Photo credit: The Atlantic

The privacy of the Christian religion, particularly as that obtains within the so-called evangelical churches of North America, might be one of the most deleterious things to have ever pierced its fabric. The individualism of a post-Enlightened secular world has penetrated the walls of evangelicalism in force. Evangelicals hold onto “me and my Jesus,” “me and my Bible,” and only when that serves their personal interests and feelings. This has been a century’s long problem, longer in fact, and it has destroyed the spirituality, or even the potential for a genuine Christian spirituality, en masse.

When a turn-to-the-subject posture gets applied to the Christian life what gets produced is North American evangelicalism, simpliciter. In my view, at least institutionally and collectivistically, the experiment of an evangelicalism ought to be abandoned (because it has already abandoned itself); and this, posthaste. Originally, in the early Protestant world, to be an evangelical meant to be a full blooded proponent of what came to be known as a sola Scriptura Christianity. To be an evangelical under this rubric was to literally put your life on the line. To be a sola fide Gospel proponent was to deny the authority of the known church (in the West), at the time. Now to be an evangelical means to be a moralistic therapeutic deist; to be a participant in a folk religion founded upon the ‘feels’ of the pastors and the laity, respectively.

I have been triggered, and this post is the result of that. There is a lot behind this trigger which will remain unstated. It should be said though: good intentions are no longer good enough (and never were). An empty piety, and its spirituality, does not reflect a genuinely Gospel formed Christianity. When churches are funded by said piety, all that we are left with, again, is a folk religion; not worth the time and energy of any committed Christian. Elks Lodge Christianity, country club Christianity, narthex Christianity, me and my Jesus Christianity have failed the people. There is no power there because the Holy Spirit is not there. There is no growth there because everything has been dumbed down to the feels of the people; indeed, this shaped by the secular culture that has penetrated the evangelical church to its core. But the pietism keeps the blinders on the peoples’ eyes all around. What an atrocious pitiful thing.

#rantover