Protestant Preservation Is Not Optional
Editor’s note: part of a symposium on Aaron Renn’s essay, “The Problem with the Evangelical Elite.”
In “The Problem with the Evangelical Elite,” Aaron Renn talks about the “pipeline” of elites from Protestant denominations that lasted until the 1970’s. Members of low-church denominations would move to the “tall-steeple” church upon achieving educational or economic success, where they would congregate with people whose cultural attitudes and socio-economic status were more alike. Robert Putnam and David Campbell compare it to trading in the Chevy for an Oldsmobile in American Grace. It would be easy to say good riddance, pointing at the grossly avaricious culture of mid-20th century Protestant Christianity, from the classism and conformism of “tall-steeple” churches to the materialistic reduction of faith into a metaphor for socialist ideologies and pseudo-justice movements. The form of Protestantism where hypocrite ministers thunder from the pulpit claiming God demands some permutation of postwar politics, but in the privacy of their rectory admit that they don’t believe he exists at all, doesn’t deserve to be revitalized. H. Richard Niebuhr’s criticisms of Protestantism in The Kingdom of God in America are still largely true today.
On the other hand, as Renn pointed out, this structure did play an important role in producing the intellectual and social culture of American Protestantism. When these trends and institutions fell, Protestants also largely lost the ability to perpetuate their authentic beliefs, principles, and ideals throughout society and in academia. He is right to say that the pressing problem of Protestantism as a social grouping in concrete existence is how to rebuild a bridge between the subculture of church communities and the larger society of communities in which we are embedded. Neo-gnostic speculation aside, Christians are not of this world but are obligated to persist within it under the same rules as any other discrete human grouping. Israel might have been God’s chosen people, but even they were never metastatically extracted from the world and its burdens of existence. Neither are the Protestant communities exempt from the requirements of being a people in the world. If Protestantism is worth preserving, the work of its preservation in the world is not optional.
What, then, might a new pan-Protestant culture, which draws the best and brightest out of all Protestant churches into institutional or cultural relevance, look like in the contemporary world? How would it differ from the old “pipeline” model of 1950’s Protestantism? Certainly, as Renn notes, it won’t be a process of denominational conversion in any meaningful manner. In Hoge, Johnson, and Luiden’s study of the religiosity of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers, Vanishing Boundaries, one of the key findings is the diminishing relevance of denominational boundaries for Americans. While they did find some not-insignificant movement of Protestants into Evangelical, Catholic, and Nonreligious categories, this movement is dwarfed by the inter-Protestant denominational movement. Furthermore, the reasons given for denominational change were overwhelmingly non-theological: marriage to a member of another denomination, relocation away from their childhood church, or personal conflict with a minister or church leader. For Baby Boomers, the difference between a Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, or Episcopal creed was not a particularly important consideration. The vast majority of respondents remarked that they were basically the same. While these studies deal with the Baby Boomer generation, there is significant corroborating evidence in Smith and Denton’s survey of Millennials, Soul Searching. Young millennials could not articulate the difference between their denominations and others. The traditional conclusion given to this research is that Boomers and Millennials are just ignorant and theologically inarticulate.
Instead, consider this alternative explanation: beginning in the 1960’s, the salient issues that matter to Protestants trying to live in the world have changed. The difference between a Presbyterian, Lutheran, or Baptist doesn’t actually matter as much as the difference between a faithful, traditional Protestant and the new types of religious and irreligious faith that dominate contemporary society. Freud’s narcissism of small differences gives way in the face of a serious, competing creed: the New Religion of Post-Protestant Progressivism, with its elect oppressed and reprobate oppressors, a faith without forgiveness or mercy which satisfies the sublimated lust for revenge against the objects of its devotees’ existential envy. As I argued on Aaron Renn’s Substack, the barriers to pan-Protestant unity are already falling. There is certainly a question of the extent to which the labels of Evangelical and Mainline are even relevant any longer. In practice, the criteria used to differentiate between Mainline and Evangelical Protestants tend to be more socio-economic than theological.
