It’s annoyed me for a while that I can’t say I was raised as a Christian anymore without appending a lot of explanation. You see, “Christian” no longer seems to apply to Catholics. Christians, apparently, are all Protestant — no, not even that. Today, “Christian” has come to mean only “evangelical” — conservative evangelical, at that — and while I’m not always sure what I “am,” I know what I’m not.
One of the reasons that “evangelical Christianity” has come to stand in for all other forms of Christianity in the public mind is that evangelicals are extraordinarily media-savvy, and misinformation about the numbers of evangelicals in society has sunk into the public consciousness. One out of four Americans are evangelicals, pollsters said after the 2000 and 2004 elections, and they exert a tremendous influence over the nation’s political agenda.
But Christine Wicker’s The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church takes a closer look at those numbers. Yes, one out of four Americans may answer that on a poll, but after looking closely at the statistics, discussing social desirability biases, refining the question, and calling on many other sources (e.g., churches’ own membership rosters, congregational organizations’ reports), she compellingly concludes that only 7 percent, or 15 million, of adult Americans is evangelical. That’s certainly enough to influence politics when acting in concert, but hardly the 1 out of 4 statistic being bounced around by the media.
What is an evangelical? Wicker defines her term by offering a list of fundamental beliefs (yes, from which we derive fundamentalist) of evangelicism:
• The inerrancy of Scripture
• The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus
• The bodily resurrection of Jesus
• The idea that salvation and atonement for sin come only through the death of Jesus, God’s grace, and human faith
• The imminent second coming of Christ. (p. 50-51)
She uses this to differentiate between evangelicals and born-again Christians and mainline Protestant denominations that don’t agree with all of these beliefs. She also notes that a number of progressive evangelicals, such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore (and, I wonder, maybe Barack Obama?), don’t fit the stereotypes of evangelical politics that have arisen as a result of the religious right. In other words, she’s pointing out that many other forms of Protestant Christianity have been rendered invisible by conservative evangelicals’ domination of the media.
Although Wicker doesn’t mention Noelle-Neumann’s “spiral of silence” model, it’s clearly applicable to her argument — if you think that your opinion is in the minority, you are more likely to keep it silent for fear of public ridicule and isolation. So, the more often the media seek out evangelical spokespeople and declare their opinions to represent those of 1 out of four Americans, the less likely people with different opinions will feel comfortable speaking out about their dissenting views, which of course means less challenge to the evangelical opinion, ultimately creating that spiral of silence that may result in a silent majority (the rest of the U.S.) allowing itself to be led around by a vocal minority (conservative evangelicals).
Wicker is a former evangelical Christian who still respects her Southern Baptist roots; she describes the troubles evangelical Christianity is having in the U.S. with a clear sense of regret, feeling that the country is losing part of its heritage even though she’s no longer evangelical herself. Thus, her analysis is as scrupulous and careful as she can make it, calling on evangelicals’ own data and spokespeople as she describes the problems evangelicals are having as they lose their Baby Boomer celebrity-preachers, as megachurches find it difficult to convince Gen X attendees to donate money to pay their operating costs, as evangelical congregation members drop out or seek more individualized venues in which to practice their belief, and as U.S. politics begins to shift its attention to social problems evangelicals haven’t always addressed well, such as poverty, injustice, and racism, rather than sexual behavior.
By contrast, Nicholas Guyatt’s Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans are Looking Forward to the End of the World, is a more popularized, eye-rolling look at evangelical belief. Guyatt is emphatically not evangelical, although his book consists of interviews with some of the major apocalyptic theologians in the evangelical movement — Tim LaHaye, Tommy Ice, John Hagee, David Reagan, David Chagall, Hal Lindsey’s right-hand man Jack Kinsella, and others.
Guyatt doesn’t question the 1-in-4 statistic; his interest is in what the more apocalyptically minded subset of evangelical Christians believe and how that affects their involvement in U.S. politics. Just as Wicker usefully differentiated between “evangelical” and “born-again” Christians for the neophyte reader, Guyatt usefully differentiates between “prophetic (apocalyptic)” and “Dominionist” evangelicals (the former believe the Rapture, Antichrist, and Tribulation are imminent and thus don’t care much about political activism; the latter dismiss those ideas and, though still anticipating the Second Coming, intend to bring U.S. law and governance in line with the Bible in the meantime). Guyatt explores in depth apocalyptic Christian beliefs about global politics, especially with regard to Israel and Islam, which I found to be an intriguing framework within which to consider current events between Hamas and Israel and President Bush’s response to them.
