Invitation to a Culture War
Thanks but No Thanks to Erick Erickson's Invitation to Fight "the Right People" and Thoughts on what the RNC Censure Tells Us About 2024
I do not usually talk about faith and politics, but when I was looking at issues to address this, this was top of mind. So if you don’t like reading about religion, apologies in advance.
Erick Erickson on his blog had an interesting post in which he express some well-deserved tiredness with the wars within Christian Evangelical circles.
Let me go ahead and acknowledge there’s some truth to this. As a Christian, there’s nothing more absurd than the ongoing wars of minor Christian celebrities. It’s a cheap pitch for an article in a Christian journal to say, “I want to explain why David French is wrong!” There’s some unhealthy divisiveness and focus on attacking personalities.
That said, I have to take some issue with Erickson’s advice to “Big Eva” which refers to folks like Russell Moore, Beth Moore, and David French:
We’re seeing a realignment within evangelicalism right now with some, derisively called “Big Eva” spending way, way, way too much time lecturing evangelicals on their faults. I tread carefully here because I have friends in this camp who I love dearly, but can y’all just give it a rest a bit? Maybe spend a few weeks going after the Wokes instead of the constant chastisement against a whole bunch of people who have been nothing but chastised by the media and cultural elite over the past four or five years? Female friends in this camp, can you speak up against the normalization of transgenderism and girls becoming boys and boys getting into girls’ sports? (emphasis mine)
Can y’all just go maybe one week without speaking into the house and maybe preach out of the house? Show the grace you expect to be shown whether it is shown to you or not.
So there are several problems I have with this advice. Let’s focus on the highlighted portions inviting Christian leaders to go after “wokes” and “the normalization of transgenderism.”
It says something about one’s view of Christianity that the most unifying and Christian thing you can think of is to go after the same type of people that the rest of the tribe is attacking. Former Christian Post Editor Napp Nazworth pointed out that this came after Erickson complained about “Tribal performance art” and then effectively called on “Big Eva” to attack some things and people to show others they’re still part of the tribe.
Woke and Anti-Woke: Two Sides of the Same Coin
There are legitimate concerns on both issues. Many of the woke writers offer up toxic, inaccurate, and one-sided ideas about race in America that have served to make race relations worse. They seek to build a world of never-ending race-angst that’s going to inflame rather than soothe passions over these issues.
In many ways, Wokeism is a new religion and harsh unforgiving fundamentalist one that leads to a joyless existence of pharisaic rules and regulations of what can be watched, seen, and enjoyed, and what must be canceled. It’s not only a cruel religion but a very arbitrary one where eventually even its practitioners find themselves not woke enough. Because this religion makes up new rules all the time and there’s an effort to find things that people have enjoyed and declare them problematic in order to make the declarant more righteous and more woke than those who challenged him.
The anti-woke side is in many ways, just as unpleasant crankish and self-righteous as the wokesters. . The anti-woke brigades are not merry bands of winsome opponents of woke extremists. I observed this for the first time when I was looking into criticism of woke fiction. What I found on YouTube were critics who were just as mean, nasty, and joyless as the other side. Many will unnecessarily inject race into issues or bring up irrelevant points like, “George Floyd was no angel” that inflame racial passions.
Christians in the anti-woke brigades ignore legitimate concerns from African American Christians, even those who agree with them on other issues. I imagine there’s a special app for conservative Christian leaders that allows to see tweets from former NFL star Benjamin Watson about the pro-life issue and ignore those about race.
There are pastors who try to address concerns about racism, but any pastor who does will be called woke and savaged on the Internet, whether he was being woke or just trying to apply biblical ideas to a difficult issue. The anti-woke brigades don’t care. Christian anti-wokesters will follow folks the advice of people like Atheist James Lindsay on what’s best for the church rather than folks like Pastor Tim Keller.
Also, just like the wokes, the anti-wokes want to restrict access to books they don’t like. There have been efforts to suppress books under the cover of anti-CRT legislation, just as the wokes have tried to push out books that may be good but aren’t woke enough. Both movements infantalize and divide people, and have a real problem with free speech. Not really seeing something good to join.
Trying the Same Thing That Didn’t Work
I think the transgenderism debate is also one that has some serious trouble. The country has moved far too quickly over the course of only seven years or eight on the idea that gender is a mere social construct and a theory of gender identity that essentially the individual can redefine their gender based on their own perceptions of themselves. Asking any questions about the wisdom of this will garner allegations of transphobia. However, the changes to society have been radical and have occurred mostly at the direction of a small number of people. There are legitimate concerns about this rapid fire change.
