Ron Miller's Blog: Ron's Reflections, page 5

Who are the watchmen?

As current events go, few could match the controversy surrounding the testimony of college presidents from three of the nation’s most elite academic institutions at a December 5th hearing of a U.S. House committee on antisemitism on college campuses. Ever since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th and Israel’s retaliatory response to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip, Americans have responded passionately to the war in the Middle East, particularly on college campuses, and the r...

An unexpected blessing

The end of a calendar year and the start of a new one elicit many emotions in me unique to this season. Looking back, I have a sense of contentment for the accomplishments of the year past and gratitude for new or strengthened relationships, regrets for past failures, frustration for things left undone or incomplete, and melancholy over people no longer with me, either because we’re no longer in relationship with one another or they’ve passed away. January 1st is just a date on the calendar, but...

An Off-Key Christmas Carol

Amid an enjoyable Christmas celebration with my family, notifications about an “unhinged” rant on Truth Social from Donald Trump kept appearing from the various news apps installed on my smartphone. I eventually opened one of the news articles and read about it, and his screed was breathtaking. I won’t share or link to it here since it’s not hard to find, and I don’t care to promote it, but suffice it to say that wishing one’s perceived opponents to “rot in hell” while also saying “Merry Christm...

The Reckoning (2016)

Note: Now and again, it’s illuminating to look back at what we thought in the past about people, events, or trends that dominate our public discourse today. The rise of Donald J. Trump nearly eight years ago was unexpected, but there was the potential for some good to come of the reckoning that accompanied his ascendance. Looking back, I don’t believe anything good has come to pass, and I am more pessimistic about the endgame than I was in 2016.

March 05, 2016

As I write this, the Republican primary in my home state of Virginia is in the books, and Donald Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul who has flipped the political establishment on its head with his improbable run for the presidency, has won. His performance on "Super Tuesday" was not as dominating as perhaps Mr. Trump and his supporters had hoped, but it did make the path to the nomination much more difficult for his opponents. It seems that now would be a good time to consider the long-term implications of this current political season, at least from my limited vantage point. Donald Trump's ascension marks the end, in my opinion, of several coalitions which have held sway over American politics and culture for decades.

First of all, I believe we are witnessing the end of the modern conservative movement as it is currently configured. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is currently taking place in National Harbor, Maryland this week, and it was at CPAC in March 1981 that President Ronald Reagan praised political philosopher Frank Meyer's concept of "fusionism" as "a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought -- a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism." The ascendancy of modern conservatism which began in the 1950s with Russell Kirk and eventually evolved into a coalition of libertarians, neoconservatives and traditional conservatives, reached its peak with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980. Each member of the coalition contributed to modern conservatism's signature political platform of laissez-faire economics and limited government (libertarians), national security (neoconservatives) and "family values" (traditional conservatives).

In truth, this coalition has been crumbling for some time. Neoconservatives and traditional conservatives, once they were in positions of influence, were all too willing to compromise on the notion of limited government if Leviathan could be turned to do their bidding, putting them at odds with the libertarians. Eventually, the libertarian economic philosophy was subsumed by a "pro-business" platform, a collusion between well-heeled businesses and the politicians who depended on their contributions to gain and keep power, the relationship greased by millions of dollars in political contributions and legislation which favored the wealthiest and most influential business interests over others. They paid lip service to libertarian principles on economics and government, but their "crony capitalism" bore no resemblance to true libertarianism.

National security objectives became muddied by political considerations such as nation-building and the promotion of American values globally. The age of terrorism brought new challenges to the forefront, not only in terms of interventionism overseas, but also the precarious balance between national security and civil liberties, the clash between Apple and the FBI being the most current example.

Traditional conservatives exchanged persuasion for politics, hoping to create their virtuous utopia through might rather than right, thereby downgrading the heretofore transcendent Judeo-Christian ethic to just another political interest. Their goals were at odds with the pro-business cabal, for whom currying favor with potential customers took precedence over the promulgation of a conservative social agenda, and libertarians, who generally oppose using the force of government to compel "right" behavior.

Today these factions openly oppose each other, and it is hard to remember this coalition was once considered an unstoppable force in American politics. People who challenge Donald Trump's conservatism must come to grips with the fact that not even the traditional members of the conservative coalition agree on what it means to be conservative. Those coalition conservatives that remain might be able to recite which policy prescriptions qualify one as "conservative", but if asked, I doubt they could tell you what unifying principles tie those talking points together.

Conservatism as Russell Kirk envisioned it was never intended to be a checklist of policy positions, or even a political ideology. It was intended to be a philosophy for understanding and ordering the world around us. Kirk said:

Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata...For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night. (Yet conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy “change is the means of our preservation.”) A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers.

In his book, The Politics of Prudence, Kirk attempted to define the principles which undergird conservatism as a philosophy, and he believed that conservatism "can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects", a notion which is lost in today's hyper-partisan atmosphere where even one deviation from the checklist makes one an apostate - and every faction of the conservative movement has its own checklist.

This checklist mentality can have disastrous consequences, as evidenced by the budgetary crisis in the state of Louisiana, where a conservative governor's strict adherence to conservative dogma has proven to be irresponsible - imprudent. if you will.

Going forward, I believe conservatives will find their revitalization in reacquainting themselves with Russell Kirk and his original intent for conservatism, and restoring devotion to permanent things, prudence and healthy change as the hallmarks of the conservative movement in the years ahead.

As the conservative movement becomes unmoored from whatever central organizing precepts once governed it, the Republican Party, which has been the acknowledged political standard-bearer for the movement, is at a crossroads as well, regardless of whether or not Donald Trump is the nominee. While Trump has certainly been the focus of conversation during this election, I've found it more enlightening and constructive to observe the people supporting him and learn more about them and their motivations. There have been a lot of articles written on this topic, and I recommend you look them up and read them to give you a more nuanced and less polemical view of the Trump electorate.

This national election revealed a widening chasm between the party elites and the broader electorate, and while it's easy to dismiss them as evil or ignorant, as both political parties have done, it's also not accurate because, if the polls are to be believed, Trump appears to have broader support than conventional wisdom suggests, cutting across education, age, residential status and income groups.

Moreover, it's also not fair because it doesn't acknowledge the very real struggles the general public has endured as the economic, cultural and political landscape has shifted under their feet as if in an earthquake. Elites, regardless of their political stripes, are equipped to deal with such changes because they either benefit from them or have the means to shield themselves from the consequences. Those without means, however, are at the mercy of these tectonic shifts, and they are fearful, anxious and angry toward the elites who made promises they couldn't or wouldn't keep.

The research I've read on the Trump electorate has certainly opened my eyes to the crises confronting working class Americans daily, and the tragic consequences when there appears to be no solution in sight, and no one to speak for them. It has also changed my thinking about the politics which have contributed in some part to their plight. While I may disagree with their electoral choices, and while I admit there are some ugly undertones to some of what I read and hear, I've emerged from my research primarily feeling compassion for them. These are human beings in pain, and humans don't typically respond to pain in a rational manner.

What's clear is that, regardless of the electoral outcome, the GOP has to decide how to respond to the tremendous gap between the leadership and the electorate. This isn't a task they can perform within the comfortable confines of Washington, DC, either. They need to immerse themselves in the midst of "flyover country" and figure out what the people are looking for in a governing Republican Party, and once they know that, determine if that is what they want to be. As they are working to win back the trust of the rank and file, they also need to create space in the party for minorities and other non-traditional constituencies who may be philosophically compatible with the party, but find it to be largely tone deaf on the issues that matter to them. Needless to say, they have a daunting task ahead of them to build a new governing coalition.

It's not all gloom and doom for the GOP. They still control 33 state Houses and one unicameral legislature, 34 state Senates, and 31 governorships, and they have full control of 23 state governments, compared to just seven for the Democrats. In addition, they still have the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, at least for the time being. Perhaps there is something the national party can learn from its state and local counterparts. One thing, however, is certain; if they want to be a viable national party going forward, they can't stay the same. The Republican Party of the past few decades must evolve or die.

Perhaps the most significant sea change of them all, however, is the fracturing of the conservative evangelical movement which rose to its height during the Reagan presidency and was represented most visibly by the Moral Majority, established by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., the founder of Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty Christian Academy and Liberty University, my employer. At one time, the endorsement of the evangelical right was considered essential to the success of the GOP presidential nominee but, as the years have gone by, their influence has waned, and their favorites in recent elections have not even won the nomination, much less the presidency. Those losses were exacerbated by rapid and radical changes in the American legal and cultural ethic on sex and gender, disrupting mores which had been in place for millennia, and their failure to secure anything other than platitudes from elected officials on the issues they cared about just added to their frustration. Taken together, these factors marked the beginning of the end for evangelicals as a political force in America.

This has led to a lot of soul-searching by evangelicals, a term, incidentally, which not even those who are tagged as such by society agree on, particularly in an election year when it seems that the evangelical vote is divided among several candidates. Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, eschews the term for "gospel Christian", and explains how "evangelical" has been so misappropriated that it is "subverting the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Some evangelicals challenged the very notion of their extensive involvement in politics as a hindrance to their witness of the Gospel - the good news - to the world, and that ambivalence is cited by Christian millennials as a key reason why they have walked away from the activism of their predecessors. Even Cal Thomas, the author and syndicated columnist who served as the late Rev. Falwell's communications director in the Moral Majority, eventually rejected the emphasis on political rather than spiritual solutions to the nation's problems, declaring:

We've put too much faith in sending the right person to Washington. The political process is very limited in what it can do for our moral and spiritual problems. Let's not be under any illusion that anything short of the regeneration of Americans will produce a changed America.

