Thread by @MargeNAlia

Another thoughtful piece from @DavidAFrench , who has endured hellish abuse from his fellow evangelicals and been faithful throughout.

https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1353368695473627137

I am also glad that Hunter Baker apologized, but won't trust people like him until they show a track record of the good fruit of repentance around the arrogant mindsets that allow evangelical men to overvalue their own calloused judgement and disdain opponents as hysterical.

I think it took some real integrity for Hunter Baker to admit the inner narrative that categorized his own approach as prudential and carefully reasoned and that of his opponents as fragile, weak, and emotional.

By confessing that narrative, he is exponentially doing better than the vast majority of white men in his evangelical world. I am celebrating that step. I just hope that it doesn't stop there and that these dispositions get uprooted.

The habituation of the narrative in which "my Sanctified Common Sense and sincere assent to scripture gives me Clear-Eyed Reason to navigate reality" is pervasive among white SBC men, who are stunted in their growth b/c they measure themselves by themselves.

The puffed up bubble that surrounds their inflated confidence in their own judgement and sincerity remains intact because any challenge that may pierce the balloon are deflected by dismissing challengers as "weak," "emotional," "hysterical," "fragile," "liberal," "Marxist," etc.

Most of the time, I am confident that the men that are deflecting and dismissing concerns are not doing this intentionally. They are sincere. Their explanations are entirely plausible to them.

Some of them might even experience pangs of doubt about their own judgement relative to the person/people raising concerns. If they only look to other people with the same formation to discern whether their are gaps in their judgment, they will end up reinforcing the bubble.

Any woman or person of color that has ever challenged a white male leader in the SBC about anything has likely had this experience of being dismissed as unsubmissive to authority and acting out of fragile feelings instead of the biblically informed reason of the Stalwart Leaders.

I hope that men in evangelical denominations that can recognize their own thought processes in the helpful confession and apology of Hunter Baker will sit with the discomfort long enough to let the Holy Spirit shine light on these deeply rooted patterns of sin and hubris.

If the roots of the sinful dispositions that produced such awful fruit are not addressed, the same bad fruit will spring up despite the plant getting a surface pruning due to the regrettable fruit of the recent crop of the Trumpist Insurrection.