Billy Graham To Bono: Evangelical Gets Its Freak On

American Christianity: Young, Cool, Hip, Sexy, and Non-Fattening I think I speak for all of us recovering evangelicals when I say, "Way to go, evangelicalism."

Like the group of friends that you abandoned in high school because they were going nowhere but who now have more money, better jobs, and better sex than you do, evangelicalism has grown up groovy.

You left because it was narrow.

Not anymore.

You left because it was unjust and segregated.  

Not so much.

You left because it didn't care about debt relief, AIDS, and Africa (work with me).  

Hello, Bono.

You left because they voted in blocs and listened to horrible music and had Christian bookstores with dumb-ass titles like Help, Lord!  The Devil Wants Me Fat! A Scriptural Approach to a Trim and Attractive Body.  (No.  We are not making that up.)

Dude. Get with it. It's 2010. There's an app for that.

Well, okay, so that's still sort of a problem.

But all things considered, after a long bleed-off of evangelical kids towards exotic Eastern parts like Canterbury, Rome and Constantinople, it's cool to be unabashedly American evangelical again.

And there's lots of good stuff going down among evangelicals.  I want to be clear that, given the choice between thinking well and living well, you really do have to go with living well.

And early returns have it that the New Young Evangelicals are rich, disciplined, open-hearted, charitable, giving, and emotionally stable.  They're easier to talk to, more open-minded, less inclined to try to save you from hell between beers.  They have been known to get beyond abortion in their politics.

They get the thinking wrong.  They're slavish when it comes to scripture, conformist, and often culturally very dull.

And they get the important stuff right.

The evangelical leader of the free world greets President BushTrue, they're awfully apt to resemble a J. Crew ad circa 1998.  And no doubt their formal theology is a bit of a murky swamp.  Don't get me started on the music.

But they've digested one of the lessons of September 11, 2001: fundamentalism that isn't about acceptance is not welcome.  If you come telling us how to get to paradise, you'd better make damned sure we'd want to be there with you.

Whether this is God's perspective on the human race, I'm not qualified to say (and neither are you).  But I expect it's a lot closer than the dogged cadre that still corners you from time to time to demand what you'd say if God asked, "Why should I let you into my heaven?"

While I can't help but feeling their vision of God is awfully plastic, and not terribly well thought out, they're starting to worship a God who might be worth getting out of bed for.

Not quite.  But I'll take the progress.

Comments

[Mamadala]

So, what has happened that you say they are "starting" to worship. What is the progress that has been made. Just Bono? Is he evangelical?

[Otter]

Yeah, I was a little vague, wasn't I.

That post came from cruising a friend's latest evangelical marriage group. Lots of good stuff they're doing, far too extroverted for me. But it got me thinking about how Rick Warren and Bono and Rob Bell and a stable of other young hip smart people have tried to reinvent evangelicalism around compassion and service, spirit and honesty, instead of shoehorning all of reality into one hell-bent box.

I think it's a general drift in American evangelicalism, and I think it received a huge impetus from the anti-fundamentalism of the post 9/11 world. When you come spouting religious truth-claims, you put the world on guard. They're watching you for hostile intent and sudden movements for your apocalyptic hell-gun. And I think that the evangelical marketing department got the message.

Evangelicalism is now holding out its hand. Sure, it's still saying, "Nice doggie," but I don't mind that.