Exploring the post-truth realm of white American evangelicalism
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Like many white American kids raised evangelical at the turn of the century, my high school years came with warnings that the “post-truth world” was coming. Most of us would agree that we are at least one foot in, even if there’s disagreement on where our semi-dystopian reality comes from.
But this common obsession in the larger white American evangelical subculture with ideas of postmodernism, relativism, etc. didn’t line up neatly with my own. Knowing what I know now, my journey through early 2000s American evangelicalism was pretty abnormal. I did not hear warnings about the coming post-truth world with anywhere near as much frequency as my peers in other churches. There was also real nuance and temperance when the isms were talked about.
For example, on one summer youth trip, we were taught correctly that our coming college experiences would take place in pluralistic campus cultures. Rather than being groomed to fear such experiences or to dominate others, I distinctly remember being taught the importance of engaging with a soft touch. “One of the most Jesus things you can do is listen to other people,” I was told. My peers at other churches were often being taught the exact opposite.
There is not a single source for our post-truth cultural woes. Disinformation from growing authoritarianism in the Republican Party is the most obvious. So is the smaller vein of authoritarianism on the left that remains largely isolated to the most progressive political circles. The urban-rural divide and our political and cultural sorting contribute to different lifestyles that pose genuine challenges, although I’m not convinced such divides are unbridgeable. As a Christian living in the American South who happens to be classically and politically liberal, I know from experience that merely talking to people can overcome differences.
One of the primary sources of our post-truth world is one I can speak to though. I had a front row seat in white American evangelicalism over the last 10 years or so. I watched many in this subculture drift into the post-truth future that they loudly warned of. Over the last few years especially, I’ve come to better understand just how much of a post-truth realm white American evangelicalism has been for decades, and why.
History is informative when it comes to understanding how and when the post-truth seeds in white evangelicalism were planted. The fundamentalist-modernist controversy that originated in the 1920s and 1930s is an obvious one. You can read a great overview on some more. In this piece though, I really want to examine more recent history and white evangelical teachings and culture to help us understand the immediacy of the crisis we face today.
Defining white American evangelicalism
Before continuing, I want to preface what I mean and don’t mean when I use the term white American evangelicalism. Determining where the always-shifting borders of this subculture begin and end is no simple task. I’m not going to pretend I’m in a position to answer such questions definitively. This isn’t even a modest contribution on my part, but a summary of some of the well-documented, prevailing characteristics.
What I mean by white American evangelicalism is a hyper-conservative consumer culture driven by aggressive hermeneutical arrogance and populist authoritarianism, both of which are masked internally by the heavy use of Christian language. The main point of the subculture is protecting itself, making normative a form of white conservative identity politics and claiming this is “living the Gospel” while, ironically, decrying all identity politics. Helpful critiques are silenced and endless and overblown fear-based judgements are rendered against perceived foes, both external and internal. The very idea of Christianity is so deeply entangled with an authoritarianism surrounding white conservative American culture that when you critique white evangelical’s cultural and political positions, a common response from them is that you are attacking Christianity itself, or you are just categorically dismissed or treated like a threat that needs to be demeaned and discredited.
White American evangelicals have their own language that blinds them to these truths. Aggressive hermeneutical arrogance is proclaimed as Gospel truth. Cultural authoritarianism is simply strong leadership and manifests itself in a posture that is anti-accountability. The most gentle of internal critics who are trying to fix practical problems are labelled as troublemakers, gossiped about, and collectively shunned. And the great enemy is the culture, a term for pretty much everyone outside the subculture. These are but a few examples that allow many people who say they don’t behave in these ways to do so without an ounce of self-reflection or objectivity, or to blame the most staggering overreaches and overreactions around them on “a few bad apples.” It’s the dynamic described in the letter to the Laodicean church (Revelation 3:14-20), a church which thinks it is one thing but is actually another.
If you feel that this definition is unfair, or that white American evangelicalism should be defined by more “traditional” evangelical theological criteria such as the Bebbington Quadrilateral, evangelicals’ own institutions are increasingly showing data that the above definition is fair. In their 2022 State of Theology report, Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research conclude:
“In the evangelical sphere, doctrines including the deity and exclusivity of Jesus Christ, as well as the inspiration and authority of the Bible, are increasingly being rejected. While positive trends are present, including evangelicals’ views on abortion and sex outside of marriage, an inconsistent biblical ethic is also evident, with more evangelicals embracing a secular worldview in the areas of homosexuality and gender identity.”
