On Post-Evangelical and Post-Charismatic Millennials.

It seems to me that there are folk out there who are trying to make sense of why Christian millennials are so deeply anti-Trump and so "unorthodox" with the party politics of our forebears. (For some that means "they lean Left," while for others that means "they reject partisan politics altogether." Some millennials remain conservatives but deeply reject Trump anyways.)

Here are some interpretations of my generation I've seen. According to the far right, these millennials (including myself!) are:

+ Deceived by their universities (that's a big one)
+ Poorly educated in the Bible
+ Spiritually imperceptive
+ Unintelligent
+ Swayed by peer pressure
+ Lied to by the mainstream media (MSM)

For me, at least, I find these assertions to be more than a little bit patronizing and a lot belittling, especially that last one (I hate peer pressure of all kinds). It's like they seem to be attempting to diagnose an illness without seeing the patient face to face. Where is their image of a millennial coming from anyways? Are they talking about millennials they know, personally? or some stereotyped image of them?

Can I tell you a bit of my own story? How I got "here"? I plan on writing another blog where I can give more flesh to some of these claims, but here's the outline of how I never got sucked into conservatism (or liberalism) in the first place:

Bipartisan Role Models: I've had role models who are both conservative and liberals, and I refute the claims both sides make about the other's immorality. And I know deeply godly Christian people who are conservative and liberal.

Christians of Color: I've made friends with Christians of color, and realized that their politics were totally different from the politics I heard at church, even though we're theologically similar.

Rejection of Obama-Hatred: I have always been thoroughly and totally disgusted by how I've heard Christians talk about Obama. And liberals in general. That sort of hatred and dehumanization is foreign to the Gospel. (Some might say: "We don't hate people, we hate the policies," but their words speak for themselves on that matter.)

In-Depth Scripture Study: I've studied the Scriptures regarding matters like race and God's vision for a multiethnic, multicultural kingdom. I've found most evangelical conversations on race to be deeply disconnected to the Bible (and very rooted in politics).

Taught by Kingdom-Workers, Evangelism-Champions: I learned a lot about matters of race and justice not from those liberal universities but from an evangelical organization (IVCF), an organization that also first taught me the centrality of evangelism. In a moment in history in which evangelical churches are often more interested in politics than mission, I found in IVCF a direct and clear call to spread the Gospel that I was hungry for and never hearing evangelicalism (ironically enough).

Disgruntled by Spiritual Abuse: I've seen conservative Christian leaders advance political causes with an inappropriate use of their spiritual power and influence, something that made me very disconcerted. (RE: passing out voting fliers with only conservative candidates, praying for only certain candidates, endorsements, &c)

Discouraged by Poor Theology: Beyond this I've seen churches and church leaders take hardline stances on political matters (for example: Obamacare) and yet leave more critical theological issues and problems (for example: Christology, mission and evangelism, Trinitarian theology) up in the air. When asked, I've heard "Well, we don't really know for sure about those things. Are they really that important?" Yes, they are.

Less Mainstream Media, More Bipartisan Media: I've always found CNN and FOX and MSNBC and The Blaze and whatnot to be a bunch of politically-charged blowhards. A lot of millennials believe this too. In fact, we're the generation of podcasts, of multiple news medias, of complex viewpoints. We're more likely to listen to This American Life than The CBS Evening News or whatnot. I listen to a lot of NPR, and, I gotta tell you, I'm sometimes a little freaked out about how multi-partisan they are. I've heard them interview Glenn Beck, or Floridians who were pro-Trump, or deeply progressive social activists. And NPR treats them all well - even the Trump folks. (NPR should get an award for being professional in an unprofessional year.) At a time when the MSM is becoming less and less a newsource and more and more an entertainment venue, me and people like me are fleeing to real news. We aren't even partially swayed by the MSM; we don't even pay attention to it.

