Just as the raging alcoholic in the household must be appeased, so the evangelical authority figure must be forgiven his transgressions whether he has seriously repented or not.
VISION OF GOD: The Old Testament God can be loving, capricious or cruel. Evangelicals expect their leaders to be the same and are left empty if their minister turns out to be loving and kind. Loving and kind evangelical ministers are candidates for permanent exile to a moribund countryside congregation, or for a job selling insurance.
WOMEN:Time and again, I have seen an evangelical victim surrounded by women urging her to forgive, forgive, forgive--you must forgive--while the abuser goes through a brief repentence routine and becomes a celebrity. The men envy him to no end! And the women know he is an alpha male who must be appeased.
WOMEN: The sexual abuse victim is a threat to the evangelical belief in the rightness of all male authority. The victim must be controlled, supressed, handled, managed, and not for the victim’s own good but for the preservation of the group identity. The urgent demand that the victim forgive is an attempt to put the sordid mess out of view as quickly as possible so the authority and rightness of the alpha male does not come into question. Moral failure in a subjected follower supports the ideology; moral failure in a leader threatens the entire group and must be covered up. So it is that the victim must be blamed.
What about the abusers? They are ritually given a free ride. It is the abused who infuriate the evangelicals. They weren’t good enough. This is cruel. Gloria--emphasis on the abused doing the forgiving. In this sense, evangelicalism is a defender of brute force--brute force can always be justified--weakness is to be hated. Evangelicalism has a hatred of the victim running through it.
SEX: Sexual sin is central to the evangelical mind. Indeed, some evangelicals think of nothing else.
LEAVING evangelicalism is virtually impossible. It is easier to quit drinking, for at least there is a place for you to go--Alcoholics Anonymous. But there is nowhere for a former evangelical to go. Non-evangelicals don’t understand, and most former evangelicals are too ashamed of their apostasy to discuss it, or too reprobate to care.
LEAVING: Grandpa wanted out of evangelicalism. Dad wants out of evangelicalism. So many people want out of evangelicalism, and they love to listen to the rebels--but then they get pulled back to the ideology by the longest, most elastic bungee cord ever devised by the oppressors of the human mind.
SEX: Evangelicals are in complete accord with the worst elements of mass media culture that sex is really all that matters. It all comes down to sex. Sex, sex, sex.
THE MOST frustrated people in the world are those who think they have found the truth.
GENERATIONS: The first generation of evangelicals felt the transformation first, then lived the holy life. The second generation has the holy life thrust upon them, and then has to cough up a transformation.
Where are the Northwestern graduates? They have vanished. So it is with evangelicals with potential. They evaporate, disappear. They go to sleep.
IMPERATIVE: Nobody seems to agree with me that the one overriding fact of evangelicalism is what people do with the evangelical imperative--the need for everybody to convert or spend eternity in hell. Nobody seems to take hell seriously, least of all those who actually believe in it. Either evangelicals don’t really believe it, or they are shockingly unconcerned that people around them are going to have their skin burned off forever and ever. Is that why they are unconcerned about torture of those of a different religion?
HELL: The ethical implications of hell aren’t brought up. Hell functions as a lever to enforce the rules. It cannot be used to push people out of their evangelical envelopes of comfort. If it is used for that purpose, the existence of hell is effectively denied.
DEATH: A dying fundamentalist clings to life with an unseemly tenacity.
If one is not preparing for death, one is not living. Perhaps the better word for death is oblivion.
DROPPING THE BIBLE: I can’t count the number of times I have seen a television evangelist find an excuse to raise the Bible up above his head and drop it to the floor, or otherwise do it violence. One wonders.
INTERNICENE STRIFE: The best source for dirt on televangelists is fellow evangelicals. Although they tend to focus on minor matters of doctrine, if the televangelist has done anything morally wrong, they’ll point it out.
Joyce Meyer: $900,000 per year salary. $95 million in revenue per year. Is her salary tax free?
LAW: The notion of “rule of law” makes an evangelical yawn with indifference. The Bible is their only law, and evangelicals, more than all those hair-splitting legal heathens, have that under control.
Put a “man of god” in there and let him cut the corners, cut the legalities, slice through the red tape, do the right thing, do our dirty work, suffer on the cross so that the rest of us may be free. The world is so evil, so bad, that fighting that evil in the public sphere inevitably requires that one things which might look a little shady if they were exposed to the light of day. In fact, it is the light of day that is evil. Expose the lawlessness of the leader? No, punish those who leaked the lawlessness to the press.
Why evangelicals need so much reassurance in their services; why humanity on the part of the preacher, even if it is counterfeit, is so inordinately rewarded--because evangelicalism, even in its most minor forms, is an authoritarian system of holy terror, and entertainment brings relief.
Critics of the hard driving evangelicals use weak arguements like “God doesn’t want us to..” in order to justify their laziness in evangelizing others. They never look to the root of the problem, the theological root of the problem: The existence of a real hell where real people are going to burn. Get to the root of the matter, and you might escape! Dare to see to the bottom of the issue!