There are several ways to break down the data. Depending on how you go about it, somewhere between 29-51% of white evangelicals somewhat disagree, aren’t sure, somewhat agree, or strongly agree with the statement “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.” Even evangelical’s own institutions say this is heresy. Just as eye-opening is that there is much stronger cohesion on social, political, and cultural beliefs/issues (95-96% abortion and sex outside of traditional marriage are sins, to provide just two examples). This is further evidence that beliefs/issues like these are the unifying factor in white American evangelicalism, not Jesus.
While a common white evangelical response to such critiques is that the Bible is the source of these beliefs —and I believe people when they say that, even if I don’t always agree with their biblical interpretation or posture on a given issue— it’s still worth pointing out that the Bible and Jesus are not the same thing. In this context, when the Bible is placed before Jesus —as at least a sizable number of white evangelicals have done— culture war Christianity becomes all but inevitable. And you end up with something akin to the definition I lay out above.
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If you are still not convinced, I would encourage you to read The Decline and Renewal of the American Church: Part 2 – The Decline of Evangelicalism from theologian and pastor Tim Keller. It’s as helpful as it is long, so here’s an excerpt from his Sociology of Evangelicalism section worth exploring:
“Recognizing these ‘two addresses’ of evangelicalism (theological and sociological) helps us discern something important. Within the framework of the four theological marks, what I’ll call the six social marks of evangelicalism can be stronger or weaker. The term “fundamentalism” was one way used in the past to describe those who hold these social traits very strongly:
Moralism vs. gracious engagement: Strict conformity to behavioral codes. Secondary doctrines made primary with resulting self-righteousness. Everything is either wholly good or wholly evil, leading to withdrawal from society. A spirit of condemnation. Separatism and sectarianism. No ability to engage opposing views with patience, humility, hope, and tolerance.
Individualism vs. social reform: Belief that we are wholly the result of our personal choices. Little understanding of how culture forms us or of evil systemic or institutional forces.
Dualism vs. a vision for all of life: A pitting of biblical beliefs against culture. Either we seek a hostile takeover or we seal off Christian beliefs from our work and life in society. No thought for how faith shapes the way we work in the secular spheres and how it can serve society.
Anti-intellectualism vs. scholarship: A distrust of experts, reverse snobbism against education, and distrust of any result of scholarship or research that isn’t believed as “common sense” to most people. Skepticism of science. A refusal to show other viewpoints any respect. A shallow commonsense approach to biblical interpretation that ignores the biblical author’s intended meaning in the original context and the scholarship that helps us discern it.
Anti-institutionalism vs. accountability: A distrust of traditional institutions. The use of celebrity-driven, brand-driven platforms and networks that lead to fast growth but low accountability. A tendency toward authoritarianism.
Enculturation vs. cultural reflection: A wedding of Christianity to popular, traditional U.S. culture. Three features: (1) Gender exaggeration: due to fundamentalism’s tendency to ‘baptize’ American culture, there’s a legalistic tendency toward nonbiblical gender stereotypes (especially those of the 1950s), a denigration of women, and coverup of abuse; (2) Nationalism: a ‘God and Country’ ethos that rejects reflection on the dark sides of U.S. history and society and expresses fear of a multiethnic future; (3) Racism: often overt, but at the very least a racial and cultural insensitivity and cluelessness.”
Additionally, it’s important to flesh out a little of what I do not mean. I know plenty of people who describe themselves as conservative evangelicals who happen to be white, but have serious issues with the white American evangelical subculture, so much so that some of them have even been forced to leave a church and are not welcomed in certain social circles. They often agree on a majority of theological beliefs and cultural concerns in those places, but sincerely and openly reject the arrogance and authoritarianism. This is an important distinction that often gets overlooked.
In summary, this is just as much about posture and culture as it is about theological belief and history. This is not meant to be a succinct definition, but a framework to provide more nuance in understanding how white American evangelicalism is a post-truth subculture.
