What if the elites are right?
I appreciated this article by Samuel James, not so much because he addresses the moral suitability of our current president (which is an issue), but because we evangelical conservatives need to avoid using the same kind of identity politics that we resent being used against us...
I wish so much that evangelicals would fully resist the allure of identity politics, especially the versions that seem to be popular in our conservative theological circles. Substitute the word “white” for “elite” in much evangelical political discourse, and you would end up with lengthy essays that would be logically indistinguishable from those of the wokest SJWs.
Whether Galli and the staff at CT are elites has absolutely no bearing on whether they’re right about this president and the morality of supporting him. The argument fails for the same reason the common pro-choice canard about pro-life’s being “out of touch” with the physical and social trauma of unplanned pregnancy fails. I completely accept the fact that I, a white, middle-class, nuclear-family raised male, cannot sufficiently empathize with a poor, disadvantaged, unwed mother, just as I accept that the editor in chief of a large Christian magazine cannot sufficiently empathize with my rural, pastoring, Trump-supporting relatives. A failure to empathize is not synonymous with a failure to speak truth. Babies are still babies, and low character is still low character—regardless who’s elite and who’s not.
Here's the full article.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
And in this article by Larry Alex Taunton we have, in my opinion, an accurate description of the spiritual state of America. It's a rather depressing read, but he ends with optimism and a challenge:
The American church is a sleeping giant. However, it cannot afford to slumber much longer. She must find her voice and her courage. And I want to put special emphasis on that last word, because courage, it seems to me, is what is most lacking among Christians. We have become what C.S. Lewis called “men without chests.” To borrow (and tweak) a line from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we have come to think that safety and material well-being are the chief end of man. That is a secular, not a Christian, understanding of life. And that secular influence upon Christians has instilled in us a desire for the safety of our Family Life Centers and the comfort of our homes rather than a conviction that we must engage the world beyond our doors. That must change. Because we are confronted with people intoxicated with their own revolutionary idealism and who really believe that society can be a tabula rasa upon which they will create heaven on earth. But this is no vision inspired by the Judeo-Christian conception of heaven; it is a secular one without God, without any virtues beyond those which the state gives it, and without human dignity.
Read the full article here.
I appreciated this article by Samuel James, not so much because he addresses the moral suitability of our current president (which is an issue), but because we evangelical conservatives need to avoid using the same kind of identity politics that we resent being used against us...
I wish so much that evangelicals would fully resist the allure of identity politics, especially the versions that seem to be popular in our conservative theological circles. Substitute the word “white” for “elite” in much evangelical political discourse, and you would end up with lengthy essays that would be logically indistinguishable from those of the wokest SJWs.Whether Galli and the staff at CT are elites has absolutely no bearing on whether they’re right about this president and the morality of supporting him. The argument fails for the same reason the common pro-choice canard about pro-life’s being “out of touch” with the physical and social trauma of unplanned pregnancy fails. I completely accept the fact that I, a white, middle-class, nuclear-family raised male, cannot sufficiently empathize with a poor, disadvantaged, unwed mother, just as I accept that the editor in chief of a large Christian magazine cannot sufficiently empathize with my rural, pastoring, Trump-supporting relatives. A failure to empathize is not synonymous with a failure to speak truth. Babies are still babies, and low character is still low character—regardless who’s elite and who’s not.
Here's the full article.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
And in this article by Larry Alex Taunton we have, in my opinion, an accurate description of the spiritual state of America. It's a rather depressing read, but he ends with optimism and a challenge:
The American church is a sleeping giant. However, it cannot afford to slumber much longer. She must find her voice and her courage. And I want to put special emphasis on that last word, because courage, it seems to me, is what is most lacking among Christians. We have become what C.S. Lewis called “men without chests.” To borrow (and tweak) a line from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we have come to think that safety and material well-being are the chief end of man. That is a secular, not a Christian, understanding of life. And that secular influence upon Christians has instilled in us a desire for the safety of our Family Life Centers and the comfort of our homes rather than a conviction that we must engage the world beyond our doors. That must change. Because we are confronted with people intoxicated with their own revolutionary idealism and who really believe that society can be a tabula rasa upon which they will create heaven on earth. But this is no vision inspired by the Judeo-Christian conception of heaven; it is a secular one without God, without any virtues beyond those which the state gives it, and without human dignity.
Read the full article here.
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