Last week, three very different events reminded me of the problems. A recently disgraced former minister reappeared, ready for the conference circuit. An influential ministry brand published a new creed, seeing the liturgy of the church as a yet untapped area for product placement. And remember when I averred that parts of Protestant evangelicalism seemed to be run by the Mob? Well, soon it could be official as Mark Driscoll, fallen megachurch pastor, found himself the subject of a RICO indictment. All three events, different as they are, point to a significant aspect of conservative evangelical culture. 

Reading Janik and Toulmin’s Wittgenstein’s Vienna a few years ago, I was struck at how oblivious the last generation of the Austro-Hungarian empire were to the imminent collapse of their world. One might say they kept waltzing up to the very moment that they suddenly found they could waltz no more. Yet all around them their world was slowly but surely coming to an end. From the surrounding European politics to the nihilism of the satirist, Karl Kraus and the early philosophical stirrings of the great Wittgenstein, the signs of the end of the age were all around.

American conservative evangelicalism, like Vienna in 1914, seems to its leadership relatively healthy but it is quite possibly enjoying the last waltz as forces round about conspire to undo it. Last week, three very different events reminded me of the problems. A recently disgraced former minister reappeared, ready for the conference circuit. An influential ministry brand published a new creed, seeing the liturgy of the church as a yet untapped area for product placement. And remember when I averred that parts of Protestant evangelicalism seemed to be run by the Mob? Well, soon it could be official as Mark Driscoll, fallen megachurch pastor, found himself the subject of a RICO indictment.

All three events, different as they are, point to a significant aspect of conservative evangelical culture. It is deeply influenced by carefully marketed influential brands, often identified in the Christian public’s mind with particular individuals. Now, brands can do good work but sometimes they can come to see self-perpetuation as their primary purpose. And they can give an almost mystical authority to those identified with the brand. This is why adulterous pastors with brand recognition have the fast-track back to national influence while anonymous others, guilty of the same sins, are rightly finished as pastors and must seek humble, unheralded avenues of service in the church. It is why the Nicene Creed needs supplementing because, as we all know, a creed really needs that extra bit of brand recognition to carry weight in the present. It is why hot-shots end up as laws unto themselves but are kept on board by the evangelical powers-that-be long after the moral problems have become obvious to any disinterested observer. As Marxist historians and fictional American gumshoes know, you just have to follow the money to make sense of it all.

Shortly before the events of last week, I had been reading Novak and Adams’ Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is. A thoughtful book, deeply rooted in Catholic social teaching, it did not convince me—a convinced Protestant—on every point. But it is immensely impressive. At the same time I was following a couple of twitter battles in the evangelical world over contemporary political and social issues. The juxtaposition was embarrassing.

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