Together these two books provide a slightly more nuanced view of the internal divisions and disagreements in evangelical Christianity than most of us outsiders are likely to have, although Wicker’s book only lightly touches on belief in the Rapture, and Guyatt’s book examines only the more extreme versions of evangelicism. Thus, Wicker’s book is of equal interest to both evangelicals and non-evangelicals, although perhaps for different reasons, while Guyatt’s book is aimed more at the skeptical reader.
Although I object to the fact that conservative evangelical Christianity has highjacked the term “Christianity” to exclude so many other Christian perspectives, I don’t hold the kind of knee-jerk, anti-evangelical attitude that would be stereotypically held by a liberal intellectual academic. I understand where evangelists are coming from, although I can’t quite grasp how they got there. And if they say they’ll pray for me, I’ll quite sincerely say “thanks — I need all the help I can get.”
In other words, I’m one of those mainstream Americans that Wicker describes who so frustrate evangelicals — my guiding principles include “if nobody is getting hurt, it’s OK” (I’d modify this to, “if everyone involved consents and nobody is getting hurt, it’s OK”) and the ethic of reciprocity, nicely phrased by Hillel as “that which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” I’m willing to give evangelicals their space. The problem is, that’s not enough. Wicker nicely describes the problem viewpoints like mine set up for evangelicals:
As people outside the evangelical camp adopt the “Don’t hurt anyone” rule for themselves, they also apply it to others. Realizing that Christians were commanded to follow the Golden Rule, outsiders are less likely to understand where evangelicals, with their Bible-based morality, are coming from, and are more likely to condemn such morality as unchristian when it hurts someone by denying them certain rights or respect.
Indeed. In this passage Wicker pinpoints a core conflict between mainstream American values and evangelical belief, and I think that over all the other issues she describes, the “evangelical nation” will have to decide how to address the mainstream’s perception of its actions if it wants to avoid losing the political influence it has enjoyed for so many years.
drupagliassotti @ January 7, 2009
Some quick reviews of books I’ve read in the last couple of weeks:
Company of Liars by Karen Maitland: A sort of Canterbury Tales set in 1348; a small group of vagabonds flees both the encroaching Black Plague and some sort of supernaturally pursuing wolf. The gritty historical detail and the fun of discovering each character’s secrets before they’re all picked off one-by-one makes this well worth a read. The action climax struck me as a little flimsy and too off-stage, but there’s so much other goodness here that you can’t fret about the book’s occasional stumble.
Curse of the Pogo Stick by Colin Cotterill: Another installment of the series about Dr. Siri Paiboun, national coroner of ’70s Laos, that addresses the political plight of the Hmong. I enjoy these novels for the glimpses they give me into a different culture, and the booby-trapped corpse is pretty cool, but they aren’t action-adventure or high suspense. Read for the historical/cultural context, not for a thrill.
The Decline of Men: How the American Male is Tuning Out, Giving Up, and Flipping Off His Future by Guy Garcia: The only nonfiction in this lot, this books describes, in sociojournalistic mode, the ways in which American men are feeling disenfranchised and adapting poorly to their changing social status; it even manages to do so without blaming women (that wouldn’t be manly). Makes me scared for the future of my teenaged nephew. I may use a chapter from this in my mass media class to cover the gender stereotyping of men, which tends to be forgotten in students’ fuss over stereotypes about women. …I’d like to hear what men have to say about this book.
The Devils of Bakersfield by John Shannon is the 10th in a series but the first I’ve read, and it stands alone just fine. Satanic scares in Bakersfield plunge investigator Jack Liffey into a nightmare of evangelical accusations and social prejudice; seems almost laughably over the top but, unfortunately, probably isn’t. Light and readable, but offering two identical-but-for-one-word final chapters, with a chance to vote online for which one you like better, sucks and forces me to give this novel a thumbs-down for authorial cop-out.
The Drifter’s Wheel by Philip DePoy: I like the Fever Devilin novels, about an anthropologist gathering folk stories in the Appalachias, because they remind me Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John stories, which I loved as a child. This installment poses an oddball little mystery about a man who claims to have lived through wars from the Civil to WWII that will keep readers guessing until the end. Nice little series, enjoyable read.
Every Last Drop by Charlie Huston: Vampires, yawn, but PI Joe Pitt’s first-person, present-tense, neo-noir narration is well-crafted, and this fourth installment in the series is violent and intense. The New York clan warfare feels informed by Vampire: The Masquerade (what vampire novel doesn’t, nowadays?), but you gotta love the grue of vampires biting off parts of each other and not regenerating them.
Master of the Delta by Thomas H. Cook: A young schoolteacher from one of the area’s great old families takes a promising loner under his wing when he discovers the boy is the son of a local murderer; but is his interest entirely healthy, and what will the boy’s inquiries about his father stir up? Well-done psychological nuances as the narrator comes to grip with his own prejudices and assumptions about class and evil. Read for the author’s deft handling of the narrator’s hubris and its consequences.
