Can Any Good Come Out of Wilmore?
The Anatomy of Public Skepticism, Moral Change, and Good Will
Over the last week, two very different events—the student revival happening in Wilmore, Kentucky and the explosion of the “He Gets Us” ads—both have evoked questions over the nature of public confessions of faith. We dig in.
The Nature of Public Confession
Any discussion of the public confession of faith is tricky, not only because America is by-and-large a jaded nation on all things religion, but because of the way in which these things are perpetually abused and scrutinized. These events of public piety get weaponized very easily, for what seem to be three reasons:
There is a suspicion of their dubious nature. The default stance here is one of suspicion, because athletes believing in God comes with them making millions and living in auspicious: the fruits of confession seem dubious, and underwrought. Public figures quote Scripture and then bomb children. The distance between the glory and the dream is great, and we have lost the appetite for bridging this.
There is a suspicion of these events being ephemeral. John the Baptist’s words ring out here, to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance”, such that we always wonder whether something can endure in the long run. We know too much; we have seen too many times the good intentions undone or the zeal fade.
There is the expectation of immediate action. We hunger and long for the world to be made whole, such that when words are uttered, we do not wish for deference but for actualization. In some ways, this is the fruit of the dynamic we talked about last week—that we relate knowing Jesus with knowing Jesus as a moral reformer—but I think, this is also the fruit of fatigue: too many words and not enough corresponding changes.
A quick survey of two very different events—the recent revival taking place in Asbury University, and the He Gets Us campaign—have brought with them similar responses, frequently from Christians, on one of these three axises. There are wrinkles to each, which we’ll get into, but broadly, there is a cultural expectation that any act of confession will have a public demonstration that comes with it. The problem of reception with both of these is the same, but playing out in different ways.
Worship in Wilmore, Justice in the Streets
Since last week, an ordinary chapel service at Asbury, Kentucky has been continually going. Back in the 1970s, there was a similar event at the same campus, which those present attested to was a time of genuine repentance, of worship, of renewed affection. By all first-hand accounts, the same seems to be underway again. Those who have embraced it as a genuine event, I have no desire to address, but rather, the question of whether this will eventuate in public acts of justice.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been teaching a course on intentional Christian communities—the monastics on through the present—and one consistent theme, almost down the line, is that a life of prayer and devotion manifests itself first as healing the internal house, and then love beyond the community. Over and over again, the way in which internal practices happen—whether prayer, devotion, study, or work—set the stage for how it happens externally. The monastic devotion to prayer and virtue are frequently called up to settle judicial disputes as monks; the Dominicans, devoted to study, are drafted to help start universities; the Fransiscans, devoted to poverty, inspire public acts of mercy.
The hope that a revival will break forth in, say, a renovation of policing policy in Kentucky or in an end to the cash-bail system, isn’t unreasonable. We could point to the way in which other revivals in American history were tied with temperance movements or funding of public education. But the key here is this: the form of repentance and prayer will determine its public form, not necessarily a particularly formulated public question.
This is because, as always, public need and Christian goods do not align directly, since forever. The disciples come looking for sack lunches for the people, and Jesus talks about himself as the bread of life. The man asks Peter for gold, and he gives him the ability to walk and repent. The fruits of prayer and holiness emerge sideways into a world which is capable of receiving it, but not capable of assimilating it. So it goes: the public reforming work of God will always disappoint us if we assume it must appear as an answer to a question which we have, in the form we have asked it.1 To demand that God answer a question I have asked in the framing that I want it answered is the epitome of idolatry.2
He Gets Us, Unless It’s That’s Guy, In Which Case, Maybe?
The heat surrounding the second event, the He Gets Us campaign, took one of two critiques:
Why not just give a billion dollars to feed the hungry? A fair question in one way. Yes, wealthy people can give their money in ways which are more direct aid than others. AND we should be very skeptical of running first to this question of effective altruism, the promise to use money in maximally beneficial ways. Sometimes, the most “effective” way to help alleviate a social problem ultimately is destructive to them in the long run: it’s far cheaper and more effective to suggest a person enter MAID than to address deeper questions of social isolation, medical access, and poverty. Similarly, not all things which one need spend money on are the maximal good kinds of things: when I pay my electricity bill, should I have defaulted and given it to the poor instead?3 In the case of He Gets Us, as a PR campaign, I've registered my critique already. But as a precursor to something more deep and lasting, it's not the worst idea.
