Meet the New Evangelical Boss, Same as the Old Evangelical Boss

Meet the New Evangelical Boss, Same as the Old Evangelical Boss January 15, 2013

Gabe Lyons is sad.

In response to Gigliogate, Gabe Lyons wrote a tirade about how this was a hate crime against his fellow evangelical speaker and that Barack Obama was facing a Martin Luther King moment in how he responds. David Sessions came back at Lyons in stunning fashion. His opening paragraph says what I’ve been trying to say for some time: the young, hip evangelical intelligentsia is no different from from the older cabal of Dobson, Colson, and the like. Here’s Sessions:

I wrote a short thing some time ago about the garb of non-ideological non-partisanship in which a younger generation of conservative evangelicals have cloaked themselves. They often explicitly and forcefully position themselves against the religious right, but there is very little substantive difference when you get down to it, especially on some of the most important social issues of the moment.

Now, in the wake of the Louie Giglio ordeal, along comes Gabe Lyons to demonstrate exactly what I’m talking about, in an even more cartoonish fashion than I ever would have expected from him. If there’s anyone who stands for the new evangelical tone, it’s him: he’s the co-author of unChristian, the founding text of that point of view, and the man behind Q Ideas, the website/conference that features moderate, civil discourse by young evangelical writers. The endlessly repeated revelation of unChristian is that the broader culture dislikes Christians because it perceives them as too political, too judgemental, too hard-line, etc. The whole mini-industry and ideology that has sprung up around those conclusion seems to assume, like some parts of the Republican Party, that what is primarily needed is a new style of discourse. They like to affect an aura of progressivity, especially in comparison with the old religious right.

But things like this show how shallow these reinventions really are.

Do yourself a favor and read the rest: You’ve Got To Be Kidding, Gabe Lyons | Patrol – A review of religion and the modern world.

Pretty interesting, when Gabe Lyons just last year proclaimed that he’s not an evangelical.


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