But seeing to the root of evangelicalism is frightening, and unless you’ve been there yourself, it is unkind to criticize.
Religion sometimes coincides with spirituality, but not often.
Evangelical can be an insult; it can be the highest compliment. People will fight to keep it in their camp.
AFTER TALKING WITH MARK: He mentioned the “This American Life” on hell. The minister in Tulsa who gave up on the idea of hell and lost his congregation. His ministers resigned. And so on. The utter necessity of hell--as related to WHY people are so scared of saying what I said in my article: They are still scared that the evangelicals are right, even though they have a distaste for evangelicalism. They know that they dislike it as a matter of taste, but they haven’t made any intellectual break with evangelical assumptions, the main assumption being hell. There is no credible theistic alternative to the dualism of evangelicalism on the religous market today.
SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT: Who is willing to take on the crude nature of substitutionary atonement?
Mel Gibson made it clear in his brutal movie what it means. All people who recoiled from the gratuitous violence might be asked--don’t you question, then, the nature of a God who would require such a sacrifice?
DOGMAS: What about the superstitions of the virgin birth, the resurrection, the miracles--some people might suspect these didn’t take place, but they remain quiet. They don’t see the damage those doctrines do. They aren’t ready to take on the whole unholy infrastructure. But it is the entire unholy infrastructure which needs be rooted out from the base--not just chipped at from around the edges, not just compromised, but rooted out.
What about the symbolic cannibalism of communion? It would be abandoned with disgust if anybody thought about it without fear.
HELL: What keeps American evangelical churches full? A firm, vivid belief in hell! Break down the belief in hell and the masses will trample each other on their way out the door. Subtract hell and evangelical faith morphs from practical necessity to an intolerable pain in the ass.
One person who believes in hell is a tragedy. A million persons who believe in hell is a statistic, and a very useful one to psychopathic leaders.
A populace convinced of hell is putty in the hands of the authoritarian ruler. From the desperate mother who uses hell to get her children to behave to the televangelist who invokes hell to milk contributions, a host of tin-horn dictators depend upon hell to prop up their unholy regimes. For the desperate authoritarian, hell is less a matter of truth than a vital question of power. What else can explain the ruler’s visceral panic when some naive innocent doubts hell’s existence?
WOMEN: Oppressed? Far from it. For the many females desperate to regress into dependence upon a strong male, evangelicalism provides the perfect excuse--and throws a veil of sanctity over the whole sordid endeavor. Long live glorious, ignoble, God-excused dependence, with the ups and downs of the resulting depression disguised as noble spiritual struggle!
WOMEN: The coterie of dependent females in the kitchen of at a fundamentalist gathering, around the table later, discussing their males, managing their males, problems managing their males, they aren’t open, they are operating in shame, in secret, kids and men aren’t meant to hear their conversations.
HELL: The evangelical is attached to the notion of hell in part because it is the only check on his compulsions.
NARCISSISM: Evangelicalism encourages narcissism. Ryan’s wedding. The self-centeredness of anthropomorphizing God. 2ndbestDad. Competition. Ranking. Always competing, always ranking, always making God out to be Melvin writ large. Big Daddy. Big husband. An eroticized personal relationship with God.
There are so many things which are distasteful about evangelicalism, things which make people wrinkle their noses. It is time to elaborate those things, to tease them out, to make them ludicrous.
Once an evangelical female eroticizes Jesus, sex with her mousy husband is over! What a relief.
HELL: Ask an evangelical “Do you wish hell to be empty?” The likely response: “Well, it won’t be.”
“Yes, but would you empty it if you could?”
Watch the squirming as their desire for revenge against their enemies, for the right to think of themselves as superior to the hell-bound world, fights with their knowledge that no decent person would with any other person, no matter how depraved, to suffer burns for eternity in hell as they are convinced it exists.
CHARITY: Having successfully denigrated all good deeds of non-evangelicals as futile, evangelicals trump up their own meager good deeds beyond all proportion.
Ede, to Chad, about Madison the baby: “I hope she grows up to love Jesus.”
Assumptions: Jesus is living. Jesus survives as a conscious entity who will get pissed off if he isn’t loved.
Chad had a dream when he was fourteen that he was in hell and was attacked by flesh-eating centipedes. It so upset him that he wrote his Grandma DeBoer that he figured he had better do somthing to get right with Jesus. She called him back on the phone, crying, ecstatic at his apparent conversion.
SCIENCE: What is the effect upon the evangelical of not paying heed to geological time?
What is the result of the evangelical’s contempt for open-ended historical inquiry?
EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY: Dallas Theological Seminary puts out scholarly treatises which are anything but scholarly--their conclusions are foregone. There is no freedom to come up with anything but support fot orthodoxy.