My Democrat Family: Beyond all this is my family. I come from a family of Democrats on both sides. Sure, I don't see eye to eye with them on everything, but I can tell you the truth that from what I've heard about liberals in evangelicals circles they'd have me think that my own family was a bunch of God-hating, immoral psychopaths. That's not who they are. They are moral people - and some are Christian people! - who taught me how to care, how to treat people with dignity, how to debate an idea, how to raise a family in love. They are also proud union-members, and that's given me some things to think about too. Not too long ago, the Democrat / Republican divide was about unions more than anything else, about workers' rights. When the super-conservatives have made political conversations about very specific things (i.e. gay rights or abortion, etc.), my normal, liberal family members have focused on things that matter to them (i.e. education, workers' rights, etc.), and that has given me a different perspective on politics in general, and made more open to the diversity of opinions in politics.

Rejection of Liberal-Hating: In light of my Democrat family, I have to confess that I have always been deeply bothered by my far-right conservative folks' description of Democrats and liberals as some sort of evil anti-Christain boogeyman. They sling words around like "Leftys" and "SJWs" that are intended as invectives. I've heard them say that "those teacher's unions ruin the schools" or that "those teachers that are brainwashing our children" or whatnot. I come from a family of teachers who are in teachers' unions... Do you think that I don't find that offensive? This sort of rhetoric, maybe even more than it's easier manifestation of Obama-hating, is part of what drives me (and others like me) away from strictly-conservative Christianity. If that's how you'll treat my family, why would I want to hang out with you?

(If I didn't make this clear already, I know some incredible conservative people who are deeply committed to their political claims and who aren't jerks like some of the above claims observe. My claims are in response to specific subsets and specific groups of generally far-right Christian people, and are not representative of all conservatives. I even admire a good handful of godly conservative people who give me hope for a future conservatism not driven by hate.)

In Other Words: I Have My Reasons...
So, what makes me more of a "principled moderate"? Not "godless education," not peer pressure nor bad theology. Rather it's been because of mission-loving, evangelistic Christians, because of Christians of color, because of my disgust with the abuse of power within conservative evangelicalism, because of the idol of conservative orthodoxy, and because I come from a loving family that defies the labels that I've heard attributed to liberals.

It should be clear that this post is not in opposition to conservatism. Again, as I've said before, I know some incredible conservative people. But I write it to let you know that Christians like me - post-evangelical and post-charismatic - are tired of the ultra-conservative assumptions governing our movement, and I suspect that others who identify this way would resonate with at least one of the points I've shared above. We're not abandoning the faith, we're not committing heresy, we're not rejecting the evangelical call to witness, we're not being deceived or pressured into some false ideology, we're not being taught nonsense and believing it...

Instead, post-evangelical / post-charismatic Christians care deeply about God's people, His Church, His Missional Work in the world, and the advancement of His Kingdom, and we think that a conservative-only Christianity shoots itself in the foot and has the temptation to be swayed and allured by offers of power from the State. For many of us, we see the collusion between the Religious Right and DJT as a final representation of this temptation - although for me I have been on this path for more than five years now - and we want nothing to do with it, for the Lord's sake!

It would be a mistake to identify this group of Christians as "seeker safe" (we balk at such unbiblical nonsense) or "emerging church" (we long for deeper, authoritative orthodoxy and Bible-centered theology). In fact, a lot of us still *are* evangelical or charismatic, based on the usual definitions of those terms. But we're finding the hegemony of conservatism harmful to our Gospel-witness, interfering with our hearing the voice of God, inconsistent with the words of the prophets (both ancient and modern), and... unbiblical.

I hope what you get out of this, if you're still reading, is this:

If you're a conservative-only Christian: Hear that we exist. We do not accept your political claims, and we have a little bit of a different political theology than you. We want to be part of your Church, we want you to be part of our Church. We want our liberal brothers and sisters to be in this Church too and not branded as heretics because of politics. We want for all of our ideologies and politics to be held accountable to Scriptures, and that includes your conservative claims that have gone unchecked for a long long time. Be open to us.

