Posted on 06/19/2014 6:51:46 AM PDT by don-o
I’d been writing novels and literary nonfiction for twenty years before I dared to write a memoir about my flight from my evangelical past. That book became the bestselling CRAZY FOR GOD: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. I’d been so out of touch with the evangelical world that I’d lost track of the players. Put it this way: I’d never heard of Rob Bell.
I was expecting a backlash from the sort of people I’d worked with. I was only half joking when I told my wife Genie, “Pat Robertson will have me killed.”
I’d dropped out of the machine in the early 1990s. Having once been the keynote speaker at the Southern Baptist convention, the Religious Broadcasters and the Christian Booksellers convention and having been one of the early leaders of the evangelical anti-abortion movement, I thought I’d be deluged with denunciations. Instead I got (literally thousands) of emails thanking me for “telling my story” as many people put it.
Turned out millions were fleeing former certainties.
What was that “story” of flight?
During my more than 20 year Rip Van winkle-like gap, while I’d been out of the loop writing books like Keeping Faith-a father-son story about love and the United States Marine Corps (it became a bestseller after Oprah interviewed me) my novels Portofino, Zermatt and Saving Grandma, thousands of other former evangelicals had “fallen away” too, as my mother would have put it.
Some of us were now atheists, others were still religious but joined to new emergent churches. Others had found refuge in what I’d been raised to call “liberal” or “mainline” denominations.
Yet others were the “spiritual but not religious” types, doing their version of “church” on the beach or in the woods.
What we all had in common was that we were no longer “saved,” as Billy Graham would have defined the word say back in the late 1960s when he used to visit my parents mission of L’Abri.
We’d all burnt out on the politicized religion, the narrow theology too.
Lots of people who wrote to me were still “professional Christians” in other words, secret unbelievers but stuck in religion jobs. To put it bluntly: they quit believing, or at least believing in the old way, but were earning a living in a church or other religious organization and couldn’t drop out for financial reasons. They were blunt about this.
Surprisingly I got hundreds of notes telling me people’s intimate facts of unbelief and doubt that could get the person fired. Maybe they trusted me because I’d tried to tell my story honestly and they responded in kind. For instance one man wrote: “ if it got back to anyone in my church it would end my and my families life as we know it.”
For whatever reason I suddenly realized that as a spin-off from my memoir I was conducting an unscientific but nevertheless startling “poll” as it were.
What I discovered was stunning: The evangelical world is crumbling from within.
And it isn’t just younger people dropping out becoming the “nones” (as in “none” when asked about religious affiliation). Thousands of people my age – 50 and up – people raised in the church, or were once fervent converts, once ministers or workers in places like Campus Crusade, were dropping out or secretly not believing while also clinging to jobs in places like Wheaton College or the Billy Graham organization and still collecting that paycheck.
Sure the big churches will keep going. Sure there is still big money to be made. But between the generational shift within the evangelical world on issues like women’s rights and gay marriage, pitting the younger set against grandparents, and the wholesale loss of faith in the 19th century born-again Billy Graham simplistic one-sinner’s-prayer-solves-everything-faith, and the secularization of the culture… I would not be buying stock in Franklin Graham’s future, as it were.
Something else is happening too: The army of former believers, the dropouts, the heretics (like me), are still looking for community, faith and love.
And that is where my new book WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace has – in just a month since publication – become my next unintended, and unscientific but real “test” of the religion waters. Why I… is generating a flow of Facebook messages, tweets and email that is amazing. Ever since the Washington Post reviewed it of course the word is out.
Here’s one letter in my new book-generated “survey”:
I am your clone. I am where you are, but with a different starting place. You have come from a religious position of meaningless certainty. I have come from a religious position of certain meaninglessness. From what I can see with unusual clarity (for me), there is remarkable congruity of my current spiritual map with the content of your courageous writing and brave publishing. Unbelievably, I agree; a miracle in this day and age. I am a poet… So very much, I appreciate and treasure your cogent statement on poetry… Your book has taken me over. I read it straight through and finished it at three am. I slept for four hours. I had to get out of bed with too little sleep because this demanded to be written. Thank you for being so vigorously honest. Thank you for the work you did to write this. Thank you for telling major publishers to f**k off by self-publishing this wonder-full revelation. The experience of it is exhilarating.
And this:
Thank you so much for your book. Just finished it. It took me to a place of tranquility and peace – the harshness of my [former evangelical] self-judgment being met by pure love… I am working towards this in my own days. My husband is going to read it next – we have very spirited conversations about church – left a largish Pentecostal one four years ago – he still gets annoying feeds on FB from people we love in the church about pledge day (pledging to the building fund) which make him see red. OK, well, enough chit chat. Thank you.
And this:
I was born and raised an MK [missionary kid] in the Philippines… My folks were Fundamentalist Baptists but studied at the very Bible Presbyterian National Bible Institute in NYC (later Shelton College) just after World War II. My father often mentioned that your father had spoken at their college… I grew up reading both your parents books… I consider myself a “recovering” fundamentalist/Evangelical. Every time I read something you have written… I know that you are also a “recovering” Fundamentalist/Evangelical because like me you have to consciously deal with the former mindset all the time and [learn to] empathize…
I kid you not: there are hundreds more.
