Don’t Criticize Your In-Group in the Out-Group’s Forums

Where you say something can be as important as what you say

Where you say something can be as important as what you say.

It’s a good thing to want to hold your own people accountable. But where and how to do that is important.

I recently wrote an op-ed criticizing the idea of Christian nationalism. I said Yes when asked to do this because it was for the American Mind, a publication of the very conservative Claremont Institute. I would not have written it for a liberal publication or one with the reputation of being hostile to Christian nationalism.

When I worked for the Manhattan Institute, I observed that one of the easiest ways for a conservative to get positive coverage or an op-ed placed in the in an elite media publication was to criticize Republicans or conservatives using the left’s value system as the rationale. Some Never Trump types turned this into de facto full time gigs.

I myself once wrote an article criticizing Protestant church architecture for a Catholic architecture journal. I did it because I held the editor and the publication in high regard - and still do. But I realized in retrospect I should not have done that. I should not have criticized an element of Protestantism in a Catholic publication. It would only reinforce the Catholic sense of their own superiority.

I think my ideas were broadly right, but I chose the wrong venue to express them.

I resolved not to do that again. For example, I have been a critic of the how Indiana’s Republicans have governed the state. Surely one of the national publications where I have bylines would love to receive a pitch from me trashing the Indiana GOP. But I don’t want to create bad national press for my state. And I especially don’t want to do it by catering to the left’s value system, reinforcing their moral hegemony. So I elected to write a long piece in a niche policy journal American Affairs instead.

When I started this newsletter, I set as one of my guiding principles, “Don’t criticize other Christians in the liberal secular media if you can avoid it, and certainly do not criticize them from the secular value system of the publication in question.”

I'd rather have a smaller audience for my ideas than gain a big one by flattering the sensibilities of people who don’t like evangelicals or conservatives.

Elite media like the Washington Post and New York Times figured out that the lure of a byline in those places would be too tempting for many conservative Christians to ignore. Those Christians were willing to write harshly critical op-eds for those publications that used the value system of the secular publications for their critiques.

We’ve seen this many times already, from Russell Moore, David French, and a relatively small group of others whose names repeatedly occur in anti-evangelical media hit pieces. Their message would surely be unpopular in any case, but their choice of venues angers people - and raises legitimate questions about whether their desire is truly evangelical reform or seeking approval from secular elites.

There was another case of this last week, when producer Rob Reiner, no friend of Christianity to say the least, dropped the trailer for his new documentary “God & Country: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.”

It is chock full of the usual suspects.

In response, John Fea wrote some interesting reflections on choosing a venue to express your ideas.

As someone who speaks to the media often, this is something I really wrestle with and will continue to wrestle with. I have been accused many, many times of throwing my fellow evangelicals under the bus in order to give the secular media what they want to hear. The temptation to do this is real. And I have probably succumbed to it more than once.

He notes how he published his book Believe Me with a Christian publisher rather than a more prestigious mainstream imprint specifically to avoid this trap:

When I wrote Believe Me, not a day went by in which I did not think the mainstream media was using me to advance its agenda. Actually, one of the reasons I published Believe Me with a Christian press (as opposed to a trade press) was because many of the trade presses and literary agents I approached wanted me to write a book that was more scathing and more critical of evangelicals. I wouldn’t do it.

He also notes that, paradoxically, sometimes secular elite media is the only place you can publish, get an outlet.

Sometimes it’s tough for critics of evangelicalism who remain in the evangelical fold, like me, to find a place to publish critical pieces. Christianity Today, for example, rarely publishes the kind of stuff I write about my evangelical tribe. My passion is to reach my fellow evangelicals with some good Christian thinking, but very few evangelical churches want to hear what I have to say because they think it might be too divisive…Moreover, I am guessing that my fellow evangelicals read and watch secular media more than they do Christian media. It is likely that I would speak to more evangelicals in The Washington Post or The Atlantic than I would at Christianity Today.

He mentions starting his own publication in order to have an outlet for his ideas. I can certainly relate to what he’s saying here.

It’s also the case that, as Fea basically says, my guiding principle around where to publish is just that. It’s not a moral law. So it has to be applied with wisdom and judgment. There may be times to make an exception. Or we have to navigate gray areas in whether something we are pitching to a major media outlet uses their value system in its arguments or your own.

For example, my piece about online men’s influencers in the Wall Street Journal was in a secular publication and did criticize evangelicals. But it’s also a conservative publication. I included other traditional authorities along with the church in my critique. And saying that online men’s influencers get some things right certainly isn’t the secular value system.

Or think about publishing my three worlds of evangelicalism article in First Things, technically ecumenical but known, I think rightly so, as a basically Catholic publication. Undoubtedly the piece had much greater reach and impact as a result of being in First Things. And my piece is not a Catholic inflected critique of evangelicalism. In fact, it was much more analytical than critical. And the three worlds framework has applicability well beyond evangelicalism.

But I’m not above critique. Maybe people think I got these wrong. I at least want to be thinking about the issues.

To be clear: I think it’s great to get published in the New York Times. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what you say and the rationales you give need to be a consideration.

If you criticize your in-group in the out-group’s forum, using the value system of the out-group, don’t be surprised if you alienate a lot of people and receive a lot of hate in return.

Maybe that’s something you don’t care about or even relish. Sadly, in today’s world, hate is a commodity you can monetize.

Regardless, thinking about the venue where you say something is a important as thinking about what it is you actually want to say.