The Overview (Monday, January 18)
Fallout from the Capitol riot, plus thoughts on "white evangelical crap"
In just two days the United States will inaugurate its next president. I’ve always been awestruck by the transfer of power between competing factions in American politics, and although this year’s transition has been unlike any other in American history, the constitutional order marches on.
Yes, things will look different this year as a result of the January 6 riot and the ongoing pandemic. There will be no crowds on the national mall watching President-elect Biden’s inaugural address, and the security presence in the capital is unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Nevertheless, the constitutional order marches on.
The Biden administration’s initial agenda will have to compete with yet another Senate trial for President Trump, who was impeached for the second time in a year following the events of January 6. This administration will have no shortage of challenges as it looks ahead to its first 100 days, from a flailing economy to a stubborn pandemic to rebuilding international confidence in the United States as a leader of the world. And while I expect to disagree with many things coming out of the Biden administration in the next few years, the constitutional order marches on.
With that, here’s the Monday, January 18 edition of The Overview:
1) If you’re like me, you’ve read a lot of things about the January 6 riot. Here are a few that I found especially memorable:
Writing in his Reclaiming Hope newsletter, Michael Wear shares his thoughts on that day, and they are moving. He blames the events of January 6 on Americans taking politics too seriously — specifically, taking politics seriously in all the wrong ways:
We have made an idol of our politics, because we have looked to politics to do what God has not, while neglecting the very reason for politics in the first place. We have not been seeking to advance the common good in our politics lately. We have not viewed politics as the means by which we make decisions about how we will live together as a people. Politics, like so much else of our lives, has become a forum for self-expression, a forum which gives our animosities access to tools of coercion and cultural power.
I’m continually amazed by Michael’s ability to say incredibly powerful things so easily. If you don’t subscribe (it’s free!) to Reclaiming Hope, you should.
David French, in his French Press newsletter, lays out his anger and frustration with the American church—especially the white evangelical church—as complicit in the Capitol riot. French does not do this as an outsider throwing stones at a foreign institution, but rather as someone (like me) who grew up in church, remains in the church, and sees its potential to do better for the Kingdom.
One of the reasons I admire David’s writing and witness is his consistency. He doesn’t criticize one thing only to ignore it when it’s coming from his own political tribe. Consider the following:
Riots weren’t justified when police knelt on a man’s neck while his life drained away in Minneapolis. Riots weren’t justified when police killed an innocent woman in a botched, reckless raid in Louisville. Riots weren’t justified when a black man was executed in broad daylight by wannabe vigilantes in Georgia.
If that’s true (and it is), then don’t think for one second it’s appropriate for Christians to air their grievances when the right-wing Christian riot was motivated by terrible lies. If a riot isn’t justified when agents of the state actually kill innocent black men and women, it really isn’t justified when you falsely believe wild election conspiracy theories or when you falsely believe a cabal of cannibal pedophiles control Washington and Hollywood.
Marching for a lie is bad enough. Rioting for a lie is an atrocity.
Continuing, he argues that since these lies have taken root in conservative communities (including in churches), it is up to Christian leaders to push back, and to push back forcefully:
Rebutting enabling lies does not mean whitewashing the opposition. It does not mean surrendering your values or failing to resist destructive ideas. It does mean discerning the difference between a problem and a crisis, between an aberration and an example. And it means possessing the humility to admit when you’re wrong. It means understanding that no emergency is ever too great to stop loving your enemies and blessing those who persecute you.
And the rebuttal has to come from within. The New York Times isn’t going to break this fever. Vox won’t change many right-wing minds. But courageous Christians who love Christ and His church have a chance.
This echoes something I wrote in an article for Christianity Today, on why Americans (and Christians) need to learn to lose better: “The world may constantly jump from truth to truth as the moment demands, but Christians should be different.”
Finally, writing for the National Review, Dan McLaughlin—never one to be confused with a moderate or liberal—explains why the Senate should convict President Trump in his second impeachment trial and bar him from holding office in the future. McLaughlin did not support Congress’ first impeachment effort last year, but this time, he says, is different:
Trump has made a point to import into the Republican Party the ethos of routine assaults on the legitimacy of elections that has long prevailed among Democrats. It is time for that to end, and end in decisive fashion, such that Trump’s fate can be used as an example forever more. Some on the right would argue that, since Democrats have never been held to account for pushing election-delegitimizing nonsense, Trump should not be, either. But you have to start somewhere; holding your own to account sets down a marker that can be used later as a precedent against others. And Trump did not just attack the legitimacy of the election; he did so in a way that stirred up a violent assault on the very counting of the votes. Setting an outer boundary at challenges that end in bloodshed and the evacuation of the Capitol is hardly an unreasonable place to start.
He continues:
Casting [Trump] into the outer darkness to wail and gnash his teeth, whence he can never return as a candidate for office, is the only way to put an end to this and resume the business of focusing the Republican Party again on winning elections and on using public office to deliver what voters want from government.
That is democracy. It is the American way. Every last one of the 74 million Americans who placed their trust in Donald Trump to uphold his oath and abide by the American system has been personally betrayed by him. It is time for 17 Republican senators to stand up and say: Enough.
2) Mere Orthodoxy’s Jake Meador offers a nice explanation of “white evangelical crap,” which he alluded to in another MereO essay. For Meador, the hallmarks of WEC are folk civil religion, consumeristic mentalities about wealth, and indifference to racial justice. After going into great detail on each of these, Meador suggests that ditching WEC leaves the church looking very different — indeed, more Christian:
What I imagine churches looking like is precisely what historic Protestantism imagines them looking like: Local Christian congregations defined by the preaching of the Gospel, administration of the Sacraments, and assisting one another in the practices of Christian discipline….
What is left are countless models of Christian fidelity that exemplify Christian attitudes toward country, wealth, and neighbor.
Most importantly, what is left seems to look a lot more like Jesus than what has become normal in the past decades in many evangelical churches in America.
3) Lastly, I had the opportunity to speak to Orry Phillips of The Conversation, a podcast hosted at John Brown University. Orry and I talked about the 2020 election, the Georgia runoffs, the January 6 riot, what to expect from the Republicans and the Democrats in the months and years ahead, and more.
Orry’s previous guests include David French, Eric Metaxas, Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), Shadi Hamid, and Matthew Kaemingk. It’s a great podcast — check it out.