Evangelical impulses which are ignoble: For simplicity, against nuance and subtlety. Suspicious of nuance and subtlety.
VISION of GOD: If you attribute the random daily events to a diety who is a projection of your father, do you have any choice but to be angry? Unless you are so scared that you don’t allow yourself even that.
I am blessed to have Ede and Dad in my life to give examples of evangelicalism close up.
Evangelicalism restricts. It holes up. It will be a trick to demonstrate that these are evil tendencies.
Evangelicalism gives its adherents an excuse to despise the different. It enables them to ignore the teachings of Jesus--which are anything but parochial.
SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT: If the main mission of Jesus is as a sacrifice, his teachings can be easily ignored--as the example, the unrealistic example, of what God would demand. In effect, the emphasis on Jesus on the cross allows evangelicals to ignore his teachings.
The emphasis on the miracles of Jesus is inherently selfish. The belief in miracles is like believing in the lottery; it is a dream of dependence, a dream of unearned wealth, a dream of living like a child, forever. Heaven, too, becomes an eternal welfare state for the dependent. The heaven of the evangelical’s imagination resembles the new home built after
SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT: The crude sacrificial exchange--the life of a perfect innocent in exchange for indulgence from a despotic god--appears in ancient religions everywhere. Christianity, through substitutionary atonement, made the process more efficient by making it a one-time slaughter, for which generations of farm animals and virgins should be eternally grateful. It is no less crude, however.
Competition: There is a constant drumbeat of “we are the greatest” in any evangelical’s telling of stories. Our church is the greatest. We have a wonderful pastor. We have a wonderful youth program. We are building a new building. We are the greatest.
CHURCH CULTURE: But in order for these “we are the greatest” stories to have any traction, they have to be told to fellow evangelicals. Nobody else would care. And so, the gatherings of evangelicals consist of evangelicals beating each other over the head with the greatness of their youth programs and Christmas galas.
EXCERPTs FROM YELLOW NOTEBOOK--2005
Evangelicalism attempts to address the problem of loneliness and alienation by creating the ultimate individual--God--who has a motherly, feminine son--alleviates loneliness by (?)
The laboratory of the USA has produced evangelicalism, one of the loneliest religions possible. Even the celebrations of togetherness have a “thou protesteth too much” air about them, a disproportionate sense of relief and shelter which reveals an anxiety.
The number one item on the agenda of the shame-soaked modern individual: reduce shame. Justify myself. Cling to a larger entity, be it a group or an ideology. Cling with a desperation equivalent to the problem at hand. It is a biological imperative to feel included, to feel justified. The Christian religion’s genius is to create metaphors which express this shame--the foremost of which is the image of Christ on the cross.
For a Christian marriage to be noble, it must involve suffering, for nothing is so noble as to hang from one’s cross, and in a solidly middle-class society, about the only suffering one can claim is that inflicted by one’s spouse.
ETHICS: Evangelicals fancy that they have a monopoly on the code of ethics of a five-year-old--do not lie--and by God, they take pride in it--in not telling white lies, etc. and they see any shades of gray, even in the service of good, to be depraved. But their dwelling on the five-year-old’s morality shows that their greatest temptation still lies in the realm of a five-year-old: Cheating, stealing and lying.
Child-like morality: Don’t have sex or play with your gonads.
The face of the evangelical to the outside: you do not count. Your opinion doesn’t count. You may rise to the level of “interesting,” but only as a pet. You may never enter into the evangelical secret society, the fold, the fellowship.
Evangelicals as Masons: The shared sense of initiation, a nationwide fellowship. The shared initiation is powerful.
Pursuing this sense of apartness is not easy--or is it? When every mind is inclined in that direction--when the universial psychology is one of anxiety towards the world.
MALE INTIMACY: Evangelicalism does, however, allow for male intimacy. They can show their emotions and hug and have heart-to-hearts; it is quite close to gayness in that regard. It satisfies a need for male companionship and closeness. Spiritual talks. Talks about marital issues. Frank talks. Crying. Being vulnerable. Being stripped naked by the conversion experience. Loving Jesus and the effeminacy he represents. Building up Jesus into an idealized you in the leader and then bowing down to him--the erotic undertones aren’t very under. No wonder overt homosexuality makes evangelicals so damn nervous. Clearly sexless marriages.
Sexless marriages! Tom Lee. Orville Lee. John Mosiman.
Jesus represents sort of a feminine ideal.
ART: It is no mystery why there are no evangelical poets, no great evangelical artists, no truly great evangelical scientists--the habit of mind which attracts evangelicals to evangelical churches is not conducive to great art. It is not used to digging to the bottom, seeing underneath, much less seeing things as they are. They don’t have the ability to subjectively interpret.
Lack of shame is a prerequisite of great art. As is a lack of fear, and a faith in one’s self. All three are verboten in evangelicalism.
The evangelical single male: a lost soul.
Dad doesn’t count non-evangelicals as people.
