Conservatives Need Winsomeness, Too

We've Talked Plenty About Christian Winsomeness Toward Progressives. But What about the Other Half of America?

I feel like I’ve lived two lives.

I grew up in the most conservative town imaginable. Brighton, Michigan is almost entirely a suburban city created by white flight from Detroit. By the time I was 18, I’d met one black family, and one black friend at school. Other than that, I’d known two non-white families.

One thing I had not met was a Democrat. At least, they didn’t telegraph it if I had, the same way zombies or aliens try to blend in before they begin their hostile takeover of our land, women and economic systems. My Aunt was the pride of our family, having worked for George Bush Senior. And you might think, given this description, that I’m describing a particularly evangelical landscape. That’s for sure true for my town on the whole. But interestingly, most of my family - and many of my friends - weren’t part of a church. They still aren’t, to this day. If you asked my cousins or uncles if they were Christians, they would tell you they were, despite not having darkened the doors of a church for years, or even decades, with the exception of weddings, funerals, etc. But that’s partially because the term “Christian”, in suburban Detroit area, was really a name for a certain kind of political/cultural package. To ask if you were a Christian, in Brighton, was to ask if you were politically and socially aligned along the Right Wing.

And the answer to that, almost certainly, for almost everyone, was yes.

So I was not entirely shocked when I read, in Michael Graham and Jim Davis’ very helpful book “The Great Dechurching”, this paragraph:

We often hear people attributing the loss of religious adherence solely to “the left,” “liberalism,” and “progressive” ideology, and while it is true that the secular left has been a source of erosion for congregations, a new secular right is on the rise with a strong focus on nationalism, individualism, law and order, immigration fears, and populist right-wing ideas. Particularly among evangelicals, there is more danger of dechurching on the right than on the left.

I wasn’t shocked, because in truth, that’s the story of most of the people I love growing up. It’s not so much that they all converted to Trumpism as a form of religion. That would be overstating things. It would be more accurate to say that Trumpism (and I distinguish this from people who held their noses or flipped a coin in 2016 or 2020, the same way I would distinguish between a “materialist” and a person with materials - let’s just say for arguments’ sake the Trumpists are those that call themselves Christian/evangelical but aren’t part of a church, meaning Trump’s vision of flourishing is functionally their Christian religion) captured the essence of my version of Christendom, only with more permission to, well, do whatever the hell they wanted.

Again, that is almost a distinction without a difference. I don’t think many of my family members or friends would give a second thought to how their self-given label, “Christian”, intersected with any part of their decision making, other than when convenient. Here’s one example that always felt bizarre and hilarious and sad to me. I remember having a very junior high boy conversation with my very junior high boy cousin, right when conversations were heating up about gay marriage in our country. I asked him what he thought about the issue, as a “Christian.” His answer?

“I think it’s okay to be a lesbian,” he said. “But it’s not okay to be gay.”

You almost want to laugh, until you realize what it means. And it would take me way too much time and emotional introspection to unpack that statement. But the bottom line was this: Christianity served to confirm whatever suspicions he’d had about those who lacked machisimo while also, weirdly, giving him license to take pleasure in something he found personally gratifying, namely, watching lesbian sex acts.

So Trumpism, really, just captures that spirit. If you thought it was all sprung upon us, you’d be wrong or blind or just living with some upper crust of society for long enough to forget this is what much of America is like. So no, I’d never heard the phrase “Secular Right" until last week, but when I did, it felt obvious to me what it was describing: it was describing my family, both before - but especially after - the rise of Trumpism.

Even that, I’m afraid, is describing the shift I observed as more dramatic than it was. Not to demonize (or serpentize) any of these folks, but, well, it did very much feel to me less like everyone around me had converted to Trumpism, and more like they’d shed their final layer of exoskeleton: a moment of perverse liberation, where the thing that always was metamorphisized into its final form.

