The Myth Of The Evangelical Crack-up

One of our Patrick Henry College students scored an internship at Slate, the big and influential online magazine. Recently, he actually wrote the lead, front-page story. I’ll link it to his byline: David Sessions.

First of all, how good does an openly conservative Christian have to be to get an internship with “Slate”? Second, how good of an intern does he have to be to write a lead story? Third, how good does the college have to be to prepare a young Christian to get that kind of internship and to be able to write that kind of story?

Anyway, David argues in his story that all of the mainstream media stories on how Christian conservatives have lost their political clout are wrong. David did a little research (which he learned at PHC) and found that the mainstream media has been saying this for EVERY election, and that it has ALWAYS taken Christian activists a while to get behind any particular candidate.

David also offers insights into the new generation of Christian political activists. They do NOT believe in establishing a theocracy (a notion that many “Slate” readers use to scare themselves at night). They are not even as conservative as many pundits assume (which is not necessarily a good thing).

David cites the influence of Reformed theology among many younger activists as something that minimizes the legalism and theocratic impulse, putting more emphasis on God’s grace rather than setting up a militant kingdom on earth. I would add, though, that the theocrats also grow out of a particular Reformed tradition. But there is indeed another strain of Calvinism that opposes that emphasis. (Some of its critics accuse his adherents of “crypto-Lutheranism”!)

I’m not sure I totally agree with David’s diagnosis that evangelicals are not cracking up. But what do you think?