Here’s what Kryptos fails to grasp. Evangelicalism, a poor term which I’ll use for simplicity’s sake, is a spiritual movement, not a political, economic, or cultural one, though it naturally bears consequences in those areas…People like Kryptos and the American Reformer crowd want it to be more, to leave the spiritual realm of faith and piety and consciously move into the market of across-the-board influence, developing distinctly evangelical systems of political, economic, and social thought to that end.

If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. (1 Cor. 3:18-19)

Of contemporary pseudo-intellectual phenomena, few are more irksome than evangelicalism bashing. I have written before of how there is a cottage industry in criticizing evangelicalism; and as that industry continues to offer digital commentators the chance to play the prophet, sound important, and get reads and acclaim, it continues to churn out rubbish.

A recent example is afforded by American Reformer. While we can be grateful that outlet has granted a reprieve from its efforts to normalize the sometime-Nazi, anti-Semitic Romanist Carl Schmitt’s ideas, this latest offering does a disservice to those of Christ’s people whom we call evangelicals. (And for those of you who have not heard, yes, there are professing believers going about drawing ideas from Nazis and acting as though learning from members of one of the most catastrophic political movements in history is not a terrible idea. Worse, some of their leadership threatened Jake Meador with a lawsuit for suggesting they were going into business with the contemporary Nazi persona and filth-monger Raw Egg Nationalist, as seen here.)

To return, a pseudonymous author, Kryptos, asks “Why Are There No Evangelical Elites?” Following upon Aaron Renn’s recent articles on the same topic, he maintains “that there are precious few, if any, Evangelical elites.” He says “first we should define our terms” and uses Vilfredo Pareto’s definition from The Rise and Fall of Elites (ca. 1900), saying elites are “those who score highest on scales measuring any social value or commodity (utility).”

Here is the first problem. Elite theory, in light of which Renn and Kryptos analyze evangelical culture, comes primarily from the world of secular social and political thought. American Reformer says that its mission is “to promote a vigorous Christian approach to the cultural challenges of our day, rooted in the rich tradition of Protestant social and political thought.” Judging Christ’s people poorly in light of primarily secular social and political theories is Protestant . . . . how? Remind me, which Scripture tells us to do such things, or to desire to be “elite?” Is it Romans 14:4?

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

14:10?

Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

1 Corinthians 1:26-29?

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

Is it James 2:1-7?

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?

Matthew 11:25?

At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

1 Corinthians 2:6?

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.

Or could it be that Kryptos is ensnared with the things of this life (Lk. 21:34), the seeking of influence and power? Could it be that Kryptos, et al., “have made distinctions among yourselves” – elite versus average – and “become judges with evil faults”?

Two, there is something repulsive about people who are not elite criticizing others for not being elite. Even if he is, say, a billionaire hedge fund manager in his daily life, Kryptos is no elite as a writer. He has some 6,600 Substack subscribers, yet talks like he’s going to change the whole evangelical outlook:

If evangelicals are going to develop elites, they have to do so beginning with their own community. This is a multi generational project.

Three, who determines the “scales measuring any social value”? Different societies have different values and therefore different scales. Kryptos’s society values commerce, industry, innovation, education, influence, and “high culture”—worldly respectability, in other words. But my Southern society values leisure, repose, acceptance of the way things are rather than seeking to change them, and therefore regards those who value worldly preeminence as being in real danger of losing their souls.

Why should evangelicals prefer Kryptos’s values? For that matter, who wants to be judged on the basis of his “social value” or “commodity?” That’s dehumanizing, the regarding men in accordance with their achievements rather than because of their being the image of God. While we’re on the topic of degrading others, consider Kryptos’s next section, “Evangelicalism is ‘Low Brow’”:

Evangelicalism is the “low brow” church for the bumpkin masses. To be Evangelical is to be downscale and by definition “not elite.”  If you identify as an Evangelical, you are telling someone that you are not a person that needs to be taken seriously by the broader society. Nobody needs to look up to you or take their cues from you. For that reason, if you are at all a striver, if you desire to be a mover and shaker and get invited to all the right parties, you will hide or downplay your Evangelical roots for all the same reasons that you might try to get rid of a southern accent. If you want to become elite, you must put your Evangelicalism behind you. There are many, many stories of successful people making public rejections and renunciations of the Evangelical faith of their youth. Evangelicalism is for the people who live in the trailer parks. It’s not for anyone who wants a successful life in the public square.

