Yesterday’s post on the evangelical elite problem article generated a lot of reader feedback. I wanted to share some of what has come in so far.
Brandon wrote:
My experience is that many evangelical leaders and communities in the south suppress ambition, intentionally or not, by frequently condemning selfish motives, the trappings of success, the evil of pride, etc. Young people receive a message that a quiet, upstanding family life is morally superior to making sacrifices necessary to excel professionally in a highly competitive field. This suppression of ambition is definitely a factor impacting talent development in evangelical churches.
Oddly, this doesn’t apply to sports. In sports, evangelicals are all-in and ambition is not a concern at all—kids (especially young men) are overtly encouraged to push themselves to perform to the utmost of their ability, make sacrifices, and achieve as much as possible. My sense is that evangelicals are well-represented (if not over-represented) among the ranks of collegiate and professional athletes, potentially confirming that attitude toward ambition matters.
If this thesis is correct, evangelicals need to develop more sophisticated ways of talking about ambition to channel the same zeal to excel into music, fine arts, literature, scholarship, civic engagement, etc.
Jim Grey wrote:
Another thought I had from reading the article. In the evangelical (and anabaptist) churches I’ve been a part of, culture is a dangerous external force. No wonder there are no cultural elites from these churches - we shun the outside culture because to engage in it is a slippery slope toward sin. Until these churches and their members shift their mindset from “culture is dangerous, avoid” to “culture is malleable - engage, influence, change” there’s no hope.
Jackson wrote:
One of those things that made me feel out of place [in my college evangelical student ministry] was the suspicion they had toward ambition. I recall particularly zealous students (and their mentors) believing that academic success was tantamount to idolatry. This attitude, along with changes in my theological convictions, drove me out of evangelical churches and into the Anglican.
The issue with an evangelical elite is that it seems generally true that to become elite means to cease to be evangelical. The origin of these attitudes can be traced to the anabaptists. It’s my impression that evangelicals see any relationship between their church or faith with powerful institutions as having a corrupting effect on themselves and not a purifying effect on culture. To them the church is a bottom up organization and therefore to evangelize culture it starts at the individual and not at the culture making institutions.
SchneiderKunstler shared:
From my perspective, having grown up within mainstream conservative Evangelicalism and having made the now-usual pilgrimage through the Episcopal church into the Roman Catholic church, I feel like you explained the problems quite accurately, even if I disagree with your optimistic ideas for solving them. I do think that you accurately laid out the conundrums facing Evangelicals, which are deeply rooted in their theology (or lack thereof in key areas) and lead them into ways of seeing the world which actively mitigate against what you’re asking them to do. As one way of illustration, I grew up both in and near Wheaton, then spent from ‘95-2010 basically in international development work but having to raise donor support through a Christian ministry. Towards the end of that time we wanted/needed to get back into working with artists, designers and the Arts, overseas, and when we excitedly communicated that to our donors our income literally overnight cut itself in half -- and, in talking with many of them, learned that they had always thought we had been doing something more like church planting, in a country where it’s simply not possible -- or necessary. Quite a strange experience, and quite a hard lesson, but it epitomizes everything you describe.
Kevin writes:
Speaking from my own experience as an evangelical that went to a top 25 US secular university, I noticed a lot of my Christian peers would form a majority of their friend groups within the church. They would then spend a lot of time serving the church in various capacities (leading small groups, joining worship team, etc.). When they finished college, while they got their degrees they lacked influence and a skillset to navigate through the real world, because most of their college experience was inside this Christian bubble.
This is going to sound like a bit of a pat on the back, but I specifically rejected calls on me to lead small groups and things like that. While church pastors framed those as “leadership positions”, I saw them as little more than low level coordination/facilitation roles. Instead, I invested my time in a large 100+ student run club and eventually ended up as the president for that organization. That opened doors where I interacted with other leaders within the school community that actually affected people at a larger scale.
I’ve thought a lot about the divergence in experience I had vs my 20+ years as an evangelical Christian, and I think it boils down to:
- Theologically, evangelicals have a weak understanding of how to interact in the world. Their theology boils down to being saved by grace and then waiting for Jesus to return. It’s very passive. Perhaps this is a difference between dispensationalism (evangelical) and covenant theology (mainline).
