I have always been befuddled by the fact that so many evangelical Christians hang out in the Old Testament rather than the New Testament. Isn't the New Testament the book about Christ?
I might be able to help: When I was an evangelical, I was part of the neo-calvinist 'movement' whose mission was basically to relate everything in the old testament to a supposed corollary in the new testament. This proved your theological chops, and as a reformed theology bro, you could basically be a jerk without repercussion cuz you had John Calvin in your back pocket. It was the Cartesian approach to Christianity: I think, therefore I'm saved.
If I had a dollar for everytime I've tried to make this point to a so called Christian actively engaging in terribly un-Christlike behavior, I'd probably have a cool ten grand.
Jewish girl with Southern Baptist dad. We’ve got the Bible covered, basically.
Pretty much boils down to our both loving Israel for waaaay different reasons.
Someone should have throttled the southern evangelical movement in its crib. I’ve known wonderful and loving SB folks, but they weren’t wonderful because they were Southern Baptist. They were just wonderful.
Another dynamic that may be in play with evangelicals and Trump is the rise of pastor-ruled congregations in the past several decades. So many churches now are basically new business startups by a minister or a minister couple. And even within more traditional denominational churches, the minister is so dominant that the governing board is little more than a subservient politburo. Evangelicals and Pentecostals have been conditioned for a generation to cater to a single authoritarian leader.
I think you're right, with the caveat of the southern Baptist convention, which, yes, has megachurches, but has many more small congregations that are part of all this too. That's where the doctrine/inerrancy comes in. In the absence of an authoritarian leader, there is still an authoritarian view of Scripture--there one correct interpretation, one will of God, we determine what that is, we are right.
I was reared in the home of a white evangelical pastor and have been thoroughly steeped in that subculture. For 50 years I was a leader in white evangelicalism (teacher, elder, church planter).
Now I'm not. Now I'm estranged from my mother and siblings. There are many issues that have me on the outside looking in (not that I want in) but here's what really sticks in my craw: Hammered into my adolescent brain incessantly was the fact that our lives were meant to be a 'witness to the world.'
Is there any white evangelical who actually believes the ideology they subscribe to is attracting people to become followers of Christ? Seriously?
I feel this. Such a burden to go into every relationship with an eye towards witness or ministry or accountability. Such a constraint on actually knowing and enjoying a person and allowing them to know you.
So what made you leave? Gradual process or epiphany? Thank you for sharing.
My heart aches for a lifetime of wasted opportunities to develop relationships that could have been meaningful if I had not been a colossal fool thinking I had THE answer to life.
I left because my life was upended about 10 years ago, and in those dark days staring into the abyss, I realized I had subscribed to an ideology fueled by equal parts of fear and hate, and whose aim was the accumulation of political power. The Sermon on the Mount, not so much.
Then I had to reevaluate everything, and I'm not done. TBH, I recite the Nicene Creed every week in the mainline (!), liberal (!!), inclusive (!!!) church I now attend, but I feel as though I am on a knife's edge, spiritually speaking. How could I have been so wrong?
It’s a brave person to actually take stock when life does its upending. know that whatever knife’s edge you feel you’re on, the love that surrounds us is under your feet. You’re actually not on a knife’s edge at all but standing in wide open space. Peace be with you.
I attended a Catholic university affiliated with the Congregation of Holy Cross (not Notre Dame, the other one). Holly’s essay got me thinking about Ethics. Casting my mind back, I think it was woven into the education there. At that time to earn a BA I had to take 4 philosophy classes and 4 theology classes. BS degrees were 3 each.
I have a coworker and friend who went through the whole Jesuit primary and high school system. He thinks it’s a sort of training on how to question your beliefs and try to find bias and inconsistency in ourselves. They accept that their methods can result in turning some away from the faith.
To boil it down, what i think sunk in is that the means are just as important as the ends. If you violate core principles to achieve victory then you may be a sinner.