Understanding the false gospels of white American evangelicalism
In many fractured American evangelical churches today, some form of the question how did we get here? rises to the surface when the inevitable implosion finally arrives. The answer usually has something to do with gatekeepers tying to protect a fellow leader with a severe moral failing or the resident culture warriors making the lives of more reasonable congregants absolutely miserable. Concurrently, many people who flee the rising and increasingly unchecked arrogance and authoritarianism in such churches ask the same question more broadly of white American evangelical history and teachings. For those of us who follow this question to its logical conclusion, what is found is both deeply alarming and personally disorienting. The resulting experience -messily described as deconstruction– becomes an inevitability forced upon you, not by choice.
What is found is a deeper understanding that white American evangelicalism has long been a post-truth subculture. There isn’t one way to explore this, but examining this through the lens of false gospels is one of the best. In her helpful book The Liturgy of Politics, Duke Divinity School doctoral student Kaitlyn Schiess lays out four false gospels commonly found in white American evangelical churches. There is some redundancy with Keller’s Sociology of Evangelicalism above, but what Schiess does here is explain the post-truth whys behind Keller’s descriptors. These are some of the teachings, not just the results. Here’s a summary of each found in Chapter 3: Of This World, pages 39-56:
The False Gospel of Prosperity - “Deifies the American Dream of ‘upward mobility, accumulation, hard work, and moral fiber.’ It places great weight on individuals to chart their own paths, make their own destinies, and take control of their own resources — and then puts moral weight on their ability to succeed…instead of privatizing religion, the American legacy is a deified market.” White evangelicals “can worship whoever you want in the privacy of your own home, but in public you worship the all-knowing, perfectly just, all-powerful market. This gospel is not merely learned; it is the air we breathe.”
The False Gospel of Patriotism - Deifies the “uncritical allegiance to one’s country” rather than “expressing gratitude for the good gifts given to a particular nation and understanding the special connection members of the nation share.” We learn that “the solution to feelings of insecurity, threats of discomfort, and the instability of the world is the innate goodness of our country…American Christians, regardless of motives, put a lot at risk when we paint our nation as uniquely Christian — namely, our witness to a world looking at our nation’s history without our rose-colored glasses.”
The False Gospel of Security - Deifies the false belief that “God always provides physical security.” This false gospel “conveniently leaves out the parts of biblical witness where God allows his people to suffer insecurity or even asks them to do dangerous things…when humans try to rid themselves of vulnerability, they inevitably offload it on someone else and take authority that doesn’t belong to them.” This false Gospel stems from and builds up an “overriding desire for security” that “can justify anything, including the abuse and degradation of human beings.”
The False Gospel of White Supremacy - Deifies the false belief that white evangelicals today are neither impacted by nor responsible for the racial sins of America’s past and our lingering racially segregated realities today. “The white supremacist gospel tells us that ‘our kind of people’ deserve better, safer, happier lives. The sin problem in the world is the existence of dangerous and different people and anyone who disrupts our blissful ignorance of structural biases and inequalities.” This false gospel “is simultaneously pervasive in the white American church and most firmly denied by it…In our supposed postracial society, this gospel must fly under the radar, but that doesn’t mean it has ceased to exist.”
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As these false gospels suggest, white American evangelicals teach a dangerously flawed Gospel about themselves, to themselves, for themselves. And these things aren’t necessarily always taught from the pulpit; some evangelical pastors will even preach against some of these, albeit to little effect as they are up against a consumer culture that houses immense populist power (i.e. there are often severe repercussions for speaking basic truth, even if you are a pastor). But you do hear these false gospels from pulpits often, Sunday School classes even more, and perhaps more importantly in conversations between ordinary white evangelicals, from the larger white evangelical consumer culture (Desiring God, CBMW, The Gospel Coalition, 9Marks, Focus on the Family, etc.) and from politically conservative and far-right media outlets that dabble in the thinnest of Christian language. Schiess summarizes the results on page 56 when she writes:
“These gospels are powerful because of their captivating narratives, their comforting beliefs, and the rituals and practices that form them in our lives. While each gospel has its individual characteristics, each is also communal and cultural—making it so powerful because it is part of the societal atmosphere so natural to us that we don’t even notice it is there. None of these gospels are handed to us as fully formed ‘religious’ options that we cognitively accept or reject but are experienced more as stories we live into.”