It is into this time of introspection that Donald Trump came crashing like a bull in a china shop. Some evangelicals see him as the antithesis of Christian character and are appalled at the fact that so many self-identified evangelicals are supporting him. Russell Moore questions the veracity of their faith, saying:

At least in the Bible Belt, someone may claim to be an evangelical who's drunk right now and who hasn't been to church since someone took him to vacation Bible school back in the 1980s. And so that's not a useful category. What's useful is finding out whether or not people are actively following Christ, whether they're church attenders, for instance.

Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's flagship seminary, made an observation which applies not only to this electoral season, but to the state of American evangelicals as a whole:

We have taken comfort in the fact that there have been millions and millions of us in America. And a part of that evidence has been the last several election cycles, with the evangelical vote being in the millions. And now we're having to face the fact that, evidently, theologically-defined - defined by commitment to core evangelical values - there aren't so many millions of us as we thought.

The rapid changes in American society to which I alluded earlier had already begun to cull out those "cultural Christians" who embraced the moniker primarily because it placed them in the mainstream of popular opinion, not because of any deep, unwavering commitment to biblical principles. Some polls suggest that a key distinction between self-identified evangelicals who support Trump and those who support other candidates is regular church attendance, which validates Mr. Moore's previous statement.

But what of those evangelicals who are clearly committed Christians, but still support Trump?

These evangelicals see Mr. Trump as the strong, politically incorrect, resolute leader who will protect our religious liberties, essentially the only thing remaining to us in post-modern America. They have grown weary of those who "come from us", to paraphrase former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, or who speak the lingo but go to Washington and do nothing for us, thereby devaluing our investment of time. talent and treasure in their campaigns. While other evangelical leaders castigate them for their apparent hypocrisy - Peter Wehner says the same people who crticized President Bill Clinton for his moral failures are now supporting "a moral degenerate" in Trump - they point out that past candidates for president who garnered broad support from evangelicals were not "pure", either. David Brody, chief political correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network, sums up the dilemma:

The condemnation of Trump’s Christian supporters from within evangelical circles is troubling. Is there now a threshold of Christianity that you need to achieve to be a “real evangelical?” In other words, if you support Cruz you’re a true believer but if you go with Trump you’re not? Are “Trump Christians” going to have to wear a political Scarlet Letter? And if we’re going to go down that road, where exactly do we draw the line on morality? What about John McCain in 2008? Should evangelicals have spurned him because he had an affair with his first wife? What about Ronald Reagan? He was divorced and his wife celebrated astrology.

In effect, Donald Trump has created a rift within the evangelical community that won't go away after the election. Even if he doesn't win, the wounds within the evangelical community are deep and will take some time to heal.

The battle came to Liberty University earlier this spring, when university President Jerry Falwell, Jr., the son of the late founder, went public with his personal endorsement for Mr. Trump. As a non-profit institution, Liberty University is not permitted to endorse political candidates, although individuals may support whomever they chose. The tension the endorsement created, which had largely been kept out of the spotlight, burst into the open this week when Mark DeMoss, the chairman of the executive committee for the University's board of directors, decided to go public in the Washington Post with his objections to the endorsement, claiming to speak on behalf of several alumni, faculty and students who had contacted him to express their consternation. President Falwell expressed his disappointment with his colleague and friend, and his wife, Becki, later responded in a social media post with a stinging rebuke of Mr. DeMoss and other alumni critical of her husband's endorsement.

This disagreement is more than just a conflict between competing evangelicals. When Mark DeMoss's father died, the late Rev. Falwell took young Mark into their home, and when he graduated from Liberty University in 1984, Falwell hired him as his chief of staff. Jerry Jr. and he were classmates at Liberty and graduated together. The main academic building on campus is named for Mark DeMoss' late father, Arthur DeMoss, and a student clubhouse is named for his brother, David DeMoss, who was killed in a car accident in 1986 in his senior year as a student at Liberty. Mark DeMoss and his family are long-time contributors to Liberty University, and he has indicated that he will continue to serve on the board of directors. I mention this only to highlight the deep and potentially lasting impact of the "year of Trump" on the political evangelical movement in general, and on the family that ostensibly gave it birth decades ago.

So what is the way forward for the conservative evangelical movement?

Frankly, I will not mourn the demise of the movement as a political faction. A healthy American polity needs a reformed and revitalized conservative movement and Republican Party to compete in the marketplace of ideas. The gospel of Jesus Christ, however, does not need politics to accomplish the Great Commission - period.

Should Christians be engaged in the political process? By all means. "The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it" (Psalm 24:1), and that includes government and politics. As individual citizens, we should be well informed about the candidates, we should vote according to our beliefs, and we should pray for all who ascend to a position of leadership, even if we didn't vote for them, so they may rule as the Lord intended. While rulers in Biblical times were not elected, the Bible is not silent on the character we should seek in our rulers - "But select capable men from all the people--men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain--and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens" (Exodus 18:21).

Some of us may be called to public service, as Joseph, Deborah, Daniel and David were, and it is an honor and privilege for me as an educator to help prepare those young men and women here at Liberty University upon whom God has placed that calling.

Lord Acton's famous quote, however, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely", should be a warning to Christians about the dangers of becoming a political interest group. The prime directive of politics is power; if a political entity cannot obtain or hold power, then it is ineffective and has no reason to exist in its ineffective form. This is where the conservative movement and the GOP find themselves today.

Christianity, however, should never seek power as a tool with which to advance itself. It's bad enough that the God-sized, life-saving and everlasting message of salvation through Jesus Christ is being shoehorned into a box that not only constricts its reach, but has only enough room for those who agree with the political message therein. When the Gospel is relegated to a political faction, the good news is corrupted because the faction does not seek salvation for all mankind, but power for some.

I believe in an intentional God, and I am absolutely certain that He's not looking at Donald Trump and exclaiming, "Well, I didn't see him coming!" Jesus assures us that "My Father is always working, and so am I." Even before the "year of Trump", I indicated that Christianity in America would undergo a culling of the ranks as social changes compelled us to choose between the "The Earthly City" and the "City of God", to quote St. Augustine. That process is accelerating with the rise of Donald Trump, and what emerges from it, I believe, will be a faithful, sacrificial remnant of believers, less concerned with being a dominant cultural and political force in America and more concerned with winning as many souls as possible to inhabit the City of God. As with Gideon's army, once the Lord winnows us down to the ones who truly love and obey Him, the victory which follows will bring Him, and Him alone, the glory.

The sound of the Master's voice

I’m old enough to claim the Beatles as part of my childhood soundtrack, so I was intrigued by the story of how the surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr, produced Now and Then, dubbed “the last Beatles song” because it blends their music with the vocals and instrumentals of their late bandmates, John Lennon and George Harrison.

What most fascinated me was the technology they used on John’s demo cassette tape to separate his vocals from the piano track that obscured them and made them unusable until now. In 1995, when they first tried to use the “lo-fi, 40-something-year-old cassette recording” to create the song, George Harrison described it as “rubbish,” preceding that declaration with an expletive emphasizing just how bad it was. It took famed director Peter Jackson, with artificial intelligence (AI) extraction technology he used on a previous Beatles documentary series, Get Back, to uncover John’s vocals so they could be heard clearly. Paul McCartney spoke of how moving it was for him to hear his old friend and bandmate’s voice once again:

"They said this is the sound of John's voice. A few seconds later or however long it took, and there it was: John's voice, crystal clear. It was quite emotional."

Ringo Starr recounted, "Since Peter took John off and gave him his own track, it was like John's there, you know? It was far out."

Hearing the original cassette recording followed by the extracted audio was a revelation. John Lennon’s unmistakable high baritone was as clear as if he had been recorded in a modern studio. It was as if the mud and dirt were removed from a rock to reveal a gold nugget.

As I followed this story, I thought how analogous it was to the spiritual journey millions of Americans are undertaking if the polls and studies are to be believed. There has been and continues to be a lot of talk about deconstruction in the faith context. While this philosophical methodology has become the description of a modern movement that some say is damaging to Christianity, it’s 1) not unique to issues of spirituality, 2) not new, and 3) entirely biblical. Just as the John Lennon track needed to undergo a process of extraction for his voice to be clearly heard, our faith practices and traditions sometimes must be disassembled and the obscuring elements removed to get to the one true Jesus.

