Part 1: Response to Dr. Labberton’s speech, “Political Dealing: the Crises of Evangelicalism”.
The first of a four-part series.
Labberton’s speech:
https://www.fuller.edu/posts/political-dealing-the-crisis-of-evangelicalism/
By Ben Smith
April 23rd, 2018
I’ve been deeply disturbed by a recent speech given by Dr. Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Seminary, on the state of evangelicalism. I immediately felt that the speech was dripping with bitter accusation, and I sensed that I needed to dive deeper and explain my feelings. This speech struck a tender nerve in me, because it makes transparent the dangerous direction I think the church has been headed for the last year and half. I assume that the reader is familiar with Labberton’s speech. The link is above.
Labberton starts by taking issue with how Christians are using power, which is one of the main places I see a connection to Postmodernism and the bitterness it foments. So first, a word about Postmodernism and its view of power. Postmodernism has reduced all hierarchies down to a single variable: power. The approach is to analyze a piece of literature, or a cultural phenomenon, and see how binary oppositions have created a two-sided set of definitions where none exists apart from manipulative social constructs. Since Western society, the Western Canon, and philosophy are based on such binary logic, deconstructing binaries is the task of the philosopher, literary critic, and seeker of social justice. For instance, Aristotelian binary logic will divide people into two genders, “male” and “female”, in order to privilege one gender over the other, men over woman. Thus, gender is a social construct created for devious purposes. The reality of language, then, is a power game. The true task of the literary or cultural critic is to break apart binaries (and the metanarratives that ensconce them) and thus break up arbitrary and exploitative power. Coincidentally, this is why feminists are so attached to the transgender movement. It deconstructs the gender binary. But, let’s get back to Labberton’s argument.
The binary that Labberton deconstructs is between the gospel of Jesus and the strategies of Caesar. He says, “The apparent evangelical alignment with the use of power that seeks dominance, control, supremacy, and victory over compassion and justice associates Jesus with the strategies of Caesar, not with the good news of the gospel.” I’ve heard trappings of this many times from the pulpit, and it’s always bothered me deeply, but I could never put my finger on why. There was always some kind of ineffable common sense welling inside me that opposed it, but I couldn’t exactly own that feeling or articulate it. I saw it as an overly suspicious framework for viewing the embodied forms of social and political life, with an anti-empirical element to it. This might seem like somewhat of a leap, but I’ll make the connection below.
Labberton excoriates the evangelical use of power in cartoonish fashion. He reduces the concerns of Evangelicals to an ungodly desire to for “winning power” (like Judas) on all the following issues: “racial, political, economic, cultural …US militarism, … mass incarceration, …#MeToo movement (or mistreatment of women in general), … police shootings of unarmed, young, black men, … the actions of ICE toward child and adult immigrants, … gun use and control, … tax policy.” Of course, the positions evangelicals take on all these issues are deftly summed up as: “all this is about power.” I don’t know where to stop. Did evangelicals open Pandora’s Box? Did they dress up as a serpent and make Eve eat the forbidden fruit? Did they kill the Tsar and his ministers?
The reality is that evangelicals, and other conservatives, have well-intentioned reasons for the positions they take on each issue Labberton mentions. Let me quickly go through the list one by one. I can do it in five minutes, just below:
Racial: Conservatives believe that all men are created equal on race, and the left’s obsession with identity politics is simply reverse racism, so we aren’t biting.
Political: It’s a democracy, so seeking political power isn’t exploitative, but rather the duty of a concerned citizen.
Cultural: Traditions like traditional marriage are the bedrock of society, and provide for equality for children because each child gets a mom and a dad, the number one predicate of success.
US militarism: There’s a huge split here between staying out of things, and doing good with our military.
Mass incarceration: We’ve tried to address this as a society about every forty years and it never works.
MeToo movement: See police shootings.
ICE and Immigration: We should treat immigrants so well that we let them become citizens, legally.
Police shootings: We should arrive at a truthful narrative before making up our minds about innocence or guilt.
Gun use: We believe that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with gun; also, our nation used guns to overthrow a tyrant, so they are useful against state tyranny which often racks up deaths in the millions.
Tax policy: Capitalism is the most successful system in the history of humanity.
Conservatives are so transparent about these beliefs, I can’t see how Labberton doesn’t acknowledge them. This is what really makes me sick to my stomach: his libelous reduction of good intentions to hateful power seeking. I just see Postmodern blinders here. I want to return to what I said about suspicion of embodied forms of social and cultural life, which is what I sense in Labberton. It seems that Labberton is saying that seeking political power goes against the gospel. He views culture and power as purely exploitative. He sees only the Tyrannical Father, never fearing the Devouring Mother. In a way that is similar to how postmodernists ignore the physical differences between men and women through absolute faith in their binary deconstructions, Labberton ignores the transparently stated moral arguments of conservatives in pursuit of his binary of the gospel of Jesus against that of Judas and Caesar. His deconstruction must be true, evidence be damned.
I sense there is a theological frosting just thick enough to conceal the somewhat gnostic postmodern interior of Labberton’s self-righteous critique. There is this idea that seeking to make change through political means is legalism, and therefore contrary to the gospel of Christ. Christians should seek change through preaching the gospel, allowing the Holy Spirit to change people, instead of forcing people to obey our moral values, like Caesar would. The law is a slavemaster, and Christians who seek cultural change through politics hold the slavemaster’s whip. I could point out the obvious irony that Labberton merely seeks the other political side of these issues. Or, I could point out that we live in a democracy, so we actually have political power, simply through voting. We don’t suddenly become Caesar when we step into the voting booth. Or, is it that when we talk about how to vote beforehand, let’s say in a political group, that we become Judas or Caesar or something. Or, what if we do preach the gospel a lot, and it works, and everyone’s heart is changed by the gospel, would it be legalism for people with these changed hearts to vote conservatively?
Again, I don’t know where to begin with all this. I just can’t take Labberton’s argument credibly. His views of power are completely suspicious and reductionist. It seems that he thinks the Bible was written by a tag team effort of Elizabeth Warren and Michel Foucault.
