Samuel James #fundie patheos.com

But secular progressives don’t think of religion this way. If pressed on the issue of why progressive Christianity has failed and is currently failing, most will either mutter something about “fundamentalism” and pretend to get a phone call, or they will throw their hands up and admit that religion just exists outside of rational life. By definition, secular progressives don’t attribute this kind of gravitas to religious life. It’s the John’s baptism trap: If religion comes from above, why don’t you believe, and if it comes from below, how dare you?

So then, writers like Bruni carry on the hopeful vision of a progressive religious life, one that is continually in flux and adaptable to the demands of modernity. They disbelieve that the same evangelicals who carry iPhone 6 in their pockets can actually have their epistemological and social lives constrained by tales from 4th century Palestine. The real culprit is homophobia, and evangelicals’ “obeisance” is offered not to God but to oppressive traditions built on power.

So how should evangelicals respond to this? Well, there is both good news and bad news on that front.

The bad news is this: There really isn’t a good way to argue against bad faith. When Bruni and others rage against RFRA, they are not raging against the protection of beliefs, they are raging against the protection of hypocritical ones. RFFA MUST be coverage for homophobia, because Christians are no more constrained to believe antiquarian homilies on marriage than they are constrained to conquer Jericho and enslave its inhabitants.

If Bruni will not grant good faith to evangelicals and admit that in 2015 millions of Americans can love LGBT neighbors while believing they were created for something different, then there’s no logical riposte possible. Bruni quotes a “gay philanthropist” as saying “church leaders must be made ‘to take homosexuality off the sin list.’” Is that a threat? Yes. Is it anti-pluralism? Yes. But if the whole thing is just a hoax anyway, who cares?

But there is good news. When Christians see public, outright rejection of the basic precepts of religious faith, we know the field is ripe unto harvest. Debate, argumentation, and policy have their place. But a post-Christian culture needs Christian churches more urgently than it needs Christian influence. If it takes the shriveling of the margins of civic life–until evangelical conscience is deemed an enemy of the state–to rekindle the flame of the Great Commission in American evangelical congregations, then so be it. Let the epic collapse of demythologized and de-Christianized American religion signal again the showdown between the only two worldviews possible for society: Jesus, or nothing.

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