Despite its current association with Christianity, deconstruction is applied in multiple contexts outside spirituality, whether as a philosophical, literary, linguistic, or cultural methodology. While it is extraordinarily complex in definition and application, deconstruction can be described simply as analyzing something by breaking down its elements and examining them critically. As the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website says, “most of us have run into it by now even if we didn't realize it.” The person who first used the term to describe their critical reevaluation of their faith beliefs happened to be studying the work of Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher credited with the development of deconstruction.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” What we’re calling deconstruction today was called Reformation back in the day. The introduction of the printing press and the expanded availability of the Scriptures to the laity, along with Martin Luther’s protestations against the orthodoxy of the Roman Catholic Church, led to one of the most significant religious shifts in world history and stripped away the cultural and institutional barriers between Christ and the common man, in much the same way as the early church, through the council at Jerusalem, removed Judaism’s strictures that placed a rabbinical hierarchy in the path between believers, particularly Gentiles, and their Lord:

After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” (Acts 15:7-11)

There is no more powerful metaphor for the removal of all obstacles between us and our Lord and Savior than what occurred immediately after Christ’s death on the cross:

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:50-54)

Certainly, the appearance the Sunday after Jesus’ crucifixion of formerly dead holy people in the streets of Jerusalem, especially after Jesus Himself was rumored to have risen from the dead, had a few folks a little freaked out! However, we mustn’t miss the significance of the veil being torn from top to bottom at the moment of his death. This veil was a heavy and elaborately adorned barrier that separated the Holy of Holies, an ornately decorated chamber, from the rest of the Temple. The Holy of Holies hosted the Ark of the Covenant, where the Jewish faithful believed the Spirit of the Lord resided since the Exodus from Egypt. The Holy of Holies was accessed only by the High Priest on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to offer the most important sacrifice of the year.

However, with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as the substitutionary atonement for our sins, past, present, and future, the need for a veil separating us from the presence of the Lord and a high priest as an intercessor on our behalf evaporated. As Paul writes in Hebrews, “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Hebrews 10:14). And if the significance of the tearing of the veil wasn’t clear, Paul stated it emphatically:

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 19:22)

In short, even the early church in the New Testament underwent a process of deconstruction to determine what was essential to Christianity and what wasn’t, and this was central to the teachings of the apostles as they planted churches amid varying power structures, cultures, and customs throughout the known world.

Many in the faith community are critical of deconstruction because some Christians who go through the process choose to leave the church. Such an outcome is inevitable, particularly if the individual has been grievously wounded within the church; not everyone who deconstructs their faith can reassemble the right pieces and restore their devotion. I pray they can find their way back to Jesus without the obstacles placed in their path by institutions, cultures, and people. However, I see many more people in a deconstruction process who are rediscovering Jesus, minus the baggage with which American Christendom has burdened Him.

I am one of those people, and it has deepened my faith, not diminished it. I prefer the term disenculturation to deconstruction, but whatever one calls it, the process of extracting the detritus of American culture to reveal Jesus, standing alone and above all things, is life-giving if you humble yourself enough to critically examine your upbringing and peer groups and how they conflated your faith with beliefs and practices that have nothing to do with Him.

I am probably on my third journey of deconstruction, to be honest. There is my initial profession of faith at the age of nine, a belief that was challenged and fell apart in my college years because I lacked the spiritual maturity or the discipline of a consistent faith practice in my younger years. My church background was somewhat mongrelized, with the homogenous Protestant Sunday services of military chapels interspersed with the black Baptist church services we attended in my mother’s hometown of Lake Charles, Louisiana, when my father was on unaccompanied tours of duty with the U.S. Air Force. That is the church where my great-grandparents and grandparents served as deacons and deaconesses and where I accepted Christ and was baptized. However, our chapel attendance waxed and waned when we were at my father’s various duty stations, so we weren’t immersed in a church culture.

Looking back, I recognize that while I knew and understood the salvation story of Jesus Christ, my motivation for becoming a Christian was based more on my trust in my family and their beliefs than a rock-solid personal assurance in Jesus. When a friend in college who wasn’t raised a Christian challenged me with a question of why my family’s gift of faith, conceived in love, was somehow more valid than what his family taught him, I had no answer, and I walked away from the church, confused and lost.

I recall that Jesus was still with me, and I never renounced my belief. I just stopped practicing my faith and became quite cynical about the shortcomings of those I witnessed who were mean-spirited, licentious, political, or exclusionary while loudly proclaiming to be Christians.

My 2nd deconstruction occurred after my grandfather’s unexpected passing in 1992. I credited him with my salvation, and his death rocked me more than I anticipated, even though a literal and personal distance had come between us over the years. My travels with the Air Force kept me from my family in Louisiana, and I was starting my own family. Also, I was more often at odds with my grandfather over politics, race, and his devaluing of my “book learning,” which he didn’t think equated to real work. We had a rapprochement near the end of his life, and he spoke to me like a man leaving instructions before he passed, although he didn’t know he was sick at the time.

After he died, I needed assurance that there was indeed life after death, and I went back to the church, determined to find an anchor for my faith. I found it in the resurrection of Jesus, specifically my conclusion that it was a historical fact and not a fable. Once my mind grasped the veracity and enormity of that event, I rededicated myself to Jesus and returned to the church, ready to be discipled and grow in my faith. My wife, who grew up Catholic in her home country of France but became agnostic as her family drifted away from church, came to faith as I rediscovered mine.

My wife and I gravitated toward the Willow Creek contemporary style of worship and ministry, and we were not wedded to a specific denomination. However, two churches where I revived and refined my faith happened to be affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Because of that affiliation, my presidential appointment to the Bush Administration, and the culturally conservative leanings of the congregations at the nondenominational churches we attended, my faith was infused with the cultural and political conservatism prevalent in a large segment of evangelical Christianity. My decisions to run for public office, become a political party activist, begin a blog on political and cultural matters, and write a book that documented my faith and political journeys as one led to an accumulation of baggage that improperly influenced my faith and relegated it to a status of first among equals among my priorities.

This amalgamation of conservative politics and faith eventually led me to Liberty University, a destination I didn’t expect since I wasn’t an academic but entirely appropriate for someone of my inclination at that time, as it turned out. Other circumstances also steered me in that direction, unemployment chief among them, but little did I know that my current journey of deconstruction, or disenculturation, would begin there.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with my personal story, although it illustrates how one constantly examines one’s faith to ensure that it is only and all about Jesus, so I’ll be brief about my current state. The past 12 years have brought me closer to a purity of faith than ever. The total immersion in a politically charged faith culture clashed with what I observed and experienced as an elder in a small church filled with people broken by life, sometimes by other churches; my work in the community with hurting people and families; and my extraordinary health challenges, and I was deeply humbled as a result. Being stripped of pride and certainty regarding my life and worldview led me to surrender to God in a way I never had before.

Since then, He’s been leading me back to Him and helping me discard what’s not of Him, and I am so much lighter without the baggage I was carrying!

I said earlier that deconstruction is neither new nor confined to spiritual matters and is also entirely biblical. We are never asked to accept what we are told without question but are encouraged to examine everything and trust the Holy Spirit within us to show us the truth. The encounter Paul had with the Jews in Berea illustrates this:

Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. (Acts 17:11-12)

Furthermore, the Scriptures tell us:

Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. (Lamentations 3:40)

But test everything; hold fast what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)

Beloved ones, that’s faith deconstruction in a nutshell. Contrary to the naysayers who believe it threatens the church, I believe it is the Lord’s way of reforming the church into His bride. History proves that the church strays when it is proximate to power and popular influences, and a culling of the ranks is necessary to bring it back to God’s purposes and not those of man. To that end, the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John are faithful:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (John 15:1-8)

Listen to old assumptions with fresh ears and apply the discernment of the Holy Spirit to what you hear. You’ll be amazed as the noise clears, and you hear the unmistakable sound of the Master’s voice.

Quenching the Holy Spirit

Recently, noted political commentator, opinion writer, author, and attorney David French announced he was leaving the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) because of what it has become since it was purchased by Elon Musk a little over a year ago. In the interest of full disclosure, while I’m not nearly as well-known as David, I left Twitter last year after 14 years because I couldn’t spend more than three minutes at a time on the platform without becoming frustrated with the nastiness, falsehoods, and unmoderated content and behavior that seemed to surge after Musk’s takeover. His vision of free speech seems to be allowing anyone to say anything, no matter how untrue, unsafe, or vile, unless he finds it insulting or offensive, in which case he’s quick to ban the offending party.

Many other Christian influencers are also leaving X behind. I understand David’s actions, and the reaction of many on his feed essentially validated why he was leaving.

However, what was more disturbing to me and other observers was the identity of far too many of the angry and vitriolic respondents, whose profiles often included, among other descriptors, “Christian,” “Christ-follower,” or a similar reference to Jesus or the Christian faith. As I struggled to reconcile their claimed identity with their words and actions, a question came to mind that bears discussing.

However, before I get to the question, let me set the stage for the uninitiated.

I first learned of David French from two friends of mine, Orit Kwasman (née Sklar) and Ruth Malhotra, who, as students, sued Georgia Tech for violating their First Amendment rights to free speech and religious liberty. David was the lead counsel on that case, which resulted in a resounding victory for his clients. He devoted his legal career to religious liberty cases until he stepped away in 2005 to serve as a judge advocate in the U.S. Army Reserve. He was deployed to Iraq in 2007 and returned a decorated Army officer with a Bronze Star. He became a writer and political commentator and briefly considered running for president in 2016 as an independent to counter the rise of the eventual Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

Today, David is probably known to most people as a columnist for the New York Times, which invited him to join their opinion staff and offer a divergent perspective from others on the staff and most of their readers. That perspective is about more than him being a constitutional conservative, a term I use to distinguish him and other traditional center-right individuals from whatever political philosophy this populist movement led by Donald Trump represents. David is also a faithful and outspoken evangelical Christian, which makes the attacks against him more baffling, at least to those outside the bubble of faith and politics in which his critics reside.