Feb 25·edited Feb 25Liked by Holly Berkley Fletcher
The bit on narcissism being at the heart of a certain brand of evangelicalism made bells ring for me. I had sort of innately identified that there's a deep thread of narcissism among many Trump supporters, and I wondered how it is that all these various individual narcissists seemed to magically coalesce in a cult of personality around perhaps the most shameless narcissist American History has ever seen in a public figure. Ahh Haa! The Evangelical (and Southern, undoubtedly) culture already made this behavioral disorder and patterns ones they can see familiarity in (and find comfort in, because that's what you do before you figure out this behavior is actually toxic AF).
To those of us who have a persistent humanist view of the world, it makes no sense that what's right, or true, or good can change on a dime depending on what the current context is (Did Biden do and say that, or was it Trump?) and what serves to edify their religious agenda, and therefore the political agenda it's become intertwined with, such that neither one seems to think it can survive being untangled from the other. For me, if the politicians I currently have common cause with did something obviously deplorable, that would change my opinion and alliance with them... because I DO judge people by the content of their character, instead of taking a tribalist shortcut to assure me someone is "good" despite all their obvious and numerous misdeeds.
There's a very natural tendency to not want to cast judgement on the people you're affiliated with. We've all had that disappointment, especially when MeToo started dragging a lot of scum into the spotlight. Actors, politicians, people in our own lives.
But if you're striving to live a rational ethically virtuous life, regardless of faith or not, you have to entertain the evidence that comes to you. I had to accept, for example, that a beloved former boss in whose hands I readily put my life and career, was a sexual predator whose behavior in the instance I know of was both well-attested by reliable witnesses and indicative to me of a high probability of being a habitual thing. He went unpunished because in that era and environment women were only worthy of protection if they're specifically attached to men willing to protect them.
Haven't spoken to him in ~14 years, have no interest in ever doing so again. Didn't like the evidence, but it was compelling enough to accept it.
I can do that sort of thing because I capable, within the normal human bounds of embarrassment, of admitting that I'm wrong. About situations, facts, and people. And that's where narcissists break down both as individuals and as a culture.
I'm so sorry, you're right, that's a difficult thing to reckon with. That you were able to do that is a tremendous comfort to the victims involved and is so important for ensuring broader equality and justice in society.
Kudos to you Josh for taking the evidence against your former boss into real consideration. One of the most frustrating things (from my own experience) when dealing with a narcissist is the propensity for lying & gaslighting, so often it’s the victim who ends up marked negatively by the shared social group.
It means a lot to have validation from outside observers.
I didn't want to like you at all. You see I'm easily jealous. Then I read your posts. Sigh. You're amazing. I love your humor, humility, grace! And you make sense to me! I'm on a faith journey myself. So discovering your writings turns out to be a good thing after all. DRATS. Gonna keep reading!
Oh, I know that feeling, I get jealous of people, but honestly, I am not worth being jealous over LOL And lots and lots of people would dispute your attaching humility and grace to me. I try, that's about the best I can say for myself.
You have no idea how petty and superficial I am. :) But I love your writing! I was raised as a Southern Baptist, but my Dad was Jewish; so this worry and focus on doctrine rang true to me. I found your chart on the history of the evangelical movement too funny, and your critique of white evangelicals--- yikes, spot on.
When I would express worry over my dad's not being saved, he would say, between me, my bookie, and Leon (the man who ran the deli he would frequent), I'm covered. AMEN. Thanks for helping me keep trying to understand this aspect of Christianity.
How did it feel to worry for your father's soul? Did you buy his glib assurances or did you earnestly fear for him growing up? The fear of hell part of evangelicalism is the very, very worst.
