{"id":12618,"date":"2013-01-02T18:12:57","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T23:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=12618"},"modified":"2014-09-10T00:45:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T04:45:23","slug":"mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/02\/mainstream-evangelicals-criticize-critics-of-the-religious-right-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mainstream’ evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right (part 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

If you\u2019re on the pastoral staff of a medium-sized or larger evangelical church, then you\u2019re familiar with what David Frum calls Fox Geezer Syndrome<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Over the past couple of years, I\u2019ve been keeping track of a trend among friends around my age (late thirties to mid-forties). Eight of us (so far) share something in common besides our conservatism: a deep frustration over how our parents have become impossible to take on the subject of politics. Without fail, it turns out that our folks have all been sitting at home watching Fox News Channel all day \u2013 especially Glenn Beck\u2019s program.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Used to be I would call my mom and get updated on news from the neighborhood, her garden, the grandchildren, hometown gossip, and so forth. I\u2019ve always been interested in politics, but never had the occasion to talk about them with her. She just doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

Or didn\u2019t. I don\u2019t know when it happened, exactly, but she began peppering our conversation with red-hot remarks about President Obama. I would try to engage her, but unless I shared her particular judgment, and her outrage, she apparently thought that I was a dupe or a RINO. Finally I asked my father privately why Mom, who as far as I know never before had a political thought, was so worked up about Obama all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s been like that ever since she started watching Glenn Beck,\u201d Dad said.<\/p>\n

A few months later, she roped him into watching Beck, which had the same effect. Even though we\u2019re all conservatives, I found myself having to steer our phone conversations away from politics and current events. It wasn\u2019t that I disagreed with their opinions \u2013 though I often did \u2013 but rather that I found the vehemence with which they expressed those opinions to be so off-putting.<\/p>\n

Then I flew out for a visit, and observed that their television was on all day long, even if no one was watching it. What channel was playing? Fox. Spending a few days in the company of the channel \u2013 especially Glenn Beck \u2014 it all became clear to me. If Fox was the window through which I saw the wider world, for hours every day, I\u2019d be perpetually pissed off too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same effect \u2014 perpetual indignation \u2014 occurs among those who spend their days listening to much of what is called \u201cChristian radio.\u201d And given the amount of overlap in a Venn diagram of white evangelical church-goers and Fox News viewers, or of white evangelical church-goers and Christian radio listeners, every evangelical congregation is bound to have at least a few members suffering from some form of Fox Geezer Syndrome.<\/p>\n

In other words, for evangelical pastors, the \u201ccrazy uncles\u201d they\u2019re most concerned with aren\u2019t the media mavens of the religious right, but the actual<\/em> uncles \u2014 the members of their church family who are infected with the indignation the religious right nurtures and husbands and feeds off of.<\/p>\n

Dealing with such church members is a pastoral<\/em> challenge. Pastors are looking for some way of reaching these folks. People with FGS are unhappy, and they often seem to want to spread that unhappiness. They are suffering from a spiritual sickness, and they seem to want to spread that sickness too.<\/p>\n

Pastors want to address that, because the spiritual health of their congregation is their job<\/em>. And they want to address that because the presence of these spiritually sick people in their congregations makes it harder for them to do their job when it comes to everybody else.<\/p>\n

A \u201ccrazy uncle\u201d with FGS can be tolerated, ignored or endured when you only have to put up with him during one Thanksgiving dinner every year. But for pastors, every Sunday is Thanksgiving dinner and they can\u2019t just sit at the far-end of the table. Uncle FGS is going to come through that line at the back of the church to shake the pastor\u2019s hand and to try out some of the latest \u201cred-hot remarks\u201d from Fox News or American Family Radio or Facebook. They\u2019ll say these things seeking the pastor\u2019s affirmation or assent. Any response showing less than sufficient agreement and outrage is liable to diminish their affection for the pastor, coming to view them as \u201ca dupe or a RINO.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure there are many, many evangelical pastors now squirming their way through such encounters with pre-emptive comments on sports or the weather. They\u2019ve had to wrestle with their own versions of John McCain\u2019s \u201cNo, ma\u2019am\u201d moment<\/a> many times over. And they\u2019d eagerly welcome any advice for how to reach such parishioners.<\/p>\n

And one place such pastors might turn for such advice would be Leadership Journal<\/em> and its blog, Out of Ur.<\/p>\n

Yet when they go there what do they find instead? They find Skye Jethani hand-waving away their problem<\/a>. The religious right, he insists, is nothing more than a \u201cmedia narrative\u201d dreamed up by unscrupulous, ratings-driven networks and by nefarious progressive bloggers with an ax to grind. It\u2019s not a real<\/em> problem.<\/p>\n

But dismissing this as not a real problem doesn\u2019t help the pastors who are really trying to cope with it.<\/p>\n

