It's the Economy: Ivan Illich on the Problem of Evangelical Identity
Or, Why Cultural Engagements Have to Account for Economic Factors
Evangelical Christian identity, and who counts as an evangelical, has been the subject of no shortage of rumination in the last decade, but the missing piece to the conversations is how Christian faithfulness is affected by the dynamics Illich highlights. In other words, Illich is a better evangelical.
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The Mutable Evangelical: A Feature, Not a Bug
In her excellent essay “The Evangelical Question in the History of American Religion”,1 Kirsten Sanders examines the question of what it means to be an evangelical Christian. The problem is, historically, that this nomenclature has undergone a lot of change. For the moment, let’s entirely set aside the problem that many people who never go to church get lumped in with what we think of as “evangelicals”, and keep an eye on the ball: what is an evangelical, theologically?
The classic definition is one provided by David Bebbington back in the 1970s: evangelical Christians are defined by biblicism, activism, crucicentrism (the centrality of the cross for salvation) and evangelism. But this four-fold mark has undergone at least three major shifts historically. But what interests me in this whole question is not who counts as an evangelical (I think that’s a relatively impossible question2) but why there have been so many different iterations of what evangelicals are.
The mutability of evangelicalism as Sanders lays it out is helpful here: there is no form that can lay claim to be truly and definitively evangelical, in that evangelicalism has, nearly from the beginning, been multiple things. The theological commitments wed to the existing cultural forms, such that evangelicalism has a moving identity, even if there are common features as Bebbington names: there are no more Billy Grahams because the world which enabled a Billy Graham to exist no longer exists. Likewise, the streams of post-1970s left-leaning evangelicals don’t get to claim that they are the true evangelicals, because they like Graham are marked by the same contested features in a very different era.
One of the threads which is important to this story is that in emphasizing a “mere Christian” approach, evangelical identity is less wedded to immutable structural forms, and ultimately becomes conditioned by the cultural forms of their day. Entrepreneurial church starters, mass market technologies of print, radio, and TV, coalition-building across denominational divides: these all exemplify a key evangelical feature, namely, that of finding ways to enter into the public marketplace for the sake of evangelism and conversion. In the absence of any firm thing to draw together all of these disparate historical groups, Sanders asks the question as to whether evangelicals exist except as a contextually specific groups: perhaps “evangelicalism” doesn’t exist after all.
What interests me here is not, however, what differentiates these iterations of evangelicals, but the thread that, from Ivan Illich’s vantage point, seems to be the thing they miss in common.
What Changes, and What Doesn’t, Within Evangelical Identity
The thing I wonder upon reading this is that there seems to be two missing elements to her analysis—elements which don’t undermine her basic thesis, but which help to explain the ways in which evangelical identity is wedded to culture. Evangelicalism exists in symbiotic relationship with particular cultures, but not for the sake of respectability: it does so for the sake of discipleship and evangelism. To be an evangelical, as Bebbington describes it, is to be one who evangelizes, and to evangelize, you have to speak in registers which can be heard; you have to train Christians swimming in today’s waters.
And so, how this looks in 1975 is by definition not going to be how it looks in 2022: to look to Graham for training about how to be an evangelical won’t work because evangelicalism is a continual process of discipleship. It holds to the centrality of the Scripture, but in different worlds, and so different elements pop out: Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger3 doesn’t hit the same today as it did when it came out because evangelicals are now thinking about sexuality more than hunger.
The drive to connect with a culture for evangelistic reasons and the desire to equip Christians in those cultures takes place, as Sanders describes, in a marketplace fashion. Evangelical superstars (or their exvangelical counterparts) don’t begin making money for its own sake, but because that’s how equipping-products get disseminated.4 The problem here, though, isn’t that religious claims enter into a contested public space and make their case: the problem is that the use which is made of them becomes one more function of the market.
In describing the most recent iteration of evangelicals (and I think, exvangelicals), Sanders writes
Many influencers and leaders prominent in the world of Evangelicalism C (the most recent form of evangelicalism) tend to reject the evangelical label. But in seeking to distance themselves a previous movement and casting around for a new religious identity that better squares with their social concerns…such religious figures bear an uncanny, if unintended, resemblance to their evangelical predecessors…they have been left with little choice than to market their religious beliefs and values to whoever will buy them. The best way to do this is to adopt the preferences, values, and strategies of the surrounding culture.
The most recent evangelicals have become, in other words, influencers: people who are fully aware that they are selling something, not in a craven (most of the time) way, but that this is simply how it works. It’s not that this impulse toward connecting with culture, and disseminating Gospel tools is new: it’s just more overt in an a hyper-monetized culture.
Deschooling Evangelicalism: It’s the (Convivial) Economy
The line between contextualization and capitulating to market forces is a fine one, and not easy to sort out when it’s been crossed. I think it’s fair to say that when whatever is being sold is just in-crowd speak, theological cotton candy, or pure encouragement, it’s just market material. There is no theological vantage point immune from this phenomenon: it’s Jen Hatmaker and its the latest hypermasculine author; people are entitled to make a living, and if people want to buy junk food, it’s their money.5
This is where Illich becomes most salient, both for helping affirm what is good about evangelicalism, and to help it move forward: by helping us to see the links between market economies and the dissemination of ideas and values. Consider what Illich, in Deschooling Society, has to say about compulsory education, in ways which are reminiscent of this whole evangelical-marketing phenomenon:
School is not only the New World Religion. It is also the world’s fastest-growing labor market. The engineering of consumers has become the economy’s principal growth sector…If we add those engaged in full-time teaching to those in full-time attendance, we realize that this so-called super structure has become society’s major employer.6
Schooling, in Illich’s usage, is something like Foucault’s “discipline”: an external force which becomes an internal movement in the soul. We become “schooled” to the degree that we can no longer think outside the habits formed in us by a particular mindset. In the case of compulsory education, the habit is one which teaches us to equate having gone to formal school with being skilled. This, in turn, reinforces the notion that the ones with credentials are the ones capable of doing a job the best, producing an economy of technocrats who are the best credentialed, but use their elite tools to maintain their rank at the top.
