Which Evangelicals Are Woke?

Cancel culture goes both ways.

Yesterday morning, I listened to Preston Sprinkle’s response to criticisms of his Exiles in Babylon conference. Sprinkle presents, in his books and on YouTube, an evangelical perspective that is arguably theologically orthodox, but sympathetic to Side B, celibate, gay Christians. He is also mildly left-leaning on politics, from an Anabaptist-inflected Christian perspective. Hence, “Exiles in Babylon.”

Alisa Childers and Christopher Yuan criticized Sprinkle and his conference in a recent podcast. Alisa Childers is a former contemporary Christian music star, turned Christian discernment YouTuber. Christopher Yuan is the author of Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son's Journey to God. (Though I’m sure he would revise the word “gay” today.)

Childers alleges that the conference is platforming a gay-affirming, progressive Christian as well as Christians who “identify as trans” and have pronouns in their bios. She is concerned that the conference presents views that may be incorrect without loudly proclaiming that these are just someone’s opinion, or presenting a debate.

Yuan brings a “Side Y” Christian perspective on homosexuality, as someone who “struggles with same-sex attraction” himself. He argues against Side B, those Christians who say that being gay is not a sin, while holding to an otherwise traditional Christian sexual ethic. In fact, he says that Side B is “a different gospel.” (See this explainer on the “four sides” on questions of sexuality.)

The Big Question

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

I have one question about these discussions: Who here is woke?

From a partisan political view, an evangelical might say that clearly Sprinkle is more “woke.” After all, his politics are a bit to the left of the average evangelical - he is willing to use LGBTQ+ language, and even preferred pronouns. He has spoken with people on his channel who are to his left, including a (non-Christian) transgender woman. (Great episode, by the way.)

But in the context of conservative evangelicalism, Sprinkle is actually the free speech warrior. He is the closest thing I have seen on evangelical YouTube to what, for example, Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster do on Triggernometry - interview people on all sides of the aisle in good faith discussions and debates without demonizing one’s opponents. The Exiles in Babylon conference featured several panels of this kind, including on the Israel-Palestine conflict and Christian deconstruction.

On the other hand, it is Childers and Yuan who here advocate a kind of “no-platforming.” It is they who want a conference to have speakers with all and only approved views, in order to teach people what they ought to think. It is they who wield rhetoric to demonize their opponents - and especially the opponents who are closest to them ideologically.

They also speak far too freely of other Christians preaching “a different gospel.” J. Gresham Machen used the related rhetoric of a different religion in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. But Machen was speaking of people - theological liberals - who did not believe in the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, or his or our resurrection, i.e., people who did not believe in Christianity(!), but continued to call themselves “Christians.”

Is celibate gay evangelical writer Wesley Hill preaching another gospel? Far from it. Wesley Hill’s story was the first of a gay Christian that I heard. He graduated from Wheaton College a decade before I did and spoke in chapel the year I started. His story in Washed and Waiting is a beautiful presentation of his journey with Christian faith and homosexuality. And, by the way, it preaches the one gospel, of salvation from sin through Jesus Christ, received by repentance and faith.

Theologian John Frame coined a phrase for those who continue in the mood of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy even when that is not what is happening: “Machen’s Warrior Children.” It’s when you fight evangelical Christians who are one step toward the lef… —nope, it’s just the middle—from you as if they were Harry Emerson Fosdick, the liberal preacher and author of the sermon, “Will the Fundamentalists Win?” Others have described this as “St. George in Retirement Syndrome”; with the dragon dead or out of the region, what is St. George to do with his fighting spirit?

Now, I’m willing to argue about which side in a theological controversy is being more faithful to the gospel. Sometimes it is faithfulness to the gospel that is at stake. For example, I would argue that the Ex-Gay movement of the ’70s to ’00s (Side X) offered what was effectively a prosperity gospel, and that Childers and Yuan’s position, that same-sex attracted Christians should not “identify as ‘gay,’” (Side Y) still has some of the same prosperity elements.

But I’m not going to say that people who think those things believe a different gospel. In fact, because we believe the same gospel, I’m going to appeal to the gospel we all believe in to argue that their approach to same-sex attraction is mistaken. (As I did, for instance, here.)

Both Sides

Photo by Juliana e Mariana Amorim on Unsplash

As in politics, so in the church, wokeness isn’t about right or left per se. It is about, within a large ideological group, who takes things to the extreme where they demonize their own. To quote Relient K, “We’re cannibals; we watch our brother fall. We eat our own the bones and all.”

On the left, wokeness sets in when you demonize fellow liberals for not signalling virtue loudly enough, strongly desire ideological purity, and refuse to listen to those with whom you disagree.

Among evangelicals, it occurs when… well, when you demonize fellow evangelicals for not signalling virtue loudly enough, strongly desire ideological purity, and refuse to listen to those with whom you disagree.

I concede that there certainly are some evangelicals who adopt uncritically liberal “wokeness,” both socially-liberal views and the mash-up of concerns about race and sexuality viewed in terms of oppressors and oppressed. (Some adopt it critically; to y’all, I say, let’s have the conversation!)

But among thinking, conservative evangelicals, there is an opposite danger - whether equal or greater, I cannot judge. That danger is to fall into tribalism, the purity spiral, and not talking to one’s opponents.

The fact is, whenever you talk to someone, you can find some common ground. And that humanizes other people. They’re not evil. They may be wrong.

But they may also be saying something you need to hear.

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My New Band

It’s as good a time as any to let you know that I’m starting a band. I’ll be releasing a single soon called, “Common Ground.” It’s a burning pop-punk track mocking the reasons we demonize others.

I’ll let you know when the single is released. If you want to hear the song before the release, send me a direct message or email (joelcarini@substack.com) and I’ll send you the private link.