{"id":30266,"date":"2015-11-12T16:07:25","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T21:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=30266"},"modified":"2015-11-12T16:07:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T21:07:25","slug":"why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/11\/12\/why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty\/","title":{"rendered":"Why conversionist stories promote dishonesty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cEvangelicals really, really want to hear a story about sin and redemption,\u201d Kevin Drum<\/a> wrote. That\u2019s true, but it\u2019s not unique to evangelicals. Everybody loves a good story of redemption. As Kurt Vonnegut<\/a> noted, \u201cPeople love<\/em> that story. They never<\/em> get sick of it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The basic shape of this conversion narrative is essentially the same as what we sometimes call \u201cMan in a Hole.\u201d But, as Vonnegut notes, \u201cIt needn\u2019t be about a man and it needn\u2019t be about somebody getting into a hole.\u201d The gist is, \u201cSomebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

That quote is from one of my favorite things, a lecture\/comedy routine in which\u00a0Vonnegut helpfully graphed the shape of that story and of other stories on a chalkboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

The vertical axis on Vonnegut\u2019s graph is the \u201cG-I axis,\u201d with Good Fortune at the top and Ill Fortune at the bottom. The horizontal B-E axis starts at the Beginning\u00a0and moves toward the End (although Vonnegut says the E stands for \u201celectricity.\u201d)\u00a0As he reminds us, the shapes of stories are\u00a0\u201cAn exercise in relativity. It\u2019s the shape of the curve that matters and not their origins.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the shape of that curve encourages and rewards embellishment and exaggeration. Give that curve a more extreme downward slope and a steeper upward trajectory at the end and your story will have more of an impact. It will get a bigger response and audiences will want to hear it over and over.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare knew this. He followed this formula in his three plays about Henry V, even going so far as to have the young Prince Hal spell it out, explicitly, for the audience (from 1 Henry IV, I, ii<\/a>):<\/p>\n

If all the year were playing holidays,
\nTo sport would be as tedious as to work;
\nBut when they seldom come, they wish\u2019d for come,
\nAnd nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
\nSo, when this loose behavior I throw off
\nAnd pay the debt I never promised,
\nBy how much better than my word I am,
\nBy so much shall I falsify men\u2019s hopes;
\nAnd like bright metal on a sullen ground,
\nMy reformation, glittering o\u2019er my fault,
\nShall show more goodly and attract more eyes
\nThan that which hath no foil to set it off.
\nI\u2019ll so offend, to make offence a skill;
\nRedeeming time when men think least I will.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

People love<\/em> that story. They never<\/em> get sick of it.<\/p>\n

That same formula applies to the \u201cpersonal testimonies\u201d we share in church. The ones we like best \u2014 that show more\u00a0goodly and attract more\u00a0eyes \u2014 are those with the starkest contrasts and the steepest curves.<\/p>\n

If you have a relatively flat conversion narrative you\u2019ll be politely thanked for sharing, but probably won\u2019t be called on to share it again. The roller-coaster curves of the big-time sinners\u2019 stories are more interesting and much more exciting<\/em>. If you\u2019ve got that<\/em> kind of conversion narrative \u2014 with a much deeper hole and a much steeper climb out of it \u2014 then people will want to hear this story told and retold so often that you may be able to quit your day-job and become an itinerant evangelist with a ghost-written memoir published by Zondervan.<\/p>\n

Daniel Burke discusses this in his CNN piece on \u201cThe dirty little secret about religious conversion stories<\/a>.\u201d Burke quotes from a Christianity Today*<\/em> column by Ted Olson:<\/p>\n

\u201cTestimony envy may be part of any community,\u201d Olsen wrote \u2026\u00a0\u201cbut we evangelicals seem to have a particular bent toward narrative one-upmanship.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s all true. The white evangelical Christian culture rewards, and thus encourages, \u201ctestimony envy\u201d and \u201cnarrative one-upmanship,\u201d creating a not-so-subtle pressure to exaggerate the slope and the shape of our conversion narratives, making them more extreme and, thereby, less accurate and less true.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s more than that.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s more than just the temptation to give our stories, as Burke writes, \u201ca little stretch\u201d with an eye to make them more compelling calls for \u201cwinning souls for Christ.\u201d That idea \u2014 that exaggerations are acceptable because they serve this higher purpose of spreading the gospel and saving souls \u2014 is a key to the rationalization that defends<\/em> the tendency toward dishonest conversion stories, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the cause of that tendency.<\/p>\n

Burke approaches that cause, almost parenthetically, but doesn\u2019t explore it further:<\/p>\n

Among the more notorious examples of salvation slipping into showmanship was Mike Warnke, a Christian comedian and evangelist who claimed to have converted after a violent and scandalous sojourn as a high priest in Satanism.<\/p>\n

\u201cExaggeration did creep into some of my stories,\u201d Warnke later admitted to an Oklahoma newspaper in 2000, \u201cbut my testimony is still my testimony.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We\u2019ve discussed Mike Warnke here before<\/a>. Warnke\u2019s testimony did not involve \u201cexaggeration.\u201d It was a bundle of lies \u2014 audacious, flamboyantly huge, deliberately crafted lies.<\/p>\n

Vonnegut concludes the lecture in the video above by graphing the many curves and dips of the story of Cinderella \u2014 which he describes as the most popular story in western civilization. \u201cWe love to hear this story. Every time it\u2019s retold, somebody makes another million dollars. You\u2019re welcome to do it.\u201d After the many dips and bumps in the shape of that story, Vonnegut ends by sweeping the chalk up and off the charts and drawing a little infinity symbol as Cinderella and the prince at last achieve \u201cinfinite happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Warnke made his million dollars by inverting that curve. His lurid story of imaginary Satanism included a downward slope of off-the-charts, infinite depravity. That required an active imagination, but not as much originality as you might think, because ultimately what Warnke was doing was retelling another old story that has long been popular in western civilization \u2014 the story of blood libels and witch trials and inquisitions and black markets in baby parts.<\/p>\n

