Evangelical Control Grid
Matthew 23:1-5:
Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men.
Like many Christian millennials, I grew up in what can broadly be called a conservative evangelical home-school community. A dominant cultural fixture was Focus on the Family and their kids radio show Adventures in Odyssey, which began in 1987 to the present day. From 1996-2013 Focus on the Family also ran a series of stand alone radio dramas with their “Focus on the Family Radio Theater.” This company embodied the ethos of the religious right revival in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, and they wanted to have cultural engagement with the world in order to change it. Sort of Breitbart before Breitbart; politics is downstream from culture. Most people consider Christian cultural artifacts from this period as schlock, terrible knockoffs of ideas from secular culture. In many cases this was true. In the case of radio-drama this was not so. Focus on the Family had great producers and actors to throw into these shows. Yet as we look at the cultural landscape of America and of Christian America to this day, the effects have been totally non-existent. The church and Christian families are worse off than they were in the 1980s and “cultural” engagement has failed tremendously. Many, like my self, grew up in communities that just totally disintegrated into the ether. Homeschooling (this specific Christian endeavor of the 90's) was more or less a one generation experiment where the millennial children of boomer and X'er conservative Christian parents failed to continue their vision. Why did they fail? That is a multifaceted question that will have to take into account a variety of factors, but a major one is insincerity and dishonesty; what I call the Evangelical Control Grid.
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