I can remember a time when an attorney with an extensive record of legal victories for religious liberty and conservative causes, a veteran with decorated military service in a war zone, and bonafide evangelical Christian credentials would have been held up as an exemplar of Republican Party excellence. Add to that a wife, Nancy Anderson French, an accomplished professional in her own right as a journalist and writer, and three children, one adopted from Ethiopia, and you have the picture-perfect family for a campaign brochure.

However, I don’t want that statement about them to come across as cynical. In my few interactions with them on social media, where we follow each other, I’ve found them to be authentic, delightful, and kind. I would enjoy getting together with them for dinners and cookouts, except for the nearly 500 miles and eight-hour drive separating their home in Tennessee from ours in Virginia! I only bring up how perfect a political family they would have been in times past to illustrate how dark the night has become in the American public square.

The darkness descended on the French family after he spoke out against Donald Trump as he pursued the Republican nomination for president in 2015. What happened to David and a few others back then was just the beginning of what is now a depressingly normal reaction to anyone who opposes Trump. The vulgarity, hatred, and violence of these attacks were unprecedented to most of us who participated in the political process. David wrote about it at the time, and he realized he was witnessing a paradigm shift in our political discourse, even as others tried to play it off as business as usual:

The misery is compounded when longtime friends and allies dismiss my experiences and the experiences of my colleagues as nothing more than the normal cost of public advocacy. It’s not. I have contributed to National Review for more than ten years now, and have been deeply involved in many of America’s most emotional culture-war battles for more than 20. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.

Moreover, he was frustrated, as are many of my friends who are on the receiving end of a sustained flow of personal invective, at the accusation that their exposure of these incendiary attacks was a way for them to curry favor with the elite class, or to increase their notoriety:

I have to laugh when people accuse me of opposing Trump because it somehow makes me rich, or because I’m currying favors with guests at the “elite” cocktail parties that I never actually attend. I oppose Trump not just because he’s an ignorant demagogue and a naked political opportunist, but also because bigotry and intimidation cling to his campaign. Every campaign attracts its share of fools, cranks, and crazies. But Trump’s candidacy has weaponized them. Every harassing tweet and every violent threat is like a voice whispering in my ear, telling me to do all that I can to oppose a movement that breeds and exploits such reckless hate.

Other evangelical Christians have also paid the price for speaking out against Trump, whose lust for power and attention and rejection of the need for repentance stand in stark contrast to the nature of Jesus Christ, or calling attention to the un-Christian words and actions of their fellow Christians.

A dear long-time friend with a national public profile as an evangelical Christian educator, writer, and commentator, Karen Swallow Prior, says, “Since 2015, I have been publicly slandered, harassed, and trolled by a handful of pastors in my denomination.” She was eventually driven away from the vocation to which she had dedicated her life, teaching young people to find the Good, True, and Beautiful of the Lord in literature:

Not only is 58 the worst age to be unemployed, but being unemployed in academia is even worse, and being unemployed in the field of English in this culture-wars-climate is worst of all. (If you don’t believe that, just google the news headlines.)

Beth Moore was an esteemed women’s ministry Bible teacher in the Southern Baptist denomination for decades until she dared to speak out on Twitter against Trump’s recorded comments behind the scenes from Access Hollywood endorsing sexual assault, a crime committed against her repeatedly as a child by her own father. The reaction was swift and condemnatory to the point of questioning her commitment to the pro-life political position fundamental to evangelical Christianity and even the veracity of her faith, as she recounts in her book, All My Knotted Up Life: A Memoir:

But when pro-Christian starts to look less and less like Christ, something’s gone off the rails. It was, to me, like they were under a spell. Like someone spiked their iced tea. I knew many of these people and no longer recognized them nor them me. What happened immediately following those tweets was the psychological equivalent of standing in front of a firing squad bereft of the benefit of dying.

She left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021, even as it struggled with revelations of decades of rampant sexual abuse and harassment in its ranks and the coverups committed by people in authority to keep the abuses secret. Historian Kate Bowler wrote:

“Ms. Moore is a deeply trusted voice across the liberal-conservative divide, and has always been able to communicate a deep faithfulness to her tradition without having to follow the Southern Baptist’s scramble to make Trump spiritually respectable. The Southern Baptists have lost a powerful champion in a time in which their public witness has already been significantly weakened.”

Whether it’s overlooking or excusing Trump’s character, displaying or downplaying racism, misogyny, and nativism, committing or hiding clergy sex abuse, or dehumanizing political opponents or those not in the inner circle, any Christian public figure who dares to point out the cognitive dissonance and the damage to the Christian witness of these behaviors is guaranteed to suffer an immediate and ferocious backlash from their fellow believers. The irony is that these are the same people who declared in 1998, amid President Clinton’s infidelity and sexual abuse of an intern, that character was essential to public service:

We urge all Americans to embrace and act on the conviction that character does count in public office, and to elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.

I’ve said in the past that while I might be dismayed by the behavior of non-Christians, I don’t have expectations of them, “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world” (1 John 2:16).

However, we who profess to be saved by the blood of Jesus Christ are told by the apostle John in the passage of Scripture immediately preceding the previous one, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). The apostle Peter admonishes us, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14). Jesus’ brother James is even more direct:

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. (James 4:4)

The apostles could not conceive of someone saved in Christ spewing hate:

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. (James 3:9-12)

If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21)

If we are truly transformed, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). When we accept Christ, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us and, as we mature in our faith, brings forth “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” ( Galatians 5:22-23).

The Lord promised us the Holy Spirit before the time of Christ, telling us:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as a “Helper,” the “Spirit of truth” from whom we will “receive power” (John 14:15-17; Acts 1:8). James describes the Holy Spirit as wisdom from above, given to all who ask for it:

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. (James 3:17)

Since all who come to faith in Christ are given the Holy Spirit, our thoughts, words, and actions should increasingly reflect His nature as we mature. Especially when we feel compelled to correct a fellow Christian, we are called to do so with humility, not puffing ourselves up but acknowledging our own fallibility and equality with our brother or sister as we gently counsel them:

You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. (Romans 14:10)

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:1-2).

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:5)

When Jesus confronted the men who wanted to stone the adulterous woman, he was illustrating the very human tendency to be fixated on the faults of others while blindly ignoring our own. This was the point of the plank if you will, and the lesson is clear. If we rid ourselves of the pride and hypocrisy that generally accompanies condemnation, our heart for others expands because we are authentic and humble about our own struggles.

We constantly work to dislodge the plank from our own eye as we “press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called” us (Philippians 3:14). This ongoing and lifelong process of sanctification, or becoming more like Christ, should leave us with no time for self-righteousness or judgment, but our increased self-awareness should make us ever more charitable toward others and their struggles. We become allies in the journey to sanctification rather than enemies pointing out the other’s faults while ignoring our own.

My friend Karen made some eye-opening observations about some of her public detractors, whose lack of self-awareness is breathtaking:

One of these men has since been arrested for charges related to drug abuse and domestic violence. Another—who declaimed me by name from the floor of a national convention—was later arrested for domestic assault. Another is a self-admitted wife abuser who has merely changed the targets of his abuse and called it repentance. At this point, I’ve stopped counting. Abusers are going to abuse. No way around that. My abuse is so little compared to what too many have gone through. But what cannot be abided or excused is the supposedly “good, godly” leaders who have paid too much attention to such abusers for too long and given their voices any hearing at all.

Paul’s warning in Galatians 6:7 comes to mind; “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

So, after all that stage-setting, I’m ready to return to the question that these rageful responses engendered in me.

What have they done to quench the Holy Spirit within them?

Based on what the apostles declared in the Scriptures, some would conclude that the Holy Spirit is not in them. I am not inclined to do that. It is not my role to determine whether a person has repented and invited Jesus to be their Lord and Savior. That is between them and God; if they say they are Christian, I take them at their word.

As I prepared this article, I was intrigued to learn that before Christ, a person could be filled with the Holy Spirit for an event or a season. However, He could also depart from them, as He did many times in the Old Testament. The good news of Christ is that once we accept Him and the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, He dwells with us forever and never forsakes us. That’s a beautiful thing, and it should lead us to live in gratitude to God and grace to others as we share the gift we’ve received. So where is the Holy Spirit when Christians behave un-Christianly?

1 Thessalonians 5:19 warns us, “Do not quench the Spirit.” In this context, “quench” describes extinguishing a flame or stifling or suppressing a feeling. Paul also says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30). We are assured of our salvation, and it can’t be taken from us, but we can bring sorrow to the Holy Spirit or suppress the good that comes from His presence within us.

One of the agents of suppression is discontent.

Despite the eternal assurance we have in Jesus, many American Christians are deeply discontented with their status in life. They believe their privileged status in America has diminished, and they perceive adversarial forces intend to push them to the fringes of a society where they once held dominion. I’ve written about how eloquently Dr. Prior described the evangelical pursuit of empire in her book, "The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. The perception that the prominence of evangelical Christian culture was shrinking led to the creation of the Moral Majority in 1980, which spurred the creation of an entire subculture of institutions and movements determined to “take back” the nation for Jesus Christ.

A question for another time is why we think we need to “take it back” when it’s already His, and always has been, and always will be. He declared before giving us His parting instructions to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18) that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). Could it be that the dominion they seek is not that of Christ, who wants us to win souls to Him through service, sacrifice, and love, but instead of man, for whom dominion means control and supremacy over others?