I have no doubt that this is a fine summary of what many people think of evangelicals. I simply don’t understand why such a worldly, unfair caricature should matter to us. “What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Lk. 16:15). Let the worldlings – who are “more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (v. 8) – have their “right parties” and “striving” and “moving” and “shaking.” Let them vaunt themselves by running us down, for it is a mercy: “blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matt. 5:11). Let them call us bumpkins. (And brief aside, if you’re ashamed of your accent, you’re ashamed of your culture, heritage, forebears, neighbors, and kin; I had rather be thought a fool by arrogant rich folks than dishonor my heritage and people by being ashamed of them.)

As it is, Kryptos does not offer this as someone else’s opinion but as his own, even suggesting that “many who think of themselves as Evangelical will find this needlessly harsh and critical . . . I am of the mind that this ‘tough love’ is needed.” He also throws other shade, saying things like “there is no Evangelical ‘high culture’” and that Charlie Kirk’s funeral “was all down scale bumpkin spectacle,” with evangelicals being “low brow borrowers” whose “political thinking is low-brow populism and mass media generated,” and such like that is tedious to read, and duller still to repeat; and all which is more than a little irksome from a man who borrowed his definition of an elite from an Italian economist and his inspiration from Mr. Renn, and who reads 112 other people’s Substack sites. (As if one can read 112 other people’s opinions and not do a lot of borrowing of his own . . .)

Such claims do not come across as love, but savor of the Pharisees’ pride (e.g., Jn. 7:45-52). And while Kryptos doesn’t actually define evangelical, his suggestion that there are no evangelical elites seems vastly exaggerated. I somehow doubt that, say, zero of the military’s 900 or so flag officers are evangelical, and the governor, both U.S. senators, state senator, and congresswoman where I live could all be deemed evangelical, at least by profession. Renn admitted that, moderating his “the problem with the evangelical elite is that there isn’t one” with recognizing that business and politics (and ministry) are exceptions. Kryptos however thinks even evangelicals in politics don’t count, essentially, because they borrow from others and either follow willingly or are manipulated by others. Hence:

Elites may emerge from the Evangelical community, but they won’t be obviously and distinctly Evangelical elites, even when they don’t disown their faith. Why? because there is little or nothing specifically “Evangelical” that guides them in politics, or business, or in the arts, or in academia.

And again:

There is no distinct Evangelical body of political thought that is meaningfully different and distinct from American constitutionalism. 

Here’s what Kryptos fails to grasp. Evangelicalism, a poor term which I’ll use for simplicity’s sake, is a spiritual movement, not a political, economic, or cultural one, though it naturally bears consequences in those areas.[1] (See footnote for my definition of evangelicalism.) People like Kryptos and the American Reformer crowd want it to be more, to leave the spiritual realm of faith and piety and consciously move into the market of across-the-board influence, developing distinctly evangelical systems of political, economic, and social thought to that end.

But the gospel, the evangel, to which evangelicals so ardently cling, is given to all men in all circumstances. That is why it does not prescribe a form of government or economy, for it can exist in different societies, and among different classes of men with different worldly circumstances and concerns. What Kryptos imagines to be weakness, the lack of an evangelical social or political theory analogous to the Romanist forms of those things, is actually strength. Men who differ in so many things – circumstances and temperaments ordained for them by God, remember – can yet be united in Christ. Evangelicalism has left men at liberty in matters of politics and culture, that they might go where God through common grace commends, may be whatever suits their needs in the particular moment.

One could wish this humility and seeking first God’s kingdom, which is not of this world (Jn. 18:36), would earn the respect of other professing believers, not their sneers. But alas, such worldliness and pride, thinly and strangely disguised as “Protestant social thought” even when it hobnobs with Old Catholic provocateurs and vaunts Eastern Orthodox eccentrics, is rather unsurprising from American Reformer. May they remember to “not be haughty, but associate with the lowly” (Rom. 12:16) in future, and lay off the worldly lusting after power.

Tom Hervey is a member of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Laurens County, SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, and helped modernize Volume I of James Hervey’s classic dialogue on evangelical faith, Theron and Aspasio, available now at Monergism.

[1] An evangelical is one who believes in the necessity of personal conversion by faith, the inerrancy and primacy of scripture as the main source and final authority for doctrine and guidance in godly living, and vicarious atonement through Christ’s death, with true faith expressing itself in works of witness and mercy like evangelism, missions, feeding the poor, etc. (This approximates David Bebbington’s famed ‘quadrilateral’ defining evangelicalism, though I dissent from how he frames the four elements and offer this summary instead.) Hence evangelicalism means either this core message of the gospel as including these things, or else refers to the various church and parachurch bodies who share such an understanding of the gospel conceived in the aggregate. One could say that Southern Baptists and Pentecostals adhere to evangelicalism (first sense), or that evangelicalism includes such diverse traditions and communions as the Southern Baptists and Pentecostals (second sense).