Education, by being shaped around tests and credentials, in other words, trains people to be good workers. And in that way, all of the talk about propagating values—whether in compulsory schooling, or in marketplace evangelicalism— is really just about leading people to be good members of the working world as it exists in the hands of oligarchs and technocrats. He’s not anti-education by any means here, but anti-educational-system-which-trains-people-to-be-consumers.
To return the way in which evangelicalism changes by being linked to cultures and becoming a feature of the marketplace: you can substitute in “religion” in the analysis above, and it still works. When evangelicalism—for good reasons!—offers tools for navigating cultural concerns or for talking about how great Jesus is, but omits the ways in which this work is fostering in us the habits neccesary to become good consumers, it’s missing something huge in at least two ways:
Anything market-distributed gets distributed unevenly. Churches with a lot of money will be able to distribute marketed goods better than those without money. This goes not only for the latest Christian-influencer cookbook or app, but for denominational Sunday school literature, subscription services for videos, fill in the blank. Thus, the in-group conversations within evangelicalism only continue: the groups who don’t already agree continue to not agree because they’re not reading you or buying you. The divides within the Church (and evangelicalism) continue, not only across denominational lines, but class lines: to read this particular publishing house, or these particular authors is to be in, to read others is to be out. In other words, by ignoring this feature of consumptive distribution, evangelicalism contributes to its own fracturing.
Anything which is determined by the market long enough becomes just a feature of the market. In this way, evangelical forays into addressing cultural concerns inevitably become marked by the same viciousness, ephemerality, and eyeball-driven concerns that any contemporary markets do. This is bad for a whole raft of reasons, but in this way, it’s bad because it fuses Jesus into a market mentality: we become ironically more competitive and insular, distracted, and unserious by consuming things that talk about Jesus. The habits of marketplace consumption make us worse followers of Jesus, because how we learn to think about what is good among the various theological options out there is another iteration of marketplace competition.
The key here is not, I think, to abandon things that evangelicals care about—people need to hear about Jesus! people need to have their lives ordered around the Gospel!—but to realize the ways that evangelicalism’s ability to keep pace in culture, and its mutability, is driven by increasingly technocratic terms of engagement, and plays into patterns of consumption which contribute to the further fracturing of the movement.
Illich’s concern for a convivial world invites us to consider the ways in which these tools could and should be open access, distributed across sectors, and discussed openly rather than defensively: when the literature and tools for living as a Christian are available to only a few monied individuals, then we become Christians of a self-defined kind along the lines of access and consumption of those resources, and not those who see their identity as a Christian something to be shared, open to critique, and freely given that all my benefit. In doing so, we then will realize that the various ways in which the tools of evangelicalism can be used might all have some validity, and thus, some use across the petty lines that are drawn within the movement, drawn in no small ways because of who has access to what, and the consumption that comes as a result of that.
Reading: Charles Taylor’s Modern Social Imaginaries, because summer is waning quickly and time to read is short. Various essays in bioethics to prep for the Fall. I’ll probably be writing more about this as I teach, but I’m immediately struck by the ways in which bioethics turns on some very limited assumptions about how personhood is a function of what we will.
Writing: A book I contributed to on the varieties of Christian responses to war and peace is out. It was a good writing experience for the most part, and I’d love to hear from you if you should happen to read it. I’m continuing to write on the 23rd Psalm over at Chris Green’s site, the latest installment of which is here. The family has finally been bitten by COVID, after avoiding it for over two years. Say a prayer or three for us, and feel free to send over dinner.
Upcoming: For subscribers, I want to offer a group reading of Illich’s Tools of Conviviality over Zoom. It’s a really excellent and provocative work, and one which benefits from multiple readings. I’ll be working out the time/date with subscribers soon. If you’ve thought about subscribing, from now until September 1, I’m running a back-to-school offer, available here.
You should go read that first, and then come back.
Between 2016 and 2022, the number of thinkpieces and books turning over this question is staggering. Much of the analysis within the presidential election on this question collapsed the political patterns of those self-identifying as evangelical with those who are confessionally evangelical so that no one really has much idea what being evangelical as a self-designation means.
Sider died recently, and was eulogized well here. Al Mohler’s assessment, by contrast, was petty and missed the salient features of Sider’s work. How we remember the dead truthfully is an important question, and one I’ll try to take up in the future.
The reason, as many have observed, that so many former evangelicals (the exvangelicals) wind up selling some kind of therapy, recovery, analysis of evangelicalism, etc., is because this is the set of tools that they learned in evangelicalism: how to connect with a cultural audience.
It’s kind of their money. This is a much larger conversation about property, ownership, and money that will have to wait for another newsletter.
Deschooling Society, p. 66.
Mecy. Good work, doc.