Into this milieu of an empire lost comes a man, unlike the others who promised evangelical Christians political and cultural changes that didn’t come to pass. This man, seething with grievance, rage, and retribution, and who characterizes the current state of America as “carnage,” taps into the discontent of the evangelical electorate and promises to “make America great again.” The Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Survey reveals that most evangelicals “preferred a presidential candidate who could ‘protect and preserve American culture and the American way of life’ over one who could manage the economy.”

The dominionists of the evangelical community define “American culture and the American way of life” as one where evangelical political and cultural priorities predominate. They now have their warrior, a blunt instrument to wield against all who aggrieved them or siphoned off their influence, and anyone who speaks out against this man is attacked as an enemy of Christendom. If those critics profess to be Christians, they are guilty of heresy for rebuking their King Cyrus, and a particularly venomous scorn is heaped upon them.

In The Art of Divine Contentment, Thomas Watson wrote, “Contentment lies within a man, in the heart, and the way to be comfortable is not by having our barns filled, but our mind quiet.” The apostle Paul said:

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:12-13)

Paul found contentment through faith in Jesus Christ regardless of his circumstances. Discontent diminishes faith, and a lack of faith can quench the Holy Spirit and allow resentment and retaliation against the sources of our discontent to overtake us.

The other prevalent quenching agent is pride, which brokers no criticism and excoriates critics.

A spirit of pride is a close cousin of the passion for empire and the discontent it breeds and makes no allowance for the airing of “dirty laundry.” Even Christian leaders I would consider measured and thoughtful in their public personas take umbrage to Christian influencers like David French, Beth Moore, Russell Moore (no relation to Beth!), and Karen Swallow Prior publicly calling out scandals and moral failings in the church. If they do so from a secular platform, most of which evangelicals view with suspicion, if not outright hostility, the rage is palpable.

All but one of the individuals I’ve mentioned have written opinion pieces for the New York Times on the state of modern American evangelical Christianity. Beth Moore has been the subject of many news articles and opinion pieces in the Times as a dissenter of Trump and the Southern Baptist Convention because it mishandled the clergy sexual abuse scandal and made missteps in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and the national conversation it stimulated on the continuing racial divide in America. Whatever the circumstances that landed them in the pages of the Times, they have been on the receiving end of many evangelicals’ fury as if they had abandoned the faith and launched their attacks on American Christianity from the enemy’s camp.

The truth is that their attempts to work within evangelical institutions and with evangelical leaders to address these pressing moral issues were privately and often publicly rebuffed. The prevailing response of the evangelical community to what David Brooks, a political and cultural commentator for the New York Times, describes as “many of the raw wounds that already existed in parts of the white evangelical world: misogyny, racism, racial obliviousness, celebrity worship, resentment and the willingness to sacrifice principle for power” is to keep things hidden, deflect attention from them, or attack the messengers rather than confront these issues transparently, honestly, and with humility.

Brooks summed up the state of affairs in evangelical Christianity for those who strive to steer it back to Solus Christus - in Christ alone:

Of course there is a lot of division across many parts of American society. But for evangelicals, who have dedicated their lives to Jesus, the problem is deeper. Christians are supposed to believe in the spiritual unity of the church. While differing over politics and other secondary matters, they are in theory supposed to be unified by their shared first love — as brothers and sisters in Christ. Their common devotion is supposed to bring out the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,” say the opening lines of a famous Christian song commonly known as “By Our Love.” In its chorus it proclaims, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.” The world envisioned by that song seems very far away right now. The bitter recriminations have caused some believers to wonder if the whole religion is a crock.

There is an eternal consequence to this quenching of the Holy Spirit, and it’s reflected in the last sentence of Brooks’ statement. If we who believe wonder whether our faith is nonsense, then our witness is meaningless, and we have no hope of making disciples of non-believers, which is the primary purpose for the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts1:8)

Holding out for a Hero

I was watching a trailer for the upcoming film The Marvels and remarking to my daughter how much I'm looking forward to it. I have had a fascination for superheroes since childhood, and I’ve particularly enjoyed watching them come to life in the movies and on television. Judging from social media, I may be one of the few men in the world who enjoyed the 2019 Captain Marvel movie, so I’m very interested in seeing her story continue.

However, it seems that not many people share my enthusiasm for the upcoming film. Box-office projections are placing The Marvels at the low end of a typical opening weekend for a Marvel film. The film’s focal point, Captain Marvel, portrayed by Brie Larson, seems to draw the ire of many fans, critics, and even people who’ve never seen her in the role but dislike what they think she represents. As one comic features writer put it:

Captain Marvel is the definition of strength in the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe]. However, trolls have criticized her left and right, primarily because she comes off as arrogant and a bad fit among characters that they've known for years. There are others who hate her for completely irrational reasons.

I should say right up front that I’m not the best person to seek out for an incisive critical review of a movie or TV show. If it deeply moves me, I’ll say as much, but I don’t have my critic’s antenna deployed and fine-tuned when I watch something. I’m just looking to be entertained, and if my family’s assessment means anything, that’s not a high bar to clear! I would hate to be a critic whose job is to find the strengths and flaws in a production; I want to enjoy the time I spend in a movie theater or sitting in my media room in front of the TV screen, and that means suspending my critical faculties for a couple of hours.

That said, I have a soft spot for superheroes who fight for the poor, oppressed, and underrepresented, and if they rose from those ranks, I’m even more predisposed to giving them the benefit of the doubt.

For example, I thought the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel was delightful. Iman Vellani played the main character with all the energy, spunk, and wide-eyed amazement of a teenage girl who fangirls superheroes and suddenly becomes one.

What made the series for me, aside from Vellani’s endearing portrayal of Kamala Khan, was how it introduced its audience to the Pakistani-American community and the history of their land of origin. It reminded me of the hope embodied in the American story for so many who come here to realize their dreams or escape the horrors of their home countries. I enjoyed how Kamala was a typical American teenager but was also part of another culture at home that was normal to her but rarely seen by most of us. I marveled, pun fully intended, at how the Pakistani culture adds to the richness of America and was reminded that this is a benefit accrued to our nation by all immigrants who come here. America has always prided itself on being a nation bound together not by ethnicity, language, or land but by a creed - “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator” - and that under that creed resides the hopes and dreams of countless tribes, peoples, nations, and tongues.

I also learned more about Pakistani history than I ever thought possible from a Marvel TV series. I was aware that the British divided the Indian subcontinent they had colonized into the nations of India and Pakistan. However, I didn’t understand the scope and trauma of what the Pakistanis call Partition, which “caused large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration between the two dominions.”

It was the largest mass migration in human history, and its portrayal in Ms. Marvel led me to read more about it. It is no exaggeration to describe it as a human tragedy on a massive scale, as historian and writer William Dalrymple recounts:

By 1948, as the great migration drew to a close, more than fifteen million people had been uprooted, and between one and two million were dead. The comparison with the death camps is not so far-fetched as it may seem. Partition is central to modern identity in the Indian subcontinent, as the Holocaust is to identity among Jews, branded painfully onto the regional consciousness by memories of almost unimaginable violence.

Art expressed in movies and TV shows can tell us stories that expand our world. I’m old enough to remember the impact of the Roots TV series on America, and there are other examples of how visual portrayals of history and culture help to scale barriers between and increase our awareness of people otherwise unknown to us. Superhero movies and TV shows can be powerful vehicles for representation and universalizing the human experience.

I wrote previously that I understood the appeal of Black Panther and Wonder Woman to the people groups they represented because of how they had been previously portrayed in popular culture throughout history, rarely as heroes:

More telling, however, has been the groundswell of pride the movie has engendered in the black community here in America, in Africa, and around the world…I confess the cultural impact of Black Panther has impressed me greatly.

The only thing comparable that I’ve seen is the reaction last year to one of 2017’s blockbuster films, DC Comics’ Wonder Woman, and it mirrors the response to Black Panther in character if not in scope, although Wonder Woman broke some new ground of its own at the box office as well. In fact, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and men who exploit their position or strength in a relationship to treat women poorly arose in the same year that Wonder Woman took the world by storm.

Essentially, these works of entertainment represent a validation of the people groups they represent, portraying them in ways that elevate them in a world that has too often put them down.

Even the Amazon Prime superhero movie Samaritan, panned by critics, captured my attention because of its blue-collar protagonist, played by Sylvester Stallone, using his considerable strength and durability to serve people who lived hard lives and had no one to look out for them.

However, one Amazon Prime series I will not watch is The Boys, based on a comic book of the same name. The powered beings who inhabit this world are corrupt and megalomaniacal, none more so than their leader, the Homelander, the most powerful of The Seven, a group of corporately funded superhumans. The series has been a success for Amazon and bred a couple of spinoffs, including the recent Gen V, which has already been greenlit for a second season. I have no interest in any of them, but many people do. I have the same enmity toward the movie Brightburn, which takes the Superman origin story and turns it into a nightmare with a superpowered alien child wreaking murderous havoc on the small Kansas town where he was found and adopted. As far as this film is concerned, we’re not in Smallville anymore.