If you're a post-evangelical or post-charismatic Christian: Have hope! Take heart! God made a remnant long ago, and He's making one now too. You are not alone, and you are God's people. We're with you.

If you abandoned Christianity because it was too conservative: Stop thinking that politics defines the Christian faith! That lie was told to you long ago and it made you dissatisfied with the hypocrisy that you saw in it. There's something better. Jesus brought a whip to money-changers who thought that the Temple was just for Jews and had plopped their markets in the midst of the Gentiles' worship area. He wants to make space for you to worship Him too.

If you're a liberal-only Christian: HEY! I didn't talk about you in this post. But keep an open mind. Don't just lambast the conservatives because their conservatives. Hold them accountable for the political choices they've made. Keep up that pressure. But hold yourselves to the same standard. Again: Our politics do not define our faith. Our faith defines our politics and it often will lead us in complicated, diverse, and differing directions. Don't make that argument central! But keep up the holding of that 80% to the claims of DJT. We need that sort of rebuke right now. We need grace in that rebuke too. Love is complex.

Kent Reflections XV. A Letter to My Younger Self I. On Rebuke.

(While at work, when I have times I tend to write some of my thoughts down in a running Word document. These notes I have called "Kent Reflections," since my work is in Kent Laboratory at the University of Chicago.

What follows is a letter I wrote "to myself" sometime last week regarding Rebuke. It is not to be read as a proclamation or description of a theology of rebuke. This is more human than that. It is the thoughts and words and ideas and problems that I have been wrestling with as I grappled the Christian problem of Rebuke: When do I rebuke? Why? In what context? Who? What topics are within the domain of rebuke? And etc. It is also notably incomplete... It doesn't really "end" conclusory like I'd like. But I like that about this bit of writing, and I like the epistolary style. Maybe I have read too much Petrarch and am too addicted to letter-writing. Hmm....

In case you find this essay TL;DR, I have even encompassed a basic thesis in the opening paragraphs for you. The rest flows from there.)

XV. Kent Laboratory, November 3^rd, 2016:

A Letter to My Younger Self I. On Rebuke.

Perhaps I have read too much Petrarch, or fancy myself too much like him, that I have undertaken to write you – myself of eight years ago – a letter. You are a lot like me, of course: idealistic in good and bad ways, romantic in the German way, uninterested in monetary gain in general, and deeply in love with a man named Jesus of Nazareth. You are a little different, a little less politically moderate (though definitely not “conservative” or “liberal”!), a little more Pentecostal, a little less uncomfortable with the Charismatic wing of Pentecostalism, a little more uncomfortable with the non-Pentecostal evangelical world. But you aren’t really that different than the me who is writing this right now.

I have undertaken to write you regarding the topic of rebuke, and I think it would be well for you to listen and to hear what I have to say to you, because I think you might find it a little bit of a shocking claim. Here is the thesis: Rebuke – godly rebuke, that is – is a true expression of Compassionate Love and Care toward our Christian family. If you do not Rebuke when you ought, you reveal how little you actually Love them.

Mark this, there will be some Christians, Christians whom you know and love dearly now, that you will be tempted to write off. They will behave in ways clearly un-Christ-like, they will act out of the fruit of the flesh instead of the Spirit, and you will be tempted to say “I want nothing to do with you.”

But that temptation is the devil’s offer, it is not of God. These men and women are your flesh and blood, whether you like it or not, and they have been bought by the same flesh and blood as you. They are family, and you cannot write them off so easily. You cannot just block them on Facebook, or ban them on Twitter, you cannot just quiet them and make them shut up about their heresies and their deceptions. At times, you will feel very angry about them, you will think “Surely, you too are not the same as me, surely you are not one of the redeemed.” And their unredeemed mouths might make you think that way.