Calm is not welcome in the evangelical church.
The reams of molding prophetic tracts.
Mark Noll: Premillenial dispensationalism is the most well-developed intellectual movement in fundamentalism. In fact, it has taken over and won the day. The assumptions of premillienial dispensationalism have spread faster in the liaty than in the clergy, thanks to popularization by television evangelists and the writings of Hal Lindsay. I would they are held by almost all who call themselves evangelical. In fact, due to the holy Harlequin novels produced by Tim LaHaye and his ghost writers, people from less strident religious traditions who nevertheless gravitate towards the apocalyptic, and they are many, hold premillenial dispensational beliefs whether or not they have ever heard of the term. Why bother winning over seminary scholars when you have already won the minds of those whose literature is found in the supermarket check-out lanes?
The founders of premillenial dispensationalism, Darby, Scofield and Lewis Sperry Chafer, share one thing in common: A paucity of theological training. But together they created a many legged ideological monster, a belief system which resonates with the American public like no other, a theology which most seminaries don’t teach to this day. However, if the seminary graduates know what’s good for them, they don’t argue with the premillenial dispensationalist assumptions of their congregations. There’s no better way to lose your church than to disagree with parishoners who believe in an imminent rapture of believers!
The scholars of premillenial dispensationalism have a joyless, almost clerical task. Provided with truths they cannot question--the innerancy of scripture, its literal interpretation, the use of the Bible as an infallible legal document--they are doomed to work towards a predetermined goal of upholding the dogmas. Of open ended scholarship, they know nothing. In fact, they fear it. They are, in fact, lawyers, arguing for their case, working backwards from the dogmas to find evidence for conclusions long ago reached.
Evangelical nuns.
Darby started with the assumption that scripture was innerant. To prove his case, he developed the theology of dispensationalism.
The theology of conversion doesn’t always reflect the role conversion plays in evangelical society. The conversion experience is a powerful glue for the evangelical movement, but it has unintended consequences for evangelical theology. Some of the theology is designed to keep up the need for conversion experiences and emotion.
Although the theology says one might have a sober conversion, the culture prefers a spectacular conversion.
The theology might say the conversion is permanent, while the culture thrives on constant crisis.
THESIS: That many of the dogmas of evangelicalism are meant to support a system which gives its members a sense of significance. To the extent that they extend significance, they are honored. When they become inconvenient--such as the imperative that all be converted--they lose their steam except amongst the fanatics.
There is a separation between the evangelicalism of the evangelical seminaries and the evangelicalism of the laity. The seminaries exert little control over the laity. They’ll just “find another church,” like they were shopping for health clubs, if they are in a big enough city to have options.
Shopping for a church is a ritual in evangelicalism. What they’re looking for is a good leader, a good pastor. Doctrine might matter a bit, but not much. “He’s just a down home guy who preaches from the Bible,” probably is the best endorsement.
So, there are many flavors of evangelicalism. Some are milder, some are entrepreneurial, some are more authoritarian, some are more emotional, some are intellectual, some are upper class.
The problem happens when it comes time to get a new pastor. People who came to the church due to the last pastor can become disoriented. However, they have in the meantime developed some doctrinal and social loyalty to their church--so it is difficult to leave just because the new pastor isn’t in the same mold as the last.
Transition between pastors can redefine a church. Because of the importance of the pastor, because of the authoritarian leanings of the laity, having a pastor with an appropriate temperament is important. But finding one can be impossible.
Evangelicalism is a democracy. People vote on doctrines with their feet. Unpopular doctrines die. Popular ones fill churches.
Evangelical loyalty is to individual pastors more than it is to a particular named denomination. Although there is some denominational loyalty, people will move from church to church to find where they feel the most comfortable. There is no uniform loyalty to a denomination like that which characterizes the Catholic Church. In fact, most evangelicals would have a tough time telling you why they are one church and not the next except for that they feel more comfortable there.
The ancient theological disputes which resulted in the various Protestant sects are laughably irrelevant to most lay evangelicals. They’ll jump from one denomination to another in a heartbeat if they like the minister.
For some, the evangelical imperative dawns on them like a blinding flash--they head off to the mission field. For others, it dawns slowly, too slowly to prompt action. For many, it remains as a festering sore, a constant source of guilt. Others, soothed by a sympathetic minister who spends a lot of time addressing his own guilt for not doing more to convert the unsaved, manage to put the evangelical imperative in the background--a vague mist of “we should really,” but nothing which would disturb their daily life as accepted members of the larger community.
Hypocritical evangelicals are easier to get along with, but they are hypocritical nonetheless.
Passive aggressive prayer: Evangelical prayer sometimes is a way for people to get their way without having to confront offending others. It is covert, passive, subterranean. Enlisting other passive people in your prayer effort is a way of increasing the likelihood that the prayer will be answered. So, if you are praying to fix one outside the fold, or to influence one outside the fold, rather than confront him, you disuss the issue, no matter how confidential, with your fellow evangelicals. To the non-evangelical, this appears to be transparent gossip. It is always a bit of a surprise to the evangelical when the person who is prayed about feels betrayed. Here again, decency rears its head and the evangelical scurries for cover. The sin here is that the person found out about the betrayal, not that the betrayal occurred.
In fact, there is much that is secret in the evangelical world that when it is exposed to the light of day, the evangelical will back down and admit that it wasn’t decent. Mainly gossip, cutting corners, backbiting, short circuiting procedure. Of course, if it was never brought to the light of day, the evangelical would never think twice about it.
The luxury of navel gazing: By shutting off all speculation about the nature of the spiritual world, evangelical religion allows its adherents the dubious luxury of endless self-centeredness. Exploring the nature of the eternal with open-ended study can pull one out of the daily mess; without that ambiguity, one is tempted to bring to bear the fixed nature of the eternal God on the messy affairs of one’s daily life.
Speculation limited: Evangelicals appear to have great debates about theology--in fact, those debates are so limited in nature that they qualify as a tempest in a teapot. Should there be drums in church? Can the divorced re-marry? At what age are children responsible for their salvation? What is the “age of accountability?” Furious debate on these harmless questions partially slake the evangelical’s intellectual restlessness without requiring them to tread on uncomfortable ground.
The sheer effrontery of evangelical prayer, addressing God as a best buddy. Their refusal to allow anybody else a shred of dignity extends to their Lord!
AFTER GETTING HOME from Arizona by crossing through the Bible belt of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska and listening to dozens of evangelical Christian radio programs en route:
“Of course, we know we’re all going to live for eternity, it’s just a matter if we’re in smoking or non-smoking.” --Janet Folger of Faith 2 Action
“Can you hear Him now?” --church billboard.
“No word yet on why the liberal ministers contacted the IRS rather than speaking with Rev. Parsley face-to-face, as is mandated by scripture”--Christian newscast.
“First the prospect, then the procedure,” --Chuck Swindoll, going step-by-step through the procedure which we will go through after death. Separation of the soul from the body, etc.
Very specific, very mechanical.
“I want every one of you fathers to go home tonight and sit down with your family and have family worship time.” --some professor of family worship.
Also, a seed company advertisement had some verse from Corinthians on seeds. II Corinthians 9:10: “Now may he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food, supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the fruits of your righteousness; was included on a Texas seed company advertisement.
Focus on the Family: All Alito all the time. Everything depends upon this appointment. Fake host. Who gets to play the fake host who asks the softball questions?
Dobson: “Thanks for finding me down here in California.” As if the guy didn’t know where he was.
Stanley: “Listen to me now” “Listen carefully.” etc. Browbeating.
Parsley’s speech is growling and hateful. And threatening. Opponents to God will regret it.
There was another evangelist who was snarling and sarcastic about other churches, about the sell-church concept. Whatever that is.
How to deal with evangelicals: When I got home, there was an anonymous tract in the mail. No return address. Should this upset me? Clearly somebody thinks I need Jesus. Can I respond with sympathy? Can I hold my fire? Should I hold my fire? Should I confine my observations to here?
The bulk of Christian music presents Jesus as a sort of meglomaniac--hey, the bulk of evangelical preaching talks about God and Jesus as if they demand constant praise. This is crazy. Glorify God? This is the prototypical alcoholic male asshole demanding constant attention and praise. The ultimate narcissist.
We’ll spend the whole time in eternity praising Him. Boring. But we’re supposed to love it.
I must investigate further the asshole God of the evangelicals who demands constant glory and praise. This is unsavory. He is a son of a bitch. A narcissistic bastard.
Prayer: The badgering of the diety to act like the CIA and intervene to change people and circumstances--expresses a desire for an extra-legal (supernatural) force to step in and make things right--or, at least, more like what is desired by the evangelical. It is a pagan desire. The desire to appease the gods, to yell at the gods.
Multiply out any activity or circumstance for eternity, and it becomes hell. Heaven? The sure and certain hope of total oblivion, the droplet returning to the lake.
JANUARY 21: Today’s reading: NYT article on one evangelical scholar’s worry about the 85% support level that evangelicals have shown towards the Iraq war. “Bush is a brother in Christ, so wherever he leads us, we will go,” was the attitude as he summarized it.
Dad talks about conversion of the Muslims. Conversion, for Dad, brings mysterious and threatening people into an arena where he has command of the secrets. I think Dad overrates the importance of theology to evangelicals, or at least is frustrated when they are inattentive to theology, for that is where he garners his significance.
Part of the initiation ceremony is to reduce the neophyte to zero and raise the authority of the long-time adherents. This glorifies the organization, and also glorifies those who have been in the group for some time. The neophyte agrees to the emasculation as the price of admission into a secret club, pulled in by the powerful human longing for tight kinship.