It’s legitimate to be concerned about the ethics of using puberty blockers on kids, many of whom would naturally resolve their own gender confusion without intervention. There’s also a fair question whether some gender transitions (particularly among the young) are occurring because of social pressure from peers and family members transitioning,
There are also have been enough studies or reports to be concerned about basis on which transitions are being pursued. Oftentimes, trans activists seem to assume highly stereotyped views of gender, and falling outside that view of femininity or masculinity is considered a reason to consider transition. In the very recent past under ideals of feminism and gender equality, people were told by liberal thinkers to be themselves. You’re a woman who wants to be a truck driver, go for it. You’re a guy who wants to be a beautician, have at it. In the 2020s, more people would tend to suggest that you might consider changing your gender because of that interest. That’s not progress.*
There definitely needs to be a Christian response to all of these issues, but it needs to be pastoral and not political. There’s a lot of pain and hurting people dealing with stuff around this issue. And it’s the type of issue that requires sensitivity and thoughtful and loving engagement from the Church. There are few aspects of the transgenderism issue that lends itself to political debate.
The issue of girls and school sports is certainly one of those. And even here I think much of the right overstates its case. We’re told that the presence of transgender athletes will destroy girls’ sports. I’d agree with the argument that biological males have an unfair advantage when playing many girls’ sports due to the physical difference between male and female bodies. But destroying girls’ sports?
My home state of Idaho passed a law on transgender sports and the big challenge by those trying to overturn it is finding a trans athlete to have standing in the lawsuit. The original plaintiff withdrew from Boise State University and therefore may not have standing, putting the whole lawsuit at risk because there’s no transgender athletes who are being hurt by it. Idaho is a small state. Our population is about two million people. However, our state has ninety K-12 school districts with nearly 300,000 students, plus multiple colleges and universities. Out of all those schools and students, only one transgender athlete at the college level exists. That might be unfair to girls in the same sport but it isn’t going to destroy girls sports in the state.
Now certainly, other states might have more transgender students, but most girls and women sports competitions are not going to be won by transgender athletes who went from mediocre male athletes to winning women’s competitions. That said, many women and girls become involved in sports with the goal of getting scholarships for college or winning championships. This may lead parents to redirect their daughters away from sports or to sports where the physical advantage a transgender competitor could enjoy would be less.
While I think it’s a place for legitimate political debate, it is an odd issue for Erickson to suggest Christian women dedicate their time or energy to. Women’s sports hasn’t been a traditional big focus as a cause for Christians, or certainly for conservatives. In years past, there’s been an argument made on the right that many regulations protecting women’s sports are unfair. Earlier this month, Carrie Lucas, President of the Independent Women’s Forum led a conference call on the importance of protecting girls in sports where participants invoked and praised Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. in 2012, Ms. Lucas wrote an article for U.S. News and World Report about the dark side of Title IX and how it unfairly hurt boys sports. Now, you can argue that the two points don’t necessarily contradict, but there’s really no concern about girls’ sports evident in that piece or in any conservative literature prior to the transgender issue arising.
The biggest problem with much of the Christian response to the transgender issue is that it mirrors much of the Christian response to the gay rights debate. While there were legitimate arguments over same-sex marriage and what’s good for society, much of the case that was made (at least at its more memorable level) centered on homosexuals being people who molested children or lived over-the-top lives of constant debauchery.
The media had ways to counterprogram against that sort of portrayal with programs such as Will and Grace. Not only that, but many kids who were raised in the church had their faith challenged because the gays and lesbians they met didn’t fit into the hateful stereotype.
Similarly, listening to many Christians today, you’d think the only reason to identify as transgender is to get access to the women’s bathroom to molest or spy on women or to achieve success in women’s sports.
I foresee a similar outcome with the current strategy over the transgender issue. The media will continue to push a pro-transgender activist narrative with the general populace and many Christian young people who listened to their parents are going to be surprised to meet people who are transgender and are neither athletes nor sexual predators.
A truly Christian strategy would be gospel-oriented and people-oriented, bathed in prayer, and seeking to bring healing and peace, and only addressed in the political sphere in regards to religious liberty and a few very narrow cases. The current approach on the right is to view transgendermism primarily as a cultural wedge issue for the purpose of political organizing, even though there’s very little to actually be done politically.