A recent article examining the failures of recent superhero movies to capture audiences like Marvel Studios did in its heyday suggested that the evil superhuman genre holds more appeal to millennials and Generation Z than the traditional superhero film. I don’t believe that accounts entirely for what the industry calls “superhero fatigue,” but it led me to ponder why they would be attracted to these violent and nihilistic superhumans.

I concluded that we live in a dark and cynical age and these movies and TV shows reflect the pessimism of younger generations about life and the future. They blame older generations and existing institutions for the state of the world and perceive them as using power and influence to their benefit and at the expense of others. This tracks with the portrayals in these evil superhuman shows of powerful beings fulfilling their selfish desires regardless of the impact on the less powerful.

This distrust of great power is captured in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and its sequel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which are notable to me because of Henry Cavill’s excellent portrayal of Superman but also caused a lot of debate over their gloomier take on the traditional Superman story. In many respects, Man of Steel is as much a reflection of the generation in which it was created as Superman: The Movie is of my generation and those which preceded it. The version of Superman that the late Christopher Reeve played is the hopeful, optimistic, and revered superhero I remember from childhood, the embodiment of goodness and morality or, as the old TV show and Reeve himself said in the movie, “truth, justice, and the American Way.” Later iterations of that slogan dropped the last part, but that is another conversation altogether!

That said, Snyder and Cavill’s Superman is an accurate reflection of the 21st century’s attitudes toward influential people and institutions. The younger generations have witnessed the global breakdown of a shared moral order and the abuse of power and influence to feed the voracious appetites of the strong while the weak suffer. They have witnessed terror inflicted on non-combatants, corruption in corporate boardrooms and the citadels of government, and sexual abuse by the shepherds of our faith, and they perceive nothing is being done about any of it. The arrival of an all-powerful being from an alien culture would probably cause great fear and suspicion in an environment such as this. As Lawrence Fishburne’s Perry White said in Man of Steel in response to Lois Lane’s decision to quash her story about a mysterious superhuman being performing good deeds in secret, “Can you imagine how people on this planet would react if they knew there was someone like this out there?"

Batman v. Superman features a worldwide debate over the presence of Superman and whether it is wise for him to operate unchecked, given his immense power. Lex Luthor, Superman’s greatest earthly nemesis in comic book folklore, and even Bruce Wayne, the Batman, portrayed by Ben Affleck in the film, were mistrustful of Superman’s power. Wayne says of Superman:

He has the power to wipe out the entire human race, and if we believe there’s even a one percent chance that he is our enemy we have to take it as an absolute certainty… and we have to destroy him.

Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor quotes the Epicurean Paradox when he declares to Superman:

I've figured it out way back, if God is all powerful, He cannot be all good. And if He's all good then He cannot be all powerful. And neither can you be.

Unlike many of my generation who longed for the Big Blue Boy Scout that everyone adored, I thought this examination of Superman through the lens of an untrusting world was pretty much on the nose for our times.

For his part, Cavill’s Superman always sought to do the right thing, even if it was not always well executed. When he finally confronted the reporter chasing him around the globe, he threatened to disappear. However, Lois Lane called his bluff, saying, “The only way you could disappear for good is to stop helping people altogether, and I sense that's not an option for you.” The movies that comprised the Snyderverse, as Zack Snyder’s portrayal of DC Comics’ superheroes came to be known, didn’t modify the characters' personalities as much as they placed them in today’s world and suggested how we might respond to them and them to us.

The cynicism toward superheroes manifests not just in the deconstruction of the “good superhero” mythology but also in the hostile response toward the “woke” superhero that some segments of the population perceive in stories and representations like The Marvels, Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and others. For the record, I dislike the term “woke” in the modern vernacular. However, I will use it here in the context that it’s typically offered, even though I think it’s wrong and dishonors its originators and their history.

Ironically, anyone who knows the history of Superman, the character widely credited with popularizing the superhero genre, would see elements of “wokeness” in the comic books of the late 1930s and early 1940s as he fought against corrupt corporations, greedy landlords, and crooked politicians on behalf of the average citizen. Action Comics #1, which introduced Superman to the world, described him as a “champion of the oppressed, the physical marvel who had sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need.” The early evidence of Superman as a purveyor of social justice is voluminous and persuasive. If the stories written about him from the beginning were read today within a modern construct, I’ve no doubt they’d be tossed into the bonfire alongside the books about black history and the Holocaust.

However, I am drawn to superheroes precisely because they use their power to help the powerless and bring righteousness and justice to the world. I sometimes wonder what the “anti-woke” crowd wants from their all-powerful beings if not to “comfort us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:4) and bring “down the mighty from their thrones and” exalt “those of humble estate” (Luke 1:52).

Ultimately, I believe my love of the superhero genre and my inability to buy into either the cynicism of the evil superhuman stories or the exclusion of the “anti-woke” comes from my devotion to the only true superhero, the God who came to earth as a man, Jesus Christ. He is undoubtedly a being of universal power that transcends space and time:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1: 1-3)

Despite His infinite power and presence, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14) and lived and died as one of us. During His life, he made no doubt as to his favor toward the downtrodden:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

His power was evident in miracles of healing and raising people from the dead, but He exhibited His greatest superpower early in His ministry:

Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven." At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, "This fellow is blaspheming!" Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, "Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, `Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, `Get up and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...." Then he said to the paralytic, "Get up, take your mat and go home." And the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to men. (Matthew 9:1-8)

Despite his external human frailty, He made it clear who He really was - “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58) - and when His enemies sent their troops to capture Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, He forbade his disciples from fighting them, declaring:

“Put your sword back in its place,”Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matthew 26:52-54)

When evil believed it prevailed over the hero, He burst out of the grave and announced to the world that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). He could well use His power to destroy us with a mere thought. However, He willingly surrendered His power for us:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

He even forgave us for murdering Him!

Our hero promises to return one day to set everything right, but not before everyone has a chance to come to His side:

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

Thankfully, Jesus is not the hero we deserve because we fall short of His glory, but He is the hero we need because He loves us and wants us to “have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

Christian Narcissism

As a long-time follower of politics, I was intrigued by the plea deals the Fulton County District Attorney’s office struck recently with some of the defendants in the 2020 Georgia election interference case. Jenna Ellis, an attorney who exceeded her allotted 15 minutes of fame as an election denier, stood out for her statement of remorse, which was not required as part of her deal. Reading her statement in court, she began by stating:

“As an attorney who is also a Christian, I take my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously and I endeavor to be a person of sound moral and ethical character in all of my dealings.”

In an article about how she eventually decided to plead guilty, she was quoted months earlier regarding her disillusionment with Donald Trump:

“I simply can’t support him for elected office again...Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”

I’ve known of Ms. Ellis since she was associated with Liberty University in various roles. My recollection of her interactions on social media is that she was particularly judgmental and mean-spirited toward anyone who did not practice or endorse her combative style of evangelical Christianity. That said, her statement about Donald Trump revealed her awareness, however tardy, that other than Jesus Christ, no human being, past, present, or future, is without sin or error.

When King Solomon asks, “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin’? (Proverbs 20:9),” he is declaring a fundamental tenet of a Biblical worldview, that man is inherently sinful and cannot stand undefiled before a perfect and holy God without the redemption of Christ. The apostle John made this clear in his epistle:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)

Contrast that with statements from Mr. Trump, who, when asked if he’d ever sought God’s forgiveness for anything he’d done, breezily stated:

I’m not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. … I think if I do something wrong … I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.

When the question was posed to him again in a different forum, he fussed:

Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes? I work hard, I'm an honorable person.

In short, he doesn’t need to involve the Lord in determining whether he’s done right or wrong. He thinks he’s perfectly capable of working that out on his own.

However, I found Ms. Ellis’ declaration of Mr. Trump’s “malignant narcissistic tendency,” evidenced by his inability to admit wrongdoing, intriguing, given that her modus operandi in the public square resembled his more than anything reflecting the nature of Jesus Christ. A recent book by a dear friend, former colleague, and role model gave me some context into why this might be the case.

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis, written by Dr. Karen Swallow Prior, is a deep and thoughtful look into the history and cultural trends that shaped evangelical Christianity and the literature and art that captured the characteristics and social imagination comprising this particular practice of the faith. It impressed me how much of what we call evangelicalism is based not on Scripture but folkways that accumulated over time and became integral to how we worship. I could write several articles on the moments of revelation I experienced while reading this book. I highly recommend it to anyone who has struggled to reconcile the Jesus of the Bible with the religion that bears His name.

I want to focus on a few of my observations about current events as I read this timely and essential work. The chapters on conversion and testimony are ironic, given that evangelical leaders who supported Mr. Trump, including Ms. Ellis, took great pains to ignore this unrepentant man’s words, replacing them with something that resembled the remorse, repentance, and acceptance of Jesus’ lordship inherent in the salvation experience, but which he never uttered.

However, what interested me more is the contradiction between conversion and testimony, which require humility, contrition, and surrender, and the desire for empire that Dr. Prior exposes in her book as another aspect of the evangelical imagination. The pursuit of empire is prideful and drives evangelical institutions to seek and wield power, give no quarter, admit no wrongdoing, and describe any criticism, whether from within or without the church, as persecution and, therefore, without merit.

Is this not malignant narcissism on an institutional level?