I used to think evangelicalism/fundamentalism was all about illiterates reading LITERALLY and worshipping the Bible instead of God--as in the memoir Educated or in The Poisonwood Bible. But you're right--the ones who forbid doubt, who will point to a proof text on anything and everything make flip-flopping an Olympic sport. If you break the rules, you're roasted on a spit unless you're in a position of power or money--then it's, "Oh, but ALL have sinned and fallen short." Why do Southern evangelicals always have to remind us that just because the accent sounds a little dumb, they are not dumb? Good one, Holly. Good one.
I have been thinking for a while now that the people who have fallen for Trumpism must have been conditioned by a life of living with narcissists. The codependent relationship with a narcissist, whether within the family or in the person of their religious leader must be their normal.
I guess I felt like God couldn’t really punish someone who I loved. Plus, I think I decided (like Scarlett O” Hara) “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.” :)
Great article! I was raised evangelical, and I can definitely affirm the many observations spoken of here. I'm 47 and haven't gone to church in a LONG time now, but I'm still recovering in certain ways from my childhood experiences with it. Thanks for writing!
"I thought maybe God hated me is what I thought. Why else, in my young brain, would all of these people around me be having these dramatic spiritual encounters"--I so related to this. That's kind of the bottom line, isn't it? I find there's kind of 2 broad camps of us, those who were true believers at one point but there was some kind of departure and those for whom it never really added it. I think I was more in the 2nd camp, although I wanted SO BADLY to have faith and so expertly faked it that I might straddle things a bit. I am still a Christian just by sheer will at this point, but it's definitely not certain belief, it's more of an ethic/practice. Thank you for sharing! Peace be with you!
I have always been befuddled by the fact that so many evangelical Christians hang out in the Old Testament rather than the New Testament. Isn't the New Testament the book about Christ?
I might be able to help: When I was an evangelical, I was part of the neo-calvinist 'movement' whose mission was basically to relate everything in the old testament to a supposed corollary in the new testament. This proved your theological chops, and as a reformed theology bro, you could basically be a jerk without repercussion cuz you had John Calvin in your back pocket. It was the Cartesian approach to Christianity: I think, therefore I'm saved.
If I had a dollar for everytime I've tried to make this point to a so called Christian actively engaging in terribly un-Christlike behavior, I'd probably have a cool ten grand.
I like to use the term Old Testament Christians.
I’m sorry, who?
Jewish girl with Southern Baptist dad. We’ve got the Bible covered, basically.
Pretty much boils down to our both loving Israel for waaaay different reasons.
Someone should have throttled the southern evangelical movement in its crib. I’ve known wonderful and loving SB folks, but they weren’t wonderful because they were Southern Baptist. They were just wonderful.
Another dynamic that may be in play with evangelicals and Trump is the rise of pastor-ruled congregations in the past several decades. So many churches now are basically new business startups by a minister or a minister couple. And even within more traditional denominational churches, the minister is so dominant that the governing board is little more than a subservient politburo. Evangelicals and Pentecostals have been conditioned for a generation to cater to a single authoritarian leader.
I think you're right, with the caveat of the southern Baptist convention, which, yes, has megachurches, but has many more small congregations that are part of all this too. That's where the doctrine/inerrancy comes in. In the absence of an authoritarian leader, there is still an authoritarian view of Scripture--there one correct interpretation, one will of God, we determine what that is, we are right.
I was reared in the home of a white evangelical pastor and have been thoroughly steeped in that subculture. For 50 years I was a leader in white evangelicalism (teacher, elder, church planter).
Now I'm not. Now I'm estranged from my mother and siblings. There are many issues that have me on the outside looking in (not that I want in) but here's what really sticks in my craw: Hammered into my adolescent brain incessantly was the fact that our lives were meant to be a 'witness to the world.'
Is there any white evangelical who actually believes the ideology they subscribe to is attracting people to become followers of Christ? Seriously?
I feel this. Such a burden to go into every relationship with an eye towards witness or ministry or accountability. Such a constraint on actually knowing and enjoying a person and allowing them to know you.