Here’s what I have been learning from the response to my new book:
First: the evangelical movement I grew up in is dying, people — by the millions — are looking for an exit
Second: it only looks alive because there are lots of people still pulling a paycheck who have to pretend to still believe—few really do
Third: for the rest, from new converts to old hands, the evangelical churches are a way-station to changed minds, doubts and “falling away.”
As for the religious right, it’s the Tea Party/Fox News netherworld now. Politics has replaced religion altogether. Hard right politics are alive and thriving but less to do with Jesus than with the Koch brothers, Ayn Rand and American jingoism– with a dose of libertarian “Don’t Tread on Me!” selfishness thrown in.
My new book is not just being read but (to my surprise) being read as a sort of declaration of independence from all these versions of “faith.”
What is emerging is that thousands of us recovering evangelicals now doubt our old theologies but we still crave faith and community. In fact, we long for community, love and even a chance to follow Jesus – not as a god so much but as the best example of what we’d like the world to become…
What we share is not theology but the reward of the look of unconditional trust and love we see in the eyes of those who know us best.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that he is the early 21st-century equivalent of Joseph Fletcher, who also apostatized, on his way to writing Situation Ethics. A "Christian atheist" is most likely someone who (thinks s/he) is a follower of Christian ethics--meaning, to the person, "'love' is more important than any rules in the Bible"--while rejecting Christian metaphysics.
Did he ever really know Jesus? The article seems to suggest not, as he equates his various affiliations as nothing more than social groups to join and leave based on profit potential.
“An atheist who believes in God?” — Heck, even demons believe in God.
I would suggest his personal politics have far more to do with his view on life than any time spent around Christians. Like the religious, he wants to approach God on his terms. He does not want Jesus, the Savior, the Truth and only Way to God, he wants:
“to follow Jesus – not as a god so much but as the best example of what we’d like the world to become.”
He claims he wants:
“...the look of unconditional trust and love we see in the eyes of those who know us best.” — But that can only come from his Creator, who could possibly know him better?
Thank you. This is how I would want people to pray for me.
Look for America to have the missionaries coming from the nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to bring the good news of the Gospel of Jesus witness to bring souls to Him
...just a quick perusal of religious reality of Christians in the very places you name jeopardizes your statement...
It’s easy to say that in hindsight. So people are saved and then not. It’s just that God for some reason gives us the choice to choose his helping hand of salvation or refuse it.
Look for America to have the missionaries coming from the nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America
They're already here.
My Little City has a convent in it, filled with Nigerian nuns.
(A good buddy of mine is maintenance guy for them, as part of his being head of maintenance at the Catholic school. He has stories. You don't want to be around one when they're driving.)
I certainly don't doubt my faith and remain convinced that the truth IS found in Christianity. His father and mother would be heartbroken to know this is how their son thinks today. I had read some time ago that Frank Schaeffer had decided to begin to worship as an Eastern Orthodox because he was convinced that was the missing piece he needed in his relationship with God. Now, it looks like he is bordering on the edge of agnosticism (atheism being too absolute an idea just yet). He supports Liberal causes like access to abortion and is a frequent contributor to Liberal websites. He definitely needs our prayers to get past his perpetual anger but compassion is best reserved for when he comes to his senses and realizes that it has ALWAYS been about individual, personal relationship with Jesus Christ that the Christian faith is all about.
I will default to “whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them...”
Short, sweet and simple.
In the Catholic Church we call these people "church mice." Their primary goal is to stay on the payroll at the Chancery or some such place, rather than concern themselves with the souls of those who are paying the bills.
And trying to drag others along with him...No doubt in my mind that he never knew the 'way' to begin with...
Technically, they don't believe in God, they know God exists. But your point is well taken.
Interesting how he “lost his religion” and has become a liberal all at the same time.
If you believe that he can choose God, then he certainly can choose to walk away.
If you believe God chooses us then one can see that he was never saved in the first place. He would never walk away.
Impossible...Atheism is a disbelief in a deity...
I was thinking of James 2:19 when I typed that. Know might have been a better word choice.
James 2:19 (KJV)
19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
“Impossible...”
As usual, you’re wrong: http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/23/new-pew-survey-21-of-atheists-believe-in-god/
That's not true at all...It's because of grace that we are assured of our salvation...
return to the Catholic church, in which you were baptized, and reject the misdirection that has plagued your life...
Regardless of what some survey says, Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism).
If some doofus answering a survey says he is an atheist, yet "believes in god", then he is mislabeling himself.
I suspect that those responding to the survey as atheists are really antitheists. (I think that there are very few true atheists.)
I dated a girl who once told me that she didn’t “believe in me.” (I thought it was a very odd thing to say.) She certainly didn’t doubt my existence — she just didn’t like who I was.
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