Back of the Envelope

This was originally posted at 10:55 am on Nov 30, 2004. I'm reposting it, and deleting the original post, in order to eliminate the trackback spamming this post routinely receives.

A Harvard Law professor and evangelical, Bill Stuntz, has a few observations (via Instapundit):

The past few months have seen a lot of talk about red and blue America, mostly by people on one side of the partisan divide who find the other side a mystery.

It isn't a mystery to me, because I live on both sides. For the past twenty years, I've belonged to evangelical Protestant churches, the kind where George W. Bush rolled up huge majorities. And for the past eighteen years, I've worked in secular universities where one can hardly believe that Bush voters exist. Evangelical churches are red America at its reddest. And universities, especially the ones in New England (where I work now), are as blue as the bluest sky.

Not surprisingly, each of these institutions is enemy territory to the other. But the enmity is needless. It may be a sign that I'm terminally weird, but I love them both, passionately. And I think that if my church friends and my university friends got to know each other, they'd find a lot to like and admire. More to the point, the representatives of each side would learn something important and useful from the other side. These institutions may be red and blue now. But their natural color is purple.

See, I told you there were evangelical churches in Boston. More to the point, Professor Stuntz points out ways in which these two very different cultures could benefit from each other: evangelicals would benefit from the University's love of argument, while the University could benefit from the evangelicals' virtue of humility. Bill Stuntz also lays out the common ground: the focus on ideas, the importance of community, and the reliance on voluntary service. He even points out some common political ground:

There is even a measure of political common ground. True, university faculties are heavily Democratic, and evangelical churches are thick with Republicans. But that red-blue polarization is mostly a consequence of which issues are on the table — and which ones aren't. Change the issue menu, and those electoral maps may look very different. Imagine a presidential campaign in which the two candidates seriously debated how a loving society should treat its poorest members. Helping the poor is supposed to be the left's central commitment, going back to the days of FDR and the New Deal. In practice, the commitment has all but disappeared from national politics. Judging by the speeches of liberal Democratic politicians, what poor people need most is free abortions. Anti-poverty programs tend to help middle-class government employees; the poor end up with a few scraps from the table. Teachers' unions have a stranglehold on failed urban school systems, even though fixing those schools would be the best anti-poverty program imaginable.

I don't think my liberal Democratic professor friends like this state of affairs. And — here's a news flash — neither do most evangelicals, who regard helping the poor as both a passion and a spiritual obligation, not just a political preference. (This may be even more true of theologically conservative Catholics.) These men and women vote Republican not because they like the party's policy toward poverty — cut taxes and hope for the best — but because poverty isn't on the table anymore. In evangelical churches, elections are mostly about abortion. Neither party seems much concerned with giving a hand to those who most need it.

That could change. I can't prove it, but I think there is a large, latent pro-redistribution evangelical vote, ready to get behind the first politician to tap into it. (Barack Obama, are you listening?) If liberal Democratic academics believe the things they say they believe — and I think they do — there is an alliance here just waiting to happen.

I've said this before. The Democrats could easily reach out for the evangelical vote if they could cast down the sacred cow of abortion rights. After they do that, they would need to stop villifying evangelicals, at the least putting that wing of the party which believes that evangelicals want to turn the US into a theocracy out at the fringes where they belong. I doubt they could win me--I'm politically conservative for reasons of pragmatism (I have my doubts about whether the government can ever be effective in solving domestic problems)--but I know plenty of evangelicals who are conservative theologically but up for grabs politically.

I'm posting this as a public service for Massachusetts liberals. You may be wondering what these evangelicals are like. I read a lot of liberal columnists talking about them as if they are bizarre foreigners with an unfamiliar culture and strange values. Hopefully, you don't view them as "self-righteous, gun-totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport-ownin' rednecks" (as Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror says), in which case I can't help you. If you're a bit more open minded, I would like to point out that evangelicals are not as foreign as you might think. You don't have to visit South Dakota or South Carolina in order to meet an evangelical--there are, in fact, evangelicals in Boston. How do you find them?

Well, the best place to find them is in church. There are churches all over the place in Boston, but not all churches are frequented by evangelicals. Some of them are little more than historical monuments, and others have a theology so distant from evangelicalism that it's hardly recognizable as the same religion. Of course, evangelicalism is not really a denomination, so much as a religious movement, as I've explained previously. I'm not even going to try to list a bunch of evangelical churches, but I will point you to one church where you're sure to find evangelicals. It's easy to find, and you may already be familiar with it. In fact, it's the third stop on the Freedom Trail, right off of Boston Common. Park Street Church's place on the Freedom Trail does not come from its role in the revolution, as it was founded in 1807, but rather from the part it played in the abolitionist movement. The church describes itself as "A congregational church that is evangelical and international," and it is very much an active, living church. If you want to actually meet an evangelical, I suggest that rather than doing the Freedom Trail tour, you come to one of its services. Just walk in the front door and go up one of the sets of stairs on either side, and you'll find the sanctuary. The church has four services on Sunday, at 8:30 am and 11 am, and also at 4 pm and 6 pm. At any of those times you'll have the opportunity to meet plenty of people, most of whom describe themselves as evangelical, even though some of them have only a vague idea of what that means (hint: the simplest definition of evangelical might be "a Christian who takes the Bible seriously"). Personally, I especially enjoy the evening services, which are more contemporary than the morning services. Come January, I should be back in Boston, and if you would like to join me at the 4 pm service, just let me know.