Warnke did not need to break any new ground in order to describe infinite depravity and infinite evil.\u00a0The description of that ultimate, superlative evil has been streamlined over the centuries into an efficient shorthand conveying all of that in a few broad strokes. Off-the-charts evil and depravity requires service to superlative, unsurpassable evil, so the first shorthand element to convey that is Satanism. And what do these Satanists do? Well, the worst thing we can imagine always gravitates toward murder, and the worst murder we can imagine involves killing the innocent, and the most innocent victims we can imagine are infants.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s where this story always arrives. Always. Satanic baby-killers. A gifted storyteller will find ways to enliven that centuries-old trope by tossing in some depraved sex rituals, lots of gore, maybe some form of cannibalism. Warnke checked all of those boxes in his grisly, R-rated \u201ctestimony,\u201d like a skilled comic riffing a particularly appalling variation of the old \u201cThe Aristocrats\u201d joke.<\/p>\n

And Warnke\u2019s abominable testimony thus became a huge hit. It was, as Burke says, an act of \u201cshowmanship,\u201d but the remarkable thing about that act wasn\u2019t Warnke\u2019s skill in presenting it \u2014 it was the audience\u2019s eager hunger to hear his depraved tale told and retold. That vast audience was so enthused and delighted by Warnke\u2019s version of the Satanic baby-killers story that I\u2019m tempted to think Vonnegut was wrong about Cinderella, and that it\u2019s only the second<\/em>-most popular story in our civilization.<\/p>\n

Tales of infinite depravity have a bigger fan-base than tales of infinite happiness, apparently \u2014 at least among white evangelical Christians.<\/p>\n

That appeal and that popularity, I think, go back to the very thing that Shakespeare\u2019s Prince Hal described \u2014 reformation glittering o\u2019er fault. The stories we love best, that \u201cshow more goodly and attract more eyes,\u201d are those that make the contrast between this reformation and fault most vivid. \u201cLike bright metal on a sullen ground,\u201d Hal says, but its far easier to make the ground seem more sullen \u2014 to \u201cwish that black was a little blacker,\u201d as C.S. Lewis put it \u2014 than to make the metal seem brighter. It\u2019s easier to exaggerate our own brightness\u00a0by exaggerating the surrounding sullenness into its most extreme form. And that leads us, inexorably, back to tales of Satan and of baby-killing.<\/p>\n

When we contrast\u00a0ourselves with those imagined Satanic baby-killers, even our blandest reformation doesn\u2019t just seem to glitter, it dazzles<\/em>. It\u2019s a lie, an optical illusion, but it makes us seem\u00a0to shine.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Christianity Today<\/em> is a publication that believes gay and lesbian couples are \u201cdestructive to society.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s more than just the temptation to give our stories, as Burke writes, “a little stretch” with an eye to make them more compelling calls for “winning souls for Christ.” That idea — that exaggerations are acceptable because they serve this higher purpose of spreading the gospel and saving souls — is a key to the rationalization that defends the tendency toward dishonest conversion stories, but I don’t think it’s the cause of that tendency.<\/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":[113,19,29],"class_list":["post-30266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-evangelism","tag-hell","tag-satanic-baby-killers"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy conversionist stories promote dishonesty<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's more than just the temptation to give our stories, as Burke writes, "a little stretch" with an eye to make them more compelling calls for "winning souls for Christ." 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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":"Why conversionist stories promote dishonesty","description":"It's more than just the temptation to give our stories, as Burke writes, \"a little stretch\" with an eye to make them more compelling calls for \"winning souls for Christ.\" That idea -- that exaggerations are acceptable because they serve this higher purpose of spreading the gospel and saving souls -- is a key to the rationalization that defends the tendency toward dishonest conversion stories, but I don't think it's the cause of that tendency.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/11\/12\/why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why conversionist stories promote dishonesty","og_description":"It's more than just the temptation to give our stories, as Burke writes, \"a little stretch\" with an eye to make them more compelling calls for \"winning souls for Christ.\" That idea -- that exaggerations are acceptable because they serve this higher purpose of spreading the gospel and saving souls -- is a key to the rationalization that defends the tendency toward dishonest conversion stories, but I don't think it's the cause of that tendency.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/11\/12\/why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty\/","og_site_name":"slacktivist","article_published_time":"2015-11-12T21:07:25+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2015\/11\/Screen-shot-2015-11-11-at-4.06.48-PM.png"}],"author":"Fred Clark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Clark","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/11\/12\/why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/11\/12\/why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty\/","name":"Why conversionist stories promote dishonesty","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-11-12T21:07:25+00:00","dateModified":"2015-11-12T21:07:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47"},"description":"It's more than just the temptation to give our stories, as Burke writes, \"a little stretch\" with an eye to make them more compelling calls for \"winning souls for Christ.\" That idea -- that exaggerations are acceptable because they serve this higher purpose of spreading the gospel and saving souls -- is a key to the rationalization that defends the tendency toward dishonest conversion stories, but I don't think it's the cause of that tendency.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/11\/12\/why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/11\/12\/why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/11\/12\/why-conversionist-stories-promote-dishonesty\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why conversionist stories promote dishonesty"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). 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\/30266","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=30266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}