See if you can follow the contradictory twists and turns of Jethani\u2019s conclusion:<\/p>\n

Sadly, when sensationalism sells it\u2019s going to be the crazy uncles in Christendom that get media attention. Over time this creates the popular perception that all Christians share the views of those spotlighted by the media, especially among those who have no un-mediated interaction with Christians themselves. But there is an even more dangerous side-effect of the media\u2019s elevation of Crazy Uncle Christians. With access to the prestige and platform that comes with media attention, Crazy Uncles actually start to influence the views of more Christians. In other words, the tail starts wagging the dog. Christians too start believing the church is a hate-mongering, homophobic, and theocratic special interest group. This is the trap evident in Michael Cheshire\u2019s post. He\u2019s accepted the media\u2019s narrative of American Christianity as reality.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, there is no question that the Church in the United States has real problems as well as a severe PR issue. It is the child born from the union of partisan evangelical leaders and media sensationalism over 30 years ago, but we cannot allow the church\u2019s media-created image to become its on-the-ground reality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So at the same time he acknowledges that this horse left the barn \u201cover 30 years ago,\u201d he also warns us to shut the gate lest our long-established history might come to pass in the future? What?<\/em><\/p>\n

The leaders of the religious right were not elevated by \u201cthe media,\u201d they own their own<\/em> media. They don\u2019t enjoy prestige and a platform because of \u201cmedia attention,\u201d they enjoy prestige and a platform because they have direct-mail databases with the names of millions of devout, church-going white evangelicals who send them money because they agree with and support what they say.<\/p>\n

No, the religious right is not synonymous with all of American evangelicalism. But it exists within American evangelicalism. It thrives there, popular, unperturbed and unchallenged.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, someone like Michael Cheshire may summon the courage to speak up to criticize the presence of this toxic thing<\/em> growing within our community, but the leaders of the religious right don\u2019t need to worry about people like that. Every time such a critic arises, some earnest \u201cmainstream\u201d evangelical will argue, instead, that such critics have fallen prey to a sensationalistic media narrative.<\/p>\n

As the decades passed and the religious right wormed its way ever closer to the center and the summit of evangelicalism, the \u201cmainstream\u201d evangelicals of what was once the \u201cestablishment\u201d continue to claim that its size and influence are exaggerated, and that the religious right is wholly external to and distinct from real<\/em> evangelicalism. You can read such claims on the blogs of Christianity Today,<\/em> even as it struggles to keep pace with Charisma<\/em> magazine\u00a0\u2014 a hothouse of seething political nuttery that makes Dobson and Huckabee\u2019s recent comments seem moderate by comparison.<\/p>\n

This denial that the problem might be anything more than a media narrative or a progressive scheme is symptomatic of a larger, more pervasive tendency without our evangelical subculture \u2014 one that touches on aspects of our fellowship that have nothing to do with the Fox-addled uncles of the religious right.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the idea that not talking<\/em> about a problem is the same thing as not having<\/em> a problem.<\/p>\n

So we all go to church, and we smile and we mask our struggles and hide our sins. We\u2019ve gotten so good at pretending that we\u2019re all flawless that each of us has come to fear that everyone else really might be<\/em> flawless \u2014 making us even less likely to admit our flaws to any of these perfect-seeming people. It\u2019s kind of exhausting, maintaining that pretense week after week.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard dozens of sermons and read scores of articles lamenting this pretense of perfection in our churches. Yet for all the hand-wringing we evangelicals do about it, just look what happens when someone like Michael Cheshire speaks up and dares to suggest that all is not perfect. He gets criticized for being a critic.<\/p>\n

If we all just agree to ignore the religious right, maybe they\u2019ll go away. If we all just agree not to criticize anything in our community, then the world will think it\u2019s perfect and be drawn to our perfection.<\/p>\n

But the world is not so blind. Our flaws are apparent whether or not we allow ourselves to speak of them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dealing with church members perpetually enraged due to Fox Geezer Syndrome is a pastoral challenge. Pastors are looking for some way of reaching these folks. They are suffering from a spiritual sickness, and pastors want to bring them some relief. Dismissing such concerns as nothing more than an imaginary “media narrative” doesn’t help real pastors dealing with such real problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[120,28],"class_list":["post-12618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-charisma","tag-religious-right"],"yoast_head":"\n'Mainstream' evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right (part 3)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dealing with church members perpetually enraged due to Fox Geezer Syndrome is a pastoral challenge. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"'Mainstream' evangelicals criticize critics of the religious right (part 3)","description":"Dealing with church members perpetually enraged due to Fox Geezer Syndrome is a pastoral challenge. Pastors are looking for some way of reaching these folks. They are suffering from a spiritual sickness, and pastors want to bring them some relief. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}