My friend Aaron M. Renn makes a very strong case, in “The Problem with the Evangelical Elite,” over at First Things, that such an elite can hardly be said to exist.
I think I've seen the same "Evangelicals need to create elites" article a thousand times by now (not trying to take away from Aaron's good writing). I'm glad you were able to strongman the counter arguments that I couldn't quite articulate.
I'm all for the attempts to create church elites as well as other community elites; but I would like to see also emphasis on the education or recruitment of leaders for business & politics. I'm especially worried about the idea of getting evangelicals to act in ways elite liberals favor. I want more variance, not less-
As someone raised evangelical-leaning Presbyterian, heavily involved in undergrad years with a major evangelical organization, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, who attended Keller's Redeemer in the aughts, and who now is Anglican (ACNA), much about these discussions feels...curious. In my late 50s, and having paid little attention to most trends in the "evangelical world" since my early 40s, I still nonetheless feel that somehow, near-every public-intellectual discussion of things evangelical, is almost always just...off. It's way off when it comes from non-conservative intellectuals, but even many conservative ones seem to lose their footing on this topic.
I in some ways consider myself "ex-Evangelical," for certain ACNA/church-tradition reasons, even though Renn wants to insist on my denomination being a "splinter" of evangelicalism, and I won't deny our roots, and especially my own, in evangelicalism. That's part of why I'm often made a tad defensive, or just outright puzzled, by what I hear others saying about evangelicals. Are they--or as I'd say in the past, we--SO difficult to understand? After all, certain Catholic writers like Douthat and Bottom did it well enough.
This Renn piece...I dunno. It's scattered...he tells "Protestants" to do five things at once, among them to get more united and also to get more accepting of the intra-Protestant stratification and variance. He knows a lot and mentions a lot of major figures, and while he makes a number of good points, I don't detect much continuity here b/t his thinking, and books of my young evangelical years such as Evangelical Essentials (Stott). I don't sense familiarity with the kinds of things, including many political ones, that the early-net blog Evangelical Outpost exhibited as a matter of course. And there are a number of off statements, for example, say, when Renn talks about how deep the theologians of the Episcopal church and other mainline denominations have been, and what evangelicals ought to learn from them, once they see the need to build bridges to them. Uh...if we're talking about certain stayed-mainly-orthodox mainline church leaders of say, the 1970s or 80s, that's one thing, but to write as if the leaders of today's mainline denominations have much in common with evangelicals or evangelical-rooted ACNA-ers, and to do so without documentation showing that unexpected developments are underway...wow. If he can make an error that big, that disconnected from ABC realities of church life, it doesn't surprise me that Titus has to school him on the way women's ordination is bad news, and I could report to him how the slightest prospect of it repels serious Z-sters in the ACNA.
Also, as someone who's been reading E. Digby Baltzell on just how generally Wonderful that late19th/early 20th-century WASP establishment was, in addition to being rather obviously drifting away from serious Christian faith, as if what Kierkegaard railed against were a friggin' Road Map to excellence, I have more reasons yet to shy away. Renn's obligatory quick-mentions of WASP establishment shortcomings do little to cloak his obvious wanting to look to it as a model.
And I'll add this: the FOREIGN-NESS of this whole how-do-we-get-another-Protestant-elite discussion from the actual typical talk I do hear from my fellow ACNA-ers, or from full-on evangelicals I know, is striking. "Patronage-structures?" I mean, some of this is in continuity with older authors like Noll and Keller, but I'm telling you, this is nowhere on the list of topics that come up in my church, or with evangelical friends. Maybe it should come up sometimes, maybe that's Renn's big point, and maybe when, say, the ACNA starts founding colleges it will come up, but sorry, it feels like Renn is not in touch. That he's only really talking to a set of academics or political analysts. Most evangelicals and most ACNA-ers would be amused to learn that "the Protestants" is becoming a hot topic, or that a guy like Renn might be led by his theory to want the members of my church's vestry to try to reach out to our local Methodists so as to explore Protestant Commonality.
I've seen Renn be smart on certain political topics, but as for this touted Christianity expertise of his, something feels weak. I'm not saying evangelicals don't need to think more about their relation to America, nor denying that at a certain point, that naturally leads to thinking about evangelical elites. Someone Renn-influenced might have a point were he to say, "Evangelical parents have many kids, but they doom them to having to submit to secular elites over their lives, because they prepare no institutions, besides the most narrowly religious one, for them to be in charge of. They play by the progressivist elite's rules and bow to their initiative, and errantly tell themselves this is 'Christian humility' or 'not being too political.'" There's something to that. But what our Renn-influenced critic cannot admit is that some of the a-political and anti-status-seeking patterns of American evangelicalism stem back to a reaction against the way the WASP emphasis on elite Society, at its best an emphasis on elite leadership, reliably led away from orthodox belief! Led to the merely nominal Christianity Kierkegaard warned against! Led also to Riverside Church and Reverend Fosdick!
Anyhoo, another thing that bugs me about Renn's essay is that ALL "let's plan out our elites" talk feels strange and out of touch these days, and especially to the extent it denies the radical corruption of most American higher-ed, which I talked about in my "Honor Charlie, Ditch Existing Universities" essay (which Titus mentions in his own way when he says "It’s not so useful to imitate liberal institutions that are collapsing").
P.S. Titus--minor thing, but I don't think Reagan works the way you want him to in this. He was important for being a political ally to evangelicals, for openly inviting them into the tent, but near nobody in the evangelicalism of that time took him that seriously as an example of lived faith, and of how to combine it with political commitment, the way many now do with Kirk--and rightly so.
