Some recommended reading
Recent essays on identity formation, negative epistemology, a divided Christianity, and "the beginnings of a manifesto"
My work as a college professor can be divided into several categories. Most of what I do involves teaching and instruction, including lecturing, guiding class discussions, and, yes, grading. I’m fortunate to be able to conduct research, which I occasionally share at professional conferences and sometimes publish in books and journals.1 I serve my institution in a variety of ways, including on hiring and curricular committees.
But my favorite part of my job, hands down, is being able to read. A lot.
Sometimes this reading is related to teaching, including preparing for classes and identifying new, relevant material to share with students. Often this reading is related to my research; keeping up with the latest studies in my field not only makes me a better teacher, but it also informs the projects on which I’m working at any given time.
But of all the reading I do in my job, my favorite sort is the kind that doesn’t serve any specific purpose. Instead, it simply enriches my read on the world around me — and for me, this usually involves the intersection of religion, politics, and American culture. And yes, sometimes this reading makes its way into my teaching and research. But this is usually secondary; before this, it is simply a joy to consider and reflect upon.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been fortunate to read the following essays, each of which have informed and challenged my thinking in different ways. I hope they do the same for you.
The Gospel in the Marketplace of Identity, by Austin Gravley
I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Austin through his work with the American Values Coalition. In this essay—the fourth and final of a series—Austin explains how identity has come to supplant information in the social media ecosystem. Specifically, he argues, social media has become a tool by which we seek out and consume information that forms our identities in critical ways. Here’s why that’s a problem:
Using social media to help us understand ourselves is like taking someone’s doodle of a map and using it for a cross-country roadtrip. While we use these tools and platforms as reliable guides for finding our place in the world and navigating it, in actuality we are given a crayon-drawn map and a compass with a needle constantly redirecting where "north" is. Instead of "north" being anchored in truth, knowledge, and wisdom, "north" is determined by my ever-shifting desires. "North" becomes not just what I want, but who I want to be, and my compass will lead me to wherever “my people” dwell.
The prevalence of this situation, Austin writes, demands a thoughtful and intentional response from Christians. He says that Christians should be unapologetic in our declaring the gospel—the good news—of Jesus, especially the countercultural reality of this good news — namely, that we ought not craft our identity based on the whims of our shifting desires, but rather that God gives us our identity as created in His image. Toward the end of his essay, Austin writes:
What the church has to offer to a world driven by identities is an identity greater than any identity we could select for ourselves. It is not an identity we achieve or attain for ourselves, but one we receive by faith as we lay down our claim to be the rulers of our lives and submit to the gracious and loving yoke of Christ.
I have the pleasure of interacting and working with college students on a daily basis. These young men and women are in the midst of an incredibly formative period of their lives. Austin’s essay is a reminder to reject the false hope of identify formation via social media and temporal relationships, and rather to find our identity in the eternal—and infinitely better—hope of glory.
Touch Negative Epistemology and Negative Epistemology Will Touch You Back, by Samuel James
It will come as no surprise to my readers that Samuel James is one of my current favorite writers and observers on the fraught relationship between faith, culture, and technology.2 One of his most recent essays touches on an idea that I think about often, not just as a social scientist but as a Christian living in an increasingly polarized and pluralist age.
James’ conception of negative epistemology is similar to negative partisanship, which is the political science idea that more and more people are making political judgments not to achieve their favored policy goals, but rather to encourage the defeat and destruction of their perceived opponents. Negative epistemology, on the other hand, is “a way of forming one’s beliefs not from a set of convictions and judgments, but from doing the opposite of whatever a disliked out-group does.”
In addition to being a vehicle for dismissing ideas out of hand and encouraging viewing those holding these ideas with disdain, negative epistemology treats essential work in social and cultural relations as a game:
Negative epistemology is not a creation of the Internet age, but the Web has provided it with its best known habitat for organic growth. Online, thinking outrage-first feels not only righteous but strategic, like a wise practice to ensure you keep “speaking truth to power.” And yet our digital marches are not like the ones we know from our history. They meander. They don’t look us in the eye. Our quest to take the opposite view of the people we dislike is an illusion of power. Looking out and seeing more and more enemies strengthens our sense of purpose. We tell ourselves we are genuinely holding powerful people accountable, when in fact we are immersed in a role-playing game.
We might feel strong when we dunk on someone on social media or reply to a tweet with just the right blend of snark and authenticity, but these interactions don’t contribute to meaningful discourse in the least. Instead, they reinforce tribal divisions and encourage disparate groups to circle the wagons of their preferred worldview. At a time when we should prioritize engagement, we instead reward dismissals.
And in the end, nobody really wins.
