This post was inspired by a discussion that was generated from Cameron MacAllister’s note “Why I don’t call myself an Evangelical.” Cameron is a good friend, and in response to his note, Carson Clark, another friend, and a tenacious debater, launched into a thorough defense of evangelicalism as a social and historical movement in America. I thought the discussion needed to be moved elsewhere and broadened a touch, so I decided to expound a tad on some of the thoughts I have had on the subject since being thrust forth from the birth canal of the academic world and into the “real world.”
What struck me this morning about the “debate” between Carson and myself was that it was mostly a discussion of words, context, and meaning. It was, and is, an ongoing discussion of ideas. Using words and ideas, Carson is, and has been, defending systems. And therein lies the problem I have with the 21st century academic: words, ideas, and systems. To a majority of Americans, and I would even venture to say, to a vast majority of humanity, the world of words, ideas, and systems falls second fiddle to the world of tangibility, perception, aesthetics, and of the senses. We are thinking people, but we are a sensory people as well. We construct the world in the mind, but also through our vision, our hearing, our smelling, and our physical feeling.
Only connect: the poetry and the prose, the man of action with the man of thought. God bless you E.M Forster. Call the ‘poetry’ the man of thought, the defender of the world of ideas. Call the ‘prose’ the man of action, who deals in tangibility. The two must be married. When our debates and arguments never join with the world around us, what are they? Mere and meaningless intellectual debate. That said, if the aesthetic world never joins with the world of ideas, what do we have? Hedonism?
I have no interest in defending evangelicalism. Like Cameron, I do not consider myself an evangelical. As I have said on more than one occasion, to me it seems that the term evangelical is not worth saving. It is a term and, contextually as well as colloquially, in America it is a pejorative term. Christian, too, is often a pejorative in America and in many parts of the world. For lack of a better or broader term, I consider myself a Christian, and therefore, I have a bit of an obligation to defend it. Applying my critique of the evangelical debate, how does one move beyond a defense of Christianity that only takes place in the world of words, ideas, and systems? Connect it to the aesthetic world.
Peter, the retired gentlemen who I have started playing chess with down at the local coffee shop, is not interested in an intellectual debate or defense of Christianity, or any other system for that matter. He wants to see that it works. He wants to feel its positive effect on his life. It is time for evangelicals and Christians to drop the intellectual debate and start living and breathing their faith. The same is true for any follower of any movement, but all the more so for the followers of a pejorative movement like Christianity. I could run you through the ringer with debate or “apologetics” but unless you see it and experience it my arguments will not move you. In contrast, my actions should speak for themselves.
I say this, and I think I mean it: there is no place for the pure intellectual. Get out from behind that book, get out from the classroom, and learn from the man on the street. I’ve learned more in the last year from Larry McCoy than I have from any preacher behind his pulpit.
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