Ross Douthat writing in the Free Press. I think he summarises very well, for me capturing both my admiration and suspicion for a brand of Christianity that I am forever half-in, half out of. One point he captures more accurately than I have before seen, is the defense against the accusation that evangelicalism is theocratic. That has always just plain rung false to me, yet the evidence critics bring forward for that idea has always had much truth in it. I have not countered the charge well. Douthat does.
Evangelical political engagement is more likely to be defensive than controlling or incipiently theocratic.
Yes, this. Evangelicalism is not theocratic, but it is defensive, the great destroyer of all the other claimants to (theo)cracies that pretend to not be religions. As an overly-flexible, cliche-ridden faith, it knows another religion when it sees one, however many veils those may dance behind. The princess detects the pea under a dozen mattresses. Wokeness, politicised liberal Christianity, Country-Over-God, the Gospel of Nice, the Big Guy Upstairs, the Pale Galilean, All-Faiths-the-Same, the Inherited God, the Good Persons, Somber Churchiness, the God of Funerals - all of these are cut to earth by the Evangelicals more quickly than by other brands. Each of these small gods is bitter against the diagnostic X-Ray that is evangelicalism.
Cross-posted at Substack
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