How can the Green family’s money be used for this? The first one is the easier objection to answer: some money spent makes possible other kinds of money spent. Big PR campaigns seem imprudent to me, but if they make possible one conversation about Jesus, it’s not a loss, theologically speaking. But this one is harder: that the man doing at least some of the funding is behind the dubious Bible museum and its holdings, and was involved in a lawsuit surrounding what kind of contraception his stores had to cover.
The latter one is worth spending our time with, as the first one feels like special pleading: this question comes up frequently with critics of big evangelistic things in ways that it doesn’t come up with, say, government bureaucracy4. But the second one is a more serious question: how could anyone accept a good (albeit fairly harmless?) campaign which emphasizes that "Jesus was a rebel"5 from someone whose political commitments run counter to the tenor of the campaign?
To this, I think the question of Zacchaeus helps: a wealthy man who Jesus dined with. Interestingly, the acceptance of dinner preceded Zacchaeus’ repentance of cheating folks out of their wealth. The presence of Jesus precipitated this offer of Zacchaeus, but there is no request from Jesus—as there would be with another rich man—to leave his wealth behind. There is only the public offer, and the commendation by Jesus. The presumption here is that Zacchaeus does not return to his ways, but this too seems curious: the disciples return to their fishing no sooner than the crucifixion has happened, so a seamless repentance of a tax collector likewise is hoped for, but perhaps too stylized. Repentance and conversion takes a lifetime.
To this end, what are we to make of someone like Green, who supports a variety of organizations which seem inconsistent with the ethos of the campaign? As we indicated in the last issue on this, the record of Hobby Lobby is…weird. It pays on average 15$/hr, while also going to court to litigate about bathrooms. Green is on record as moving toward giving away his whole business to an environmental trust, while also legislating against covering needed contraception.
It is unlikely that these things are conflicting actions for Green, and that if you are waiting for him to recant his views on contraception, that’s not going to happen: these are, I think, things that people of good will can deeply and vigorously disagree on. Setting aside any judgments there, the question that seems to be broached most obviously is whether or not something with potential good can be countenanced if it comes from a perceived dubious source.
This is, I might add, not a new problem: Mother Teresa took money from Idi Amin, and the early church took money from the recently deceased Ananias and Sapphira. It is questionable whether either repented prior to their money being put to good use. And yet, thank God that wealth, as Basil put it, was meant to circulate and not to be stored up in lakes of injustice.
Is Public Good Will Enough?
The questions which these cases together bring up is this: is it enough to start as a person of good will? What faithful intentions count? Do past sins obscure present good deeds? This is always the question which dogs all acts of piety in public, and I don’t propose to resolve it here: only to help defuse the rhetoric. That two things can be true: that Asbury has discriminated in the past and that a revival is underway there, or that Green’s museum participated in dubious practices and that he helped fund a large (and non-sectarian!) campaign about Jesus. These things are both true, and this, I think, is the mystery of grace.
The grace of God is available for our viewing in the present, not as an evaluation of whether or not an action is true forever, or what it may produce, but as an occasion to thank God that it is happening now. What will happen with Green or Asbury? I couldn’t pretend to know—and neither can anyone else. But it strikes me that the willingness to refuse to countenance the possibility of goodness emerging in the world absent that goodness already being both fully formed and pure in heart is a deeply unmerciful and deeply presumptuous posture to take. So, let’s hope here. The presumption toward skepticism runs deep, and the desire for the villain to remain such is high. But life’s too short for that.
Reading: Nolan Geertz’s Nihilism and Technology, which thus far is excellent. A Time for Gifts, by Patrick Fermor, which I am not loving, but reading diligently anyway.
Unless it overdelivers in robustly public ways, and then it gets over-labeled as Christian nationalism. But I digress.
Big macro-scale reformations to civic, ecclesial, and pedagogical life or it didn’t happen.
Peter Singer thinks yes, and his answer should nag at us, and make us uncomfortable. Nonetheless, a house without electricity makes it more likely that I then have to spend three times more on gas fires heating my house, or coffee at Starbucks to be able to use the Internet, or ice keeping food cold.
If the target here is efficient use of funds for social benevolence, your big target here is not necessarily David Green. One might consult the latest expenditures within the latest federal budget for a more appropriate target. Or perhaps other more well-known and recent nonprofits which have been found to spend a ton of money on advertising their ethos with few to no tangible goods to show for it.
Note that, in these videos, people holding the “God hates you” signs and the Karens videoing the rebels are part of the bad guys!