On The Fringe

The Atlantic op-ed is behind a paywall, so I’ll crib a few quotes via Alternet via Raw Story:

In Walker Percy’s The Second Coming, Will Barrett, the novel’s main character, says of Christians, 'I cannot be sure they don’t have the truth. But if they have the truth, why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise that truth? One might even become a Christian if there were few if any Christians around. Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million Southern Baptists?' Barrett then puts forward a mystery: 'If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it? And if the good news is true; why are its public proclaimers such assholes and the proclamation itself such a weary used-up thing?'

Which last two questions get to the relevant point here, but also to the issue if soteriology. Don’t get me started on that. Also:

Wehner's friend, Steve Hayner — the former president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Columbia Theological Seminary — said something before his death in 2015 that Wehner will never forget: "The central character of God, Steve said, is love and grace, and the central mission of Christians is to extend God’s hand of grace to others."

As I was saying, extending that hand of grace is very hard to do. Much easier to suck up to power.

In Houston and in Dallas there are huge Southern Baptist churches. I mean mega church size churches. But they don’t dominate the local culture and politics as thoroughly as the Baptist churches did in the small town I grew up in, and those churches feel that gap keenly. They long for the power they never had: the control of Geneva by Calvin, or the Bishop of Rome over Europe. It’s ironic since the Baptists came to this country to escape the authority of governments which condemned them (and not to immediately establish their own government, as the Puritans did). Baptists were actually the liberals of Xianity in those days. Mutatis mutandis, because as they gained numbers they gained power, and power, as the Catholic layperson said (Lord Acton), corrupts (he actually said “tends to corrupt,” but then he was an English Lord, so of course he whiffed it).

Further out on the social fringe were the “evangelicals,” cut from the same cloth as Southern Baptists but never as socially significant.  Their rise to prominence was directly connected to political power in the ‘70’s, when cable TeeVee money gave them clout (“Money talks”) and they used it for political clout. They’ve been longing for those halcyon days ever since. The Tea Party threw kerosene on those embers, and here we are today.

The longing for power is much stronger than the longing to show grace. Hell, the longing for grace to be extended to us is much stronger than the longing to extend grace to others.

Same as it ever was.

Never forget the Rev. Dr. King was a pastor. They haven’t. They’ve been scurrying away from his Christianity ever since.