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Things Evangelicalsim Likes| | The following list is by an incredible blogger/writer who you can find at http://jenellparis.blogspot.com/
She is a professor who teaches at a Christian college in Pennsylvania. I highly suggest adding her to your list of frequented blogs.
by Jenell Paris
I’m an evangelical first and foremost for cultural reasons. But if pressed to discuss theology, I still uphold Jesus as Lord and Savior and have a high view of the Bible. My credentials are sound. Why, then, do evangelicals keep suggesting to me that my membership in the movement is becoming increasingly tenuous?
Over the last 18 months or so I’ve attempted to publish lots of stuff and have done some public speaking. The stories in this series of posts are from these experiences, but all are anonymized (if you think you recognize yourself, by all means learn from it, but it probably isn’t you – it’s really anonymized.) Some of the pieces discussed won’t ever be published, and others will be or already are…all that to say don’t waste your time trying to figure out the specifics of my stories.
I get along with evangelicals pretty well, but evangelicalism … I think it might be turning on me. The “-ism” suffix indicates a set of beliefs that guide a social movement. Some –isms seem affable, like conservatism or liberalism (pick one) or realism. Others, like authoritarianism or fascism, seem terrible. But they share in common the –ism, the turning of a thought or practice into an ideology that guides a group of people toward some end.
Evangelical beliefs are supposedly widely held by a very large group of people out there called evangelicals. Evangelicals don’t have an organization, a denomination, or an official leader – we exist by power of our “-ism,” and we grant authority – informally - to particular persons and groups to represent the movement. In addition to publicly visible evangelicals, pastors and editors serve as culture brokers, articulating what evangelicals want, ascertaining what pleases them and what offends them, and deciding how much of what they really need they can handle in any given sermon, book, or speech. That’s mostly how I hear about my breaches – from editors and publishers who deliver religious goods and services to large groups of evangelicals, and paid church workers who do essentially the same.
My problem is not with individual evangelicals, and it’s not about core doctrines or church membership or life experience. I’m good on all those counts. If I understand our conflict (and I may not), evangelicalism and I have nine points of disagreement, based on the likes and dislikes, not the core beliefs, of the –ism. I’ll post a series over the next few days about “What Evangelicalism Likes”, and how my scholarly work is displeasing it.
1. Evangelicalism Likes Lots of Scripture in Small Doses
I wrote an essay that used Scripture as a framing theme, but didn’t discuss specific Bible verses as proof of my point. According to expert feedback, my approach was Christian, but not evangelical. An evangelical approach would have listed the six verses that discuss my topic, and articulate pre-existing points of view on each. My PhD in anthropology allows me to develop ancillary thoughts related to culture or humanity, but I am still obligated to write extensively about Bible verses, even though my Bible study would either be derivative of actual Bible scholarship, or wing-nutty because I had pretended to be a Bible scholar.
I argued that the entire Bible addressed my topic, not just the six verses with the topic’s main phrase. This is often perceived by evangelicalism as a liberal approach that allows free-wheelers to generate any theme whatsoever. It is important to remain ‘close to the text’, maybe literally holding the Bible so close that one’s eye can only see one or two verses at a time.
This strikes me as Bible-ism, turning the Living Word into a set of doctrines and ideas that support a religious movement. But please learn from my experience with evangelicalism: if you use the phrase “finger pointing at the moon” to describe the relationship between the Bible and God, you’re sunk.
2. Evangelicalism Likes the word “Jesus”
I based a pages-long analysis on one of Jesus’ encounters with his disciples. Evangelicalism said I wrote about Jesus appropriately, but with insufficient repetition. And in addition to Jesus’ name, his moral prohibitions should have been stated earlier and more often.
Jesus is a historical person whose actions and sayings should be cited often. Fair enough. But in addition, it seems that evangelicalism likes Jesus used as a blank screen onto which we project our notions of perfection, completion, beauty and the like. Evangelicalism may think it lifts up Jesus to use him as a master metaphor, but I’m not so sure. I’d call it Jesus-ism, turning the person of Jesus into an ideology.
3. Evangelicalism Likes Merging Exegesis and Hermeneutics
One commenter questioned my acceptance of liberal scholarship (“reliance upon!”, I said) that distinguishes between what same-sex sex meant in biblical cultures and what it means in our day. Though evangelical scholars separate exegesis and hermeneutics, evangelicalism often doesn’t. Evangelicalism wants the Bible to speak plainly and unproblematically into our culture on every issue currently of interest to us, regardless of differences in language, culture, and worldview between our world and the world of a particular biblical author. It’s also unwise of me to lean so heavily on liberal Bible scholars and secular queer theorists, arguing as I did that it’s possible for evangelicals to learn from their analysis even while disagreeing with their politics.