Joe Carter has an interesting post on free will and, you guessed it, divine foreknowledge:

A similar question arises when we consider the relationship between human free will and divine foreknowledge. If God knows everything before it happens then how can we we be responsible for the choices we make? If we accept that God can foreknow all that will ever happen, does that mean that free will is an illusion?

According to evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig, we are quite justified in believing that God has the ability to foreknow events without having to accept the conclusion that such knowledge causes us to make the choices we do. In order to arrive at that determination, though, we must first take a detour through the philosophical puzzle know as Newcomb's Paradox.

As I've pointed out before, I take a somewhat different view on God's foreknowledge. Since I believe that God is outside of time, I don't believe that the term "foreknowledge" is quite accurate, since to him, it's simply knowledge. Of course, by looking at things this way, I'm pretty much saying that backward causation is not an issue for me. In any case, read Joe's post for an alternative view.

Jeremy Pierce has some advice for Christians who are concerned about the increasing separation between Red and Blue America:

Jollyblogger has an excellent post looking at the electoral maps (including a good comparison of the county maps from 2000 and 2004 and a purple-shade map for measuring the percentage of red and blue in each state). It's not the political analysis that interested me, though. He points out that most of the country is red when you look at counties, with almost 50% of the electorate concentrated in the 25% of the counties that are blue and just over 50% of the electorate in the 75% of the counties that are red. The fact of the matter is that most evangelical Christians are in those red counties, which means most of the people in the blue counties don't actually know any evangelical Christians. This explains why so many people don't even come close to understanding evangelical Christians (which doesn't stop some of them from talking about us as if we're demonic). What struck me was Jollyblogger's remark about what Christians should do. He says Christians need to migrate in large numbers to those blue counties if they ever hope to influence the culture around them. He's right, but perhaps I can elaborate on the point more specifically.
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If evangelical Christians are largely clustered around those who are culturally and socially conservative, who are steeped in the church in some form, and not those who are at the forefront of the liberalization and secularization of America, then how are we to fulfill this mandate? Christians who live in their small towns and do have relationships with nonbelievers might play a role in fulfilling the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20, but there are whole people-groups within the United States that are in some ways nearly unreached, and the majority of blue voters in blue states are among them. Most Christian conferences I've been to emphasize unreached people groups around the world, and I think that's necessary if we're to take Jesus' command seriously, but I'm not convinced we understand how close the unreached people groups are.

I happen to agree with this point, and it's been one influence on my job search. Although I'll admit it's not exactly in the terms I was thinking. When I first moved to Boston, I was amazed at how vibrant and outgoing the Christian community was there, and I want to be part of that again. I really do think the fact that evangelical Christians are in a minority in such places, that they do not possess worldly power there, is part of what encourages them to develop spiritually. As Jeremy points out, the temptation to circle the wagons is even more powerful in the blue counties, to keep your Christianity under wraps unless you're with your Christian friends, but no one ever said being a Christian was easy.

By the way, the title of this post refers to the book of Daniel, which reflects the proper attitude of Christians when they find themselves in strange lands. The book of Daniel is also the inspiration for the name of this blog by Grad students and alumni from Boston.

Sheya Joie hands a dose of reality to Christians concerning the re-election of President Bush:

The Bush win seemed to have brought out a lot of what I think of as 'Bush-olatry' - Christians so exultant over his win, as if having Bush in the White House will ensure good things breaking out everywhere. I heard a lot of talk of 'reprieve' and 'now we have four more years.'

But four more years to do what? To sit in our churches and continue with the bless-me clubs?

Yes, I voted for Bush (don't let my dad know I violated the principle of the secret ballot!) - but it was more like I voted against Kerry. I don't have a whole lot of illusions about Republican-presidents-as-Messiah: we've had some pretty conservative presidents - and yet abortion is still legal, morals continue to get worse and worse, etc, etc.

Yes, who occupies the White House does matter. But so does what we ourselves are doing. (Yes, including me.) It isn't enough to vote a Christian into the Presidency and think, I did a good thing; I can go back to sleep now.

She's right. While worldly victories are nice, they can be ultimately self-defeating if we put too much emphasis on the world and not enough on the soul. The Christian's job is to win souls, not elections, and that can't be done through winning a majority. Souls are turned one at a time, and if you look at the liberal response to the election, Bush's re-election almost seems counterproductive to winning souls, having hardened hearts rather than softened them. Of course, I don't really believe that's the case, as I believe these particular hearts wouldn't have softened if they had won the election, and the long-term effects for Christianity are positive from this election; ensured freedom of expression here, freedom of religion in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, and the expansion of a culture of life and moral values are all benefits of a Bush victory. For that matter, I think it sounded an alarm for the mainstream media and the liberal elite that they've lost touch with mainstream American culture which could ultimately change how they talk and think about religious people. Short term, however, I think this election may have made it harder to reach some people with the Gospel.

The response to this is not to water down the Gospel and make it as non-offensive as possible, to the point of removing any moral imperative from our witness, just to win people. Yes, we could make the Gospel more attractive if we got rid of the hard parts, but the Gospel is by its nature a message of offense, and if we're not offending anyone, we're probably doing something wrong. I'm making that point that our success is not unmitigated, and it's certainly not an excuse for rest on our laurels. We should not gloat, despite my previous joking, but we should act with compassion and grace to reach out to others, to make clear what the message is, and to let them respond as they may.