Liberty in Christ
Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash
Just ten years ago, most of us would see a story or statistic every now and then that stopped us in our tracks. It now feels like we are confronted by such disruptions almost weekly amidst the social upheaval, change, and unveiling of truth around us.
Another shocking story slammed into American Christianity this week, or re-slammed, depending on your view of things. The Vanity Fair deep dive into the rise and fall of Jerry Falwell Jr., disgraced former president of the country’s largest Christian university, has generated a lot of interest and debate online. You can read the piece here.
Falwell’s personal shortcomings aren’t what I want to explore here. Sadly, stories like these are common in white American evangelicalism. Keep in mind that Falwell represents just one of a number of scandals that make up the moral collapse at Liberty University, the same types of scandals ripping through evangelical institutions and churches across the country.
I want to examine the debate itself, because many people don’t seem to realize that it’s a debate already being settled by ordinary people offline.
Every time a story like this emerges, the on-again off-again debate around whether moral failings and abuse are features or bugs in the white American evangelical belief system is flipped on like a light switch. The general public can see some of this play out online at the elite levels of American evangelicalism (y’all, elite American evangelical Twitter is wild).
But many of these stories are also talked about in hushed tones at the local church level on Sunday mornings, in small groups, and in prayer meetings. In many white evangelical churches specifically, these moral failings and stories of abuse are brushed off with claims that such people are not real Christians or not actually evangelical or that the culture got’em. Dripping with condescension, such statements come from the deep-rooted belief in many white American evangelical spaces that they mostly have all the answers and just need to double down to protect themselves and become immune from the slightest of criticisms.
Whether or not you think that stories like Jerry Falwell Jr.’s are a feature or a bug of white American evangelical institutions and churches, there’s a hair-raising quote from Falwell at the end of the piece that deserves attention:
“Nothing in history has done more to turn people away from Christianity than organized religion. The religious elite has got this idea that somehow their sins aren’t as bad as everyone else’s.”
What makes these words astounding is that this comes from a man who, until very recently, was sitting at the apex of the white American evangelical elite class. Falwell clearly meant this as a jab at evangelicals writ large, even citing Franklin Graham as a specific example. To be blunt, Falwell is perfectly comfortable indicting himself as he points to white American evangelicalism and says that most of its elite leaders are full of crap.
Now, we should not root a broader criticism of white American evangelicalism in Falwell’s thoughts of the subculture. I don’t believe Falwell’s assessment is accurate merely because of who he is or what he says. I also know more than a few kind-hearted evangelicals. Some of them are even more critical of white American evangelicalism than I am. Regardless, I believe such moral failings and abuse are features of this subculture for two reasons separate from Falwell.
The first is the seemingly endless stories of moral collapse and abuse pouring out of white American evangelical institutions and churches. Many evangelicals at all levels demand at all costs the restoration of leaders who have fallen, including up to the point of railroading victims, silencing advocates, and covering up abuse. Time and time again, we’ve seen white evangelical leaders aim a flamethrower at the fruits of the spirit, emptying the tank as they conflate a narrow, culturally-rooted, and unmoored-from-history interpretation of scripture with biblical inerrancy.
Second, many good people who have left or are leaving white American evangelical churches, be they in a denomination or not, already believe that moral collapse and abuse are features of this cultural system. For them, the argument ended a while ago. It’s critically important to not only listen, but also to see who they are. The best, brightest, and most engaged are the ones walking away. Russell Moore, a well-known American evangelical, wrote this last year:
“Many of us have observed, anecdotally, a hemorrhaging of younger evangelicals from churches and institutions in recent years. What seems different about this quiet exodus is that the departures are heightened not among the peripheries of the church — those ‘nominal’ or ‘cultural’ Christians who grow up to rebel against their parents’ beliefs — but instead among those who are the most committed to what were previously thought to be the hardest aspects of Christian religion in modernity: belief in ‘the supernatural,’ the rigorous demands of discipleship, and a longing for community and accountability in a multigenerational church with ancient roots and transcendent authority.
We now see young evangelicals walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the church itself does not believe what the church teaches…The problem now is not that people think the church’s way of life is too demanding, too morally rigorous, but that they have come to think the church doesn’t believe its own moral teachings.”
For many former evangelicals, including people who are still conservative and Christian, the Falwell story only adds to the factual evidence at the heart of Moore’s assessment. Good people were being given undeniable reasons to believe that moral collapse and abuse are features of white American evangelicalism long before Falwell’s fall.
When a large corner of the American Church is this inward-looking and focused on protecting their own cultural power, the logical result is systemic failure: unethical leadership, fractured faith communities, and destroyed lives. The question then is not why would someone leave? It is why would someone stay when liberty in Christ can be found so easily in other Christian traditions and faith communities elsewhere?
I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my free newsletter or becoming a member. You can also subscribe to my podcast.
