Author: Glen

I read D. Michael Lind­say’s Faith in the Halls of Pow­er: How Evan­gel­i­cals Joined the Amer­i­can Elite a while ago and have been mean­ing to post some excerpts from it for a while now. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing soci­o­log­i­cal study of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers (not just the lead­ers of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism but also lead­ers in soci­ety who are evan­gel­i­cals). In addi­tion to exist­ing research, Lind­say based his con­clu­sions on inter­views with 360 lead­ers drawn from four cat­e­gories: polit­i­cal lead­ers, intel­lec­tu­al lead­ers, busi­ness lead­ers, and min­istry lead­ers.

Here are some para­graphs that caught my atten­tion.

Page 33:

I found the fol­low­ing quote from Ger­man the­olo­gian Mar­tin Luther on one polit­i­cal leader’s desk: “The very ablest youth should be reserved and edu­cat­ed not for the office of preach­ing, but for gov­ern­ment, because in preach­ing the Holy Spir­it does it all, where­as in gov­ern­ment one must exer­cise rea­son in the shad­owy realms where ambi­gu­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty are the order of the day.”

And this is why we count it a suc­cess when our grad­u­ates go into the work­force, gov­ern­men­tal ser­vice, or acad­e­mia. We do want some grad­u­ates to fol­low us into voca­tion­al min­istry but not most.

Page 77:

At the same time, evan­gel­i­cals were estab­lish­ing cam­pus out­reach groups. Some, such as the Prince­ton Evan­gel­i­cal Fel­low­ship, had been present on elite cam­pus­es for a cou­ple of decades. The Cru­sad­er Club—later renamed the Ambassadors—began as a group of evan­gel­i­cal stu­dents from Princeton’s Class of 1912. Their influ­ence is remark­able. One of its founders, for exam­ple, was Samuel Shoe­mak­er, who lat­er helped estab­lish Alco­holics Anony­mous. Shoemaker’s twelve-step pro­gram for over­com­ing addic­tion was for­mu­lat­ed in this cam­pus group.

Cam­pus min­istry has a dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact on cul­ture — I’ll have to add this to my list of anec­dotes. It’s going to go right up there with the long-term impact of the Holy Club at Oxford watch what we do is secret online .

Page 79:

Anoth­er impor­tant fac­tor is that evan­gel­i­cal young adults tend to become evan­gel­i­cal adults: They are much less like­ly than oth­ers to aban­don their faith. Hence, evan­gel­i­cal chil­dren attend­ing selec­tive uni­ver­si­ties become alum­ni and donors. This devel­op­ment may be at the crux of the evan­gel­i­cal intel­lec­tu­al renais­sance.

He foot­notes Hout, Gree­ley, and Wilde “The Demo­graph­ic Imper­a­tive in Reli­gious Change in the Unit­ed States”, Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Soci­ol­o­gy 107:468–500 (2001) for this data. I’m encour­aged by this obser­va­tion — I’ve intu­itive­ly known for a while that if stu­dents make it through col­lege with a fer­vent faith in Christ they’re like­ly to main­tain it for a life­time. It’s nice to see that research agrees with me. 😉

Page 85:

Evan­gel­i­cals’ sup­port is geared not only to the Ivy League but also to a vari­ety of selec­tive, non­sec­tar­i­an insti­tu­tions. For exam­ple, one of the CEOs I spoke to gives schol­ar­ship mon­ey to his under­grad­u­ate insti­tu­tion, Amherst Col­lege. The funds are pri­mar­i­ly award­ed to active stu­dent vol­un­teers in such a way that ‘the schol­ar­ships have [typ­i­cal­ly] been giv­en to Chris­tians.’ Sev­er­al peo­ple told that they pre­fer not to give mon­ey to what they call the ‘crap­py schools’ that pop­u­late the evan­gel­i­cal sub­cul­ture but instead pre­fer to con­tribute funds to ‘seri­ous’ places like Har­vard and Yale, while tar­get­ing par­tic­u­lar schol­ars or pro­grams that wel­come and engage evan­gel­i­cals.