Moreover, empire-building converts opposition into opportunity. Dr. Prior writes of a particular ministry that “turned criticism into donations, and those donations turned his ministries into a multimillion-dollar empire.” It’s almost exactly the model we see in today’s political system, where impeachments and indictments are used to raise prodigious amounts of money from people who live from paycheck to paycheck but are somehow persuaded by wealthy, influential people that their way of life is in danger if they don’t give. As Dr. Prior succinctly states, “Opposition farming yields abundant crops.”

Aside from playing up opposition, real or imagined, to siphon money from their followers, many evangelical institutions have refused to accept responsibility for actual harm they’ve done to people who trusted them because they were supposed to care and look out for them like Jesus. Whether it’s fraud, financial corruption, or abuse in any form, we can’t deny the harm we’ve done to our own, which is worse than whatever damage we believe the culture has done to us because, unlike the culture, we are supposed to know better. We are supposed to be new creations in Christ with the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Instead, we behave as the world does because, like the world, we are overcome with pride that leads us to reject reproof and correction. We forget the Biblical truth that we are fallible creatures whose only saving grace comes from Jesus interceding for us.

The empire, by nature, is unreceptive to anyone questioning its credibility or integrity, and it reserves its most virulent attacks for those within its ranks who attempt to offer “life-giving correction” (Proverbs 15:31). There are evangelical scholars, writers, and influencers whose very names cause their fellow believers to lose their religion. Dr. Prior, whom I’ve known for 12 years, is one of the finest examples of Christian comportment I’ve ever met, and she has experienced this first-hand.

In truth, we are directed to speak out against the wrongs in the church. A passage of Scripture I cite often comes from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth:

What business of mine is it to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5:12-13)

I want to be clear that I am not dismissing the great good that the church and Christian organizations have done in the world, nor do I paint all Christian institutions with the same brush. As Dr. Prior writes:

To be sure, institutional ministries have done good that only God in his omniscience can fully measure. But I’ve also seen up close the harm done when people are counted as less important than the institution. It would be impossible to calculate in human terms how much good it takes to offset the damage done when empires built in the name of Jesus put his kingdom second to their own.

In the book The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?, authors Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge document “the largest and fastest religious shift in US history.” They write, “More people have left the church in the last 25 years than all the new people who became Christians from the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham crusades combined.” This detailed study offers numerous and complex reasons for this massive shift, but among them is the rise of the “exvangelicals,” who suffered harm in churches and other Christian institutions and left organized religion or rejected Christianity altogether.

Pursuing power and influence has never been Jesus’ design for His church, although the church throughout history has been seduced by it time and again. How soon we forget the last temptation Satan set before Christ during his time in the desert:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God

and him only shall you serve.’” (Matthew 4:8-10)

Because of cultural influences from antiquity to the present day, the evangelical church has inherited much that contradicts the Christ who implores us, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).

Ms. Ellis’ conversion from a cultural Christian firebrand to a remorseful and repentant defendant in a Georgia courthouse may be seen by some as a cynical ploy to avoid jail time and disbarment from practicing law. However, I hope it’s the beginning of a journey of self-awareness that will revive her Christian witness.

If she hasn’t read it already, I would recommend Dr. Prior’s book to her and to all who want to know how the evangelical mind and heart have formed over the centuries. Ms. Ellis has been publicly scornful toward my friend on social media, but like the Savior they both profess to serve, I know Dr. Prior to be slow to anger and quick to forgive. I pray the evangelical church learns what is of Jesus and what isn’t and is quick to dispose of the latter so the former may manifest itself and the church can heal and be a source of healing.

I’ll have more to say in a future article about the book in the context of my personal Christian journey, which is somewhat eclectic and unique. In the meantime, get the book.

Personal Reflections on 9/11

Note: I was appointed to the Bush Administration in 2001 as the chief information officer (CIO) for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and subsequently, I served with the Homeland Security Transition Planning Office, the White House team that laid the groundwork for the launch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where I served briefly as a senior adviser to the DHS CIO. I was a leader and active participant in the initiation of our nation's federal homeland security infrastructure, and it was all due to the timing of my arrival in Washington during the summer before the most significant enemy attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. This story is excerpted from my book SELLOUT: Musings from Uncle Tom's Porch.

I started work on June 4, 2001, exactly two weeks after my interview and as Director Allbaugh had requested. I was the chief information officer (CIO) in waiting for FEMA.

The “in waiting” part was because my predecessor was still in place, a luxury for me because I had the benefit of his knowledge and experience for the next four months. In the meantime, I was made the deputy CIO even though the person occupying that chair had yet to retire. He graciously stepped aside and also offered his help toward a smooth transition. I looked forward to easing into my new role gradually and quietly.

My expectations were dramatically altered on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was in a hotel room in Big Sky, Montana, having arrived at the ski resort the night before to be introduced that morning to the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) as FEMA’s new CIO. While I was getting ready, I turned on the television and flipped to CNN, my channel of choice when I travel.

The commentators suddenly broke away to show one of the towers of New York City’s World Trade Center with a huge gash in its side, black smoke billowing from it. The initial reports suggested a Cessna or other light plane might have inadvertently strayed into restricted airspace and slammed into the building. I recall one of the experts they consulted by phone, a former National Transportation Safety Board official, declaring ominously that, and I’m paraphrasing, “This was no accident. The airspace is restricted for a mile around the Twin Towers.”

Right at that moment, a huge fireball erupted from the other tower and I remember jumping up from the bed and running as fast as I could to get to the ballroom where the NEMA conference was being held. Director Allbaugh, his press secretary, and a host of others were rushing to their cars to get to the airport at nearby Bozeman. Someone yelled on the way out the door that a military transport would be sent to pick up the rest of us.

In the meantime, I got to work trying to get us connected to the Internet so we could do our jobs from the hotel ballroom, which was instantly transformed from a meeting place into a command center. The hotel staff had no networking equipment I could use, so I plugged a laptop into the nearest phone wall jack, grabbed an Internet connection and didn’t let it go for the rest of the day.

That turned out to be a wise move, since the telephone lines were saturated and we weren’t able to call into Washington, DC. As far as communications were concerned, I was the only conduit back to FEMA. Our public affairs people were bringing me press releases to send out and others were handing me items of importance to communicate back to headquarters. I also contacted state officials with the Montana National Guard to make arrangements for a secure phone system to be delivered to us.

I remember sitting at a table helping people get their messages out while the events of the day as reported by CNN were being projected onto a large screen or wall near where I sat. We were hearing rumors that the Capitol or the White House had been hit, that a car bomb had gone off in the State Department parking lot, and that Washington was in total gridlock. While only the last report was true, many of us were frightened for our families and friends back home. All of us watched in stunned silence the large projected image as the Twin Towers collapsed. Many wept.

A fellow FEMA associate director, a former Marine, remarked that what we were seeing was the beginning of a war and I wondered how many other targets there were across the country. Our hotel was on total lockdown with local law enforcement surrounding our building and preventing movement between buildings on the resort campus.

I prayed that no one I knew from my days in the military or as a defense contractor was in the section of the Pentagon that had been hit by American Airlines Flight 77. My family was 45 miles south of the Capitol, so I presumed they were safe. All we could do was wait for the military transport that was supposed to come and get us.

Except it never came. The nation’s airspace had been closed down and we were resigned to being where we were for a while. The days that followed were spent monitoring news reports and communicating with staff back at FEMA, checking in on family members and assuring other family and friends that I wasn’t in Washington, DC and was, in fact, okay.

I called my pastor from our church in Tampa and he asked to do an interview with me about the horrific events of the past few days so that he could share it with the congregation. I agreed and during the interview I reminded whoever would be listening that God was in control—even though it didn’t seem that way. God especially cared for the nearly 3,000 people murdered by terrorists, and the family and friends they left behind. I prayed a lot.

Some people were getting the ski resort equivalent of cabin fever and couldn’t wait for the airspace to reopen, so they rented a car and drove back to Washington, DC. I declined, confident that the airspace would soon be reopened and I would be home before they would.

My prediction proved to be correct and I didn’t have to endure days on the road to get home. It was while preparing to board the flight at the Bozeman airport that I realized life would never be the same again. The airport screeners were opening up and checking all luggage, screening each passenger for possible weapons, and the long line of people didn’t seem to mind. Everyone was quiet and serious while they waited. It was a grim but determined people I saw that day.

The air traffic control system was chaotic that day after four days without flights, and our flight was diverted to Minneapolis, then Pittsburgh. I finally arrived at Baltimore-Washington International early Saturday morning and had a quiet drive home. My wife was still up when I got home and we were glad to be in each other’s arms again. I could sense the concern inside her and was again reminded of how much had changed. Even though it was around 2 AM when I got home, I got some rest, cleaned up and drove into Washington, DC that afternoon to get right back to work.

The weeks that followed were filled with long hours and a lot of contingency planning since we thought another attack was imminent. I had prayed for God to enlarge my territory, and my prayers had been answered, although not in the way I expected. God never works in the way we hope or expect—that’s why He’s God and we’re not.

I went from being just another federal senior executive to a key player in the government’s fight against terrorism. FEMA was at the epicenter of emergency management for natural disasters, but now we added terrorism to the mix and elevated it to the top priority. Information was critical to our emergency management and other national security missions, so I found myself attending numerous White House task force meetings, briefing members of Congress during testimony on Capitol Hill, interacting with other federal agencies and IT companies on warning systems and continuity of operations after a terrorist attack, and so much more.

