The Overview (Monday, March 29)
Reflecting on Christianity and culture, two timely books, and new research on religious Americans' support for LGBTQ rights
A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of moderating a conversation between Justin Giboney and Andrew Walker. Giboney, an attorney and founder of the AND Campaign, and Walker, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, spoke on a familiar yet consistently important theme: Christian political and cultural engagement. What’s more, both were able to join us on campus at John Brown University, a welcome reprieve from our recent dependence on Zoom.
During their conversation it was clear (and, for those who know them, not a surprise) that while Giboney and Walker have real disagreements on matters of governance and policy, they do share a common faith foundation for their political beliefs. While Christians may differ on matters of policy and the means to achieve certain outcomes, hearing people discuss different views through the same lens is indisputably a good thing.
We can disagree with one another and still see the humanity in one another. And this is true for those with whom we have deep, seemingly insurmountable disagreements. But our faith can bridge these divides, rejecting passive and naive tolerance in favor of an active recognition that everyone, including those with whom we disagree, is made in the image of God.
You can watch the entire conversation here. And when you’re done, here’s the Monday, March 29 edition of The Overview:
1) Mere Orthodoxy’s Myles Werntz reviews several recent books and their connection to an enduring topic: the role of Christianity in culture. His essay, “Christianity and Culture in an Age of Crisis,” extends Niebuhr’s classic conversation to several books published in the last few years, drawing on authors from varying backgrounds and voices, from Rod Dreher to Jake Meador to Alissa Wilkinson. It is at once both an excellent review of related yet distinct books, and a marvelous encapsulation of Christianity and culture in our particularly fraught moment. It’s a long essay, but definitely worth a read (or two).
2) The aforementioned Andrew Walker, writing for The Gospel Coalition, previews his forthcoming book on religious liberty. Walker argues that religious liberty, as an ideal worth defending, is under threat from both the political and cultural left and right, encountering hostility from the left and misinterpretation from the right. Speaking directly to Christians like John MacArthur, who has criticized religious liberty on the grounds that it promotes idolatry, Walker writes,
Affirming a shared legal status that allows for all to live faithfully with their conscience—even if in error—is not to defend the merits of another religion. Nor is it willing the advance of a particular religion. It is accepting that for the gospel to be proclaimed, it will have to do so without subsidy from the state.
I’m looking forward to reviewing Walker’s book alongside the new book from Asma Uddin (a Muslim attorney and religious freedom advocate) in the future. Stay tuned.
3) Pastor, professor, and data visualization guru Ryan Burge discusses his new book on the religious “nones” in an essay for Deseret Magazine. The essay is actually an excerpt from his book, which combines Burge’s expertise in the scientific study of religion with his experience as a pastor in rural Illinois. Here’s a selection:
While pursuing a graduate degree in political science, I began pastoring a small church of about 30 retirees. Thirteen years later, I’m still behind the pulpit.
During that time, I finished a master’s thesis, got married, bought a house, defended my dissertation and had two children. My church went from having about 50 people in the pews to just over 20. What was happening in American religion was also happening right in front of me.
But why? Every interview I do about American religion leads to this question. The truth is, I can’t point to just one reason why the religiously unaffiliated, the Nones, are growing astronomically, and no other academic can either. The problem with social science is that it’s the study of people. People are emotional, unpredictable and completely unintelligible most of the time.
One individual can leave a church after years of spiritual soul-searching because of a theological disagreement. Others leave because the congregation moved the Sunday service half an hour. Each person who walks away from religion has their own reasons and their own spiritual journey. However, there are large, unseen forces in American society that may make the decision to change religious affiliation easier or more difficult. Those invisible factors can be cultural, political, theological or just the spirit of the times.
Given the trajectory of religion in the United States, Burge’s book is very much worth reading. But if you’re hesitant to buy it sight unseen, read this essay first.