So what made you leave? Gradual process or epiphany? Thank you for sharing.
My heart aches for a lifetime of wasted opportunities to develop relationships that could have been meaningful if I had not been a colossal fool thinking I had THE answer to life.
I left because my life was upended about 10 years ago, and in those dark days staring into the abyss, I realized I had subscribed to an ideology fueled by equal parts of fear and hate, and whose aim was the accumulation of political power. The Sermon on the Mount, not so much.
Then I had to reevaluate everything, and I'm not done. TBH, I recite the Nicene Creed every week in the mainline (!), liberal (!!), inclusive (!!!) church I now attend, but I feel as though I am on a knife's edge, spiritually speaking. How could I have been so wrong?
It’s a brave person to actually take stock when life does its upending. know that whatever knife’s edge you feel you’re on, the love that surrounds us is under your feet. You’re actually not on a knife’s edge at all but standing in wide open space. Peace be with you.
A wonderful reply. Thank you.
I ask myself this all the time!
I attended a Catholic university affiliated with the Congregation of Holy Cross (not Notre Dame, the other one). Holly’s essay got me thinking about Ethics. Casting my mind back, I think it was woven into the education there. At that time to earn a BA I had to take 4 philosophy classes and 4 theology classes. BS degrees were 3 each.
I have a coworker and friend who went through the whole Jesuit primary and high school system. He thinks it’s a sort of training on how to question your beliefs and try to find bias and inconsistency in ourselves. They accept that their methods can result in turning some away from the faith.
To boil it down, what i think sunk in is that the means are just as important as the ends. If you violate core principles to achieve victory then you may be a sinner.
Love this.
The bit on narcissism being at the heart of a certain brand of evangelicalism made bells ring for me. I had sort of innately identified that there's a deep thread of narcissism among many Trump supporters, and I wondered how it is that all these various individual narcissists seemed to magically coalesce in a cult of personality around perhaps the most shameless narcissist American History has ever seen in a public figure. Ahh Haa! The Evangelical (and Southern, undoubtedly) culture already made this behavioral disorder and patterns ones they can see familiarity in (and find comfort in, because that's what you do before you figure out this behavior is actually toxic AF).
To those of us who have a persistent humanist view of the world, it makes no sense that what's right, or true, or good can change on a dime depending on what the current context is (Did Biden do and say that, or was it Trump?) and what serves to edify their religious agenda, and therefore the political agenda it's become intertwined with, such that neither one seems to think it can survive being untangled from the other. For me, if the politicians I currently have common cause with did something obviously deplorable, that would change my opinion and alliance with them... because I DO judge people by the content of their character, instead of taking a tribalist shortcut to assure me someone is "good" despite all their obvious and numerous misdeeds.
There's a very natural tendency to not want to cast judgement on the people you're affiliated with. We've all had that disappointment, especially when MeToo started dragging a lot of scum into the spotlight. Actors, politicians, people in our own lives.
But if you're striving to live a rational ethically virtuous life, regardless of faith or not, you have to entertain the evidence that comes to you. I had to accept, for example, that a beloved former boss in whose hands I readily put my life and career, was a sexual predator whose behavior in the instance I know of was both well-attested by reliable witnesses and indicative to me of a high probability of being a habitual thing. He went unpunished because in that era and environment women were only worthy of protection if they're specifically attached to men willing to protect them.
Haven't spoken to him in ~14 years, have no interest in ever doing so again. Didn't like the evidence, but it was compelling enough to accept it.
I can do that sort of thing because I capable, within the normal human bounds of embarrassment, of admitting that I'm wrong. About situations, facts, and people. And that's where narcissists break down both as individuals and as a culture.
I'm so sorry, you're right, that's a difficult thing to reckon with. That you were able to do that is a tremendous comfort to the victims involved and is so important for ensuring broader equality and justice in society.
