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
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
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.
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.
Joel, congrats on the single. I sent you a message.
Also thoughtful piece, even if I don't fully agree with it. This is the first time I heard the phrase "Machen's Warrior Children", and I get it.
But I think there's something missing here, that is not symmetric between right and left in the context of the church, which I think I might have voiced here before, and if you've addressed it, I apologize.
And I hate to say it, because I try to be charitable, and I appreciate your efforts to be charitable. But: THE LEFT LIES. And I think this poisons the entire well, and it's the root of much of the problem. Machen himself observed that the left lies, it's in his book: he describes clergymen who solemnly affirm the whole of the WCF and then turn around two seconds later and start chipping away at it. And to this day you can find any number of examples of this type of behavior. One high profile example that comes to mind is the whole way Du Mez coyly danced around her opinions on LGBT for the longest time, which I picked up from Dreher around the time her book came out.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/jesus-and-elton-john-kristin-kobes-du-mez-denny-burk-evangelicalism-homosexuality/
Let me be clear, in the context of politics, maybe the right lies more. Trump certainly has a relationship with the truth that's as strained as any I can think of.
But in the context of the church, there's no contest. A conservative clergyman may lie to save his own skin, when it turns out he has engaged in, or covered for, horrific abuse. He may be coy or silent about how much he supports Trump or this or that conservative POLITICAL idea -- Chris Hodges of Church of the Highlands got in trouble for this. But when it comes to doctrine and theology, there's no conservative equivalent to the way that the left lies. There's no conservative pastor in a Mainline church who vows to support women's ordination and LGBT marriage, who claims to approve of higher criticism, and then immediately begins undermining those ideas, it turns out he believes in inerrancy. The closest equivalent I've ever heard of is Redeemed Zoomer out there, who is very open about his intentions and in any case hasn't accomplished anything to my knowledge.
But the left lies, and this means that anytime we catch a whiff of someone inside the church being significantly to our left, it's prudent to wonder for a second. Is that really his leftmost opinion? Or -- sorry for the mixed metaphor -- did he just let the mask slip, and it's the tip of the iceberg? If we give this guy an entry point, is our church about to be subverted, to become the next example of Mainline decay?
Anyway, maybe the argument is that people need to be given more of the benefit of the doubt. I don't think all this suspicion is a good thing! I think people should be able to voice ideas that are perceived as somewhere to the left of any given theological consensus without being instantly treated as heretics. But whatever the solution is, it needs to be offered in the context that, unfortunately, the left lies in a way the right does not, and real churches have been undermined and usurped as a result.
"arguably theologically orthodox, ***but*** [emphasis mine] sympathetic to Side B, celibate, gay Christians"... Is being theological orthodox and having sympathy towards Side B Christians in opposition?
Anyway, I would love to talk with you about this video sometime (both the original with Ms. Childers and Mr. Yuan as well as the response by Preston Sprinkle). I really did not like the original video especially with the accusations that the Side B theological framework and sensibility is "heresy" / "false teaching" as well as the odd straw men arguments at play and Yuan's no-platforming perspective. Side B obviously has differences with Side Y, but we both do hold the same basic points of the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, even if we differ in implications, aspects of human anthropology, and maybe the larger narrative of the gospel. Also, the idea that Side B does not think that people should repent of lust was shocking for me, I have never heard anyone say this, even if we have a more nuanced take on the dynamics of attraction compared to Side Y thinkers. Also, I appreciated your Frame and Machen examples, those dynamics are so common among some US evangelical traditions, sadly....
That said, I also did not really like how Preston engaged the discussion. In my opinion, he was too focused on what they implicated about him rather than defending Side B from gross mischaracterizations, and this episode also exposed some of his misunderstandings about the current Side B conversation around topics such as forms of committed kinship beyond marriage, among others. But he is definitely the one I would rather than a conversation with compared too Ms. Childers and Mr. Yuan - he is willing to approach conversations with hermeneutic of charity and engage publicly with perspectives that he actually disagrees. He seems open to complexity and nuance as well as learning in a way that I wonder if Ms. Childers and Mr. Yuan are.
I appreciate your sensibilities in all of this - pursuing virtuous engagement through sailing between the Charybdis of uncritical adoption and thoughtlessness and Scylla of purity spirals, tribalism, and "righteous" perfectionism.
Congratulations on the new band! Please share your first single with us a Communion & Shalom. We would happily give it a listen!