Carl Trueman gets weird

 If the Gospel Coalition's website is a reliable indicator, Carl Trueman's recent "The Failure of Evangelical Elites" in First Things has garnered thoughtful attention. I'm not sure why.

Trueman's thesis appears in the essay's second paragraph: "accommodation appeals to those who seek a seat at the table among ­society’s elite." "Those" are the university-educated elites of evangelicalism who, as he puts it later on, "[talk] in an outraged voice about racism within the boundaries set by the woke culture." From these statements and from the rest of the essay, Trueman clearly suspects their motives. Is he being fair or reasonable?

Trueman begins his discussion with Friedrich Schleiermacher, who made a great show of challenging liberal protestantism while conceding, upholding and endorsing all its tenets. While "On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers" is a truly awesome polemical title, the actual content was the exact opposite. From Schleiermacher, Trueman moves on to Mark Noll and George Marsden, who in the 1990s made a compelling argument for the recovery of Christian intellectualism in these United States. On the one hand, Trueman affirms the legitimacy and orthodoxy of that project ("And unlike ­Schleiermacher’s, I find their arguments convincing."), but with the other he denies it ("Nevertheless, a sociological comparison of their project with Schleiermacher’s is legitimate.") With this move, evangelical intellectuals "committed to a thoroughgoing supernatural Christian orthodoxy" are nonetheless associated with protestant liberalism, a counterfeit of the Christian faith.

This is guilt by association. Not only is it not nice, it's a logical fallacy.

Trueman makes a valid point when he considers the example of Francis Collins, the evangelical scientist who is head of the National Institutes of Health. Indeed, one might reasonably hope an agency headed by a faithful Christian would not so enthusiastically sponsor the use of genetic material taken from aborted babies in research and development. However, the pointedness drifts when he begins writing about "evangelical elites" and "Christian leaders." He may have specific persons in mind, but by not naming names, one is unable to check whether certain persons are actually the mealy-mouthed compromisers he implies they are.

Rhetorically, we call this a "glittering generality," which also happens to be a logical fallacy.

Trueman seems very annoyed by evangelicals who call for repentance from America's original sin of racism without simultaneously denouncing abortion and gender dysphoria affirmation. The money line in this piece comes toward the close.

Let me put it bluntly: Talking in an outraged voice about racism within the boundaries set by the woke culture is an excellent way of not talking about the pressing moral issues on which ­Christianity and the culture are opposed to each other: LGBTQ+ rights and abortion.

That sounds really good, until one remembers that Carl Trueman is a confessional presbyterian writing for a journal which toes the most Tridentine Roman Catholic line possible without drifting into outright Lefebvrism. To illustrate, I suggest a rewrite.

Let me put it bluntly: Talking in an outraged voice about evangelicals who oppose racism within the boundaries set by an apostate Anglican conservative Roman Catholic editor is an excellent way of not talking about the pressing theological issues on which ­Protestantism and Romanism are opposed to each other: justification by faith alone and the sole authority of Scripture.

In other words, Carl Trueman finds working with papists a rewarding and helpful way to promote ideas near and dear to him; he doesn't need to prosecute the material causes of the Protestant Reformation (i.e. the doctrines on which the faith stands or falls) at every turn. Good for him! Is it not possible that some of his coreligionists find working with secularists a rewarding and helpful way to promote ideas near and dear to them?

If I may point out the obvious, Mr. Trueman's lived experience in these United States is in the suburban outposts of Pennsylvania's two largest cities. His concerns about these United States, gathered from that lived experience, are entirely valid. At the same time, so are the concerns of those of us who have lived in parts of the United States which are not Pennsylvania. In fact, I tend to agree with many "evangelical elites" who think it is possible, and even necessary, to make inroads against systemic racism even if one is not directly addressing abortion on demand.

In sum, Carl Trueman's argument is just plain odd: anti-Trump evangelicals are posers petitioning for worldly acceptance because they argue against racism without, in the exact same breath, denouncing abortion on demand and LGBTQ+ rights. To put it mildly, I am not persuaded.

While I am a natural-born U.S. citizen under color of law, I was not born on American soil and so try to believe that other late-comers to our shores may understand our great country and her citizens, Christian or otherwise. At the present moment, Carl Trueman is not making that easy.

Fertility & faith

Maybe it's just because my undergraduate major was in the social sciences, but I've long believed that sociology is more important than theology if one wants to understand functional ecclesiology. "Fertility, Faith, and a Secular America?" by Philip Jenkins is a treasure trove of information on the recent decline in fertility rates across the western world and, increasingly, in the rest of the world as well.

Jenkins makes an important demographic observation and offers a useful ecclesiological/theological point. The former is that religious participation rates across a nation tend to go down along with its fertility rates (the number of births per woman; the commonly accepted "replacement rate" to keep a population stable is 2.1). The secularization of western Europe accompanied a severe decline in population growth through reproduction (as opposed to immigration). His insight is that participation in religious communities is not the same thing as belief in religious tenets: an individual may hold to the basic Christian faith and at the same time not be a member of a local congregation.

These two come together because having children tends to drive men and women to participate in religious life; that family participation, in turn, enculturates their children into religious life and makes it more likely to continue when they are grown. In other words, "belief" and "belonging" are severable practices which Churches must strive to put back together. 

My inner sociologist was fascinated by the data Jenkins offers. For example, Iran's fertility rate has dropped below 1.7 and "[b]y some estimates, Iran’s rates of mosque attendance run at perhaps 1 percent or 2 percent of the population, and barely 3,000 of the country’s 57,000 mosques are fully operational." Demography may be the United States' best ally in containing the potential threat of the Islamic Republic.

Most interestingly, Jenkins is not concerned by these trends, but (as is only fitting for a Christian)

hopeful:

Finally, my argument isn’t that Euro-American religion is dying, but that it’s changing. Many millions believe without belonging, and that number will grow. The challenge for churches, then—for all churches—is to decide how to respond to this new world, so hostile to institutions and hierarchies, so resentful of intrusions into what’s so widely seen as private space and private morality. How do you speak to those who wish to believe, but dread belonging?