They would be easier to get along with if, like other religious adherents, they were rigorous, lifelong catechumens of their carefully chosen doctrinal systems. White Evangelicals can be as hard to like as anybody. Once again, the evangelicals come in for special criticism at a point where they are at their most ecumenical, agreeing with a billion daffy Catholics on the question of girlboss pastors. So you just never know what evangelicals will get wrong. People who think having children is good and important show interest in the act by which children are conceived, believing that it may also be affected by questions of goodness and importance are the real perverts.Īnd yet, the forward-thinking J&JW stands with the crowd of stodgy experts in traditional and abstruse Trinitarian theology lately sprung up in America. They prefer America to other countries, a horrifying inclination akin to liking your own dad better than other people’s dads.Ī conservative Baptist seminary seeks out faculty members who oppose women’s ordination, making them closed-minded and sexist. J&JW’s point is that white evangelicals (should we just call them whitevangelicals?) are not very good Christians. Marabel Morgan, Elisabeth Eliot, and Phyllis Schlafly, grouped in chapter 3, are a deeply funky lunch bunch. Apposition is a tricky critter, and readers are owed good lighting to distinguish among fringier and more mainstream figures. Rushdooney (an actual racist Baptist) and Tim LaHaye (who made the tough choice to rapture the Pope), both of whom are studied at length. Schaeffer’s hefty contributions to evangelical thought included leading his coreligionists to repentance and a faithful understanding of abortion as contrary to their sixth commandment.īut his name appears once in J&JW, tossed into a paragraph alongside R.J. Wade, but also Time magazine’s Year of the Evangelical and Jimmy Carter. Francis Schaeffer is a key figure of evangelicalism in the decade that gave us not only Roe v.
This “topic” gives du Mez ample opportunity for obfuscation. If only du Mez had informed a half-century of combatants, the sad disputes between PCA and PCUSA, LCMS and ELCA, Episcopalians and Continuing Anglicans regarding what the Bible says about the beginning of human life could have been avoided. Yet another breezy line informs readers, “The Bible didn’t offer specific advice on the topic.” The topic she refers to is abortion. Wilson’s position on marriage is downright ecumenical. These differ from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas only on the predictable sticking point of what everyone means by sacrament. The same technique is deployed against independent Reformed pastor Doug Wilson: “According to Wilson, marriage had three purposes: companionship, producing godly children, and the avoidance of sexual immorality.” Wilsonian nuttiness is thus established for readers unfamiliar with standard Reformation formulations of the theology of marriage. James Dobson “saw children as naturally sinful creatures, inclined toward defiance and rebellion.” The reader must supply the knowledge that a Christian who did not believe this would be schismatic at best, departing from the catholic doctrine of original sin. These examples show the author’s familiarity with Christian theology insofar as she has a capacity for leveraging it.
The literalist interpretation applied here to Galatians 3:28 would, presumably, be quite unacceptable for 1 Timothy 2:15. The parenthetical remark is emblematic of the author’s hermeneutic: nothing in Scripture is to be taken at face value unless the phrase would be acceptable in a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion oath. (In Christ there was neither slave nor free, male nor female, according to the Apostle Paul.) Outhern culture of master and honor seemed to conflict with the egalitarian impulses of evangelical Christianity.