Kudos to you Josh for taking the evidence against your former boss into real consideration. One of the most frustrating things (from my own experience) when dealing with a narcissist is the propensity for lying & gaslighting, so often it’s the victim who ends up marked negatively by the shared social group.
It means a lot to have validation from outside observers.
Dear Holly,
I didn't want to like you at all. You see I'm easily jealous. Then I read your posts. Sigh. You're amazing. I love your humor, humility, grace! And you make sense to me! I'm on a faith journey myself. So discovering your writings turns out to be a good thing after all. DRATS. Gonna keep reading!
Oh, I know that feeling, I get jealous of people, but honestly, I am not worth being jealous over LOL And lots and lots of people would dispute your attaching humility and grace to me. I try, that's about the best I can say for myself.
Thanks, Holly!
You have no idea how petty and superficial I am. :) But I love your writing! I was raised as a Southern Baptist, but my Dad was Jewish; so this worry and focus on doctrine rang true to me. I found your chart on the history of the evangelical movement too funny, and your critique of white evangelicals--- yikes, spot on.
When I would express worry over my dad's not being saved, he would say, between me, my bookie, and Leon (the man who ran the deli he would frequent), I'm covered. AMEN. Thanks for helping me keep trying to understand this aspect of Christianity.
Irene
How did it feel to worry for your father's soul? Did you buy his glib assurances or did you earnestly fear for him growing up? The fear of hell part of evangelicalism is the very, very worst.
I used to think evangelicalism/fundamentalism was all about illiterates reading LITERALLY and worshipping the Bible instead of God--as in the memoir Educated or in The Poisonwood Bible. But you're right--the ones who forbid doubt, who will point to a proof text on anything and everything make flip-flopping an Olympic sport. If you break the rules, you're roasted on a spit unless you're in a position of power or money--then it's, "Oh, but ALL have sinned and fallen short." Why do Southern evangelicals always have to remind us that just because the accent sounds a little dumb, they are not dumb? Good one, Holly. Good one.
Preach it, Sister!
Who does Millard look like? Wrong answers only.
I mean, with some orange paint...?
Yes, and relatedly, ALEC BALDWIN
Yes, sorry new SNL tRump, Alec was way better.
Roseanne Barr.
I am alternately outraged and heartbroken when I recall how earnest I was in having my life 'be a testimony for the lord.'
I have been thinking for a while now that the people who have fallen for Trumpism must have been conditioned by a life of living with narcissists. The codependent relationship with a narcissist, whether within the family or in the person of their religious leader must be their normal.
I guess I felt like God couldn’t really punish someone who I loved. Plus, I think I decided (like Scarlett O” Hara) “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.” :)
That was a gift ❤️
Your article helped me clarify and name some of my own thoughts and experiences. Thank you.
Bravo! Loved this!
Great article! I was raised evangelical, and I can definitely affirm the many observations spoken of here. I'm 47 and haven't gone to church in a LONG time now, but I'm still recovering in certain ways from my childhood experiences with it. Thanks for writing!
Thanks for sharing! Always curious about my fellow exvangelicals—what made you leave? Are there particular aspects that you still struggle with?
Yes indeed! And I can answer those questions by dropping MY substack essay about being an evangelical survivor, if you're interested. Lol
https://open.substack.com/pub/bluepnwcats/p/surviving-evangelicalism?r=gc3ns&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
"I thought maybe God hated me is what I thought. Why else, in my young brain, would all of these people around me be having these dramatic spiritual encounters"--I so related to this. That's kind of the bottom line, isn't it? I find there's kind of 2 broad camps of us, those who were true believers at one point but there was some kind of departure and those for whom it never really added it. I think I was more in the 2nd camp, although I wanted SO BADLY to have faith and so expertly faked it that I might straddle things a bit. I am still a Christian just by sheer will at this point, but it's definitely not certain belief, it's more of an ethic/practice. Thank you for sharing! Peace be with you!
Thank you, Holly. 😊 You as well.