Where Have all the Christian Ideologues Gone?

There aren’t any Christian ideologues. There are conservative ideologues, gay ideologues, gun ideologues. We have ideologues who play videogames and communist ideologues and racist ideologues. Wind them up, get them going and they’ll say the same propaganda that everyone else in their group does. Right or wrong, good or evil, they say it. But there aren’t any Christian ideologues. At least not many. Where’s the story? Where’s the vision? The left has them loud and clear. Everyone on the LGBT spectrum. Everyone licentious. Everyone enslaved to their passions. We may not like the vision that they have, but they certainly have a vision. Same with every other group.

But we, as Christians, are losing the war of the story. Which I find absurd even writing, but it’s nothing but true. We don’t believe our own stories. It would be slightly more palatable if there was extreme hatred of ideologies that fueled this massive surge of individualism, and maybe historically there is basis for that—America as the land of free thought, soul liberty certainly lurking on the edges of this discussion—but that’s not what we see now. Get the churchgoer started on the Israeli war and you’ll probably hear one of two opinions that you know before I even tell you. You might even be able to write out a script. Or ask the woman in the pew next to you how she feels about abortion and you know about what you’d get there too. Now, somewhat importantly, I’m not saying that you’ll always get the same thing. But you’ll probably get either the pro or contra opinion and it will almost certainly be ideological. Emphatic. Nearly rehearsed. And little she says will surprise you because you’ve heard it all before. She has too. But most importantly, almost certainly nothing she says will be scripture.

Why? Because we’re losing the war of the story.

We don’t believe our own ideals. We aren’t dogmatic in our responses. We aren’t ideological. Ask a man in a conservative church his opinion on the government taking away guns and he will respond with an emphatic rhetoric that guns certainly don’t kill people and the solution to all the school shootings is more guns in the school. So be it. Ask him if he believes that training up a child in the way he should go means the child won’t depart from the way and he’ll talk about the nuances of reality. Ask a woman about women’s suffrage and you get your rehearsed answers, ask her if a woman should teach a man the scriptures and she wants to tell you about cultural contextualization. We don’t believe our own ideals.

Most would rather debate the hypotheticals of the war-torn town where there are only a few men left who are either blind or mute and ask if a woman can be a pastor there, than affirm open and often exactly the words of Scripture. We are the definition of straining out a gnat so we can swallow the camel!

The fact that this is the point in the article where I should encourage you to know exactly the context of the Scripture that you’re saying and to always put things properly, only illustrates my point. If your immediate thought was to oppose my points only because people will use Scripture out of context, then you and I (since I too had the thought) are part of the problem. Or at least certainly not part of the solution. The solution to Scripture being used improperly is hundreds of thousands of Christians using it properly. The solution to our cultural problem is the Bible once again being the most quoted media, instead of losing, depending on the week, to Dune or Marvel.

We believe and teach that the Word has power, that it is the only Truth available in the world. Why don’t we talk like we believe that? Why don’t we encourage our own ideals as much as the trans activists do theirs? Why are we losing a war about stories when we have the greatest story that could ever be told informing our narrative? If we restart, believing our own stories, maybe others will again too.