- Socially, evangelicals lack confidence to interact with the real world, and much prefer the safe space of the church and church roles. I think this extends from theology: we’re taught about the kindness and graciousness of God, but there’s not a lot of emphasis on shaping the world. Contrast this to Redeemed Zoomer, who has a very forward-looking and high agency approach to how he plans to shape the world through retaking the mainline denominations. I’ve become very inspired by his work.
- Culturally, evangelicals are afraid of secular culture (Don’t watch this/that movie because it’s a bad influence). The Catholics I knew were much more open to that stuff, even if I found their faith a bit more nominal than that of evangelicals. Those Catholics ended up rising up to much higher leadership positions in college and beyond.
In any case, my wife and I just moved to a new area and we’re now exploring mainline churches and not evangelical ones, with the mainline posture towards the world (more forward-facing, high agency) as a significant reason why.
John Yeats:
Aaron, I think you are really on to something. We must not neglect the impact of the “gospel only” years where evangelicals abandoned, for whatever reason, the public square. For decades their only strategy, their hope was that gospel transformation would reshape culture. The thinking was that the more you introduce the public to Christ the more adherents would instantly embrace a biblical world-view. While the gospel does bring transformation from the inside out, withdrawal from the public square to operate the machinery of the “gospel train” does not.
Anthony Bradley posted:
We will never have “evangelicals” in elite positions because evangelicalism does not exist as a church communion. It is not a real ecclesial body. It is simply a loose collection of individuals. It has no consensus teaching on anything. By contrast, mainline Protestants who occupy elite positions do so as members of denominations. Evangelicalism and Protestantism are not synonyms.
Evangelical institutions tend to raise children to become cubicle workers who focus their energies on the so-called “Great Commission,” not on becoming culture-shaping “salt and light” leaders.
American evangelicals are drowning in the idols of self-centered personal success, comfort, and ease. They then raise their children to worship these same idols.
A theology of work is not the problem. This is precisely what Boomers believed would “fix” the issues raised in Hunter’s book. Redeemer in New York City launched the Faith and Work project as an extension of this logic. The faith-and-work framework will always fail to produce elites. Always. The real problem is eschatology and ecclesiology. Evangelicalism at its core operates with a “Christ Against Culture” posture, regardless of how much beer its adherents drink or how much Bavinck and Kuyper they read. There is no mechanism for “evangelicals” to receive centralized and formative teaching on a “Theology of Vocation.” If the “Great Commission” considered the chief mission of the raising up boys and girls for their role in society (which is wrong, BTW), you’ll never (ever) get cultural elites. Ever.
Greg Scalise said:
When you identify as catholic that does not commit you to catholic doctrine, it’s more of an ethnic, cultural, and sacramental identifier (you were baptized). The world is full of catholics of every political and theological persuasion. Vance can identify as catholic without pushback because Biden does too. Vance gets pushback as a right-winger, not as a catholic.
But to be an evangelical is without exception to be committed to theological doctrines which are not socially acceptable. The reason evangelicals aren’t loud and proud about their identity in these institutions is that they would be rejected for it in a way that catholics won’t be. My Christian fellowship in college was put on probation basically for being evangelical. And you can find plenty of parallel news stories like that about evangelical groups, but I’ve never come across that happening to a catholic group.
This is a topic I plan to write more about myself in the future.
Jabster writes about the role of Young Earth Creationism:
Evangelical Protestantism has two main flaws; I speak this as a Protestant that is not comfortable with either the Evangelical or Mainline traditions today, all the while having my own issues with the Catholic Church:
1) An insistence on doctrines that fly in the face of science, most notably young-Earth creationism. The universe has God’s fingerprints all over it, and science doesn’t contradict that. However, an adamant belief that, say, the universe was created in six 24-hour days if one takes Genesis literally doesn’t bode well for intellectual acceptance. The Catholic Church has made its peace with science--while not yielding ground on Christian doctrinal essentials and matters that are the property of the realm of faith--and, as a result, is taken more seriously. Evangelical Protestantism is still fighting that war.
And the writer Kruptos wrote up his own response.
Just to throw my $0.02 in as a late 20s evangelical who currently feels the tension between the truly elite track to success and the evangelical alternative.
I am currently a PhD student at an evangelical seminary under a well-respected New Testament scholar. Perhaps this gives me a bit of a insider perspective on the quality of evangelical institutions, higher education more broadly, and the life and interests of evangelical churches.
First, evangelical seminaries/colleges are not on the same level as an elite institution (obviously). However, few institutions are. At some level, expecting evangelical institutions to compete with elite ones is a bit of comparing apples and oranges. What state university, even flagship ones, can compete with Harvard, Yale, or U Chicago? They are the some of the best educational institutions in the entire world, and they draw students and professors from a worldwide talent base. It’s brutal for even bright, well-educated non-evangelical Americans to be admitted to elite institutions, even harder to be admitted into their PhD programs, and even harder still to land a professorship at an elite institution, or even an R1 university. There is a major surplus of PhD students and a shrinking demand for professors in every field. Tenure-track positions routinely receive hundreds of applications for a single job opening. If your resume suggests that you lean evangelical, it is almost a guarantee for your resume to be tossed in the trash without a second thought. Why even consider an evangelical for a top-tier role when you can pick from a couple hundred others who don’t have that baggage?
What I’m trying to say is that evangelicals in America face an uphill battle to landing jobs at elite universities, partly 1) because they are American, and have to compete against the talent of the world (not to mention DEI thinking still in effect) and 2) because they are evangelical, and research universities are deeply hostile to evangelicals in a way they are not to any other religious expression. While some evangelical beliefs are certainly low-brow and off-putting to elite tastes, many elite institutions find the beliefs of evangelicals morally repugnant, reprehensible, and outright evil. There’s more to the story than simply “evangelicals are rednecks.”
Second, evangelicals have had limited success in forming elites because, at the most basic level, most of us simply don’t care about forming elites. It’s not even on the radar. The priorities of most evangelicals and evangelical churches is something like: evangelize, help people understand the Bible and follow Jesus, teach them the rudiments of a normal life (get married, have kids, work a steady job, buy a house), avoid sin, serve the church, and stay faithful until the 2nd coming of Christ. To put it bluntly, all of those things are incredibly important to orthodox Christianity. Elite formation starts to look optional when compared to these bedrock priorities. I’m not saying it should look that way, but it is understandable. When you crack open your Bible, what jumps out at you: how to become someone who shapes culture at the highest level, or how to follow Jesus in normal, mundane life? Evangelicalism is a religious tradition drawn from the people, and so it is built for them. The overwhelming majority of people have exactly a 0% chance of becoming a mover and a shaker, so evangelical churches don’t prioritize that goal.
Third, I’ll conclude this already too-long post with an anecdote. I was in a seminar last year with a bunch of other PhD students. One of the books we had to read for the seminar was George Marsden’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. I found myself agreeing with a lot of Marsden’s critiques of evangelicalism, but a student from the Netherlands did not. He said something to the effect of, “The Netherlands doesn’t have any of the problems Marsden lists. We don’t deal with anti-intellectualism, fundamentalist schisms, separation from broader culture, or a lack of rigorous scholarship. You know what else the Netherlands doesn’t have? Christians.”
He had a point. For all the flaws of evangelicals, we still care deeply about converting and discipling people. Episcopalians and Catholics have done a better job of producing elites, granted. But their conversion numbers and baptisms are dropping like its October,1929. It will be increasingly hard for them to produce elites when they don’t have any candidates for elite tracks.
A brief note on the Kruptos article: he's not wrong about how evangelicalism is perceived by others and how many in the evangelical fold behave and think, but I question whether or not the perception of a lack of evangelical intellectual seriousness among the elites is grounded in reality rather than prejudice.
Nearly every single critique he levels at evangelicals I could level at any other group in American society, from not liking nuance to lacking groundedness in history or tradition (because let's be real here, once you get offline how many people are actually integralists, distributists, or neo-Kuyperians?), and I have not been altogether impressed by the quality of legal thought provided by America's "elite" institutions.