The men who promote the evangelical masculinity cult won’t *actually* fight for anything.
If they have power over you, they silence you with threats.
If they don’t have power over you, they ignore you—or, if they can’t ignore you, they talk about you as if you’re not there.
But they never engage directly with any actual argument made by any actual person who disagrees with them. They avoid the direct exchange of ideas at any cost.
Their rhetoric bears this out: they paint emotional pictures of home-invasions wherein men protect women with violence force—never confronting the plain fact that women are far more likely to suffer violence at the hands of a man they know than a man they don’t.
They offer platitudes about the “high calling” of homemakers—never acknowledging that their own incomes draw on tithes from women’s salaries, or the reality that subsisting on one income is a privilege open to very few, due to economic policies favored by men like themselves.
They recite the enslavers’ mantra that those who disagree with them deny the authority of Scripture—never attempting to explain how their hermeneutic differs from that of their Confederate forebears, or allowing that it’s possible to disagree about what Scripture says.
All the talk of fighting is bluster: they won’t actually fight for anything.
The only weapons they really know how to wield are manipulation, avoidance and bureaucratic control.
*violent force
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Within the evangelical community, discussions of “social justice” often emphasize charity and devote little attention to the moral significance of institutions.
This paradigm allows evangelicals to advocate for political institutions that deprive the poor of their due, and then dispense charity as though it were a substitute for justice.
We need a new paradigm. Christ followers are required to advocate for public institutions that reflect the truth about what people deserve—
When people who disagree with you say that you’re deceived, and quote a Bible verse that seems to back up their position, how do you know that you’re right and they’re wrong?
Two-part answer.
First, I don’t need to know I’m right to know that they’re wrong.
There are very few things I’m certain about. I’m sure I’m wrong about a lot. It doesn’t follow that the proof-texters and fundamentalists are right (it’s possible, e.g., that we’re both wrong).
Second, one of the few things I’m certain of is that truth is coherent—it has integrity; it can’t contradict itself.
And I know that God created human beings with brains that he intends for us to use: the light of reason.
It’s been suggested that those who promote “wokeness” or “woke theology” should be regarded as false teachers. This claim reflects a kind of theological illiteracy that needs to be exposed. I’ll start with a brief note about terminology, since it’s a source of much mischief.
Critics of “wokeness” often identify concerns about systemic injustice with Critical Race Theory (CRT). But you needn’t endorse CRT—or care anything about CRT, really—in order to be concerned about systemic justice. #WG2021TX
CRT is just one among many academic disciplines that deal with questions about systemic justice; and it is hardly the first or the most important. Roughly 2500 years before the inception of CRT, Plato discusses systemic justice in his ‘Republic’ and ‘Laws’.
No good is served when ambitious theologians speak with unearned confidence about technical matters that they haven’t studied in any disciplined way; and it is harmful when they then attempt to shoehorn their views into Scripture and present their convictions as the Word of God.
If these men want to give lectures on political philosophy, I suggest they host a dinner party for likeminded friends. Or perhaps they might start a book club. These are fora in which it is appropriate for amateurs to discuss their passions.
It is unbecoming of an academic to hold himself out as an expert on subjects that are far afield from his training. Beyond that, it is toxic for theologians in particular to hide extra-Biblical agendas in their presentation of Scripture. #WG2021TX
There’s a lot of overlap among evangelicals who dismiss social justice (or “wokeness”) as Marxist, those who embrace patriarchy, and those whose theology borrows heavily from the thinking of men who claim biblical support for chattel slavery and segregation. #WG2021TX
The overlap isn’t coincidental: all of these commitments flow from an authoritarian outlook that organizes people into a divinely ordained hierarchy, based largely on innate physical characteristics, and conceives of morality as a matter of obedience to one’s natural superiors.
They all hold that God has designed some people to exercise authority, and God has designed others to practice submission to authority. Moral order is achieved when we inhabit our God-ordained place in the hierarchy; and apart from that hierarchy, there is no morality. #WG2021TX