{"id":1088,"date":"2008-03-19T10:21:58","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T18:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2008\/03\/19\/notes-from-faith-in-the-halls-of-power"},"modified":"2009-07-20T12:03:58","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T20:03:58","slug":"notes-from-faith-in-the-halls-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2008\/03\/19\/notes-from-faith-in-the-halls-of-power","title":{"rendered":"Notes from Faith in the Halls of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read D. Michael Lindsay\u2019s Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite<\/a> a while ago and have been meaning to post some excerpts from it for a while now. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Here are some paragraphs that caught my attention. <\/p>\n

Page 33: <\/p>\n

I found the following quote from German theologian Martin Luther on one political leader\u2019s desk: \u201cThe 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.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Page 77: <\/p>\n

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\u2014later renamed the Ambassadors\u2014began as a group of evangelical students from Princeton\u2019s Class of 1912. Their influence is remarkable. One of its founders, for example, was Samuel Shoemaker, who later helped establish Alcoholics Anonymous. Shoemaker\u2019s twelve-step program for overcoming addiction was formulated in this campus group.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Campus ministry has a disproportionate impact on culture \u2014 I\u2019ll have to add this to my list of anecdotes. It\u2019s going to go right up there with the long-term impact of the Holy Club at Oxford<\/a> watch what we do is secret online<\/a><\/strong> .<\/p>\n

Page 79: <\/p>\n

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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He footnotes Hout, Greeley, and Wilde \u201cThe Demographic Imperative in Religious Change in the United States\u201d, American Journal of Sociology 107:468\u2013500 (2001) for this data. I\u2019m encouraged by this observation \u2014 I\u2019ve intuitively known for a while that if students make it through college with a fervent faith in Christ they\u2019re likely to maintain it for a lifetime. It\u2019s nice to see that research agrees with me. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Page 85: <\/p>\n

Evangelicals\u2019 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 \u2018the scholarships have [typically] been given to Christians.\u2019 Several people told that they prefer not to give money to what they call the \u2018crappy schools\u2019 that populate the evangelical subculture but instead prefer to contribute funds to \u2018serious\u2019 places like Harvard and Yale, while targeting particular scholars or programs that welcome and engage evangelicals. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u2026<\/p>\n

Page 90: <\/p>\n

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\u2019 influence on their own spiritual journey, and many have read his works multiple times. One CEO told me, \u201cI\u2019ve read Mere Christianity six times\u2026 I almost have it memorized.\u201d<\/p>\n

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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s 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. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Also, it\u2019s 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\u2026<\/p>\n

Page 91: <\/p>\n

Collectively, they [the evangelical campus ministries] reached a sizable number of undergraduates. At Princeton alone, for example, I found approximately four hundred undergraduate students\u2014close to 10 percent of the student body\u2014regularly 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\u2019s top universities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Woot!<\/p>\n

Pages 140\u2013141 <\/p>\n

\u201cBeing There,\u201d 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 \u201cministry of presence.\u201d Increasingly evangelicals have recognized the value of \u201cbeing present\u201d in centers of elite cultural production\u2026. Across the evangelical landscape a \u201ctheology of the city\u201d 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\u2014all of whom were working places of elite cultural production\u2014who 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 \u201cflashpoints\u201d on the \u201cbattle lines\u201d 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\u2014not necessarily explanations that they give to outsiders, but ways they legitimate their involvement to fellow believers. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The essay he references is Steve Turner \u201cBeing There: A Vision For Christianity and the Arts\u201d Trinity Seminary Review 21 (1999): 25\u201333 \u2013 I can\u2019t find it online, otherwise I would link to it.<\/p>\n

Page 165: <\/p>\n

As another business leader told me [explaining why he wasn\u2019t a pastor], \u201cThere are plenty of Christians working on Sunday morning\u2026. There is no more Christian hour in the country than from eleven to noon on Sunday mornings. But Tuesday afternoon seemed open.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Page 177\u2013178: <\/p>\n

Evangelical business leaders also say faith influences advertising and corporate sponsorships. I interviewed Jockey\u2019s CEO, Debra Waller, in the company\u2019s 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, \u201cWell, we have intentionally decided to stay away from the more provocative, sexy type of advertising.\u201d When pressed about the extent to which her evangelical faith shapes advertising decisions, Waller, who remains personally involved in approving all of the firm\u2019s 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, \u201ca man and a woman can\u2019t look like a pretzel\u2026. People hugging each other in this situation would be very believable,\u201d but the ad must not demonstrate anything more \u201cintimate\u201d than that. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Heh. It\u2019s that story that made me want to read the book after I stumbled across it in Andy Crouch\u2019s review<\/a> <\/p>\n

jack and the beanstalk the real story online download<\/a><\/p>\n

afro samurai resurrection dvd<\/a><\/em> of Lindsay\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Pages 10 and 220: <\/p>\n

Surprisingly, more than half of all leaders talked about embracing the evangelical approach to faith\u2014\u201cdeciding to follow Jesus,\u201d in evangelical parlance\u2014after high school. Evangelicalism\u2019s most prolific pollster, George Barna, has found that \u201cif 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.\u201d This suggests that American leaders\u2019 spiritual journeys are noticeably different from those of the general population. Faith is important to them, but they generally embrace it later in life.\u2026 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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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% \u2014 \u201c80% of everyone who gets saved gets saved in children\u2019s or youth ministry.\u201d If that is accurate (and I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Page 224 <\/p>\n

\u2026sociologist 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, \u201ctheirs is a very soft patriarchy.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That needs to be said more often. Evangelicals get a bum rap that we don\u2019t 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<\/p>\n

Page 289: <\/p>\n

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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hey, I\u2019m part of a sodality<\/a> <\/p>\n

divx legend of zorro the<\/a><\/p>\n

. Who knew? It seems that there\u2019s probably a lot of literature on this that I\u2019ve been completely unaware of that would be germane to the contemporary debate about parachurch organizations.<\/p>\n

Pages 297 & 300: <\/p>\n

Dye\u2019s examination (2002) of the structure of institutional power in the United States reveals that 54 percent of the nation\u2019s corporate leaders and 42 percent of government leaders today graduated from one of twelve highly selective universities\u2026. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He footnotes Thomas R. Dye Who Is Running America? The Bush Restoration. 7th ed. (2002).<\/p>\n

Two thoughts:
\n1) Stanford made the list!
\n2) Chi Alpha still isn\u2019t touching most of those campuses. Sad.hitman dvd<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read D. Michael Lindsay\u2019s 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\u2019s a fascinating sociological study of American evangelical leaders (not just the leaders of American evangelicalism but also leaders in society \u2026 Continue reading \u201cNotes from Faith in the Halls of Power\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-hy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2231,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions\/2231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}