Evangelicalism's Patronage Problem

A failure to support their own helps keep evangelicals from reaching the top ranks of America's key institutions.

Why are there are so few evangelical elites? That is, why are there so few evangelicals in the senior most positions of the key culture shaping domains of society?

Many people have discussed the evangelical cultural factors that contribute to this such as anti-intellectualism, anti-institutionalism, populism, and a near exclusive focus on saving souls over the creation mandate.

One way some of these factors manifest themselves concretely is in a lack patronage or support for non-ecclesial work.

I want to illustrate that by looking at the case of the community formed around a now defunct mailing list called Reformed Irenics. This community emerged about 10-15 years ago and was made up of many of what were arguably the highest potential Millennials in the Reformed evangelical space.

And yet, those people did not achieve that heights that might have been expected, in part because they never obtained the necessary patronage.