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 instalment here.
Preface: As detailed in the introduction, the Ekron Initiative files were found in a leather dossier acquired by confidential methods. The dossier contained two documents excerpted from separate missions: an Elizabethan manuscript on Puritanism, and a report on the 1980s evangelical culture wars. The second document is reprinted below for the benefit of modern readers.
Special File: The Agag-Gilgal Project
To: All Department Heads, Circles 1-9 of Hell
From: Paranoia, Executive Manager of the Agag-Gilgal Project
Date: [Exact Date Redacted, Circa 1990]
Subject: Agag-Gilgal Project Results Summary
The following is a summary of the results in the attached dossier about the end of Phase 1 of the Agag-Gilgal Project.
For the benefit of readers who do not have the Ex-CEO’s handbook on hand, the Agag-Gilgal Project was named in reference to the first Hebrew King’s encounter with the people of Agagite. In a classic maneuver, the Hebrew king defied his mandate (to exterminate everyone and everything). When the Ex-CEO’s emissary, Samuel, arrived at Gilgal and demanded an explanation, the Hebrew King justified the plunder he had kept as goods he would offer to the Ex-CEO.1
The Agag-Gilgal Project began shortly after the release of the record Upon This Rock in 1969,2 which raised concerns about a new generation of subjects. Their parents had responded well to a regimen of glib materialism, suburban escapism, and riding the crest of the post-WWII material success that lifted them out of the Great Depression. Liberal doses of anti-materialism, utopian dreams, and the promise that all would go well if they “turned on, tuned in, dropped out”3 had captured the new generation, then left them hanging as the consequences set in.
Sadly, the California marketing team did not expect the shift that took people away from this desirable despair. No one expected a small church between Costa Mesa and Santa Ana would spawn an onslaught of “Jesus freaks.”4 No one imagined it would spread to quarters like San Franscisco, and then the nation at large. Words like “revival” and “great awakening” were bandied about. The possibility of losing a generation seemed likely.
Fortunately, cool heads prevailed. By the end of the next decade, the Jesus people had largely taken their parents’ route and settled into a routine of affluence combined with bluster and blather about the state of the nation. Whatever was countercultural and radical had largely been decimated by a yearning to court worldly favor in the name of acquiring resources that the Ex-CEO could use.
The following values cultivate desirable results:
- Short-term gains over eternal rewards. Rather than following teachings about trusting the Ex-CEO over chariots,5 they glad-handed politicians who promised to support their views.
- Easy acceptance over discernment. Rather than listening to leaders who warned about the difference between allies and co-belligerents,6 they treated any worldly leaders who voiced similar views as their allies. Few noticed that the same politicians who spoke as if they were kindred spirits also called them “virgin timber”7 to exploit.
- Intuition over awareness. Instead of worshipping the Ex-CEO with their minds, they continued previous generations’ contempt for analyzing themselves or their history.8 They downplayed any need to develop a “Christian mind” that understood consequences or prioritized consistency.9
- Easy indignation over careful cultivation. Rather than carefully considering long-term solutions to issues and cutting off problems at the source, they emphasized easy results—such as picketing or protesting.10
The results of all these efforts proved most pleasing. Christian witness became fighting anything our subjects didn’t sympathize with or appreciate. Christian creativity became building better jackboots for the culture war. Christian community became a constant fight to preserve an ever-shrinking circle of “true Christian values” with ever-less room to discuss what those values truly meant. Culture became something to fight over, rather than something to cultivate.11
As of this writing, with the Falwell group dissolved12 and one presidency over, our staff will be taking a much-needed sabbatical. Over the next few months, we will be considering our next moves—whether to dismantle the project entirely, or rebrand it for new uses as fresh fodder arrives. We encourage our colleagues who have received an authorized copy of this document to reach out if they have any suggestions after reading the full dossier. Unauthorized copies must be destroyed or turned in to my office at the address attached to page [redacted].
Editor’s Notes:
1. See the story of the prophet Samuel rebuking Saul in 1 Samuel 15. Agag is the name of the Amalekite king that Saul spares against God’s instructions to execute him.
2. Larry Norman’s 1969 album Upon This Rock is widely considered the first Christian rock record, and therefore a milestone in the Jesus hippie, Jesus rock genre that helped feed the Jesus Movement in California.
3. Timothy O-Leary is credited with coining this phrase, which became prevalent throughout the 1960s counterculture.
4. Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, located between Costa Mesa and Santa Ana in Orange County, California, is widely considered the birthplace of the Jesus Movement. Evangelist Lonnie Frisbee and Calvary Chapel’s pastor Chuck Smith played key roles in ministering to young people, and the new growth helped launch the Jesus Movement.
5. See Psalm 20:7.
6. Francis Schaeffer uses the term “co-belligerent” in chapter 2 of The Church at the end of the Twentieth Century. He defined a co-belligerent as someone Christians can work with to accomplish social change, but must never mistake for an ally.
7. Christopher Baylor cites a 2011 interview with Republican activist Morton Blackwell in his book First to the Party, where Blackwell recalls how the New Right courted evangelical voters in the 1970s. Blackwell recalls that during a New Right meeting, he called evangelicals “the greatest tract of virgin timber on the political landscape.”
8. Kenneth J. Stewart argues in chapter 15 of In Search of Ancient Roots that a key consequence of the fundamentalist movement was that evangelicals lost their sense of history.
9. Mark Noll argues in chapter 6 of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind that a common trait of American evangelicals’ politics is that their political discussions tend to be “intuitive—carried on without serious recourse to self-conscious theological construction, systematic moral philosophy, thorough historical analysis, or careful social scientific research.” The phrase “Christian mind” is one that Harry Blamires uses in his book of that title, where he discusses many of the same concerns that Noll raises.
10. Jon Ward argues throughout his book Testimony that in the 1980s, many Jesus Movement converts succumbed to an “us vs. them” dichotomy around topics like abortion. For more on this point as it regards the pro-life movement, see chapter 5 of Following Jesus in a Warming World by Kyle Meyaard-Schaap.
11. Makoto Fujimura argues in chapter 2 of Culture Care that Christians most move beyond a culture war framework, where culture is something to conquer, to culture care, where culture is an ecosystem that can be nourished through creating beauty.
12. Apparently a reference to the Moral Majority, which founder Jerry Falwell dissolved in 1989.
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