In the follow up video we talk about:

  • Conclusions & Convictions
  • Individualism
  • Scholarship
  • Marxism

Conclusions & Convictions: if ‘believing’ the right things is a prerequisite for belonging, then you are not free to ‘ask the question behind the question’ and follow the path wherever the inquiry takes you. You must arrive at the predetermined conclusions or you are not evangelical. This is because the nature of evangelicalism, whatever it has been in the past, has become a set of conclusions (homosexuality, the Bible, Jesus, salvation, hell, end times, etc,)

Individualism: Evangelicalism was born in the Enlightenment and thus the individual is primary when it comes to piety, salvation, and holiness. It is part of why Evangelicalism is so deeply wed to consumer capitalism which was born at the same time. One odd manifestation of this personal holiness (individualism) is called “double insulation”.

Scholarship: The previous two obstacles limit the type of scholarship that Evangelicals can participate in – which is why they have go to other fields (chemistry, Russian poetry) to find people to speak against Critical Race Theory. The problem with this is that if you are not a practitioner who employs CRT then you are only on the platform to speak against something that you have a limited understanding of.

Marxism: The specter of the Cold War looms large in Evangelicalism still. Russia was the enemy so any reference to Marx brings up ‘guilty by association’ thoughts of communism, dictatorship, atheism, Stalin and Lenin, and the slaughter of millions. Marx’s solutions proved to be faulty (wrong) but his analysis (diagnosis) of the problems of industrialized capitalism have valid critiques that have been integrated into different types of Christian theology around the globe.

The categorical dismissal of the ‘Masters of Suspicion’ – Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Marx – is a cynical scare tactic that still really works. It is the simply (one line) dismissal of each of them by evangelicals that concerns me.

Freud: I don’t want to have sex with my mother.

Darwin: I didn’t evolve from a monkey.

Nietzsche: God is not dead.

And scaring people off from CRT by associating it with cultural Marxism is a false-flag type of dog whistle that unfortunately still works.

Watch the 10 min video and let me know what you think.

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