World #2

The weird thing is this: I’ve dedicated the second half of my life to evangelizing a crowd who looks nothing like this. I spent several years on a college campus, trying to subvert what I normally would have called a “secular” - and by that I mean progressive - narrative with the gospel. Today I work with both students and adults in downtown Indianapolis, trying to winsomely present the same gospel to a fairly moderate crowd, and by that I mean the watered down Bible Belt version of progressivism. I make no apologies for that work, or my approach. I’ll go ahead and pitch my tent among the “Winsome” crowd, like Keller, who I think has been deeply mischaracterized (and misunderstood) by its critics. Yes, I think there is a kind of “winsomeness” which tries to scrub the offense of the gospel with a version of faith that says, as Jake Meador recently put it: “we Christians actually believe the same things you progressives do, if you just understood them rightly". But that, in fact, is the Mainline approach to Christianity, and I think has very little to do with what anyone in the scandalously conservative (at least if you’ve been outside much) PCA - like Tim Keller - has been trying to do (and I think Jake would agree with this, based on his other writings).

All this to say, I’m highly in favor of the much-malaised winsomeness tactic toward progressives, and have tried, as best as I can, to put it into practice. But I can understand the concerns. Which brings me to my own concern about my own “winsome” approach to Christianity…

Why is my “winsome” crowd so interested in winsomeness toward progressives?

I think it’s a very important question, actually. On the one hand, I could easily dismiss it: it’s because that’s what we’ve been terrible at for the past fifty years. When a ship has a leak, you don’t put your energy into patching the whole thing, especially if you’re one of the few who knows how to do it.

But I also had an experience last summer that gave me some pause. I was at our annual family golf outing, and found myself relaxing back into old habits: speech patterns, jokes…even opinions.

“It’s amazing how many of my opinions,” I thought, “are just habits.” It was a disturbing thought, followed by another, almost shudder-worthy:

“If I’d stayed here, would I have been critical of Trumpism? Or what I have seen Trumpism as the necessary apologetic for my conservative community? In an alternate reality, could I have used the very Trumpism I’ve criticized for years as an evangelistic shot-in-the-foot as a ‘bridge-building tool’ to my own, conservative friends and family? Could I have been saying things like, ‘You know, true nationalism comes from the gospel. True anti-wokeness comes from scripture. True Trumpism comes from Jesus….’”

I hope not. But of course, I’ll never know.

At the very least, the thought made we wonder why I’d poured so much sweat equity into converting a crowd so little like myself. I could give you reasons why, of course. I never really vibed with the cult of conservatism. I wanted to do work it felt like no one around me was doing, to fill my “niche”. All my conservative friends had already heard the gospel, they didn’t have the same barriers, my personality simply held more bridges toward the artistic and empathetic. Etc.

But none of that fixed the fact that I felt - in that moment on the golf course - almost entirely unequipped to speak to my Secular Right-wing loved ones about the gospel. It would do nothing for them to say things like, “Look, the grounds for social justice and racial equality all come from Jesus!” I’m not mocking that kind of statement, because I’ve said it in a thousand ways to my secular progressive friends. But it would be, if anything, a complete turn off to these people I’ve loved. I realized I’d become so fluent in translating the gospel toward secular progressives, I’d forgotten - or neglected - the tools I would need to translate that gospel to my friends and relatives on the Secular Right.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin to speak the gospel to a QAnon conspiracy theorist.

Brighton

This was all stirred up for me recently as I read Tim Alberta’s new book, “The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory”, an investigative journalism style look into the power behind current day evangelicalism. I read the book, at least partially, because Tim also grew up in Brighton, Michigan. Tim’s father, Richard, also played a pivotal role in my life: I worked at the church that serves at the centerpiece for Tim’s book, before Richard (Tim’s father) encouraged me to apply for an alumni scholarship to Gordon Conwell, his alma mater. After helping secure me my scholarship, he supported us and was a kind interlocutor for me, time and again, as I wrestled through ways in which our convictions differed (Richard was a true evangelical, in that, he really saw our differences as “non-essentials.” In fact, his favorite comment of mine, I think, was when I replied, “Well…” to one of his counterpoints, and moved on to a personal update. He wrote a whole paragraph to me about how important that “Well…” type of response was when navigating thorny issues).

