Thread by @mattleeanderson

I suspect many evangelicals have discounted the importance of the 'marginally committed' to our communities.

Those who are 'marginally committed' to a church might only show up once a month. They might even only show up on Christmas and Easter.

Yet when there are enough of them, they give a community a sense of energy and vitality that it otherwise would lack.

Because evangelicalism has its roots as a renewal movement within existing institutions--think Wesley as an Anglican--there are deep pressures to make everyone "fully committed."

That doesn't just mean church attendance: it means daily devotionals, Christian music, etc.

That pietism is immensely rewarding. I wouldn't trade my enthusiastic upbringing for anything.

But it also animates suspicions toward the marginally committed. Sometimes those suspicions rise to the level of trying to identify the 'unconverted' in our churches.

That pietism can also be exhausting, of course. It's hard to have the kind of chronic wakefulness to God's presence that evangelicals often aim at.

That difficulty is partially why monks exist, it seems to me.

The most recent manifestation of this dynamic of questioning the marginally committed was, I think, the "Radical Christianity" phenomenon--which like many such movements seems to have spent itself out.

[Shameless, almost-gratuituous self-promotion: I once wrote a cover story for @CTmagazine about 'radical Christianity.] christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/march/…

This impetus, though, has political dimensions: there is pervasive skepticism about those who seem to be only 'marginally committed' to, say, certain controversial moral positions--and the political judgments that *seem* to flow from them.

The tendency among politically engaged evangelicals is to argue that anyone who is not with us in our particular political program is against us.

They introduce purity tests in order to determine whether people are really on our side.

Sometimes those are statements. Other times they are votes.

The aim is to "clarify" where the (seemingly) marginally committed stand on a particularly divisive question. They want to draw a line in order to force people to make a decision about whether they are 'in or out'--in part because of the prior skepticism that people are 'in.'

In this sense, I think it's a mistake to speak about "evangelical [political] conservatives" these days. There are none: there are only reactionaries, who force people to demonstrate their bona fides by raising the costs for departing from 'political orthodoxy.'

The effect of this, though, is that it prematurely winnows people from our 'team.' Raising the stakes "reveals" that the marginally committed weren't *actually* committed--but it also leaves fewer people in the pews than there were before.

And that matters.

This is more or less the impetus within fundamentalism, as I understand it. Once a movement becomes predominantly focused on the threats to its integrity, it will begin seeing those threats everywhere--even in places where they may not be.

Now: "Whoever is not with Me is against Me" is a word from our Lord (Mt. 12:30).

But so is: "The one who is not against us is for us" (Mk. 9:40).

These two together supply excellent reason to not engage in the premature winnowing of the marginally committed, many of whom are with Jesus in their nominal affiliation with his body--or at least are not against his disciples.

They also supply, I think, good reason to check out of the perennial contest about what constitutes 'true evangelicalism'--which is largely animated by these dynamics.

There's more to say on all this. But lunch awaits, as does work.