Miracle Myx by Dave Diotalevi: A younger, more ubercompetent Odd Thomas without the heavy Christian trappings (yet retaining a certain level of spiritualism). The synaesthetic, never-sleeping 14-year-old protagonist Myx borders on the obnoxious, but the novel has too much sexual innuendo to be aimed at YA readers, so who’s it written for? I have very mixed feelings (no pun intended) about this one; characters without flaws bore me, but the storytelling style was light and catchy enough to keep me reading. If Myx gets his comeuppance in the next book, I’ll keep following the series; if he stays a whiz kid, I’ll groan and sign off.
Still Waters by Nigel McCrery: Look, another synaesthetic protagonist; they’re almost as common as vampires nowadays. The opening chapter of this novel is a real shocker, after which the narrative quiets down a little, half-following the villain, who is an old lady poisoning and replacing other old ladies, and half-following DCI Mark Lapslie as he tries to hunt her down despite the distractions of his synaesthesia. He’s more sympathetic than Myx, by far — so is the old lady, for that matter — and this is, overall, a solidly well-written British mystery.
Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain: I thought Cain’s Heartsick was intriguing, and Sweetheart carries on with the story of Portland detective Archie Sheridan, who is unhealthily obsessed with the female serial killer into whose clutches he’d fallen before the series began, and who has left him psychologically crippled and dependent on her. There are mysteries going on in the two books, but what really rivets the reader’s attention is Sheridan’s crumbling life and desperate inability to prevent being manipulated by the Lecter-esque predator who left her mark on his body and his mind. Sickly captivating.
Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett: Chess tournaments, the tsar, and Bolsheviks all clash in this story set in 1914 St. Petersburg. I enjoy reading mysteries set in different times and places, but this novel never hooked me; I just couldn’t like any of the characters very much, and Russian politics confuse me. Chess players might enjoy it more, as an ongoing chess game gets diagrammed for readers to follow, but I closed it with a shrug.
All in all, I’d most recommend picking up Company of Liars if you enjoy medieval settings and a touch of the supernatural, and Heartsick & Sweetheart if you admired Hannibal Lecter and, say, wanted to read more about the relationship between him and Starling after the controversial end of Hannibal. There are some other good books in the group, too, but those novels are the ones that stood out for me.
drupagliassotti @ January 4, 2009
Simplicity, Ashen Wings, The Harrow Comments (0)
I woke up this morning in the midst of an anxiety attack. Er, happy new year?
My problem is deadlines — too many of them coming up too fast. A Jan. 2 deadline for getting all my permissions to use manga images secured and the final draft of my BL paper off to the editor. A Jan. 20 deadline for getting all a new public speaking class developed and all my syllabi written before the new university semester begins. An “as soon as possible” deadline for getting comments about the yaoi book’s MSS off to the authors, an “as soon as possible after that” deadline to get revisions back from the authors, and an end-of-February deadline for getting the manuscripts formatted and off to the publisher.
Is it any wonder I jerked awake this morning, my heart pounding, seized by a sense of impending doom?
Last year I took on too many projects, and these deadlines are the fallout. So this year I’m going to try to give myself more breathing room.
I’ve only made two resolutions this year: to write more fiction and to lose the extra pounds that crept up on me last year while I shirked the gym in favor of long hours in the office and collapsing in a quivering heap on the sofa once I got home.
But in order to keep those two resolutions — and deal with this whole anxiety issue — I need to make some other changes, too.
For one thing, as you’ll see if you visit The Harrow’s January issue, I’m going to put The Harrow on hiatus this summer. I’m not the only one on staff who needs a break, after ten years of nonstop publication — and setting it aside for a while will eliminate one of the constant deadline pressures in my life so that I can concentrate on my writing and my fitness.
I’m also going to try to shed some other deadline-producing responsibilities this year. After spring semester ends, I should finally have finished serving a position at the university that added three meetings a month and a whole lot of miscellaneous duties to my schedule. It was an honor to be chosen for it, but after three years, I’m ready to pass it on to someone else! Similarly, I’m going to try to avoid taking on any extraneous responsibilities for a while — I need to finish the projects in front of me before I agree to tackle anything new. I expect that it’s going to be hard to say “no,” but honestly, I don’t think I have a choice any longer. Waking up to a new year should be a joyous experience, not a fearful one!
For years I’ve been simplifying my finances and my possessions. It’s finally time for me to start simplifying my responsibilities, too. I’d rather do a few things calmly than lots of things in a panic.
…But first, I have to grit my teeth and get through the next few months of deadlines…!
drupagliassotti @ January 1, 2009