A friend wrote in to ask this question, and I wonder how you would answer the question:
So, why is it that Conservative Evangelicals and/or Fundamentalists are the most apt to?
· Be anti-vaxxers
· Be complementarian
· Vote Republican regardless of the nominee
· Deny climate change
· Support the death penalty
· Value military over fighting poverty
· Believe people are guilty before being proven innocent
· Restrict voting rights
· Support gerrymandering
I also read this week David French’s perception of American evangelical and political tribalism, and I wonder if he is answering my friend’s question. Why do they get so entangled with corrupted leaders or, when corruption appears, why do they immediately defend the leader?
Is it because Conservative Evangelicals, or Fundamentalists, have become a tribe immune to criticism from the outside?
He opens with stuff about how we trust our pastoral and church leaders.
Now let’s filter that natural inclination to trust or follow people whom God in His mercy has used to bless our lives through our fallen nature and our fallen times. At the risk of oversimplification, I tend to see the same roughly three-step pattern repeat itself time and time again.
Step one is already outlined. It’s the leap from receiving a benefit or blessing through a person to granting them excessive appreciation or loyalty. A sure sign of excessive loyalty is extending trust to a man or a woman in a way that you wouldn’t extend it to anyone else. …
Step two is when the personal becomes tribal. The leader becomes an avatar, a representative of us and our community. The difference from step one can be subtle, but it’s still profound. It’s the turn from saying, “I have loyalty because I’m grateful to this man” to “I have loyalty because he represents me.”
This temptation is particularly profound when Christians feel (and are constantly told) that they’re under cultural siege. A savvy, corrupt man can exploit the resulting reflexive defensiveness with the greatest of ease. “When they’re coming after me, they’re really coming after you.” … That’s not the sole reason for critique from the outside world, of course, but the sense of unfair attack is pervasive nonetheless.
A siege mentality leads to step three: the refusal to hear criticism from the outside and crediting critique only from the inside. In part because of my three-decade experience defending religious believers, I’ve been prone to make exactly that mistake. Other people saw who Mark Driscoll was well before I did. Other people saw who Ravi Zacharias was well before I did. I often considered the source of criticism (hostile media, angry bloggers) before I considered the substance of criticism.
That’s on me, and I regret it deeply.
But then here’s where step three gets most insidious. In a sufficiently tribal environment, all criticism ultimately becomes “outside” criticism. If secular media critiques Christians, then that’s of course outside. If an Evangelical critiques Christians—even a theologically orthodox Evangelical who has been part of American Christian culture his or her entire life—then that’s betrayal. And traitors are the ultimate outsiders.
Does this explain the odd alignment of partisan politics?
Admittedly overly simplistic answer here (since otherwise I’d write an entirely too long post):
1. Fear (of getting it “wrong,” of being “unsafe,” of being disloyal (to the Constitution and flag), of eternal conscious torment in hell, etc.) If there’s one thing consistent amongst fundamentalists of all stripes, it’s fear.
2. As Oz Guinness describes in A CASE FOR CIVILITY, they have romanticized the past, and radicalized the present in an effort to “make America great again” (my inserted analogy) without realizing it was never great (from a Christlike perspective) in the first place. Which leads to what I think is the biggest issue:
3. Because they have effectively constructed a version of Christianity without anything remotely reflecting the life and teaching of Jesus.
Folks, this was a civil conversation with disagreement clear -- reminds me of the One T Saloon back in the old days on Jesus Creed. Thanks so much John and Zach.