I was attending a lot of conferences and public events since Director Allbaugh, who was more of a doer than a talker, shunned them and sent me in his place instead. He told me once, as we were walking together to Capitol Hill to testify on an emergency management bill under consideration in the Senate, “I’m going to make you a star.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not because his expression almost never changed, but I knew he liked and trusted me, and he supported every one of my initiatives to make FEMA better. My profile in the Washington, DC technology community, and the fledgling homeland security infrastructure that sprung up after 9/11, was extremely high. Consequently, a local technology magazine called me “one of the most visible CIOs in Washington.”

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

I am a movie buff to some extent, although I probably read about them more than I watch them. I have a particular type of movie that I’ll see in a theater, another that I’ll wait to watch on a streaming service, and another that garners my interest because it’s culturally significant, for good or for ill. Sound of Freedom, the surprise hit of the summer movie season, falls into the latter category, and while I may read about it, I probably won’t go to see it.

Before anyone accuses me of being indifferent to the scourge of human trafficking, especially of children, I have no issue condemning the practice and donating money to causes that seek to eradicate it. Our church and many others in central Virginia support Freedom 4/24, a local charity dedicated to preventing and raising awareness of human trafficking and restoring people rescued from trafficking.

However, I haven’t been inspired to see the film, even as it became an international sensation. The first reason is broad and personal; I’m not particularly eager to watch films about man’s inhumanity toward man. I don’t need to visualize it to know its horror, and I am so emotionally invested in what I watch that it hurts me to witness human trauma.

I love history, but some parts claw at my soul; I didn’t watch 12 Years a Slave when it came out because even the thought of that true story was unbearable. I could picture myself in Solomon Northrup, a free man who made a life for himself in society but was suddenly dragged into 12 years of chattel slavery. I would have died of despair long before the 12 years were up because of losing my dignity and liberty, and I am in awe of Mr. Northrup’s resilience and faith. I haven’t watched Till despite its historical significance for a similar reason. I should point out that I’m not suggesting these films don’t have great cultural or artistic significance and, therefore, shouldn’t be made. Human trauma has a profoundly painful effect on my psyche; there is enough of it in history and the present day to disturb my soul without willingly subjecting myself to it on a movie or television screen. Portrayals of black trauma hit particularly close to home.

Likewise, I don’t want to spend two hours in a dark movie theater watching children abused and exploited. I’m sure the movie focuses more on the heroics of the protagonist rescuing the children, and there’s nothing more inspirational than a hero coming to save the day and protect the innocent from evil. Still, the depictions of human trauma would be too much for me. That brings me to the second reason I’ve no desire to watch the film.

Jim Caviezel was once one of my favorite actors. The movie Frequency is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi thrillers, and I was a faithful fan and viewer of the television series Person of Interest, in which he played a vigilante who protected people from harm in partnership with a computer scientist whose machine gathered and correlated data to predict crimes before they happened. His monotone voice, calm and confident manner, use of stealth and shadows, and skilled fighting techniques, along with his dapper attire, earned him the moniker from the local police, “The Man in the Suit;” it had a Batman vibe to it that appealed to the Dark Knight fan in me.

However, he is arguably most famous for his portrayal of Jesus in the movie The Passion of the Christ, which I watched with a contingent of congregants from my church, not unlike what many churches are doing today with Sound of Freedom. However, I wasn’t prepared for the scenes of torture and execution, and while others have added it to their Easter viewing rituals, I haven’t watched it since it came out. Jim Caviezel would have us believe that his role in the Mel Gibson-helmed film made him untouchable in Hollywood circles. It is probably more accurate to say that he shunned parts that would reflect poorly on his beliefs as a conservative Catholic. His conditions for employment made it very difficult to cast him.

Still, none of that addresses the second reason I’ve no desire to watch Sound of Freedom. While Caviezel was once a favorite actor, he has disappointed me with his full embrace of QAnon, described as “the umbrella term for a set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles.”

While I concede that I often have to wear blinders when indulging in modern entertainment to distinguish between the art I enjoy and the artists who behave outside of their performances in ways that don’t appeal to me, the alignment of his outlandish beliefs and the film’s topic is too precise for me to ignore.

It wasn’t until I read a recent interview with the director, Alejandro Monteverde, that my views began to moderate somewhat. Contrary to the link many in the media and center-left ideological circles have made between QAnon child abuse conspiracies and the film, the director says he began working on the story before QAnon emerged and that a network news segment in 2015 inspired him. In the interview, he stated, “We shot in 2018. In 2019, it was a completely finished film [before QAnon became a phenomenon].”

While he commended Jim Caviezel for his personal commitment to the role, he regrets that a film and a topic that should generate a broad multi-partisan consensus has become a flashpoint in the culture wars because Caviezel and Tim Ballard, the real-life figure on whom the film is based, brought a political taint to his passion project because of their association with QAnon and right-wing causes. He also laments how the relationship with Angel Studios, the film’s distributor and the sponsor of faith-based shows and movies like The Chosen and His Only Son, plus the enthusiasm of the evangelical community toward the film, have led to his movie being called “a Christian thriller,” among other things. He insists there are only a few references to religion in the movie and desires that it will be seen by “people of faith, people without faith, and everyone in between.”

Conversely, fans of the film claim a concerted effort by Hollywood liberals to prevent the film from being shown, which the director also debunks. He said the film was delayed initially due to Disney's purchase of Fox, the original rights-holder, in 2019. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and people were looking for escapist, feel-good entertainment, and a film about child sex trafficking didn’t fit the bill. He made a deal with Angel Studios post-pandemic, and the film was finally released. Sometimes, the truth isn’t particularly dramatic or controversial.

Still, the compulsion to manufacture a persecution or suppression narrative where none exists has prompted breathless videos on social media purporting to show theaters shutting down screenings of the film using faux emergencies or malfunctioning equipment as the culprits. I don’t have the time or patience to evaluate every one of these viral videos, but considering how desperate the theater industry is to get people to come back to the cinema after their near-death experience during the pandemic quarantine, the notion of them driving off paying customers defies common sense. The studio and cinema owners denied the conspiracy claims and expressed their pleasure at the movie’s financial success.

So here we are in 2023 when everything is evaluated and judged through a partisan political lens, and how we feel about a topic, event, work of art, or anything is determined more by which side we embrace than what the evidence shows. Songs are immediately scrutinized for their political meaning, even if none was intended, and breathless op-eds are written from differing perspectives. Frankly, it’s exhausting and a sign, in my opinion, of our nation’s imminent demise as a united democratic republic. Consider these words, written 234 years ago:

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

It’s as if George Washington had peered into our future in the late 20th and early to mid-21st century and saw precisely what’s happening to us today.

Did we not “Seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual” who “turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty”?

Haven’t our divisions, reflected in the behaviors of our elected officials toward one another, served to “distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration”? Friends, that is the precise description of today’s government gridlock!

Are we not plagued by “ill-founded jealousies and false alarms” leading to “the animosity of one part against the other,” which “foments occasionally riot and insurrection”?

Hasn’t the belief within each tribe that the opposing tribe, individually and collectively, is an existential threat to the republic's existence made us susceptible to “foreign influence and corruption”?

As I read these words written over two centuries ago, I got chills down my spine. As a student of history, I am amazed at the collective wisdom and foresight of the men assembled together in one place to create the United States of America. One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Acts 17:26:

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

By God’s hand, these exceptional men were placed here at a particular point in history to establish a great nation based not on a common culture, language, or ethnicity but on an idea that all people are equal as image-bearers of God and are inherently worthy of liberty and dignity. Because of this, it disturbs me deeply that so many of them were either unable or unwilling to acknowledge the yawning chasm between their ideals and the horrendous practice of chattel slavery or the subjugation of the land's indigenous inhabitants. That is a topic requiring greater exposition than this post allows.

George Washington’s Farewell Address is considered one of the nation’s most remarkable documents and was once held in the same esteem as the Declaration of Independence. Over time, it has been largely forgotten except by historians, and we have failed to benefit from its extraordinary prescience. Like many of his contemporaries, Washington studied history and read the Bible, so he was well-versed in the dangers of tribalism, a malady to which free nations are particularly susceptible. While acknowledging that partisanship can keep governments in check, he warned that, without vigilance, its excesses could lead to it “bursting into a flame” and “instead of warming, it should consume.”

Jesus said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls” (Luke 11:17). Sixty-nine years after Washington presented his Farewell Address, senatorial candidate and future President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous speech constructed around Jesus’ words, “A House Divided,” speaking to the fractured state of the union in his day. Less than three years after he gave that speech, the nation was embroiled in a civil war that eventually killed or maimed more Americans than any conflict in our nation’s history. Moreover, we are still wrestling with the questions and consequences of that war in the present day.

Is civil war our destiny, and is the fifth and final stage of the life cycle of empires truly upon us? The fact we can’t be civil about and come together over a movie depicting deplorable crimes against children doesn’t inspire hope. Our discourse is dominated by people intent on causing division regardless of the topic, and as Paul told his companion in ministry, Titus:

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. (Titus 3:10)

However, the spirit of division has permeated even our churches. It goes beyond the historical divisions by denomination; congregations are divided over politics, culture, art, even beer. As such, they offer no sanctuary from the ways of the world.

Where are the peacemakers?