4) Also writing for Deseret, religion reporter extraordinaire Kelsey Dallas highlights new research on religion and LGBTQ rights. The study, from the Public Religion Research Institute, finds that support for LGBTQ rights has increased across all religious traditions and denominations; indeed, half of white evangelical Christians now express support for same-sex marriage.
However, divisions remain, particularly on other areas of policy. “So far,” Dallas writes, “the broad support for the policies captured by the survey has not been enough to overcome partisan conflict related to both religious freedom and transgender rights.” According to Dallas, this is particularly the case in terms of the Equality Act, which passed the House of Representatives but faces a steep climb in the Senate, even with Democrats in the majority.
5) And for something completely different, Fast Company’s Mark Wilson details the frenetic world of 911 operator training. I’ve always been fascinated with how 911 operators do their jobs, keeping cool some of the most stressful scenarios imaginable. Consider this:
911 operator-dispatchers have one of the hardest, most thankless jobs in the world. It takes six months of on-the-job training to become dispatchers. That’s because they have to pick up a phone and talk to someone in the middle of serious trauma—both soothing them and extracting necessary information—while coordinating one or several police, fire, and health departments to arrive on the scene ASAP. Along the way, an operator may be using half a dozen pieces of unrelated software across three to six computer screens, using multiple keyboards, mice, and even foot pedals, while simultaneously manning a radio to connect to help on the ground.
I worked for an audit and inventory management company for a year after college. My job was to connect independent inspectors with orders from our clients, usually involving an inspection of industrial equipment in which the client had a financial interest. These orders would often need to be processed and completed quickly, given the amount of money in question and the potential for fraud in some of these deals. And some of these inspections took place in pretty remote areas, making it difficult to find an inspector willing to do the job for what we were willing to pay.
And I thought that was a high-pressure environment.
As much as I am loathed to speak like an economist, I do find shades of my idea of "supply-side church economics" reflected in Ryan Burge's article in Desert News. In the later part of his article he writes, "If almost all Americans still believe in the divine, we should not be seeing the number of Nones continue to slowly and steadily grow every passing year. But we are." He points out the importance of listening to the stories of those who leave the church, and I couldn't agree more. I have always felt when listening to people talk about the SBNR group that the problem is churches. When churches fail to minister and fail to perform their duties, people will leave it. People aren't want to stay in toxic environments, and without the presence of sometime of brainwashing or abuse, people will leave in droves, and they have. It is clear from the data presented in his article that the "demand" for spirituality and churches still exists in America and is at a much higher watermark than other more secularized societies like those in Europe. Thus, if "demand" is still high, it must be the "supply" that has failed.
I see two solutions to the problem: doubling down or moving forward. (I should note that for every dichotomy there is a middle ground, but for the sake of brevity and simplicity I will divide this complicated discussion into two broadly construed camps.) By doubling down, I mean a continued and, in many ways, expanded rejection of modern life. While I am deeply sympathetic to this view, it’s an absurdly difficult road to walk, and often not worth it, at least not if you're trying to chase the type of Christianity that Burge describes in the article.
Burge goes onto to describe a small facet of the "moving forward" solution that I am thinking of: a hopeful acceptance that a continually faithful walk with Christ is all that one can do. I was moved by his words, "I thought that if I set myself on fire, people would come to watch me burn. That’s not what happened." I do not mean that church leaders should embrace the current cultural zeitgeist. I am just trying to point out that it is unproductive for church leaders to try to emulate the past and it's unhealthy to try to imitate the culture of the hour. The youth program at my church is emblematic of this problem as it tries desperately to cling to whatever new language is at the forefront of the mind of its youngest members. Aping concepts, phrases, and behaviors from modern culture simply isn't the way to build the lasting community that can heal wounds and provide opportunities. The church is not a replacement for the world, it is an alternative path. The church shouldn't be invested in repaving the road most travelled, it should turn its focus to blazing the path that less and less walk each year.