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)

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

Date: [Exact Date Redacted, Circa 1981]

Subject: Culture Wars and Anti-Intellectualism

Deception, 

I am, I must admit, bemused by the fact you felt you had to pass on your recent request to me for input. By this point in the initiative, you should be able to field such inquiries from your staff without seeking my assistance.

Still, I am aware of the fact your question touches on work being accomplished by other divisions—divisions not always forthcoming when it comes to sharing their research. I am currently having firm words with those parties.

Per your request, I have attached a copy of a cover letter from Paranoia’s recently compiled dossier on the Agag-Gilgal Project.¹ It should cover any questions your underlings have about how the so-called culture wars turned the so-called Jesus people² in a direction more aligned with our policies. They should find it obvious how the new direction—the fear of anything labeled the other, the doubled-down emphasis on political solutions, the unquestioning celebration of anything labeled “a Christian alternative”—feeds your division’s work.

The culture war vision takes the sacred vs secular dichotomy covered in our previous missive to new heights. In a culture where anything clearly not Christian is taken to be secular (and thereby connected to atheism, communism, worship of our CEO³ and other factors that evangelicals fear), art and culture cease to be beneficial things to cultivate. They become something to weaponize—either something others are using to dismantle America, or something they can use as jackboots in the war to reclaim America. No middle ground, no third option possible. I trust you see the implications for your work.

Your follow-up question essentially deals with whether this direction can be maintained. Yes, the Jesus hippies have grown up to become Christian yuppies, but does this mean they will continue to be malleable?

I can appreciate why this question has been asked, given that youthful idealism often seems easier to control. Yes, young targets yearn for action—they become so concerned about changing the world now that they neglect time to think about the best way to do so. Yes, in theory, targets becoming middle-aged gives them time to consider the mistakes of their youth. In theory, this introspective period could be a dangerous time where they drop all our carefully communicated messages.

However, you forget that these targets are the product of an American revival. Introspection requires cultivating awareness of one’s past—pondering how much one’s journey compares and contrasts to the journey that one’s parents took. These tragets have never felt any connection to their parent’s faith. Their entire experience of following the Ex-CEO began with throwing off the old ways, embracing new methods, believing they were inventing new wheels for a new movement.

Such a passionate journey presents many obstacles for our work. Their zeal to fight our work can be overwhelming. However, used properly, such zeal ensures that targets never see themselves as belonging to a larger tradition. For the target bred on revival, we offer blindness to the past.⁴

There are, of course, other methods we use to discourage self-awareness and deep thinking. Chronological arrogance is not our only product, any more than doubt.⁵ Past managers have hijacked holiness to dismiss the mind,⁶ or advanced normal and plain apocalyptic views offering targets a sense of control over their destinies.⁷

You should have the necessary documents on hand to see how these past procedures have deadened targets’ minds. The results have been targets who find they have little time, nor the necessary tools, to think deeply about how to serve the Ex-CEO—as artists or as scholars, or in other careers.

I believe this covers your staff’s questions about how recent shifts in the broader evangelical movement are not sudden. They are well-coordinated efforts by other departments to take targets to new places.

It should also answer their concerns about maintaining the anti-intellectual strategy that has worked so well for the past one and a half centuries, which has aided their work on creativity. Any other information you need should be located in archives of the department’s past ventures.  If you find any documentation is missing, inform me immediately.

Infernal Regards

Malice

Vice President of the 8th Circle of Hell,

(Global Initiatives Branch)

Editor’s Notes:

1. This appears to be a reference to 1 Samuel 15, where the prophet Samuel rebukes King Saul at Gilgal for not killing King Agag of the Amalekites and for collecting plunder they were forbidden to take. Saul tries to placate Samuel by saying that he and his men will honor God with the plunder, justifying sinful behavior by saying it was done for God.

2. The Jesus people was one of several names for a wide movement of young people, many previously associated with the counterculture, who became Christians during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Jesus Movement started in California before spreading across the country, and has been dubbed America’s third Great Awakening, and a key force in revitalizing evangelical Christianity for Baby Boomers. Jon Ward details in Testimony how the former Jesus people abandoned their earlier countercultural vision for Christian Right culture wars in the 1980s.

3. This appears to be a reference to the Satanic Panic, a period in the 1980s which included evangelicals claiming to have found hidden Satanic propaganda in various areas, from New Age teaching to roleplaying games.

4. Mark Noll argues in chapter 3 of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind that revivalism, with its emphasis on simple messages and breaking from the past, has a deep connection to American evangelicalism, which helps explain why evangelicals have consistently struggled with anti-intellectualism.

5. “Doubt is our product” is a phrase from a 1969 memo created by Brown & Williamson tobacco company executives, detailing a plan to create skepticism about health reports on tobacco damage so they could continue selling cigarettes. The full sentence reads, “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.”

6. Noll argues in chapter 5 of Scandal that the Holiness movement was one of several factors that have led evangelicals to prioritize personal spiritual experiences over developing intellectual frameworks to understand the Christian life. 

7. Charles C. Ryrie argues in chapter 1 of Dispensationalism Today that this end times theology “claims to employ principles of literal, plain, normal, or historical-grammatical interpretation consistently.” Noll and others argue that dispensationalism’s “plain and normal” approach to end times theology creates unavoidable problems for Christians seeking a well-developed theology that embraces creativity and intellectualism.

Cover Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash