The Problem with the Evangelical Elite
There is no evangelical elite. Why that matters and what to do about it.
One of the long-running themes of my work is regenerating effective leadership in America. This month I have an important new essay in First Things magazine that continues this investigation. It’s on the problem of the evangelical elite:
The problem with the evangelical elite is that there isn’t one. All too few evangelical Christians hold senior positions in the culture-shaping domains of American society. Evangelicals don’t run movie studios or serve as editors in chief of major newspapers or as presidents of elite universities. There are no evangelicals on the Supreme Court. There are hardly any leading evangelical academics or artists. There are few evangelicals at commanding heights of finance. The prominent evangelicals in Silicon Valley can be counted on one hand. There are not even many evangelicals leading influential conservative think tanks and publications, despite the fact that evangelicals are one of the largest and most critical voting blocs in the Republican coalition. Two domains are exceptions that prove the rule: politics and business.
I undertook an extensive investigation while researching this piece. I not only read several books, I also interviewed a substantial number of people in various domains to get their perspective on the problem.
I don’t believe that I’ve yet gotten it quite right or that this is the final word on the subject, but this is a critical area for reform, and my essay advances the ball. It’s a mix of diagnostic, critical analysis, and also practical suggestions on what needs to be done to change things, across both the institutional and individual domains.
One thing I point out is that evangelicals rarely think of “elite” in terms of the domains I mention in my opening paragraph. In the evangelical world, the term “evangelical elite” almost always refers to evangelicalism’s internal clerical elites.
How can we explain this lack of representation in the halls of power? One reason is that evangelicals do not typically understand “elite” in these terms. Ask evangelicals who their elites are: the bulk of the names will be pastors, theologians, and other professional Christians. Pose the same question to Catholics and far more lay leaders will be on the list.
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This is also how the culture more broadly perceives things. Artificial intelligence is trained to operate as a cultural summarizer. A Grok AI query for the top fifteen evangelical elites in America returned a list that was 100 percent pastors and other professional Christians, whereas only 20 percent of the names from an identical query about Catholic elites were clergymen.
If you are interested in what Grok returned, here is the document. Note: Tim Keller was actually dead when I ran this query, but Grok still returned him. John MacArthur was still alive when I ran it, however.
You may get different results if you run these queries today.
One of the areas I say needs continued work is the evangelical theology of vocation. The “faith and work” movement has come a long way, but fails to get at structuring and ordering activities in elite domains.
The sociologist Andrew Lynn studies the evangelical “faith and work” movement, which seeks a robust theology of vocation. In Saving the Protestant Ethic, he notes that the movement’s own practitioners “see their religious tradition as completely devoid of any theological frameworks that confer value on secular work.” Faith and work leaders have attempted to fill this lacuna, but they have been only partially successful. Their movement assigns a value to secular vocation, but it has a limited vision of what Christians should aspire to do in their vocations. The faith and work movement stresses conducting business ethically, doing high-quality work, sharing the gospel in the marketplace, practicing love-your-neighbor relationships with colleagues, and taking a “redemptive” approach to business or entrepreneurship. These are all good things, but they can and should be done by all Christians at all levels of society. What’s needed is a theological mandate for leadership at the top of the key domains of society.
You’ll note that the things the faith and work movement advocates are things that I also tout in my book Life in the Negative World. So I’m not negative towards them. They are just insufficient.
The best regarded evangelical treatment of vocation is in Tim Keller’s book Every Good Endeavor, but it also does not go far enough into elite activities in key domains.
The most widely cited book in mainstream evangelicalism that links faith and work is the late pastor Timothy Keller’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work. This book marks a significant advance in vocational theology. It describes Adam’s naming of the animals, and discusses the work of structuring and ordering. Keller writes, for example, “Work not only cares for creation, but also directs and structures it.” He goes on to say, “That is the pattern for all work. It is creative and assertive. It is rearranging the raw material of God’s creation.”
Unfortunately, structuring and ordering make up only a small portion of Keller’s book, and he offers no example of a person in a recognizably elite position engaging in structuring and ordering activity. Of the book’s many examples, none involves a positive portrayal of a person engaged in elite activity who uses the central power of his role to direct, shape, reorder, or restructure some element of society. Instead, Keller gives examples of elites behaving badly, or people abandoning high-powered positions in search of fulfillment or more ethical work.
Every Good Endeavor was an important step forward, but its approach must be extended. Evangelicalism needs a theology of vocation that comprehends the exercise of power—that validates and valorizes people who reform public policy, invent new technologies, become presidents of elite universities, acquire major media properties or foundations, organize research teams, or serve as Supreme Court justices. It is especially important that the pursuit of such achievements and positions be prized by Protestantism’s flagship churches.
I counted 28 illustrations in Every Good Endeavor. This document contains a list of them, along with every passage in the book I identified as referring positively to structuring and ordering activities.
Candidly, I am skeptical that initiatives arising out of the clerical or parachurch portions of evangelicalism will produce more and more effective evangelical elites in America, a further elaborated vocational theology being the main exception. Rather, any such activities are more likely to arise from lay efforts, and in the short term from individuals who reorient their life ambitions and activities in a new direction towards that type of accomplishment.
I suggest such individuals need to center their Protestant identity in their public persona, the way prominent Catholics do. Too many of the Protestant elites who do exist are putting their lamp under a bushel.
Protestant elites need to be forthright about their Protestant identity, in the way many Catholics are. Catholic identity is central to the public personas of Vice President JD Vance, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule, and Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen. One is hard pressed to identify a Protestant of similar status who leads with his religious identity.
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The breaking down of barriers between mainline Protestant and evangelical laymen would help in this regard. Evangelical ardor can help mainline Protestants overcome their reticence. There are impressive, theologically traditional Protestant elites, most of them Episcopalian. But they rarely make their religion central to their public identity. Some have never publicly mentioned their faith at all. Existing Protestant elites have to stop putting their lamps under a bushel. Having public role models for younger aspirants to admire and imitate is critical.
One of my ideas that did not make it into the piece is that someone needs to write a Plutarch’s Lives of elite Protestants in American history who serve as the kind of role models we’d like people to imitate. Right now your average evangelical has no idea what an actual Protestant elite would even look like.
I also say American Protestants need more cultural confidence - and I’m not talking about political activism here. I’ll actually have much more to say on this in a future article or two.
Most importantly of all, evangelicals must become culturally confident. Talented people of all stripes are rightly encouraged to participate in elite culture and institutions. Evangelicalism should offer that encouragement while at the same time inculcating a degree of critical detachment from present-day elite culture, which has been secularized. But more than critical detachment, evangelicalism must encourage a positive elite vision, one that views Protestant Christianity as crucial to moral, cultural, and political renewal. Catholic elites are comfortable in elite milieux while believing that Catholicism and its social doctrine can inform a better and more humane public policy. Catholic elites seek to be agents of change within elite institutions. Again, a new generation of Protestant elites, confident in their identities, can learn from their Catholic brethren.
And I talk about the need to be comfortable operating as a minority in a pluralistic elite milieu:
Finally, aspiring evangelical elites must adopt the mindset of being a minority in a pluralistic elite. America’s historic Protestant elite was a hegemonic majority. Today the old WASP establishment is long gone. Protestants are a minority in America, albeit still a plurality. They are a tiny minority among the American elite. The rising generation of evangelical elites must achieve a group consciousness, a sense of unique purpose as Christian leaders in a country very different from that overseen by the once all-powerful WASP elite. They must be comfortable operating in a pluralistic society. Attaining this combination requires two things: a thick skin and recognition of their unique and indispensable role in shaping America’s future.
Please do click over to read the whole thing. It’s a long essay with a lot of material in there to engage with.
In that light, I’m opening comments on this article to everyone, as I’d like to hear your thoughts. If there are people you think I should talk to about this topic, please drop their name in the comments.
I have many more ideas that did not make it into the piece, and this is a topic I’ll be writing about extensively over the next few months.
Pieces like this are what I do that nobody else is doing. Your support is what makes this possible. It takes many hours of work to write even one essay like this. I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber today, because it makes work like this possible.
Cover image: St. Thomas (Episcopal) Church, New York City.
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.
The thing that struck me most in the article is your exhortation that God wants humans to exercise dominion, not mechanically follow instructions. My experience in evangelical churches is that compliance is compulsory, and that to act too assertively is a slippery slope to sin. It's part of a fear culture that I think undergirds the evangelical churches of which I've been a part.