Very inter­est­ing. Very inter­est­ing indeed. If any­one wants to estab­lish a Cen­ter for Evan­gel­i­cal (or even Pen­te­costal) Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty at Stan­ford, give me a call. I have some ideas…

Page 90:

This kind of intel­lec­tu­al explo­ration of Chris­tian­i­ty is not uncom­mon among the lead­ers I inter­viewed, espe­cial­ly those who attend­ed sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ties. Typ­i­cal­ly, these explo­rations begin with pri­vate reflec­tion and indi­vid­ual read­ing, often books by evan­gel­i­cal authors seek­ing to offer a defense of Chris­t­ian con­vic­tions. The most pop­u­lar of these writ­ers is C. S. Lewis, who was an Oxford tutor and Cam­bridge pro­fes­sor of medieval lit­er­a­ture. Lewis, who died in 1963, wrote dozens of schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar books, but per­haps his most famous is Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, a slim vol­ume pub­lished in 1952. The book is based on a series of fif­teen-minute radio talks he deliv­ered on the BBC in the 1940s. Near­ly one in four of the peo­ple I inter­viewed men­tioned Lewis’ influ­ence on their own spir­i­tu­al jour­ney, and many have read his works mul­ti­ple times. One CEO told me, “I’ve read Mere Chris­tian­i­ty six times… I almost have it mem­o­rized.”

While these inves­ti­ga­tions usu­al­ly begin in pri­vate, most of the peo­ple I spoke to said a cam­pus group helped solid­i­fy their faith. These groups are the back­bone of evan­gel­i­cal net­works.

It’s good to know that Chi Alpha is a ver­te­brae in the back­bone of the major evan­gel­i­cal net­works in Amer­i­ca, because some­times we feel like ves­ti­gial organs. I need to get the last sen­tence of that quote into the hands of every Assem­blies of God pas­tor in my dis­trict. 😉

Also, it’s worth not­ing that most con­verts read lit­er­a­ture before con­vert­ing (at least, those who go on to posi­tions of influ­ence do). I should give away more books…

Page 91:

Col­lec­tive­ly, they [the evan­gel­i­cal cam­pus min­istries] reached a siz­able num­ber of under­grad­u­ates. At Prince­ton alone, for exam­ple, I found approx­i­mate­ly four hun­dred under­grad­u­ate students—close to 10 per­cent of the stu­dent body—regularly involved in one or more evan­gel­i­cal groups on cam­pus. And the num­ber of stu­dents involved with the Har­vard chap­ter of Cam­pus Cru­sade has increased five­fold over the last two decades. These find­ings mir­ror wider trends with­in the Ivy League. They still do not reach large seg­ments of the stu­dent body (except per­haps at Prince­ton), but these and oth­er evan­gel­i­cal groups like Inter­Var­si­ty Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship and cam­pus min­istries for par­tic­u­lar eth­nic groups have seen sim­i­lar groups. Tak­en togeth­er, these point to a sig­nif­i­cant shift on the cam­pus­es of America’s top uni­ver­si­ties.

Woot!

