Seeing our entanglements more clearly
From my review of Daniel Vaca’s Evangelicals, Inc.: Books and the Business of Religion in America, published this week by Comment magazine:
If we squint just a bit, we can see that these two groups—those who claim that the church is pure of worldly influences and those who wag their fingers because they can see that it is not—look very similar. Each of these instincts carries with it its own deep ambivalence about the material world and shared culture, as opposed to the spiritual realm and the particular subculture. The first instinct denies that material and the shared are relevant and influential, while the second denies that influence can be good, conceding too much to the fall and the curse. When it comes down to it, both instincts pretend that we must choose between marketing practices or God’s sovereignty as an explanation for our books’ success (or failure), because to choose “both” would either be impossible or wrong. But that’s a false dichotomy. It’s like asking, Did God heal you? Or was it the doctors and medicine? or, Who made you? God or your parents? or even, Was Jesus divine or human? Indeed, squint a little harder still, and both of these paths begin to look quasi-heretical, resembling dualistic false teachings that the early Christian church rejected.
But there is a third, and better, path. We can acknowledge that what evangelical Christians share with the mainstream or dominant culture stands alongside religious belief and spiritual practice in shaping our communities. This doesn’t mean that we should get comfortable with all the ways in which religious communities are shaped by mainstream and dominant cultural beliefs and practices. Rather, we should be vigilant about those influences, affirming, channelling, and even reshaping those that might be good and worthy or neutral, while negating, rejecting, and even opposing those that are unworthy and bad. But before we can measure them against Scripture and the Christian tradition, we have to see our entanglements clearly, and Vaca’s book helps us to do that.
You can read the full review (which opens with a bit of my personal testimony) here.
Recommended
To read
Two pieces that do help us see our entanglements more clearly:
Comment paired my review with this one by Peter Wehner.
My Wheaton College colleague Esau McCaulley wrote about “Ahmaud Arbery and the America That Doesn’t Exist” for The New York Times.
To listen
This week, I’ve been listening to Goin’ Home by Archie Shepp and Horace Parlan.
To cook
If I were stranded on a desert island with just one dish, I might chose these fish tacos. We made them earlier this week (with halibut – not that there aren’t four or five good options), and they were not only the best dish we’ve made over the past two months, but one of the best dishes I’ve ever made. Honestly, I haven’t had better fish tacos anywhere (and that’s saying something). Make them with this recipe for elote and crema and it’s a whole meal. (We didn’t pair them, but I made the elote with tacos al pastor. Not bad, but if I had to do it over again....)