This initiation ceremony is one of the secrets of evangelicalism’s success. The aura of secrecy--it draws people. And there is an aura of secrecy. It is a secret club with secret codes. The Masons and Elks have fallen upon hard times, busted up by the end of the male-only schtick. But in evangelicalism, it continues. And with drama--with God, with enemies, with wars and struggles with Satan and with sex and power--it is very compelling, much more compelling than the Elks. Evangelicalism includes the entire family, but it has some nice perks for Dad--a constant drumming up of his authority and right to be in the secret club.
Evangelicalism ties itself brilliantly into some of the deepest human longings--the desire to subjugate to a strong leader, the desire to be part of a tightly knit clan, or at least one which appears to have some sort of initiation ceremony and some sort of exclusive intimacy between the members; the desire for a personal God who heals hernias and finds wallets; the desire to consider such matters as worthy of the diety’s attention; the desire to have oneself be right and the rest of the world sadly mistaken--these are the powerful allures of evangelicalism, the appeals it makes to human instincts.
Evangelicalism is not so covertly built upon the desire of its followers to shuck away responsibility.
Compared to historical incarnations of God, evangelicalism’s view of God is radically small, radically unspiritual, radically peurile, radically unkind, radically sterile, radically materialistic, radically simplistic, radically unmysterious, radically unflattering and astonishingly bleak.
Wedding all good to an all-powerful male: an urge in evangelicalism which shows up in the view towards god and pastor.
It might appeal to an old lady to “praise Him all day long,” but is it any wonder that kids wrinkle their nose at the prospect?
Today: Read an article which talked down the liberal attack on the right-wing evangelicals. Said that some liberals say:
George Lakoff - whose book Don't Think of An Elephant has become a kind of bible that explains their electoral demise for many liberal Democrats in the US - describes those who tend to vote for Bush as the products of authoritarian 'strict father families' who are motivated by self-interest, greed and competitiveness. These people hate 'nurturance and care', apparently, are religious bigots and lack the therapeutic sensibilities of their liberal cousins.
Well, I kind of agree with the above analysis. I think of Lees--very competitive, greedy and self-interested. According to this article, we aren’t supposed to denigrate people of faith; I could take the tack of trying to understand that faith as a way of seeing those people more sympathetically.
In the guise of a political theory, Lakoff offers a diagnosis of human inferiority. You can almost hear him murmur: 'They actually take their children to see The Passion of the Christ….' In previous times, such contempt for people was the trademark of the authoritarian right. In today's 'inclusive' society, it is okay to denigrate sections of the electorate as simpletons if they are still gripped by the power of faith.
Lakoff and others argue that many people who vote for Bush, or who are influenced by the religious right, simply do not know what is in their best interests. Instead of acknowledging the failure of its own political projects, the liberal elite prefers to indict sections of the public for being thick and gullible.
After reading a couple of copies of the Dallas publication “Veritas.”
Bill Bright and his wife sat down and deeded their life to God. They put down all the things they wanted and valued and deeded them to God. The seminary prof writing the article did the same thing. He opened the envelope 25 yrs. later, sort of a time capsule, and was appalled at some of the things he wanted--like a sports car. I am more appalled by these stilted family things--the utter unnatural nature of the family rituals required. Oh, how I hated those family devotional sessions, the prayers before trips, the family services. Ugh. The attempts to read C. S. Lewis at the supper table, the sense of failure when those attempts fell prey to reality, as they always did. I think these are some of the impossible hoops that evangelicals set up, designed to make sure their followers fail.
Of course, they fail in the biggest hoop of all, converting others--but that imperative has already been so diluted that it is only useful on fresh converts. To make sure the rest of the laity is adequately held down, supressed by shame, you have to keep inventing new ways for them to be inadequate.
EDE IS really wondering why God gave her, the perfect Christian, leukemia. Humility, perhaps? Humility--Not a virtue understood by the evangelicals.
A tack: It was taken by Bruce Bawer--that evangelicalism is really not religion at all; it is counterfeit religion. It isn’t spiritual. It isn’t benificent. To mock the idea of belief can’t be the purpose of my book, for I am not comfortable with the secular disbelievers. I find them sterile, even frightening. There is faith in the people with whom I am comfortable. Trust and faith. A general faith in humanity, in the goodness of things, in the goodness of the universe. This is to be compared with the sterility of Lyla’s belief, or utter lack of faith, the gap which seems to be missing in Rolly’s secularism, and Jim McKenzie’s--both leave me a little wondering, if only because they rule out rather than rule in-- “and then that is it for us!” as a final answer seems cold, because there seems to be more. Faith in humans. Faith in the future. As opposed to fear and lack of faith that is shown by the gay activists and evangelical Christians. A critique of evangelicalism from a point of view of faith. Bawer made the argument, but somewhat stridently, postulating too strongly a new religious view.