But even Jesus did not give up on the Pharisees. We like to read into His rebukes the sort of harshness and authoritarian power that we think leadership looks like, we pattern our rebukes on a false image of His rebukes, but we miss the Compassion and the Care which undergirds His Words. In the American Church, a power vacuum in the realm of authority (caused by our Protestantism and our Rebelliousness, I’d say) opens the way for the powerful and the charismatic to woo our headship. The less structured denominations and movements (re: Charismatic and Baptist) have the danger of false prophets jumping into their pulpits and demanding exacting sacrifice, total submission to the “Word of God,” and implicit trust in the leader. But Christ does not lead that way.

Yet still those rough words – “brood of vipers,” “Herod, that fox,” “whitewashed tombs” – resonate out of the Gospels. We tend to think Jesus is being mean (and then we allow that to justify our own being mean). He’s actually being gracious. The Pharisees have blinded themselves in their “knowledge” and their special privileges, so blinded that they cannot see Jesus for who He is – their awaited Messiah. But Jesus does not give up on them. He pulls away their stained clothes full of blood and fecal matter and reveals their nakedness to the world and to themselves. If He didn’t care, He would let them wallow in dirty garments, thinking themselves clean.

Rebuke, I’ve learned, is a measured sort of caring love. It isn’t a hammer that we use to punish the ungodly, nor a weapon at all. It is, ideally, a manifestation of the Love of God, who is not interested in our self-deceptions and our wicked ways. So, He points out the holes in our arguments and the holes in our clothes, rather than let us go on our merry way thinking ourselves “all-right.”

So, do not write them off, these Christians you might be tempted to call “pseudo-Christians,” or “weak Christians,” or even “baby Christians.” You have a responsibility to them, if you truly love them. Some of them will think that their faith is something lived and performed in a vacuum, that they can believe whatever they want to believe without any accountability. They might loathe this sort of love. Remember, in that day, how much you loathe this sort of love when it was directed at you – when Luke rebuked your impetuousness, when Chris rebuked your antinomianism, when Dylan rebuked your weak soteriology. But “iron sharpens iron,” so they say, and those who love rebuke, Scripture notes, are wise. Sometimes they – these “weak Christians” – will surprise you with Grace and they will respond Graciously, and you will turn to the Lord in Joy and thank Him… not because “you were right” – which is prideful – but because they truly are your brother and your sister, and their repentance brings you to mind of their salvation. You will know, in that moment, why you cannot write them off, why you cannot leave them be to their own devices, why you cannot cease from holding them accountable to the same Scriptures they ought to hold you accountable to.

Remember, of course, that we American evangelicals have a weak accountability structure. We hate it when other people tell us we’re wrong. We don’t have the humility of the Catholics to go to our pastors day in and day out and say “Father, I have sinned.” We’d rather strut our soteriologically-sound assurance in front of our pulpits and altars and pretend that our heavenly-bound justification (which is true) makes us naturally pretty, like a peacock. For our neighbor, our brother, our friend to point out our hidden nakednesses feels embarrassing in that sort of culture. It’d be better if he went about looking to his own issues, rather than bothering ours!

But remember, too, Paul’s instructions to Timothy and to Titus, the reminder about overseers being “above reproach.” The statement isn’t, of course, to set the episkopos in a state of unassailable dignity – as though that were possible – but to give them credibility when they stand in clarification, correction, and rebuke before the ekklesia. (And excommunication, should that dreadful consequence need manifest.) You cannot challenge or rebuke unless you have first checked and double-checked and triple-checked yourself, after all, being “sure of yourself” is the first step to deception, and to falling into the same boat as those whom you are responding to.

A friend of mine (and yours, but not yet!) reminded me recently about how crucial it is to first see what there is of merit in the oppositional argument. And even if that oppositional argument is totally rubbish (and sometimes it most definitely is), what of the spirit behind it is of merit? And even if that spirit is utterly demonic (and sometimes it most definitely is), what of that brother or sister’s character is of merit? A good man or woman, even a godly man or woman, might believe a “wind of doctrine” from the devil and be backing it because they say they love the Truth. They do not hate the Truth simply because their logic or argument is faulty, or because they do not understand Christian epistemology well, or because they believe certain anti-Christian presuppositions! They may well love the truth and just happen to be really bad at discerning it. Have mercy and grace with them and do not call them “foolish” or “evil” or “haters of the Truth” – unless they prove themselves to be clearly those things.