I think I've seen the same "Evangelicals need to create elites" article a thousand times by now (not trying to take away from Aaron's good writing). I'm glad you were able to strongman the counter arguments that I couldn't quite articulate.
I'm all for the attempts to create church elites as well as other community elites; but I would like to see also emphasis on the education or recruitment of leaders for business & politics. I'm especially worried about the idea of getting evangelicals to act in ways elite liberals favor. I want more variance, not less-
As someone raised evangelical-leaning Presbyterian, heavily involved in undergrad years with a major evangelical organization, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, who attended Keller's Redeemer in the aughts, and who now is Anglican (ACNA), much about these discussions feels...curious. In my late 50s, and having paid little attention to most trends in the "evangelical world" since my early 40s, I still nonetheless feel that somehow, near-every public-intellectual discussion of things evangelical, is almost always just...off. It's way off when it comes from non-conservative intellectuals, but even many conservative ones seem to lose their footing on this topic.
I in some ways consider myself "ex-Evangelical," for certain ACNA/church-tradition reasons, even though Renn wants to insist on my denomination being a "splinter" of evangelicalism, and I won't deny our roots, and especially my own, in evangelicalism. That's part of why I'm often made a tad defensive, or just outright puzzled, by what I hear others saying about evangelicals. Are they--or as I'd say in the past, we--SO difficult to understand? After all, certain Catholic writers like Douthat and Bottom did it well enough.
This Renn piece...I dunno. It's scattered...he tells "Protestants" to do five things at once, among them to get more united and also to get more accepting of the intra-Protestant stratification and variance. He knows a lot and mentions a lot of major figures, and while he makes a number of good points, I don't detect much continuity here b/t his thinking, and books of my young evangelical years such as Evangelical Essentials (Stott). I don't sense familiarity with the kinds of things, including many political ones, that the early-net blog Evangelical Outpost exhibited as a matter of course. And there are a number of off statements, for example, say, when Renn talks about how deep the theologians of the Episcopal church and other mainline denominations have been, and what evangelicals ought to learn from them, once they see the need to build bridges to them. Uh...if we're talking about certain stayed-mainly-orthodox mainline church leaders of say, the 1970s or 80s, that's one thing, but to write as if the leaders of today's mainline denominations have much in common with evangelicals or evangelical-rooted ACNA-ers, and to do so without documentation showing that unexpected developments are underway...wow. If he can make an error that big, that disconnected from ABC realities of church life, it doesn't surprise me that Titus has to school him on the way women's ordination is bad news, and I could report to him how the slightest prospect of it repels serious Z-sters in the ACNA.
Also, as someone who's been reading E. Digby Baltzell on just how generally Wonderful that late19th/early 20th-century WASP establishment was, in addition to being rather obviously drifting away from serious Christian faith, as if what Kierkegaard railed against were a friggin' Road Map to excellence, I have more reasons yet to shy away. Renn's obligatory quick-mentions of WASP establishment shortcomings do little to cloak his obvious wanting to look to it as a model.
And I'll add this: the FOREIGN-NESS of this whole how-do-we-get-another-Protestant-elite discussion from the actual typical talk I do hear from my fellow ACNA-ers, or from full-on evangelicals I know, is striking. "Patronage-structures?" I mean, some of this is in continuity with older authors like Noll and Keller, but I'm telling you, this is nowhere on the list of topics that come up in my church, or with evangelical friends. Maybe it should come up sometimes, maybe that's Renn's big point, and maybe when, say, the ACNA starts founding colleges it will come up, but sorry, it feels like Renn is not in touch. That he's only really talking to a set of academics or political analysts. Most evangelicals and most ACNA-ers would be amused to learn that "the Protestants" is becoming a hot topic, or that a guy like Renn might be led by his theory to want the members of my church's vestry to try to reach out to our local Methodists so as to explore Protestant Commonality.
I've seen Renn be smart on certain political topics, but as for this touted Christianity expertise of his, something feels weak. I'm not saying evangelicals don't need to think more about their relation to America, nor denying that at a certain point, that naturally leads to thinking about evangelical elites. Someone Renn-influenced might have a point were he to say, "Evangelical parents have many kids, but they doom them to having to submit to secular elites over their lives, because they prepare no institutions, besides the most narrowly religious one, for them to be in charge of. They play by the progressivist elite's rules and bow to their initiative, and errantly tell themselves this is 'Christian humility' or 'not being too political.'" There's something to that. But what our Renn-influenced critic cannot admit is that some of the a-political and anti-status-seeking patterns of American evangelicalism stem back to a reaction against the way the WASP emphasis on elite Society, at its best an emphasis on elite leadership, reliably led away from orthodox belief! Led to the merely nominal Christianity Kierkegaard warned against! Led also to Riverside Church and Reverend Fosdick!
Anyhoo, another thing that bugs me about Renn's essay is that ALL "let's plan out our elites" talk feels strange and out of touch these days, and especially to the extent it denies the radical corruption of most American higher-ed, which I talked about in my "Honor Charlie, Ditch Existing Universities" essay (which Titus mentions in his own way when he says "It’s not so useful to imitate liberal institutions that are collapsing").
P.S. Titus--minor thing, but I don't think Reagan works the way you want him to in this. He was important for being a political ally to evangelicals, for openly inviting them into the tent, but near nobody in the evangelicalism of that time took him that seriously as an example of lived faith, and of how to combine it with political commitment, the way many now do with Kirk--and rightly so.