Based on what we have seen the last several years especially, I want to add an additional four false gospels common in white American evangelicalism. These overlap some with what Schiess lays out above, but I think they are separate enough that each should be examined on their own:
The False Gospel of Consumerism - Deifies the Christian walk as relentlessly consuming the “right products” from the “right people” so you have “correct teaching” —as defined by institutional gatekeepers— and then can live in a way that strengthens the subculture. This means white evangelicals become an intellectually self-ghettoized and culturally stranded people, unable to access the broad spectrum of historical, orthodox, and multicultural Christianity or understand lived experiences different than their own. When a rare voice rises up with a different view, teaching, or experience, those who hear and consider that voice are warned not to and even denigrated or laughed at by gatekeepers.
The False Gospel of Tribalism - Deifies their local institution/congregation (themselves) as more valuable than those on the outside and, in many cases, functionally treats themselves as being more important than God. “Enemy” language is constantly used when topics about the broader culture come up. Subcultural problems are not allowed to be discussed in ways that would lead to meaningful change. Internal critics who want to help fix internal problems are suppressed by gatekeepers with tacit support from the congregation. The physically and spiritually abused who flee are shunned by those who stay and not spoken to.
The False Gospel of Radical Individualism - Deifies ideas of “traditional” American individualism and wrongly equates them with the individual implications of the Gospel. This leads to a broad rejection of the New Testament’s often higher emphasis on faith in non-tribalistic community (Hebrews 10:23-25) and the call of Christ to give up our individual rights for the sake of others (Galatians 5:13-14). Rugged individualism leads to self-worship which leads to individual morality/immorality being taken far more seriously than communal health/unhealth, blinding white evangelicals to how they are being spiritually formed by the world around them.
The False Gospel of Gender Hierarchy and the Nuclear Family - Deifies hyper-narrow definitions of gender and family that even adherents struggle to live up to, often turning “traditional” American gender expectations into idols that are popularly enforced. Men are indoctrinated into a largely performative leader/warrior masculinity and women are hyper-sexualized and made to be submissive via various forms of purity culture . The existence of these two false gospels is why there is often no place for single women in this subculture, women’s voices are not seen as legitimate as men, men quietly fear being around women who are not their spouse, and abuse often goes unchallenged and unchecked.
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Like all false gospels, there are grains of truth scattered here and there. There is nothing inherently wrong with loving your country (1 Timothy 2:1-2). Teaching and learning is part of the faith (James 3:1). Faith in community really does matter (Hebrews 10:23-25). There are legitimate differences between men and women (my wife can become pregnant, I cannot). No one is arguing that family is without value. You get the point.
What makes these gospels false is the severe extremes to which beliefs are taken, how they become so deeply enculturated that they usurp Christ himself, and how more historically-rooted expressions of the Christian faith and other views and interpretations of Scripture are disparaged. These false gospels functionally become The Truth. The result is that love for God and love for neighbor (Mark 12:28-34) are displaced with cultural idols that overlap and reinforce one another. The false gospels of patriotism, security, and radical individualism are perhaps the easiest to see connections between, but it doesn’t stop there. One can easily argue that the false gospel of gender hierarchy (i.e. complementarianism) would not be so deeply entrenched in white American evangelical spaces today without the false gospel of consumerism built up around it. These are but a few of the ways these threads wrap around one another. But they all also feed into perhaps the most extreme and dangerous false gospel of them all: Christian nationalism. Lutheran pastor, journalist, and author of Red State Christians Angela Denker describes this reality:
“Christian Nationalism is a version of the idolatrous Theology of Glory, which replaces the genuine worship of God with worship of a particular vision of America, often rooted in a revisionist history of white people in the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement or the women’s movement. Christian Nationalism supports a violent takeover of government and the imposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on all people. Christian nationalism relies on a theological argument that equates American military sacrifice with Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. It suggests that Christians are entitled to wealth and power, in contrast to Jesus’ theology of the cross, which reminds Christians that they too have to carry their cross, just as our crucified savior did.”
