3 ms·
Modern evangelical Christianity is very much a mass-market phenomenon. It doesn't exist without Glenn Beck and his ilk, who are very much artifacts of the Inter
by sprout 16y ago
Modern evangelical Christianity is very much a mass-market phenomenon. It doesn't exist without Glenn Beck and his ilk, who are very much artifacts of the Internet echo chamber (though they perhaps owe more to Fox News, cable news being a bit of a prototype for the Internet's monotonous assault on reason.)
It's very fashionable in the hacker community to treat Christianity as an anti-science establishment, but that's really a brash generalization that isn't even supported by facts. You'll even find a lot of evangelical Christians who are stauch proponents of the theory of evolution.
It's a rather tired meme that Evangelicals are engaging in an all-out assault on the scientific establishment, when that simply isn't true. There is a large, vocal evangelical contingent that espouses creationism, but 'evangelicals' are a much more complex and noisy bunch than one might expect.
To put it simply: I've been to quite a few churches that were direct examples of the overload culture that PG is writing about. Some of them were evangelical, most of them had congregations whose political beliefs are in no way uniform. And again, evangelical is in no way a synonym for right-wing. PG is overreaching here. But, it was a footnote, so I've already gone on more than is justified.
- drewr 16y agoI really wish I didn't down-vote this. I got derailed by what I thought was going to be a short-sighted rant about Christians and Glenn Beck. In short, however, I think you're right on the money. Many Christians I know refer to modern evangelical Christianity as "evangelicalism." It connotes a social construction that has its roots in church life, but its purpose is a far cry from a biblical understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. IMO, this accounts for the rise of Beck, Limbaugh, and other talking heads. They preach a message that isn't watered down. They sound impassioned and convictional, unlike the guy standing in front of them on Sunday morning.