Thread by @martensmatt1

🧵A lot of reviews of Professor @kkdumez’s book, “Jesus & John Wayne” have been flying around over the last year. I’ve found most of them annoying because they don’t seem to really wrestle with her main point. So, after a lot of thought, I decided to weigh in./1

A note before I do. For me, this topic relates to my core issue (criminal justice) because I think conservative evangelical views on CJ are more culturally shaped than theologically shaped. So I care a lot about the core question Prof @kkdumez is raising in her book./2

I’m a Christian. I’m a Baptist. I’m a theologically conservative Christian. I’ve spent my entire life in conservative evangelicalism.

In my 30s, I moved to the South and started to see some really crazy stuff in the church. I could offer many examples. Here’s one:
/3

https://twitter.com/martensmatt1/status/1487223099351351301

Several years in this religious environment was disorienting. I commented to close friends that the conservative evangelicalism I was encountering was some weird mix of (a) Americana, (b) political conservatism, (c) a country club, and (d) Christian cliches./4

I didn’t have any terminology at that time to capture what I was seeing. I had never heard of “Christian Nationalism.” I wasn’t theologically sophisticated enough to sort through this on my own. So in 2007 I decided to enroll in @DallasSeminary as an extension student./5

I took most of my electives on church history. I signed up in 2010 to take a Baptist history class at Southern Seminary in Louisville as a visiting student. The professor went around the room the first day and asked us to introduce ourselves and explain why we were there./6

I said I was there to figure out whether I was really a Baptist. The prof asked what I meant, and I gave him my four-part observation./7

Since then, I’ve stayed a Baptist by conviction. I finished seminary more credal, more orthodox, more historically rooted, more theologically conservative than when I started. And I still am./8

But the years since then have done a lot of damage as I’ve watched what evangelical conservatism has become. I’m with @BethMooreLPM in that respect: “I cannot unsee the last 5 yrs.”
/9

https://twitter.com/bethmoorelpm/status/1492165280436563974

So, for me, “Jesus & John Wayne” resonated. As a result, it has been frustrating to watch conservative evangelicals bend over backwards to discredit this or that piece of or sentence in the book rather than wrestle—really take to heart—its core message./10

Is Prof @kkdumez doing theology while she is doing history? To some extent she is. To some extent we all are. As one of my theology professors in seminary said, “We’re all theologians, some better than others.”/11

But the question remains, is her core historical argument correct? Has politically conservative, militaristic, macho, American culture been swirled in with white American evangelicalism in a way that has corrupted it?/12

I don’t see how one can seriously deny that it has. The mere mixing of the culture and the faith is by definition corruption./13

Now, you may say, that doesn’t mean that *all* of American conservative evangelical theology has been corrupted. It could still be correct on some discrete points, maybe even on many points. And that too is undoubtedly right./14

But if the faith has been corrupted by the culture, you owe it to yourself to ask *how much* has it been corrupted by the culture? What parts are actually what Scripture teaches and how much are a reading of Scripture distorted by your and my cultural lenses./15

And that’s my issue with all the conservative evangelical responses to Prof @kkdumez’s core message. They pay lip service to the validity of that question. But they seem to be bending over backwards to avoid grappling with the question./16

They protest that Prof @kkdumez is wrong on this or that element of theology. She’s been corrupted by current secular trends, they readily point out./17

But I see no evidence of a willingness on their part to ask whether they, as a result of cultural corruption, are wrong on an element of theirs. Theirs, they seem convinced with no real reflection, is pristine./18

There’s a real lack of willingness, it seems, to engage in serious self-examination. It all seems more defensive than humble. It all seems more self-protective than reflective.

And this is not confidence-inspiring./end