Of course, not all white evangelicals are full blown Christian nationalists. I know plenty such people, but many of those who are not Christian nationalists are what sociologists Samuel L. Perry and Andrew Whitehead describe as Accommodators: people who hold some Christian nationalist beliefs or are at least sympathetic to Christian Nationalism. In their book Taking America Back For God, Perry and Whitehead’s research concludes that 32.1% of all Americans are Accommodators. We’ll explore how that plays out at a practical level in the white evangelical context in the next section. Ultimately though, these false gospels prop up the “bad history” public theologian and historian Diana Butler Bass speaks to:
“When it comes to actual history, things don’t just emerge full-blown. Donald Trump didn’t create Christian nationalism (even if the secular media didn’t discover it until the last year!). He inherited and exploited it. Few people imagined that a radicalization of providential history might unfold…
Marsden, Noll, and Hatch seemed to expect that introducing complexity, irony, and realism would rectify misguided evangelical history and make it a more nuanced, humble enterprise. But those histories proved resistant to correction. That lack of complexity — and the complete absence of irony — in providential histories would mutate into evangelical Trumpism and the construction of a politicized theological history completely devoid of facts and evidence. Marsden, Noll, and Hatch spoke to the academy; Marshall and Manuel to evangelical pastors and megachurch congregations. It wasn’t even a fair fight. Apparently, complexity and irony aren’t much of a match for bad history.”
White evangelicalism is a powerful post-truth subculture in American life. We are all feeling the dark effects of it.
When elements of the QAnon, COVID, and election denialism conspiracies crept into my social media feeds in 2020, it was impossible not to notice that it was mostly white evangelicals doing the sharing. Election denialism is one post-truth reality in white American evangelicalism that many of us have seen in our own lives. An alarming number of white Christian nationalists who embrace The Big Lie are on the ballot this Fall. And recent polling shows that 78% of Republicans who identify themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians support declaring the U.S. a Christian nation.
Pointing at the most extreme and dangerous post-truth elements festering in white American evangelicalism is not me throwing a lot of people into a bucket who don’t belong there. I have friends who reside in this subculture. There are those in the veil who do not believe in these harshest of conspiracies and who are uncomfortable with Christian nationalism. But few will speak out against any of it. Why? Calvin University historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez wrote on this last year:
“Most white evangelicals were not marching with neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. Nor were most evangelicals storming the Capitol on January 6. Yet underlying affinities make it difficult for many mainstream evangelicals to unequivocally condemn these acts.
Indeed, in many cases, the kinder, gentler version of evangelicalism has proven to be fully compatible with the movement’s authoritarian tendencies. Mirroring evangelical gender ideals that champion rugged, patriarchal leadership to guide and protect gentle, vulnerable women, the softer version of the faith requires the protection of a harsher, more aggressive strand. The two go hand in hand. Insisting that the gentler version is ‘true’ evangelicalism obscures this dynamic while giving cover to more dangerous elements.”
This is hard truth. Even if it weren’t, allowing lies to go unchecked in the interest of ”keeping peace” that doesn’t exist is immensely harmful. Doing so furthers the depths and reach of the post-truth realities careening out of this subculture, which in turn further radicalizes those who stay. Even if you disagree with Du Mez’s assessment —and you really shouldn’t— being silent is still complicity in the destruction. And, frankly, it’s ironic to me that more moderate white evangelicals who claim they have access to absolute truth can’t speak up for basic truth when lies and conspiracies are this outlandish and destructive. People who should be alive today are dead. Silence has consequences.
Additionally, we can pull back from these extreme examples and look at other moments in white American evangelical history that, in hindsight, should be taken more seriously than they have been. There are certainly many examples, but I’ll briefly share a particularly stark one. In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) —arguably the denominational headquarters of white American evangelicalism— released a document titled Resolution On Moral Character Of Public Officials. If you don’t remember what was happening back then, the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal was the big story of the day. Here’s a fascinating clause from the SBC’s resolution:
“WHEREAS, Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment…”
Back then, many white evangelicals were all for good character in public officials when Bill Clinton had a severe moral failure and there was evidence he broke the law. And they were right! But these words are either true or they are false regardless of who is in power. Besides the “surely results in God’s judgement” part, I believe these words are true. And for a long time, I believed the people who said such things believed they were true, too.
You can probably see where this is going, but I’ll spell it out anyways. Fast forward two decades and the vast majority of white evangelicals are supporting a law-breaking, norm-crushing, and soul-sucking politician named Donald Tump, a man who had sex with a pornstar and paid her hush money when his wife was at home with their newborn baby. There are the dozens of other reports and rumors of sexual harassment and affairs, including Trump’s own admission that he gropes women without their consent. He winked and nodded to the white supremacist mob at Charlottesville and ordained the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6. With regards to Donald Trump’s moral depravity, we could go on and on.
So, what happened to all that talk about the social ills stemming from tolerance toward leader wrongdoing? There isn’t a single answer, but none of them are good. Many white evangelicals had their convictions tested against their tribal loyalty. We learned they had no courage in those convictions, if such convictions ever really existed, so much so that white evangelicals have been trying to rationalize for years now why selling their souls to the devil is righteous. In moments of pure cynicism, others fully embraced the change in politics as the reason for abandoning their theological and moral “beliefs.” Ironically, Du Mez’s compatibility argument is cited by some white evangelicals themselves as their reasoning.
While overlooked historical connections like these are useful tools to understand white American evangelicalism, one only has to look at the current rapidly deteriorating situation in this subculture to see it for the post-truth realm it is. I already mentioned the prevalence of the more severe QAnon, COVID, and election denialism conspiracies. These aren’t realities we only see in the media or online anymore. The empirical is now the anecdotal. After January 6, the old joke about the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving is as depressing as it was once funny. White evangelical nihilism is a growing threat. The SBC is being investigated by the Justice Department for rampant sexual abuse and a multi-decade coverup. Dissenters, whistleblowers, and others inside white evangelical who begin telling basic truth (and even use Scripture to do so!) are being attacked, gossiped about, and demeaned so harshly that they are fleeing their churches. Attacks on those who leave white evangelicalism and question what they were a part of are routinely based in half-truths and outright lies. Broadly speaking, truth doesn’t matter. It never fully did. Power and tribalism are currency.
What has changed is that white American evangelicalism is arriving more fully at its logical conclusion. This subculture has long been built on the shifting sands of American culture, even as its adherents proclaim they have built their empire and beliefs on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ. The decline of their cultural power is underway for many reasons. But most of the wounds are self-inflicted, even as a cascade of historically-rooted critiques are slipping past the gatekeepers, bringing needed light to those white evangelicals who are beginning to look for answers.
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If white American evangelicalism really was built on the cornerstone, the fortress would stand firm. It is collapsing instead, both because the cornerstone is not there and because the Christian life demands there be no fortress (1 Peter 2:1-10). Perhaps the best description of what we are now seeing comes from the Public Religion Research Institute’s Robert P. Jones, who wrote these words one year ago:
“As the shadow cast by white Christian churches and institutions is shortening, we’re witnessing in real time the anomie this contraction is producing among many of its adherents. Many are responding by abandoning the ranks. The increasingly desperate remainder are screaming defiantly from the ramparts, determined, to the last man, to defend the breached walls.
In these twilight years of white Christian America, for those still within the veil, the strain of holding these contradictions can lead to a dissociative state, where self-reflection becomes treasonous and self-delusion a necessity. The fruits of this spirit are abundant. Empathy signals weakness, and disdain strength. Prophets are shunned, and authoritarians embraced. Truth is exchanged for a lie.
We can puzzle over these phenomena separately, but they are best understood together as symptoms of collective ill health. The willingness of so many white Christians to embrace little lies everywhere stems from the necessity of protecting the big lie that is everything.”
Closing Thoughts
Over the summer, I grabbed drinks with a friend from my high school years. We talked about a lot of things: family, work, many good memories with old friends. The conversation inevitably shifted to the feelings of pain and betrayal of the last several years. Like many Christians our age and younger, he fled from his white evangelical church during the destruction of the Trump years and hasn’t put much effort into finding a new institutional church to call home, although he is eagerly learning more about other faith traditions in the global Church. “I see more of Jesus in the rest of the Church than I do in evangelicalism,” he said. “I honestly see more of Jesus in the secular world, too.”
