In a polarized, contentious evangelical moment, Christians should hold fast to our creed and our community, without confusing them. Let’s cultivate deep conviction in the total truthfulness of Scripture, so that even when the world would say we should give up on it, we know whom we have believed.

What makes Christians different from our secular neighbors?

Certainly, our worship of the risen Christ and love for others should mark us out. Our lifestyle—fighting against sin, and running after joyful holiness—should provide contrast too. But I’d like to submit one more subtle, but crucial difference. Christians care about what’s true. Not just what’s helpful or pleasant, but what’s objectively true.

In the ruins of postmodern deconstruction, many people feel the need for rock-solid convictions, but look for them in all the wrong places. And one of the most common places is experience. In Western culture especially, “my story, my truth,” is not just a self-help mantra. It’s a powerful dogma. Many people have no sense of truth beyond their own personal self-narrative.

Christianity challenges this. It’s Christianity’s objective character, its factfulness, that cuts a sharp contrast to the therapeutic spirituality of contemporary society. Evangelicals need to fight hard to keep the factfulness of Christianity before us, and to hold onto it, despite temptations in a polarized cultural moment to surrender our belief formation to experience. Our experiences shape our beliefs, but they shouldn’t determine them.

Current Challenges

Not long ago I was listening to an evangelical writer give an interview about the writer’s own political and theological journey. The interviewer noticed that the writer seemed less conservative and less traditional these days than in the recent past, and had sometimes received criticism—including some insulting, demeaning comments—from fellow evangelicals for it.

In response, the writer talked at length about feeling betrayed by his fellow evangelicals. They had, in his view, taken a hypocritical, harsh, and cynical turn. The writer felt an understandable hurt and confusion over some of the ideological realignment that had been going on within his tribe the last few years.

And yet, after I listened to his remarks, I realized the writer had not actually explained his altered political or theological beliefs in terms of being persuaded that his new positions were true. Instead, when asked about convictions, he talked about people: the people who had betrayed principles, the people who had made (in his view) serious errors of moral judgment, and the people who had been cruel to this man. This gave the impression that his shifting beliefs had more to do with reacting to people than being persuaded by principles.

To be sure, cruelty from those you counted as friends or at least fellow Christians can be devastating. But it was remarkable that even in a conversation ostensibly about belief, the focus was on experiences. I was sympathetic to his plight, but convinced that, even if everything he had said about his former tribe was true, he had essentially subordinated the search for what’s true beneath the search for what’s pleasant.

Personal Pragmatism

When someone talks about why they’ve changed their convictions about something, they increasingly refer to negative experiences more often than persuasive arguments. Just in the last few months, I’ve seen prominent figures change denominations and talk more about the unkind or foolish people in their old tradition than about the new biblical evidence pushing them toward new convictions about baptism or polity.

I’ve seen writers announce major theological shifts on crucial topics like sexuality and gender, and more or less admit that the Scriptural truthfulness of their new beliefs is less urgent to them than the niceness of people who hold their new belief and the meanness of the people who still hold the old belief.

This is often described as a symptom of tribalism. There’s truth in that, but at a deeper level, it’s an expression of pragmatism—the kind that has often been a defining feature of American Christianity.

When a person’s beliefs shift after being presented with new evidence or arguments, the shift tends to relocate this person into a different social setting. But the dynamic I am describing occurs when a person relocates into a different social context, and changed beliefs follow. It’s not so much about losing faith in a creed, but losing faith in somebody. There’s a growing tendency to then identify the person in whom we have lost faith as the sum total of their beliefs, and change our thinking accordingly. “Because X person did Y bad thing, this must mean X person was wrong about Z idea.”

Read More