Preaching Out of the House When the House is on Fire
Erickson’s request: “Can y’all just go maybe one week without speaking into the house and maybe preach out of the house?” doesn’t seem to match up with what the Apostle Paul would say:
For what have I to do with judging ooutsiders? Is it not those inside the church2 whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you.-1 Corinthians 5:12 and 13 ESV
There have been some real rottenness exposed in the church recently. For example, David and Nancy French exposed one of the largest Christian camps in the country for harboring a sexual predator. It came out that Franklin Graham bullied the abused wife of Saeed Abedini in order to save face for himself, the Southern Baptist Convention dealing with sexual abuse, Liberty University dealing with sexual abuse, and we also learned that one of the greatest apologists of the second half of the twentieth century, Ravi Zacharias, was a serial sexual predator and spiritual abuser.
That’s all stuff that came out in 2021 and these events just broke my heart. I can’t understand someone who lived through that year and says “You know what the church today needs? A lot less introspection and responsibly. That lot more finger-pointing at all those dangerous ungodly heathens outside.”
A Confusing Cessation
Erickson’s plea to “Big Eva” is kind of an odd one. The reason he asks for them to go after “the wokes” is that this should be done “instead of the constant chastisement against a whole bunch of people who have been nothing but chastised by the media and cultural elite over the past four or five years.”
I don’t know who he’s talking about. Though perhaps Erickson is trying to play to his Trump voter readers and say, “I get you You poor innocent people have been unfairly attacked by the media and these folks just are piling on and that’s wrong.” But I’ve never known any one of these Christian leaders to go after someone for their vote.
They have criticized some people for spreading lies and misinformation, for efforts to overturn the election through the Stop the Steal movement, for being indifferent to the concerns of racial minorities, and supporting nutty “stop the steal” efforts like the Jericho March.
Now a lot of people have been criticized by the media and criticized by “Big Eva.” But the Bible’s clear that not all suffering (and certainly suffering of criticism):
If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.-1 Peter 4:14-16
There’s a clear juxtaposition. If you’re criticized for being a Christian or for standing for Christ, that’s honorable and praiseworthy. If you’re criticized as an evildoer, that’s something else. If someone says, “You’re hypocritical on the standards of ethics you hold politicians too. You’re ignoring abuse in the church and you won’t even listen to fellow Christians of color who tell you about their experiences of discrimination. You have an unkind and cold attitude to refugees. You maliciously spread information on social media without regards to whether its true or not.”
Now if all that’s true of you and you’re a Christian, then you’re not being attacked because you’re a Christian, but because you’re doing evil even while claiming Christ. Again, it feels like this is a sop being offered to Erickson’s readers who feel like they’re being attacked than the people he’s supposedly addressing.
If there’s anything approaching a point in Erickson’s statement, it’s the idea that it would be worthy for Christian leaders to consider whether their criticism is doing any good and whether they should change their approach or try some new way to convince people. That said, sometimes people just won’t listen but God still calls people to be faithful.
The strategies being deployed on fighting “wokeness” are not designed to bring cultural peace or solve problems, they’re designed to create wedge issues to win elections, build donor lists, and give leaders some political capital. The only one who goes to win off these are those who will are raking in the cash by keeping people in a constant state of fear and anger.
It’d be great to have a Christian movement that addressed these issues in a serious balanced way. At this point, even having a political party that didn’t demand you butcher your conscience in order to be a member in good standing would be a huge step forward.
A Thought on the RNC Censure
I would be remiss if I didn’t offer one comment on the morally bankrupt censures of Representatives Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and stating that those who perpetrated the attacks on the Capitol were engaged in legitimate political discourse.
This has been roundly condemned by everyone other than the most fanatical Trump supporters. National Review had a great editorial were they attacked it as “both morally repellent and politically self-destructive.” The politically self-destructive part comes down to the fact that Democrats have tried to make January 6th the issue in the 2022 elections while elected Republicans have tried to simply move past it and forget about it. The RNC just put the entire party behind the idea that storming in the Capitol and beating up police officers is “legitimate political discourse.” notwithstanding RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s efforts to clean up by arguing that the words in the resolution don’t mean what they actually say.
There’s a school of thought out there in social media that minimizes what happened by pointing out that the body issuing this censure were by minimizing the RNC as not a group of elected officials.
That’s not strictly true. Every RNC member was elected by their state party, as a result of elections that happened at the County level, which was directly impact by votes at the most local political entity of them all, the precinct.
And these same officials are going to set the national rules for choosing the nominee and the state rules, and have the authority to cancel nominating contests and award their states’ delegates to Trump.
Those who think that we’re actually going to have a wide-open 2024 Presidential nominating with fair rules that might allow Trump to be a challenged were given a harsh reality check by an RNC that showed its loyalty to Trump superseded the common-sense electoral interests of the party. The question is whether people will pay attention or continue to delude themselves about the possibility of Trump losing a Republican Primary.