4. Evangelicalism Likes Believing Things
Evangelicalism likes believing more things rather than fewer things, and believing confidently rather than doubtfully. I articulated beliefs that were conservative enough for one publisher, but not confident enough. Specifically, I acknowledged that I could be wrong about all of it – I wrote that I’ve read the Bible, searched my conscience and learned church tradition, and reached some conclusion that I put forward as my own – Jenell’s views, not God’s views. Evangelicalism would like me to claim them as God’s views. Additionally, I point out the complexity of various sexual identities and how a single message of condemnation doesn’t cover every single situation and disrespects individuality. Evangelicalism didn’t like that either – it wanted me to offer a single message of condemnation in a loving way.
5. Evangelicalism Likes Claiming that the Phrase “God is in Control” is in the Bible
A theologian recently told me that the entirety of evangelical theology is built on the cornerstone of God being in control. His book, in fact, devotes a chapter of biblical exegesis to the phrase which, strangely, is not actually in the Bible. We read words like “powerful”, “I AM,” and “King” and take them to mean “control.” Seems like the control issue might be our deal, not God’s.
Since my triplets died five years ago, I’ve refused to believe that God is in control, and numerous evangelicals have encouraged me to heal, move past anger, and grieve thoroughly (good advice) and readopt the notion that God is in control (bad advice). Surely my personal situation influences the objectivity of my theology (hence my reluctance to speak for God, noted in number 4). Surely my sanity didn’t emerge from grief entirely intact. Fair enough, but still, the Bible doesn’t say that God is in control.
6. Evangelicalism Likes Prioritizing the Superiority of Its Point of View
I wrote about a man who moves from Christian faith to atheism, and evangelicalism worried that I was showing more credence for his point of view than I was defending the Christianity he had abandoned. Indeed, because I was writing for an audience predisposed against atheism, I thought I’d show the marginal point of view in as empathic a way possible. It’s just what anthropologists do – we try to see the world from other points of view, not simply showing how Others are deficient versions of Us. Evangelicalism disagrees with anthropology on this point, preferring to discuss things like atheism, agnosticism and other religions primarily in terms of how they rely on flawed logic and personal immaturity, and how our superior logic and maturity could potentially convert their adherents.
7. Evangelicalism Likes Euphemistic Curse Words
In my evangelical upbringing, heck and darn were dicey, but acceptable. The “dicey but acceptable” category has expanded these days to include suck, blow, and even piss. The real swear words, however, are very bad. Please don’t ask me to list them – I know you know what I’m talking about here.
I tried raising the question of “Why are you so much more concerned with the fact that I wrote “shit” than that there are thousands of children starving to death in our world?”, but as it turns out, Tony Campolo has already ridden that train to its last stop.
8. Evangelicalism Likes Women in Their Place
Recently a powerful evangelical man explained to me how Christian workplaces are beginning to open to women in leadership. The women are nearly ready, he said, and as they continue refining their skills in lower-level administrative roles and in their graduate programs, then the most gifted of them can begin assuming mid- to upper-level leadership roles. This attitude translates into the publishing world as well. Evangelicalism prefers ladies to write for other ladies about lady issues: mothering, wifing, homemaking, homeschooling, beauty, and prayer. Women who write about non-lady subjects are preferred to develop points of view derivative of the men who lead public discourse on the subject at hand. Evangelicalism recently told me that a Famous White Man had already published the definitive book on my subject, and that I should consider whether or not there really is anything more to be said.
9. Evangelicalism Likes Suits
Evangelicalism ascribes authority to men in suits. Rick Warren is an exception, and has really thrown us for a loop by no longer wearing the Hawaiian shirts that we all spent fifteen years trying to get our heads around. It just feels right – words spoken by a white American standard dialect-speaking man in a suit just sound more plausible than the same words spoken by a woman, a person with an accent, or a shlumpy white American standard dialect-speaking man.
I’ve heard evangelical women, on numerous occasions, justify the way they dress at work in terms of how their attire is like or unlike a man’s dark suit. We talk about how we look, and how men interpret how we look, and whether or not we want to be perceived as pretty and why, and why our appearance has to matter so much. It’s not that we’re longing for the authority of the Suit. We’re just trying to get our work done. | | | Posted 2/8/2009 6:44 PM - 8 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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