Pages 140–141

“Being There,” an essay by poet and jour­nal­ist Steve Turn­er, has become a man­i­festo for expand­ing the evan­gel­i­cal pres­ence in main­stream cul­ture. Turn­er urges evan­gel­i­cals to cre­ate pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al com­mu­ni­ties in cul­tur­al cen­ters so that they can reach gen­er­al audi­ences. This is some­times referred to as a “min­istry of pres­ence.” Increas­ing­ly evan­gel­i­cals have rec­og­nized the val­ue of “being present” in cen­ters of elite cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion…. Across the evan­gel­i­cal land­scape a “the­ol­o­gy of the city” has emerged. Sev­er­al peo­ple I spoke to said they were inspired by a pas­sage in Jere­mi­ah 29 where the prophet admon­ished the exiled Jews to seek the peace and pros­per­i­ty of their cities, even though they were in areas pop­u­lat­ed, and ruled, by Baby­lon­ian pagans. I was struck by the num­ber of people—all of whom were work­ing places of elite cul­tur­al production—who referred to this pas­sage. Evan­gel­i­cals liv­ing and work­ing in these cos­mopoli­tan cen­ters iden­ti­fy with the exiled Jews, for any of them feel a great deal of ten­sion between the worlds of their faith and their pro­fes­sion. They referred to urban cen­ters as “flash­points” on the “bat­tle lines” between peo­ple of faith and their sec­u­lar oppo­nents and point­ed to mis­sion­ary activ­i­ties of the ear­ly church that cen­tered along trade routes. These are jus­ti­fi­ca­tions evan­gel­i­cals offer for their involvement—not nec­es­sar­i­ly expla­na­tions that they give to out­siders, but ways they legit­i­mate their involve­ment to fel­low believ­ers.

The essay he ref­er­ences is Steve Turn­er “Being There: A Vision For Chris­tian­i­ty and the Arts” Trin­i­ty Sem­i­nary Review 21 (1999): 25–33 – I can’t find it online, oth­er­wise I would link to it.

Page 165:

As anoth­er busi­ness leader told me [explain­ing why he wasn’t a pas­tor], “There are plen­ty of Chris­tians work­ing on Sun­day morn­ing…. There is no more Chris­t­ian hour in the coun­try than from eleven to noon on Sun­day morn­ings. But Tues­day after­noon seemed open.”

Page 177–178:

Evan­gel­i­cal busi­ness lead­ers also say faith influ­ences adver­tis­ing and cor­po­rate spon­sor­ships. I inter­viewed Jockey’s CEO, Debra Waller, in the company’s Man­hat­tan show­room, which was lined with larg­er-than-life pho­tos of mod­els in Jock­ey under­wear. I told Waller that I had nev­er con­duct­ed an inter­view sur­round­ed by so much human flesh. She replied, “Well, we have inten­tion­al­ly decid­ed to stay away from the more provoca­tive, sexy type of adver­tis­ing.” When pressed about the extent to which her evan­gel­i­cal faith shapes adver­tis­ing deci­sions, Waller, who remains per­son­al­ly involved in approv­ing all of the firm’s adver­tis­ing, point­ed out that all Jock­ey mod­els wear wed­ding rings in pho­to shoots involv­ing both men and women, imply­ing that the cou­ple in the ads is mar­ried. She also stip­u­lates, “a man and a woman can’t look like a pret­zel…. Peo­ple hug­ging each oth­er in this sit­u­a­tion would be very believ­able,” but the ad must not demon­strate any­thing more “inti­mate” than that.

Heh. It’s that sto­ry that made me want to read the book after I stum­bled across it in Andy Crouch’s review

jack and the beanstalk the real sto­ry online down­load

afro samu­rai res­ur­rec­tion dvd of Lind­say’s work.

Pages 10 and 220:

Sur­pris­ing­ly, more than half of all lead­ers talked about embrac­ing the evan­gel­i­cal approach to faith—“deciding to fol­low Jesus,” in evan­gel­i­cal parlance—after high school. Evangelicalism’s most pro­lif­ic poll­ster, George Bar­na, has found that “if peo­ple do not embrace Jesus Christ as their sav­ior before they reach their teenage years, the chance of their doing so at all is slim.” This sug­gests that Amer­i­can lead­ers’ spir­i­tu­al jour­neys are notice­ably dif­fer­ent from those of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. Faith is impor­tant to them, but they gen­er­al­ly embrace it lat­er in life.… a major­i­ty of those [evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers] I inter­viewed (56 per­cent) embraced evan­gel­i­cal­ism after age sev­en­teen, and over one-quar­ter were not raised in church­go­ing fam­i­lies.