Criticizm: Evanglicalism is deeply cynical, and stridently critical, even of itself. Defensive. Making fun of its opponents and even its allies. Mocking. Mockers, scoffers--evangelicalism is full of mockers and scoffers. The ministers mock and scoff and it is entertaining for all. They imitate. If they are showmen, they imitate and mock. Now, to them, scoffing is any making fun of evangelicals, not a general state of scoff towards all. And they feel so much victims of scoffers and mockers that turning the tables delights them. The minister is given permission to mock and scoff and express anger by slamming his fist on the Bible. An angry subtext.
TONE: When I was writing for the Dakota Student, I often sucked the audience in by seeming to be on their side only to slam them over the head. This would be a good model for The Evangelical Mind. Anticipate their responses, really get under their skin--by using their arguments to destroy them.
I AM STUCK on the alpha male issue in evangelicalism. Todd Pederson. George W. Bush. The whole authoritarian organization and psychology which arises around strong males--it must come from the genes, the need to protect the clan by serving a strong male and by submitting to a strong male. It may be adaptive. Indeed, it seems adaptive. The raging, roaring, loud, bumbling, strong, mocking, mean alpha male. Let us gather round him! He don’t suffer fools gladly. He is not a nice person, and we don’t wish that he were a nice person. A nice person wouldn’t protect us all as well. A nice person wouldn’t do what it takes when out of sight. We are offended by nice people with leadership pretentions--who do they think they are? What kind of world do they think we live in? There is a contempt for nice people. It goes back to why women, the beautiful women, go for a Randy Faul rather than an....Eric Bergeson.
Thus, the bitterness of many pencil-necked liberal males towards the alpha male systems. They suffered under them, and still do. So did the women. Those who escaped are bitter--or angry at themselves for the degree to which they did assent to their own biology and submit to neanderthal males. They are angry at fundamentalism and evangelicalism--which amounts to male dominance apotheosized. Their anger clouds their vision. It is anger at themselves directed outwards.
I mean, the door-knobbed alpha males always get the women. It is in the genes. Women who are allegedly liberated from the doorknob male system are angry to the extent that they still subscribe to doorknob male dominance--or to the extent that they are tempted by and attracted to doorknob males. Evangelicalism raises doorknob male dominance to the level of religion. If the women have weak husbands, and many of them do, they either eroticize their pastor--or Jesus.
How do you have sex with the pastor? By listening to him describe sexual sins in his sermons.
In evangelicalism, you are responsible for your own health. If you get a tumor, it is because you were a bad Christian. That view isn’t stated out loud, but you hear it all the time. Ede on Bob--if you people would just behave, you wouldn’t have troubles. Troubles are good: They point out to the inadequate that they are inadequate and need to get their act together, need to convert, need to have better devotions--whatever; it is not important. What is clear is that evangelicalism raises personal responsibility to a metaphysical, magical level (or lowers it to a medieval level): you are responsible for your ill health. God allowed it into your life for a reason--and that likely was so that you would improve.
The obnoxious perfectionism of Ede pisses everybody off. Oh, how everybody else wishes there were some divorce in that family, some disaster. Well, the nursery might qualify. But the resentment comes from Ede’s ideology. She has a heart of gold, but what motivates it? The need to be superior?
The logic: God must have had some reason to kill Elmer. Pretty soon it starts hitting on Elmer--he did something wrong.
Jesus’ mission was noble. He was trying to reverse the human tendency to turn religion into a club of judgement. Sure enough, humans took and turned him into a God, sacrificed him as atonement and made him perform miracles such as helping them find a lost checkbook or smoothing out the purchase of a new home.
Emotion! The Christian Women’s Club speaker was talking about praying for a new home, and I just said, Lord, if it is your will that we get this new house...” and the women suck it up like a sponge. Paganism. Just like the Hindu household gods.
Hoffer is my model. They called him caustic. I hardly think so. Pithy, yes. Caustic?
Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
Quote from a weblog on the military, but applicable to evangelical’s views--on safety, on Bush, etc.
Some of the value I got from the religious services of my youth, I do miss. I recall the beauty of the sanctuary at Calvary Baptist for an evening service. I remember the fun of singing hymns at Camp Joy. I remember the fun at the Tabernacle at Camp Koronis.
How much of the aesthetic had to do with the evangelical nature of the proceedings? I think there was a level of comfort there--a spot on the continuum--where I enjoyed the evangelical service. I enjoyed the intimacy with a group of people with a common belief. I enjoyed the sense that there were people there who cared about your problems.
Some of this might have been a projection of what I regarded as good unto the ministers and the other evangelicals. I assumed they were charitable and led upright lives. I assumed they were safe, perhaps because I hoped they were safe. We were the remnant, the true church, and we had to trust each other if only because the rest of the world was so untrustworthy.
Evangelicalism is cozy. Sitting in the pew, listening to the service, listening to the pastor, listening to the music director, listening to the hymns--I spent hours, untold hours in darkened sanctuaries. Sometimes at Sunday evening service. It seems I remember Sunday evening services the best.
