Two Moments of Christian Dismay

Sometimes, it's too much.

In my research on conservative evangelical outreach, I have to keep in mind most of the time that I'm writing for an academic/artistic audience that is, in general, vaguely hostile to evangelicalism or conservative thought. I do my best in such cases to practice "critical generosity," a term coined by performance scholar David Roman. Among other things, critical generosity means doing your best as a critic to understand the mindset, the world view, of the subject you're investigating or writing about, being extra careful not to let your own personal biases color the presentation of the subject.

In Roman's case, as he wrote about fund-raising performances and cabarets produced in the early part of the AIDS epidemic, critical generosity meant suspending standard critical evaluative criteria--is this a good piece of art?--in favor of exploring and appreciating what it was that the performances were trying to do on their own terms.

I try to apply a similar kind of critical generosity toward conservative-evangelical (or even fundamentalist) worldviews that seem very far from my own. I find it challenging and productive to force myself to get into the head space of, say, Fred Phelps, Ray Comfort, or the ex-gay ministries (and I emphasize that these are radically different entities--I mean to emphasize a diversity of evangelical beliefs, not suggest that these are variations of the same thing).

But every so often, I run into a product of evangelical (or more broadly "Christian") culture that snaps me out of critical generosity and into Christian dismay. I had two such moments today, alas.

The first involves the "Manhattan Declaration," a longish statement by a diverse (relatively speaking) collection of Christian conservatives. Alas, I have yet to read it (tomorrow's work), from the executive summary it appears to be standard religious-right culture-war boilerplate with a civil disobedience twist. That is, the declaration makes amorphous statements to the effect that Christians (by which they mean their kind of Christians) are going to stand ready to disobey laws that force them to kill unborn babies, murder disabled people, recognize homosexual marriages, or tolerate limitations on the expression of (Christian) faith.

That's right--this powerful, signed-by-125-Christian-leaders, news-media-attracting statement by "Christianity" says that the main issues facing the people of God today, the key areas of life with which they should concern themselves--are no abortions, no gays, and you'd-better-say-Merry-Christmas!

Of course things are more complicated than that, but pardon me for a moment while, sans critical generosity, I just shake my head. Really? This is the witness of transformative, saving love you want to make to the world? "Here's what we're against (by the way--all of these are in that evil old health care bill that will extend insurance coverage to more people)."

Good job, Christianity. Another winning witness. Because people are falling away from the church because it's insufficiently clear about it's dislike of abortion, gays, and other religions.

Second dismay moment: My partner's on his way to my place, traveling from Illinois all the way down to me, a journey that takes him through the hinterlands of Mississippi. On the way, he listens to talk radio, where (on NPR apparently), he heard a story about this outfit: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. This group, from what I can gather, agitates for soldiers' and officers' rights to practice their faith (read: proselytize conservative evangelicalism) no matter where they're serving. There was apparently a Harper's story about them in May (which the MRFF proudly displays on its site). Among the anecdotes gathered by the magazine? Parading through a middle-eastern town with "Jesus Killed Mohammad" being proclaimed in Arabic and English...

Ugh... (shakes head).

Well--my partner just arrived! Nothing brightens up evangelical dismay like a loved one.

More tomorrow,

JF