‘Christian America’ Isn’t Dying. It’s Dividing, by Daniel K. Williams
A popular argument in today’s discussion over the future of American religion is that Christianity is in the midst of an inexorable decline. Just take a look at the following chart showing the percentage of people identifying as white Christians over time, compared to the religiously unaffiliated:
Pushing back against this narrative a bit, the University of West Georgia’s Daniel K. Williams argues that the biggest threat to Christianity in the United States is not disaffiliation, but rather internal divisions. Specifically, Williams focuses on the potential divisions within Christianity across regions and states, as well as demographics and the kinds of people we are. “An America in which only a minority of the population is Christian,” he argues, “would therefore look less like Britain and more like Italy, where a culturally conservative Catholic south has long been at odds with a more urban, industrial, and post-Christian north.”
Williams then explains that while the majority of Christians who remain in a post-Christian America will be theologically conservative, these Christians may look different from one another depending on where they live:
The dominant strand of Christianity in the US may well be theologically conservative—but those theological conservatives will not be evenly distributed across the American landscape.
Instead, in northern cities, they’ll be concentrated heavily among immigrant groups, and they’ll be a minority in the rest of the population. They may be more likely to attend nondenominational churches that lack the institutional presence of established groups that have dominated American religion for most of the country’s history. But in the rural South, Christianity will likely remain as much of a cultural rallying cry as ever, even as southern Christians sense the rest of the country moving away from their beliefs.
He continues:
If that happens, much of the South may well become even more fervent in its culturally Christian displays of public religiosity. This happened before, in the late 19th century, when many white Southerners embraced a “Lost Cause” theology—combining evangelical piety with white supremacy and regional pride.
The “end of Christian America” will therefore not likely lead to widespread secularization and religious apathy, as it has in much of Europe, but rather to increased cultural polarization.
There’s a lot to chew on here. I appreciate Williams’ attention to the nuance of this discussion, rather than simply skipping ahead to “Christianity is doomed!” or “Christianity will conquer!” The reality, as it is most of the time, is more complicated.
Toward a Renewed Public Protestantism: The Beginnings of a Manifesto, by Jake Meador
After tracing the history and reality of Christianity in the United States—including evangelicalism, the Mainline tradition, and Catholicism—Jake Meador lays out an ambitious goal for his latest essay: “The challenge before us … is to essentially re-plant the Christian movement in the United States.”
No big deal, right?
In this essay Meador offers an opening bid of what this effort might look like for evangelical Protestants in the United States. First, the problem:
The problem we are dealing with today in evangelicalism is two-fold: First, the churches have become commoditized, as it were, driven to see themselves as a kind lifestyle purveyor. This is partly the consequence of the attractional movement, which gave birth to the notion that churches existed chiefly to provide a certain kind of experience to attendees, rather than to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments to parishioners. But it is also a function of the wide-scale adoption of the car, which has destroyed the neighborhood parish church model and created the structure in which churches had plausible reason to see themselves as an experience dispenser in competition with other churches dispensing other experiences on Sunday morning. Second, the parachurch organizations have not adapted to new realities and have often operated in a free-floating, undefined relationship to those local churches that have remained recognizably Christian communities.
After defining this problem (as well as others), Meador offers a wish list of sorts for securing the future of American evangelicalism. Here’s a summary:
“We need churches that understand their chief function as being the plain preaching of the Gospel, administration of the sacramental life of the church, and the aiding of her members in ordinary Christian discipleship, by which the church witnesses in its life together to the world that God has been drawing into life ever since the Resurrection of Christ, the first fruits of the new creation.”
“We need a network of institutions and informal communities of friends that create a robust ecosystem of organizations and networks that support the church in her worship and work.”
“We need media institutions that participate in public discourse, presenting a serious and grounded account of Christian orthodoxy. These institutions can assist churches in evangelization, catechesis, and discipleship by being present in the digital and media spaces where people increasingly live much of their lives, offering an alternative to the noise, anger, and distraction that pervades American media and digital life.”
“We need institutions focused on reaching America’s young people, introducing them to the basic elements of Christian belief, and helping them to become connected to Christian churches and begin their practices of Christian discipleship.”
He concludes with the following call:
In short, what is needed is a rebuilt American Protestantism that can reckon with and accommodate America as she actually exists while also restoring the vital public life that has been lost with the failure of the American church and accomplishing this work through a renewal of actual local congregations dedicated to the preaching of the Gospel, the sacramental life of the church, and the practices of Christian discipleship.
If this vision sounds audacious, that’s because it is. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? As we move deeper into an increasingly post-Christian century, anything less than a dramatic course correction strikes me as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Meador’s essay may not provide the answers for evangelicals staring at a vast array of challenges and disruptions, but it at least starts the conversation.
Speaking of research, I’m thrilled to have finally gotten the seventh and final substantive chapter of Uneasy Citizenship off my desk. After putting the finishing touches on a short concluding chapter, everything will head to my publisher. Thanks be to God.
His forthcoming book, Digital Liturgies, will move to the top of my reading list when it’s released in September.