Over the last few years, I’ve been a part of more conversations than I can count that arrive at this conclusion. Conversations with pastors who feel helpless as their congregants drift into extremism. With elders looking for a path forward, but who know deep down they aren’t equipped to find one. And with ordinary people who have been burned, chewed up, and spit out of churches they thought they’d be wed to for life.
Lurking behind all of these experiences is the white American evangelical consumer culture that runs the full gamut between hilariously absurd and absurdly dangerous. Contrary to the white evangelical battle cry that the cultural barbarians are besieging the gates, virtually all of the destruction is coming from the demons on the inside. The lines between white evangelical consumer culture, fundamentalism, the national Republican Party, and secular white authoritarian populism are so blurred that they are difficult to distinguish from one another. The quiet parts are being yelled out loud. A conspiratorial and self-victimizing worldview among the rank and file has all but fully displaced and silenced the more cautious in the pastoral class or, disturbingly, has converted them to the dark cause of Christian nationalism as they attempt to re-secure their positions, and their salaries.
White evangelicals have long obsessed over the looming “post-truth” world, but only in the way they defined it. For the gatekeepers, their fear-based teachings have been rooted in a false premise that they have exclusive access to absolute truth in how the world does and should work, assuring themselves it was all rooted in inerrant biblical interpretation. In reality, their teachings are fear-based because they have always been rooted mostly in American culture, with biblical interpretation used merely to justify preexisting beliefs and desires. This explains the staggering overreactions of many gatekeepers when they feel their power is being threatened. But for many in the rank and file, the fear has manifested itself quite differently. Historian Jemar Tisby writes:
“But particular kinds of surety aren't the keys to freedom, they are cages. They lock you into narrow ways of thinking and being. They close you off from relationships with people who can introduce you to new perspectives. They shrink your world so small that you can touch the walls without moving your feet, and they make anything beyond that area seem so threatening that you never venture forth.
What often skulks behind an incurious mindset is fear. The terror that sliding one block of certainty from the stack will make the entire Jenga tower of faith tumble down. ‘If I'm wrong in this area,’ so the thinking goes, ‘maybe I'm wrong in other areas, too. Areas that would dismantle my entire sense of self and perspective on reality if I'm wrong.’
Another fear of the incurious is the fear of betraying the ideological solidarity of the group. There are consequences for questioning the established order. You could be expelled from the community…The desire to create and preserve a sense of belonging has muted many questions.”
For many who remain in the fracturing, post-truth realm of white American evangelicalism, the primary purpose of theology is sheltering a cultural and political project, if such a thing can be called theology. Michael Gerson, a graduate of evangelical bastion Wheaton College and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, sums up the results of this:
“Leaders in the Republican Party have fed, justified and exploited conservative Christians’ defensiveness in service to an aggressive, reactionary politics. This has included deadly mask and vaccine resistance, the discrediting of fair elections, baseless accusations of gay ‘grooming’ in schools, the silencing of teaching about the United States’ history of racism, and (for some) a patently false belief that Godless conspiracies have taken hold of political institutions.
Some religious leaders have fueled the urgency of this agenda with apocalyptic rhetoric, in which the Christian church is under Neronian persecution by elites displaying Caligulan values. But the credibility of religious conservatives is undermined by the friends they have chosen to keep. Their political alignment with MAGA activists has given exposure and greater legitimacy to once-fringe ideas, including Confederate nostalgia, white nationalism, antisemitism, replacement theory and QAnon accusations of satanic child sacrifice by liberal politicians.
Surveying the transgressive malevolence of the radical right, one is forced to conclude: If this is not moral ruin, then there are no moral rules.”
But for many Christians who have left this broken subculture behind in hopes of finding something healthier, we have questions with no easy answers. What comes next? How do we build new communities and institutions or join existing ones in other Christian traditions that are striving to avoid the sins and consumer culture of our pasts? How do we do this joyfully when our pasts constantly pull us toward cynicism, like a magnet. Such questions show what it really means to leave white American evangelicalism behind. Central to the survival of this subculture is an endemic belief that white American evangelicalism is the purest, most elite form of the Christian faith. If that’s been drilled into your mind and heart for decades, it can take years to disentangle the Gospel from the mess.