I looked forward, a little, to the beating up of the parishoners, the invitation, the beseeching sermon, the five verses of Just As I Am. An invitation was spectacle. I wanted to watch it. It was adult, it was solemn, it was really the most dignified ceremony in the evangelical church--despite my current assertion that the whole invitation and conversion ritual is a stripping away of the convert’s dignity. In fact, they are a celebrity at the same time. I am not sure which is the correct view. There are ironies, there are contradictions.
Conversion--can be beautiful. It is a ritual of hope, a ritual which gives a clean slate, a ritual which can change things, can breed the miraculous, can be sincere, can be authentic, can be life-changing. And yet, so often it is not. So often it is counterfeit, maudlin, contrived.
As a “saved” member of the audience, what was my hope when I saw somebody convert? For friendship? For credibility? For an apology as a part of the repentance? Intimacy with the new convert? Closeness? Sex? Whatever it was, the conversion of another was a powerful drug, a drug which the cynic will not understand until he has tried it. I don’t think my emotions had anything much to do with the convert’s avoidance of eternal hellfire. The real joy was in the possibility of intimacy, of conversation, of shared belief, shared struggle, of safety, of another with whom one could be safe, of safety in numbers--for I had a fear of the outside world.
There is the sense, too, of strategy in the conversion process--of somebody who has lost their position rising back to the top with a conversion--of sensing that somebody is about to convert--and just as often, being totally surprised by somebody who seemed converted but obviously, since he just went forward, wasn’t. That in itself is a shameful secret, a deception. There is a constant theme of secrets revealed in evangelicalism--every convert, in fact, who is already in the church--reveals their secret when they convert--they were not converted before. Or, if they rededicate their life, they were hiding something horrible, something wrong. Secrets revealed--that is one of the possible allures of an evangelical service.
“On fire for the Lord.” People who are really on fire for the Lord are usually unbearable, even to their fellow evangelicals. In fact, on fire for the Lord is almost a warning phrase. Stay away. This one’s out of hand. He actually believes this stuff and is taking it seriously. Stay clear!
CONSIDER how it feels to have some of your closest and nicest relatives, on some level, wish you ill. They won’t admit it up front, but if there is the possiblity that ill fortune might bring you to Jesus, they’re all for it. In fact, prosperity and calm in an unbeliever can only be a temporary calm. There must be something wrong. If not now, soon. Otherwise, their belief that there is only peace through faith in Jesus will take a beating.
Speculate: Why don’t Jadi and Jonathan keep in touch? Possibly it is because I don’t keep in touch with them. However, there has to be more to it. Jonathan keeps in touch with Mom and Dad. Jadi and Marianne keep in touch with Mom and Dad at least a little bit. They are wary of non-evangelicals. I don’t speak the language. They like me. But they are troubled by me. My existence is anathema to them, if in fact--perhaps they don’t think of me at all! For my part, I am not eager to spend time tip-toeing around the issues with them.
Their secrets--probably aren’t safe with me. Their failings aren’t safe with me. Neither are mine with them. Both of us will use evidence of failings to flail the other, if only in our own mind. We know this, and so we avoid each other.
Honestly, I do secretly, and sometimes not-so-secretly, wish the more arrogant evangelicals ill as well. They have been hoping for my destruction, and thus I find it difficult not to hope for theirs.
How evangelicalism divides: Division, incidentally, isn’t necessarily a bad thing to evangelicals. Jesus is the great divider! Broad is the path which leads to destruction!
The demand for a dullard: Is the need for a Bush, or another dull male--which I associate with the tendency of the homecoming queen to marry the most obnoxious jock--the need to have a powerful force which can be controlled by female wiles? What about the males who also enjoy the leadership of alpha males, drunken, junior high-like, doltish males?
And what about my enjoyment of the energy and spontenaity of males? Of males like Jordan, who are all boy, all men, go go go? I enjoy them! But they are still boys, and I would not want to be under their authority. I enjoy them as long as they are under my authority.
Rod Parsley: His Hitler-like screaming--something to do with the shame of the followers at a previous defeat. Germany was humiliated by the defeat (and peace terms) of World War I. The screams of Hitler directly expressed and addressed that humiliation. What humiliation, then, have those who follow the American demogogues suffered? The humiliations of failing in a capitalist system? The psychological humiliation of being raised in evangelical religion? The shame of holding to a faith which cannot be lived without a sense of shame, a sense of being on the cross? And anger at that shame? A desire to have that shame transmogrified into pride through forceful rhetoric, forceful perspective-altering rhetoric? When Parsley and others scream in anger, and their crowds rise up in joy, is it not the relief of finally feeling pride after a life of shame? Preachin the gospel. He had the anointing! It is code for: He will make us feel pride where we once felt shame. Defensive pride, but pride nonetheless.