This find­ing is extreme­ly sig­nif­i­cant for explain­ing the strate­gic impor­tance of col­lege min­istry. While most Chris­tians get saved at a young age, those Chris­tians who wind up exert­ing the most influ­ence on soci­ety dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly come from those saved in cam­pus min­istry (espe­cial­ly at elite uni­ver­si­ties) or lat­er. The num­ber I hear tossed around is usu­al­ly 80% — “80% of every­one who gets saved gets saved in chil­dren’s or youth min­istry.” If that is accu­rate (and I don’t know what the real sta­tis­tic is), then some­one who con­verts in col­lege is 5 times as like­ly to become a sig­nif­i­cant leader in our cul­ture as some­one who con­verts as a child.

Page 224

…soci­ol­o­gist Sal­ly Gal­lagher has shown that though evan­gel­i­cals pay lip ser­vice to male head­ship in the fam­i­ly, few fam­i­lies actu­al­ly behave that way. Evan­gel­i­cal women join the Amer­i­can work­force at the same rate as women in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. And con­trary to claims that evan­gel­i­cal belief con­tributes to domes­tic vio­lence, church­go­ing evan­gel­i­cals have the low­est rates of domes­tic vio­lence of any reli­gious group in the coun­try. Evan­gel­i­cal fathers are more active and expres­sive with their chil­dren and more emo­tion­al­ly engaged with their wives. This has led soci­ol­o­gist Brad Wilcox to con­clude that if evan­gel­i­cals main­tain a patri­archy, “theirs is a very soft patri­archy.”

That needs to be said more often. Evan­gel­i­cals get a bum rap that we don’t deserve. He foot­notes Sal­ly Gal­lagher Evan­gel­i­cal Iden­ti­ty and Gen­dered Fam­i­ly Life 2003 and Brad Wilcox Soft Patri­archs, New Men: How Chris­tian­i­ty Shapes Fathers and Hus­bands 2004

Page 289:

The Protes­tant and Catholic tra­di­tions have long rec­og­nized the legit­i­ma­cy of two forms of reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion: modal­i­ties and sodal­i­ties. Anchored by geo­graph­i­cal func­tion, a modal­i­ty is a per­ma­nent, local­ized reli­gious struc­ture that serves a range of con­stituents. The tra­di­tion­al church parish exem­pli­fies a reli­gious modal­i­ty, serv­ing young and old alike. By con­trast, a sodal­i­ty focus­es on par­tic­u­lar reli­gious func­tions and is not teth­ered to geog­ra­phy in the same way. Exam­ples include medieval Catholic orders and Protes­tant mis­sion­ary agen­cies. Sodal­i­ties serve more spe­cial­ized func­tions than modal­i­ties. Dur­ing the Ref­or­ma­tion, Luther tried to erad­i­cate sodal­i­ties from the church, but by the time of William Carey in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Protes­tants had redis­cov­ered the tac­ti­cal ben­e­fits of sodal­i­ties, find­ing them help­ful in accom­plish­ing goals that were larg­er than could be under­tak­en by a sin­gle con­gre­ga­tion.

Hey, I’m part of a sodal­i­ty

divx leg­end of zor­ro the

. Who knew? It seems that there’s prob­a­bly a lot of lit­er­a­ture on this that I’ve been com­plete­ly unaware of that would be ger­mane to the con­tem­po­rary debate about para­church orga­ni­za­tions.

Pages 297 & 300:

Dye’s exam­i­na­tion (2002) of the struc­ture of insti­tu­tion­al pow­er in the Unit­ed States reveals that 54 per­cent of the nation’s cor­po­rate lead­ers and 42 per­cent of gov­ern­ment lead­ers today grad­u­at­ed from one of twelve high­ly selec­tive uni­ver­si­ties…. The eight Ivy League cam­pus­es (Brown, Colum­bia, Cor­nell, Dart­mouth, Har­vard, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, Prince­ton, and Yale), the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, and Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

He foot­notes Thomas R. Dye Who Is Run­ning Amer­i­ca? The Bush Restora­tion. 7th ed. (2002).

Two thoughts:
1) Stan­ford made the list!
2) Chi Alpha still isn’t touch­ing most of those cam­pus­es. Sad.hit­man dvd