The truth is, unfortunately, that the Reformation, needful though it was, has created incredible, at times insurmountable, rifts in our theologies. Martin Luther was not interested in creating a denomination but in transforming the Roman Church from her Pelagian pitfalls. He did not hate the Roman Church, but loved her, and he risked his theological credibility by challenging her in loving rebuke. Erasmus was not his enemy, but his interlocutor.

But be mindful of this: because we American evangelicals hate accountability, your friends and brothers and sisters will do more than just balk at your challenges. They will begin accusing you of being “judgmental” or “bringing harsh judgment” or of “being deceived” yourself, or even – and this has happened to you and me – of being a “Marxist,” a “leftist,” a “progressive,” a “liberal,” a “statist,” as though your challenge against their inconsistent Christian witness has something to do with politics! I won’t tell you about what’s been happening in 2016, because it will terrify and sadden your apolitical, idealist, hyper-positive soul. You will see a glimpse of it in 2012, though, and that will be enough to convince you that there is a dangerous Kool-Aid in evanelicalism called “political ideology.” Be wary of it.

When they say these things, don’t forget to check yourself – again! It never hurts to go over your proofs, your arguments, your claims. Sort out their grounds, the way the arguments function, sort out your Scriptures. Compare your heart to the heart of Christ – do you say what you say out of Love or out of a desire to Hurt? Are you more interested in caring for your “opponent’s” (not “enemy”!) well-being than in “getting them back,” or are you committed to getting in “the last word”? Be careful of the desire to “get even,” to retort your own “rightness,” to express your “perfect, holy orthodoxy.” Be open to a broader diversity of opinions than your opponents, because then their accusation of your “narrow-mindedness” becomes hypocritical and unsustainable.

But when you have done all this, when you have checked your own soul, confided in your wife’s wisdom, leaned into the wisdom of your Christian friends and brothers and sisters and allies, and you are still convinced that your friend and brother and sister with whom you argue is not only wrong, but wrong in such a way that hurts their Christian morality, then stand firm! Do not waver at that juncture. Remember Ezekiel, whom God told to sound the alarm and let the people face the consequence if they do not listen. Remember Jeremiah, who was hated for the Word of the Lord. Remember Isaiah, who went before the Holy Throne and said “Here am I!” only to be given a impossible task: “Say to this people, Be ever hearing and never understanding, ever seeing and never perceiving.” You are not accountable to how “nice” people perceive you to be – although doing all this in a spirit of kindness really gets under some folk’s skin – but you are accountable to the Truth revealed to you by the Spirit of God. To waver on that is not “judgmental” or “mean,” but is actually Loving and True in the deep sense of the terms.

You’ll find the hypocrisy deeply frustrating. One minute you will see these Christians make an undue judgment regarding a matter of no actual importance and based on little to no real evidence – matters on politics or social conversations, often – and later when you challenge them on something of real importance and based on Scriptural evidence – matters on theological and moral topics – they will accuse you of being judgmental. It is at times infuriating. You will want to give up again. You will want to just “cast them out to Satan.” And some you will have to just ignore because they are so unteachable, and you will wait for them to grow in humility, or hope that their pastoral headship speaks to them (which is, unfortunately, not likely).

This last group is the vast minority, though. You must Love, you must Care, and to Love and to Care you must lean in to the nonsense your friends and loved ones say. You cannot dismiss it as you would dismiss the theoretical crap coming through the news media (which is what you should do with the theoretical crap coming through the news media). These are your people, the ones that God has set in your life and you in theirs. Whether long-distance or short-distance, your Calling is to Care for them, holistically.