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A Few Notes And Questions About (White) Evangelical Deconstruction

 Let me get some potentially hostile questions out of the way. Is this deconstruction premised in philosophical skepticism? If it is, no one will be able to know when they have arrived anywhere meaningful, because it starts an endless loop of interrogation concerning one's own conclusions.

One obvious requirement, if someone wants to remove unnecessarily particular cultural baggage from an expression of Christianity, is that one be able to distinguish between that cultural baggage, and something that is universal to all, or fundamental to the Christian message. Is anyone actually able to make that distinction in a principled way? I haven't seen it.

And then we must deal with that troublesome word: "evangelical." I still don't always have a handle on what it means, but let's do the best we can, and give it a meaning that its proponents seem to agree with. "Evangelicalism" is a socio-cultural movement within Protestant Christianity, that emphasizes personal conversion, biblical inerrancy, and the historical fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead. Obviously, there is some overlap with the rest of Christianity as expressed by its adherents. We could criticize evangelicalism for lots of things, and plenty do, but I thought it would be most wise to define it positively, insofar as that is possible.

"Deconstruction," on the other hand, has meant a few things in different academic contexts. In practice, when I was a college student, to "deconstruct" something or someone meant using a Marxist framework to determine all the privileges that would render whatever this individual said as invalid, at least in terms of allowing the truth value of something they said to change the minds or perspectives of the students. If there is anything consonant with this admittedly loaded definition in the current use of the word "deconstruction," its advocates should give serious thought to choosing a different word, if in fact the stated desire to have a healthier, truer Christian faith is genuine.

One of the things getting expressed at the popular level to the whole concept of "privilege" is an opposition to the term, because it seems to imply that a speaker who has some sort of privilege is no longer supposed to be aiming at the truth in his or her speaking, but the possession of power. I personally have no objections to examining power relationships between people, and I have no objection to using a Marxist framework at least part of the time to examine aspects of our society, with a view towards improvement. However, fallacies and uncharitable interpretations dressed up in academic language remain what they are. If objective truth is not accessible or knowable, then this relativism boomerangs back upon those who would interrogate the present structures. There must be a common ground of definitions, and a possibility of truth that can be shared and held in common. There is something about true knowledge that creates an impulse for it to be shared. Or as St. Thomas Aquinas might have said, "the good is diffusive of itself."

Also, what is the relationship between evangelicalism, and the rest of Christianity? Is there a known scenario where evangelicalism would happily cease to exist? I think a lot of Christians do not even ask themselves this question. There is a lot more I could say, but I will leave you to consider on your own the profound implications, implied, but not stated.

A premise implied in my title here is that evangelicalism has not included nonwhite Christians in large numbers. Is assimilation into this subculture the only way to be an evangelical? Are there nonwhite expressions of it that fit under its umbrella?

I don't have any answers for you; I only have questions. Some of my questions might be argued to be assertions that appear to be questions, and that is fair enough, I suppose. In any case, I think people should start talking about them, instead of emoting on Twitter.

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