In De Libero Arbitrio, Augustine tells us that there is a difference between answers that are true and answers that matter. For example, the question of predestination isn’t particularly relevant to an Evangelist. Augustine warns us that we should act as if people have free will when we preach the gospel because the work of Evangelism would be undermined by Evangelists seeking to figure out exactly who was predestined to salvation. Pondering the question of predestination can hinder the work of universal preaching and tempts us to substitute our own judgment of a person’s soul in place of God’s divine, invisible election. Likewise, the doctrinal differences between Protestants dissolve when faced with an intra-mundane, immanentized religion that seeks to create Heaven on Earth by systematically demolishing all principles of human order that get in the way of their political will to power. It is somewhat unfair to accuse theologians of being solely concerned with how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but the accusation gains merit when fools scream “sacralizing” or “utter depravity” at any attempt to follow Martin Luther’s admonition to defend the Church from the Men of Violence. There is no need to cease believing in the principles that make our denominations unique, only to realize that they’re irrelevant to the task of dealing with Luther’s murderous, thieving peasants.
In the history of the Protestant Movement, there has never been a better opportunity for Protestants to work together as a common body of believers. The shared project of Protestantism is becoming clearer than ever across denominational boundaries that are becoming little more than courtesy markers. What, then, is the real barrier to a pan-Protestant culture of intellectual, social, and civic life?
The primary barrier to a Protestant cultural renaissance is, sad to say, the clergy. On the one hand, many Mainline denominations have been colonized by aggressively partisan clergy and administrators who are fundamentally out of touch with their congregants, as Ryan Burge and many others have demonstrated. However, on the Evangelical side, there is a parallel problem caused by what is frequently called the “Cult of Pastor.” Renn points out that among Evangelicals, the “elite” almost exclusively refers to people in positions of religious administration. While he emphasizes theological explanations for this phenomenon, I’m going to argue for an alternative interpretation that deals with the epistemology and sociology of Evangelical leadership. In the interests of transparency, my experience has been as an employee of an Episcopal diocese and a Southern Baptist university, and so these observations will be skewed to these contexts.
As a sociological phenomenon, the Cult of Pastor centers on the way that the minister dominates the community life of Evangelical churches as the sole source of religious as well as practical authority. Giles Kepel, Dean Kelley, Robert Putnam, and David Campbell, among others, all write eloquently on this subject in a way that doesn’t require significant recapitulation. The Managerial Revolution, which transformed American society from one of small businessmen and regional firms into the modern administrative state, did not pass by the Church. Just as government, business, and the university were transformed in the 20th century into a top-heavy structure of bureaucratic rules and regulations, so did the churches through the addition of cumbersome parachurch organizations, denominational administrative staff, corporate-style restructuring, and a general presumption that credentials could be substituted for excellence and expertise.
Managerialism is not just a way to structure large organizations but is also a mindset and way of thinking about problems and their solutions. The Managerial mindset focuses on processes, inputs-and-outputs, standardized methodologies, and universal rulesets over judgment calls by accountable leaders and experts. At the center of this phenomenon in the churches is an epistemological conceit identified by Mark Noll, that the Bible and seminary processes are a substitute for all forms of worldly knowledge. While the Bible doesn’t tell you how to rebuild the carburetor on a ’69 Chevelle, that’s never stopped a 22-year-old M.Div. from hanging over your shoulder and telling you what you’re doing wrong. The complex of Evangelical epistemological myths, from “Christian worldview” to “Christ-centered,” are designed to place theological knowledge at the apex of all human endeavors and to compel Christians to subject their own God-given projects and vocations to the system of the institutionalized, bureaucratic seminary. The pretense of Biblicism aside, the reality of the matter is that the Cult of Pastor calls Christians into submission to the Seminary-Industrial Complex and its plethora of managerial rules and customs, not to Christ or the Bible.
