The Struggle for Evangelical Leadership between the Beta-Cools and the Naughty Boys
Well-behaved Christians Seldom Make History in "The Negative World"
In today's video I follow up on yesterday's video on Doug Wilson vs established evangelical leadership.
This post by Mark Galli last October got a lot of attention. What I missed last October in it was the realization that Galli was making that Wilson and company very much punch above their weight class. https://markgalli.substack.com/p/the-galli-report-100821
In this video Wilson calls out Evangelical leadership, naming names with a rubric of power/escape/dominion.
He gets this rubric from Garry North in this blog post. https://www.garynorth.com/public/21705.cfm
I hadn't read much Reformed Re-Constructionism for a long time. It reminded me again of why it both endures but never wins. It's gutsy and ballsy never admitting what happened to the great colonial Puritan experiment. In some ways they are the far more orderly, prosperous and law abiding Antifa of the conservative Reformed world. "True Neo-Puritanism city-on-a-hill-ism has never been tried!" Have you considered Moscow ID?
I think Power/Escape/Dominion rubric is a terrific insight. I think all sustainable religions learn to incorporate all three which Christianity has. The challenge is of course getting the mix right.
Every religion that scales has its element of Power. Jesus heals the sick, stills the storm and raises the dead. We are fearful, small and fragile and we need a hero. Religions not only have this in their storied past but practice it today.
.@MiroslavVolf in Exclusion and Embrace called out the bloody weakness of Communism's secularism in how it intensifies conflict foreshortening the stage upon which justice and mercy are played out. https://paulvanderklay.me/2009/08/12/miroslav-volf-on-gods-violence-or-ours/
A religion without an Escape element usually brings hell up with it tries to bring heaven down. My guess is that when a dear saint dies in Moscow ID their funerals offer the same comfort of the resurrection and union with Christ as other Christian services.
Dominion is of course the element getting all of the attention here. Most of the time when I am reminded that the Re-constructionists are still out there it is because some reporter from Mainstream media has discovered and is aghast that Religion still does this.
That shock exists of course because Secularity has denied its religion. The majority, establishment, American faith (Blue Church) IS a Dominionist religion which pits NYC/LA/SF/DC in direct conflict with Moscow ID and it is sort of fun to watch Blue Church tremble at the thought.
The only reason Blue Church does tremble is because the Re-constructionists play politics (and Doug Wilson plays it very well) and the Amish do not.
Doug Wilson may be the tip of the Dominionist political spear, but spears need shafts to really bring force and Moscow ID is a very short shaft. That's why I say "call me when you take Boise."
Lest Evangelicalism takes too much delight in the shortness of Moscow's spear we should remember Galli's point. Evangelicalism DOES have both a leadership crisis and a credibility crisis and Wilson does punch above Moscow’s weight.
In yesterday's video I compared it to the @SkyeJethani @DavidAFrench video on Transgenderism and Classical Liberalism which I thought gave a lot of reasoned, measured analysis but probably won't inspire much.
Well behaved Christians seldom make history but figuring out how to misbehave like Jesus is no small thing. Leadership is about misbehaving publicly in all the right ways.
Christianity in America remains in crisis at many levels and the "cool kids" strategy really isn't going to cut it anymore, especially as we are now in as @aaron_renn calls it "the negative world" https://www.firstthings.com/article/2022/02/the-three-worlds-of-evangelicalism
With the recession of Modernism the field is wide open for a religion to fill the hole at the center of the culture where the church used to be. Wilson is right that new leadership will emerge and it will likely be surprising.
You can't be the tip of the spear, regardless of the length of your shaft if you don't have a point, and this point is a good one. Learn from what they’ve done, and stop burning daylight!