Regardless, for many of us who have escaped the fold, the hum of anxiety we often feel is matched by a sense of urgency. We know better than most that time may not be on the country’s side. While numerically in decline for a few decades now, white evangelicals retain a strong grip on our body politic and are increasingly, aggressively clinging to their coveted political power. The idols white evangelicals are most known for —rigid gender hierarchy, an overtly aggressive and abusive masculinity, and a brutal form of cancel culture manifesting in an endless grace for me but maximum punishment for thee posture— continue spreading poisonous roots into other denominations of the Christian faith, secular white nationalist groups, and one of the major political parties. And those roots run right back in the other direction as history tell us they always have.
I often wonder what would happen if Jesus himself took to the pulpit in a church like this on a Sunday. What would happen if he preached His Gospel? Would those who hear repent and move toward Him? Or would they cry heretic! and crucify Him? I can’t help but think it would often be the latter.
I don’t have a big answer to these problems. I don’t think anyone does. But we are long past the point in which doing something is better than doing nothing. Because of that, I have some ideas on where to start with the agency we do have.
There is a powerful role to play for the vast majority of Christians in the world who reside outside of this subculture, whether they live in the United States or not. It’s no secret that many in the global Church, including global evangelicals, are deeply alarmed by what is happening in white American evangelicalism. The Church certainly does not have a stainless past; however, there is a centuries-long thread of local faith communities joyfully serving as a strong line of defense against those who would harm the common good. I don’t know how to practically go about this, but there needs to be some sort of “missions” effort from inside and outside the United States to reach white American evangelicals where they are. I shudder using this language, perhaps because I have a bad hangover from the problematic ways missionary work is often discussed in this subculture. Nevertheless, bringing the Gospel as Jesus preached and lived it to white American evangelicals is needed to end this crisis. Former white evangelicals, including myself, aren’t equipped to do this on our own.
For those of us who have left white American evangelicalism specifically, we must remind ourselves daily not to fall prey to our pasts. The more immediate answers we seek will likely be local ones, discovered inside the life boats of those escaping the wreckage, grieving that we were blind to the wreckage that was there all along. It is here that we Christians who have left white American evangelicalism can begin steering our boats toward the Way. We will discover some answers on our own, but most answers lie beyond ourselves. That’s why we must join tables that include the voices of those white evangelicals have historically silenced, denigrated, or not paid enough attention to. We can and must learn from other Protestant traditions, the historically black church, Orthodox, Catholic, global evangelicals, and many more. We need women to sit permanently as complete equals at tables we find ourselves at. We need to learn from historians and religious and biblical scholars who are correcting the highly selective theological and historical narratives we’ve told ourselves.
What this all looks like for us as individuals has a lot to do with examining where we are. We all need to have the courage to speak up and be willing to pay a price for doing so. We could all be more wary of those who make aggressively bold claims about what the Bible says, with little to no regard for church history, the complex cultures found in Scripture, theology from other Christian traditions, or what the Spirit would have us do. We need to have more humility in understanding that aggressively narrow interpretations of Scripture and confusing Gospel truth with the rules of a specific subculture may not line up with what God says or wants for us at all. Indeed, if there is one thing we can be certain about with regards to these matters, it’s that the greatest threat to Christianity is not secularism, but subcultural certainty.
Doing these things won’t fix much in the short term. The damage is now too severe. But doing the right thing –the Jesus thing– sets the stage for healing, repair, and repentance. And if repentance really is a turning away from the bad and the ugly toward the good and the beautiful, then it requires real movement and verifiable change across our daily lives.
Perhaps the beginning of the answers we seek can be found in those abnormal experiences I had in my childhood evangelical church, experiences that are unthinkable in many white American evangelical churches today. Rather than fearing the future, we could lean in and listen with curiosity and joy. Certainly a big part of that is keeping the door open to those looking for safe passage out of the post-truth subculture that is white American evangelicalism.
I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my free newsletter or becoming a member. You can also subscribe to my podcast.