An excellent example of this epistemological blindness is found in my essay from last year here at American Reformer, critiquing Neil Shenvi’s concept of “woke right.” Once you get to the root of his attack on political sociology, you find his real complaint: “there is no ecclesiological solution” to the problems of multiculturalism, and “In practice, these assumptions make appeals to reason or logic or Scripture nearly impossible.” By making theology the criterion of knowledge, Evangelical leaders become the mirror image of the scientism of secular, bureaucratic academia, which does the same thing with empirical methods. If it can’t be solved by their choice of methodology, be it empiricism or ecclesiology, it must be a pseudo-problem or a bad-faith argument by one with nefarious motives. Instead of truth determining one’s choice of methodology, the methodology becomes the criterion of truth. Like good corporate managers, both theologians and secularist academics have been issued a set of standard operating procedures; anything that is not expressly permitted is forbidden.
Anyone remotely familiar with Evangelical culture can give a plethora of examples of pastors, theologians, or parachurch leaders who think that they’re masters of sociology, psychology, law, politics, philosophy, ethics, and social work—the supremacy of the MDiv. The abuse of sacred authority to claim epistemological superiority over the body of the Church is the hallmark of the Cult of Pastor. This is why Renn’s article will fall on deaf ears among the Evangelical elites, or rather elite Evangelicals, who could change things from the inside. Accepting the limits of their vocation, competency, and the ethical obligation to defer to mere laymen on topics outside of their expertise would be a major status blow to men with a vested interest in keeping Evangelical institutions as they are. It would challenge the vision of the Pastor as a kind of tribal Big Man within the church community and reduce the deference that permits gross corruption within major denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention. Seth Dunn’s investigation of Southern Baptist finances in The Cooperative Program and the Road to Serfdom illustrates that Protestants need to become serious about the financial and power incentives that keep our churches operating according to a corrupt status quo.
It is too much to say that the Cult of Pastor is deliberately designed to fulfill the Big Man fantasies of Evangelical leaders and the corruption of large parachurch organizations. The vast majority of ordinary Evangelical ministers are good, Christian men who work hard to serve their congregations through word and sacrament and who are grossly undercompensated for their work. If they adopt bad attitudes and opinions, it is from their teachers and leaders in the heights of their denominational hierarchies. The corrupt grifters are a tiny minority at the top who are rightfully abhorred when their deeds come to light, but the source of corruption is never actually uprooted because it’s part and parcel of the managerial-bureaucratic church institutions. The form of the modern pastorate as a body of managers, bureaucrats, and administrators is hopelessly corrupt. Pastors who take their job seriously have a difficult responsibility: to recognize how their corporate actions as a profession cause harm to the body of Christ. Their blindness to the way that bureaucratic churches are anathema to the New Testament and deleterious to any pan-Protestant Movement.
The Evangelical Movement has a choice: to continue down the road of a new clericalism, in imitation of the worst abuses of the Catholic Church to which our Founders protested, or to wrest undeserved power from the managerial bureaucratic institutions controlled by clerics who have exceeded their scriptural mandate. The Mainline Protestant churches have their own row to hoe. Their problem with the clergy is somewhat different, and most of their denominational leadership is probably beyond redemption. As for the Evangelicals, a pan-Protestant culture waits just on the other side of a row of angry, entitled, institutionally-powerful pastoral managers and bureaucrats, whose arrogance, pride, and unjustified presumption require humbling. Many of their institutions may require dismantling or restaffing with non-seminary-educated laymen. It will require working pastors, Evangelical intellectuals, Evangelical businessmen, and lay trustees to come together to tell these black-robed and suit-and-tie bureaucrats to stand down. God has made it clear, throughout the Old Testament and the New, that he doesn’t need any of us. It’s our choice to do his work or to take that long walk down Babylon way.
Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. Nehemiah 2:17.