I think Tim’s book is incredibly important. It’s an incisive look at the behind-the-scenes of what we call evangelicalism today. Using his skills as a journalist (Tim writes for The Atlantic), Tim meticulously uncovers the underbelly of much of far right evangelicalism. Behind closed doors, time and again, names you’d recognize admit to Tim that their “doom and gloomism” about America is just a fundraising tactic, or a publicity stunt. They don’t believe the stuff they’re saying, but they know it’ll bring in the numbers, and thus, the dollars. In fact the coolness with which these major leaders waived away whole swaths of lies they’d promulgated, when Tim questioned them directly, had all the ethos of a gifted drug dealer: “Well of COURSE we don’t get high off our own supply, man, are you crazy? We don’t believe that nonsense. That’s for them.”

I thought Tim did a great job of expressing his dismay over the situation, without resorting to the weirdly self indulgent cynicism or anger-porn voyerism of the exvangelical movement. But something I noticed - and something I’m learning to pay more careful attention to - is how the book stirred up in me feelings of disgust. It’s not the book’s fault. It’s not trying to investigate the golden heart of the midwest, after all. But for all the muck the book uncovered, it made we wonder: who’s really trying to understand these people? That is, other than people who want to empty their pockets. I mean us “winsome” types. Who is trying to understand the narratives that make these folks tick, in a way that isn’t just dismissive or disgusted, but which sees the imago dei in each one of them, searching desperately for answers in all the wrong places?

That, combined with some thinking I’ve been doing about the importance of wisdom as we approach another election year (I preached a recent sermon about this whole topic here), has caused me some pause. Then there were a bevy of tweets I’ve happened upon, like this one, that also struck a chord:

A decade ago, I was sharing Doug Wilson quotes on FB and Twitter. My mind changed largely because of the people who were patient with me, not the ones who attacked me. A reminder that everyone is in progress and it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance. @dhanabarger

It all made me wonder who was doing the apologetic work of subverting the secular right’s narratives. I still don’t know the answer to that. I’ve been thinking about it for a year. But I think it is a worthy project, and those of us who call ourselves winsome gospel translators need to be on the front lines of that project, if what we’re doing is - as we claim (and I believe) - more than placating a certain demographic, as we’ve been accused of doing.

Routes

I want to end by making a beginning. There are three areas where the gospel both intersects with and subverts the Secular Right Wing narrative, so far as I understand it. There are more, of course. But these are the areas that are clear to me. One way to think about these is as areas, as I’ve said before, that have both clear intersections with the gospel as well as categories that are deeply subverted by the gospel. But another way to think of these is as vacuums. I see something deeply human about some of the values of the Secular Far Right, and until we can name that, and address it, I don’t think we’re honestly going to do any real work in subverting it.

1. Heritage

One of the Secular Right Wing’s values is that of preserving a cultural heritage. And before this is hatred of some other cultural group (and on the far right, it is that, to be clear) this is a normal human desire. We all want to be part of a group. Even more, we all have a natural human desire to be part of a group with traditions, something passed down to us, and something that is worth preserving.

Evangelicalism, on the whole, hasn’t done a fantastic job of communicating this, but the truth is: the gospel gives us a tradition and heritage that is worth preserving. Walk into a typical evangelical church, and you’ll likely have little idea of this. There is very little strangeness. Everything feels as familiar as a business, a coffeeshop or, in some cases, a warehouse. The aesthetic shouts: “Nothing weird to see here!” And that’s both a win and a loss.

In his book “Destroyer of the gods,” a study of the early church’s stunning influence on Greco-Roman society, Larry Hurtado notes that one of the things that made the rag-tag upstart sect called Christianity so effective was the way it was able to be both familiar and strange:

A successful religious movement must retain a certain level of continuity with its cultural setting, and yet it must also ‘maintain a medium level of tension’ with that setting as well. That is, a movement must avoid being seen as completely alien or incomprehensible. But, on the other hand, it must also have what I mean by distinctives, distinguishing features that set it apart in its cultural setting, including behavioral demands made upon its converts.

One of the reasons ancient Christianity flourished is that it was both familiar and strange, emphasizing corporate rituals and traditions passed down to them by the Apostles but also straining to translate itself into diverse cultural settings. On the whole, I’d say evangelicals have emphasized the “familiar” side of Christianity at the expense of the “strange.” We tend to avoid the ancient, the difficult, the confessional, the corporate, the global or the historic aspects of faith and tradition on Sunday mornings. So it is not entirely shocking that large swaths of people enter our doors, on the one hand. On the other hand, it’s also not shocking that these huge swaths of people are taken in by a movement that promises a certain rootedness in history, and a certain strangeness.

I can tell you for a fact that I personally know several younger guys who’ve converted - or reconverted - to Christianity in no small part because of their attraction to the liturgy of our church on Sunday mornings. I shudder to think where their desire for strangeness, and heritage, would have taken them if Jesus hadn’t rescued them. In essence, the gospel said to them: “You can be part of a global, historic movement filled with strangeness, ritual and wisdom. It’s called the church.”

2. Conspiracy

The appeal of QAnon, or talks of the Deep State, or any number of conspiracies is two fold.

First, these conspiracy theories draw out what we all know instinctively about the world. There is a conspiracy against humanity. This is something I think C.S. Lewis was cued into, when he writes is everyman manifesto “Mere Christianity”:

One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin….It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening--in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.

There is a kindness in Lewis’s appeal. He sees the conspiracy prone not as misguided dunderheads, but as people who have a real and correct sense of the darkness of the world. He both affirms and re-channels this instinct.

So one thing I think we cannot do, if we’re to appeal to the Far Right, is try to downplay the anxieties that fuel this movement. If anything, Christianity says: “Politicians with agendas? Oh, it’s far worse than that. No political party has a chance against the real conspiracy.”

Second, when you listen to folks talk about QAnon, it becomes very clear that facts matter very little. Veracity matters very little. Sources, credibility, statistics - none of it matters, because we are not in the world of fact. QAnon exists in the world of poetry.

And again: I think we evangelicals have done very little to satisfy the poetic needs of our congregants. One of the things I’ve changed about my preaching in the last five years or so - to the ire, I’m sure, of my former preaching professors - is really laying out the poetry of the passages I’m preaching. I don’t hesitate to use ancient Greek or Hebrew words, or talk at length - or even whole sermons - about the biblical theology of certain poetic images, or give intense, technical details about the cultural setting of a certain kind of story so that when I re-tell it, it ‘hits’. And, frankly, I’ve found both Christians and non-Christians resonate with this kind of preaching far more than with my former style, which was much heavier on modern illustrations and application.

Why?

Because there is a poetic vacuum in the human heart. And, frankly, the more we evangelicals try and tidy up the scriptures - or pare their claws - the larger this poetic vacuum will grow. If we continue to tame the Bible in this way, we leave people helpless when a QAnon conspiracy theorist comes along, not because they don’t have sufficient rationality but because they don’t have a sufficiently poetic framework for life.

3. Power

One of the constant refrains in Alberta’s book was that of political/evangelical far right leaders quoting Matthew 5:13-16, and insisting they were simply equipping people to be “salt and light.” I admit this gave me pause, because I found myself…agreeing. I was agreeing with the sentiment that Christians ought to be culturally engaged, to preserve the beautiful, to promote the good. It was an interesting contrast to the churches Alberta profiled that were losing church members. At least a few of the pastors profiled insisted on being apolitical: “We just teach the Bible, here. I don’t want to engage in politics.”

So, we have MAGA churches, on the one hand, insisting they’re salt and light. Then we have apolitical churches, insisting that’s not their job. And here is what I think is happening: the pastors who are wanting to preach the Bible and remain wholly apolitical are actually creating a huge vacuum for the MAGA churches to fill. We humans are political creatures. Politics, after all, just means “group relations” or “city life.” To be apolitical is, especially in an American context, a refusal to love our neighbor.

Now, I’ve spent hours trying to find where I read this study, so if anyone can help me, I’m happy to comp you a year’s subscription to my substack, because I’m giving up. But I do know there was a study done last year on church involvement and political extremism. The finding was this: political extremism is evident at MAGA churches. It was also evident - very importantly - at apolitical churches. But where you found far less extremism was in churches that addressed political issues without taking partisan stances. In other words, churches who discipled folks to ask the right political questions, without binding church members’ conscience to certain political answers or parties, were the most effective as a moderating influence on congregants.

Again - a year’s subscription to anyone who can get me that study.

The point is this. Humans are political creatures. And when you read the New Testament in its cultural context, two things become clear.

First, the New Testament is a deeply political document. At least one whole layer of the New Testament is that each page is a polemic against Caesar as lord. We miss this, as moderns, but to claim “Jesus is Lord” is a direct shot at Caesar, whose coins bear the inscription: “Caesar is Lord.” The phrase, “The good news” - or gospel - was a phrase used to introduce Caesar’s reign, after his victory. The Book of Revelation is laced with references to Roman political leaders.

And yet, to say that the New Testament was simply advocating a replacement of Roman political leaders with Christian political leaders and a theocratic government get the New Testament vision entirely wrong. I’ve outlined more of the argument here, but essentially, Christianity didn’t try to replace the political order of its day, but to use the proclamation of Christ’s kingship to relativize it. That’s because Jesus’ theology of power was a repudiation of the Roman political theory of power:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.” - Matthew 20:25-29

Jesus’ words here, as well as his continued repudiation of the tactics of crown-grasping and warfare, aren’t actually about repudiating power as such. After all, Jesus did take the crown of the universe upon his head at his ascension. They are demonstrating that Jesus has a theory of power, but that theory has little to do with political control. Rather, for Jesus, true power came through non-violent action, loving enemies, wielding the weapon of truth, and suffering. These are Jesus’ ‘political’ tactics. And, to put it plainly: the Greco-Roman empire is long dead. Every Greco-Roman religious movement of Jesus’ day other than Judaism and Christianity is dead. And that’s because Jesus’ theology of power is playing the long game.

We do need to be salt and light. We need to teach Christians to be politically engaged. And we need to do that not by endorsing the “moral packages” the world gives us, but by equipping our congregants to engage politics on Jesus’ terms. To be in the world of politics, but not to be of it. Power is not the enemy. Greatness isn’t even the enemy…Jesus explicitly appeals to our desire for both of these, in the passage above.

The enemy is the short-sighted, self-preservative pursuit of power and greatness, which Jesus repudiates above. Be political, yes, Jesus says. Care about your neighbor. Cast your vote. Just do it in a way that is wholly subversive of the world’s version of politics: “Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.”

Conclusion

These are preliminary thoughts/observations. There’s plenty more work to do. The work I’m trying to do above is get beyond disgust, toward love. Because I do think there are many, many people on the extreme, secular right who, with patience and time, can come to Christ. People like Dan, in the tweet earlier in this article. And I do believe that those of us who have been subverting progressive culture for some time have the tools to do this. The tools I’ve outlined here are things any church can practice to inoculate its members from the Secular Right:

• Make use of the “strange” heritage of the global church. Incorporate liturgy, history, ancient prayers, etc.

• Teach the Bible as a poetic document. Our preaching and teaching needs to step back into the way the early church framed the scriptures, as a poetic, complicated document with literary complexity, pointing toward Jesus. And we need to show people its beauty and nuances, not just skip to modern applications/illustrations (though we need that, as well).

• Give people a Christological theology of power and politics. This means, in part, being non-partisan. But it also means showing that Christ’s entire theory of power is unaligned from the world’s theory of power. We need to encourage our members to frame politics as issues of servanthood, not merely as issues of self-preservation and preference. We need to encourage scriptural engagement with political issues, while also refraining from binding anyones’ conscience with our own opinions, or certainly with the “moral packages” of the right or left.

These are things we can all practice. The question is: will we?

I hope so. I’d be happy for any thoughts, resources, or insights about how to do this better. If you have any, please write me: nicholas@redeemindy.org

I’d love to read more encouraging stories, and see more examples of what it means to love, and convert, the increasingly Secular Right.