I appreciate why Swartz uses the \u201cpopulist vs. cosmopolitan\u201d framing that seems to be having a moment in both political and religious conversations, but I\u2019m still not convinced it\u2019s a helpful framework. It can be misleading in the same way those red-and-blue maps of, say, Nevada are misleading, with their tiny specks of blue \u201celites\u201d contrasted with the vast majority of red acreage. Yes, the square mileage of \u201cblue\u201d territory is smaller, but that smaller area is where most of the people<\/em> live. Most people are cosmopolitan and a \u201cpopulism\u201d that views most people with hostility ain\u2019t gonna be very popular. \u201cCosmopolitan\u201d is just not a great proxy for \u201celite.\u201d<\/p>\n Nor is \u201cpopulist\u201d a good antonym for cosmopolitan. I appreciate that more precise antonyms for that word \u2014 provincial, parochial, etc. \u2014 might seem impolite, but it\u2019s just confusing to use \u201cpopulism\u201d as a word meant to exclude the most populous areas, to exclude most of the populace<\/em>. The recent 2020 Election Map from xkcd<\/a> helps to clarify why \u201cpopulism\u201d seems misleading here:<\/p>\n Those dots are where actual people actually live. The rest of the map is, by comparison, as empty as it looks.<\/p>\n Swartz\u2019s discussion isn\u2019t about the general populace, though, it\u2019s about white evangelicals, and for that specific sub-populace, the cosmopolitan-populist framework seems to work a little better. It\u2019s true, after all, that most white evangelicals would not consider themselves \u201ccosmopolitan.\u201d One synonym for cosmopolitan, after all, is \u201cworldly,\u201d and white evangelicals are proudly, defiantly opposed to being \u201cworldly.\u201d\u00a0(Whether or not their otherworldly theology and talismanic abstinence from, say, drinking and dancing actually prevents them from being \u201cconformed to this world\u201d is another, larger question.)<\/p>\n This fierce determination to avoid worldliness makes the white evangelical sub-culture view the larger cosmopolitan world with hostility. So here you have a minority that regards itself as separate and distinct from the vast majority of the populace, and as morally superior to that populace. The word usually employed to describe that attitude by a minority toward the majority is \u201celitism.\u201d So you can see, again, why I\u2019m not wholly satisfied with this notion of a populist-cosmopolitan spectrum.<\/p>\n Despite that, Swartz\u2019s piece provides some helpful insights into the rifts between \u2014 for want of a better term \u2014 \u201ccosmopolitan evangelicals\u201d and the much-larger body of \u201cpopulist\u201d white evangelicalism. I particularly appreciated this bit:<\/p>\n The point is not to Pollyannishly search for a respectable and salvageable evangelical identity. It is not to redefine our ways out of historical complicity or to reduce the very real commonalities all white evangelicals share. One question that could emerge from a better appreciation of the scope cosmopolitan evangelicalism is why, given its infrastructure, has it had seemingly minimal effects on large swaths of popular evangelicalism?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s an excellent question (and, maybe also, a harsh indictment politely reframed as a question).<\/p>\n Part of the answer, at least, is money. Popular evangelicalism has tons more of it. And the largest donors supporting that \u201cinfrastructure\u201d of evangelicalism\u2019s more \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d forms are themselves committed to \u201cpopular evangelicalism\u201d and tend to make their financial support contingent on ensuring that it is never seriously threatened by that infrastructure.<\/p>\n Another part of the answer involves the biggest problem with the \u201cCosmopolitan vs. populist\u201d framing \u2014 the elephant in the room that it seems to have been designed to avoid addressing explicitly. And it involves how cosmopolitan evangelicalism seems just as determined to sidestep as this framework is. You know, racism.<\/p>\n The title for this post, you may have recognized, is from Wicked<\/em>, so here\u2019s Kristen Chenoweth\u2019s version of \u201cPopular<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2020\/12\/2020_election_map.jpg\")
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