Fellowship & Fairydust

Part of an ongoing web serial perhaps inspired by The Screwtape Letters. Unless otherwise noted, “the Ex-CEO” refers to God, “the opposition” to the side of the angels, and so on.

Read the previous installment here.

To: Deception, Overseer of Ekron Initiative (American Evangelical Division)

Date: [Exact Date Redacted, Circa 1999]

From: Malice, VP of 8th Circle of Hell (Global Initiatives Branch)

Subject: Wrapping Up Current Assignments

Deception,

After much discussion, the board has decided that now is the correct time for you to leave the Ekron Initiative, and accept your new role consulting on the New Ecclesia Project.¹

Please understand this is not a reflection on your work. I have nothing but praise for your efforts. This move has been motivated by the following factors:

• Research indicates that a generational shift has happened within the evangelical movement. Where past targets embraced modernist thought, younger targets openly seek to understand postmodernism. Where past targets described their work as continuing the past, new targets refer to their work as something new, “church 2.0” if you will.² New methods will be required for these new audiences, particularly since they are particularly invested in challenging the beliefs about creativity that we strived to impart to their parents. The Ekron Initiative’s next phase will use different focuses and methods to deal with the new situation. 
• Superiors have decided recent changes in church leadership models require discussions about new methods. Your years of work with the evangelical movement have given you an up-close-and-personal look at how they do church.

Specifically, the New Ecclesia Project is interest in your insights on the following:

• Continuing binary culture war thinking that weds evangelical identity to their culture more than their theology.³
• Cultivating targets who promote their personalities as charismatic, forceful, and up-to-date, within branded packages that attract listeners more than the content.
• Directing targets to see behavior usually defined as “bullying” as “salty but true,” “prophetic” or “dynamic.”⁴

While treating the arts as essentially unimportant has been your core mission, you have performed many initiatives that placed particular values within entertainment. For example, your recent work on the Rugged Suburban Husband project. You have coordinated campaigns that encouraged targets to overlook the Ex-CEO’s teachings about mercy, encouraging them to prioritize narratives where maleness is measured by toughness above all else. You have explored trends from Scottish warrior stories⁵ to fantasy films, prioritizing values in those stories (bloodlust, contempt for enemies) that the Ex-CEO wishes them to avoid.

Your efforts in these area helped create a new evangelical man—a man who dreams about Viking battles and Clint Eastwood movies as he sits in a pastel-walled Christian bookstore, reading the latest Christian men’s book entitled Barbarism for Jesus. Little does he consider that the Ex-CEO framed following His mission as losing one’s life,⁶ not conquering it. Little does he consider that his image of manhood may have more to do with pagan warrior ideals than the Ex-CEO’s teachings.

In the New Ecclesia Project, you will market these values and others to a new generation of church leaders.⁷ There may well be applications elsewhere. Currently, Arrogance is consulting with the Ecclesia Project on how these values may apply to the political sphere.⁸

A full generation has grown up since you began working on evangelicals and creativity. A generation raised in holy huddles and a vision of creativity that, thanks to your efforts, stifled and confounded targets. Now we will begin reaping the benefits of this vision. It may take some time to see the full results, but I am excited to see the future.

An evangelical imagination, carefully tailored to our vision, has potential for greatness.

Infernal Regards,

Malice

VP of 8th Circle of Hell

(Global Initiatives Branch)

Editor’s Notes:

1. Ecclesia is a Greek word for gathering or assembly, routinely used in the New Testament to refer to the church.

2. Mark Driscoll uses this terminology in his 2006 Criswell Theological Review article “A Pastoral Perspective on the Emergent Church.”

3. Kristin Kobes Du Mez argues in chapter 1 of  Jesus and John Wayne that evangelicals’ embrace of evangelical subculture has influenced them more than studying Scripture or understanding evangelicalism’s core beliefs.

4. See Rachel Held Evans’ 2014 article “Inside the Disturbed Mind of Mark Driscoll”

5. Apparently a reference to Mel Gibson’s 1995 movie Braveheart. Curtis D. Coats and Stewart M. Hoover provide a detailed look at evangelicals’ embrace of Braveheart in their essay “Broadswords and Face Paint: Why Braveheart Still Matters,” in Religion and Popular Culture in America edited by Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan.

6. See Matthew 16:25.

7. See Elizabeth Bruenig’s article on the downfall of Mark Discoll and Mars Hill Church, “The Failure of Macho Christianity” (New Republic, February 24, 2015) and Making Christianity Manly Again by Jennifer McKinnley.

8. For more on evangelical views on masculinity and their consequences for political action, see Du Mez.

Cover Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash