One of the questions that plagues my study of American religion is why there is such a frequent close correspondence between American Christianity and war making. This question displays my own liberal Protestant belief that violence should always be a last resort, and that churches and religious leaders should not be in the business of cheerleading for war. After studying American religion for two decades, I should know better—liberal, mainline, and conservative Protestants have all done it, and yet, I keep asking why. Now of course, there are the exceptions. My recent favorite is Jeremiah Evarts, a Christian Congregational missionary who courageously fought against Indian removal and, in particular, against Andrew Jackson’s terror toward the Cherokee (see Jon Meacham’s American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House). Needless to say, Evarts failed to stop the carnage, but his voice was strong for justice.
A more contemporary counter-example comes from an unlikely source. Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek Church in Illinois and one of the godfathers of the megachurch evangelical movement, preached a sermon on the eve of the Iraq War, called “Why War?” He laid out three approaches to war—realism, just-war theory, and pacifism. He encouraged his congregation to re-examine their own thinking in light of these alternatives. In the process, he identified himself as a pacifist. In the white evangelical community, this position was a profile in courage, and few followed.
I pursued this question in my recent research, investigating the relation of Pacific Northwest Christianity and the Iraq War in Evangelical vs. Liberal: The Clash of Christian Cultures in the Pacific Northwest. In interviews with nearly 450 evangelicals and liberals, covering a wide range of issues, many of the responses made me think that, at least in American Christianity, support for war is hardly inconsistent with faith, whether one is politically conservative or liberal.
I use the label evangelical and liberal based on an inductive method in which individuals self-identified around a consistent range of traits. Evangelicals embodied a specific set of beliefs and actions—Jesus as Lord and savior, a need to share the faith, the full authority of scripture, the blood atonement of Christ, and a strong belief in the goodness of the American economic and political system. Liberals were less demonstrative about their faith, more inclusive in their spiritual beliefs and actions, more private in their religious activities, and less expressive in their support for America, as well as cautious about mixing religion and politics. Nevertheless, despite the occasional criticism of the Iraq War by some liberals and a handful of evangelicals, there was little real action taken to stop it.
Indeed, liberal pastors for the most part stood on the sidelines of the Iraq War. They felt that it was their task to be informative but neutral on the issue and to allow their congregants to make up their own minds. Two out of the ten liberal pastors made strong critiques of the Iraq War, criticizing it as an unjust preemptive attack as well as arguing that the war went against a Christian just-war ethic, but this critique was muted publicly. Liberal lay people exemplified similar neutrality, with a few exceptions, questioning the statements of President Bush but also not going very far to oppose the war. If there was opposition, it was against the evangelical community. As a liberal lay leader said, “[Bush’s] God is a God of war, my God is a God peace.” God in the liberal tradition is a God who seeks reconciliation, who includes all and is hospitable to the stranger and those left out. Liberals attacked evangelicals on the ways in which God becomes the “head of the spear” in evangelical theology, whether God is deterring evil, judging immorality or fighting a cosmic war against evil regimes. Liberals found this talk “primitive” at best.
Conversely, most evangelicals came out strongly for the war without much prodding. The majority of evangelical respondents self-identified as Republicans and were strong backers of President Bush. Their reasons were based on the righteousness of the cause in Iraq, trust in the commander-in-chief, potential for a Christian mission in a Muslim country, and the need to name evil and deter it at whatever price. It was at times inspiring to listen to them as they would say that, as parents, they felt that it was their duty to send their sons and daughters for this cause. As one evangelical pastor said, “In the evangelical world, patriotism is still a high value, sacrificial patriotism.” Indeed, while several liberals spoke about the “real reasons” the United States went to war in Iraq as having to do with “oil and war-profiteering,” evangelicals were certain and glad that the commander-in-chief was leading them to pay the “ultimate price” for the sake of “liberating an oppressed country from an evil dictator.” Many evangelicals were dedicated to the idea that the United States had a “God-given” responsibility to “give itself” for the sake of others in the world.
The evangelicals in my study demonstrated a dedication to faith and a willingness to serve others in concrete forms that overshadowed and even dwarfed the service of liberals in my study. What I expected from liberals was a strong prophetic voice of justice, but I largely experienced muted complaints, often directed against Bush and the war but frequently about evangelicals. And while I often agreed with liberals in their general stance against the war, I was disappointed with the ineffectual public stances and, indeed, their tendency to talk about justice and service as opposed to doing much of it.
I have sometimes thought to myself, since doing this research, that if I were the commander-in-chief I could find no better ally than white evangelicals. Their extraordinary sacrificial loyalty to God and country buoyed the national will to invade Iraq. At the same time, as a Christian who sees little support for war making in the New Testament, I wonder why there isn’t more critical discussion among evangelicals and liberals about American state-sanctioned violence. Of course, people of good conscience can disagree over the justice of the Iraq War, but surely in the spirit of Evarts and Hybels, we could have done and could do much more to question the Christian basis of state-sponsored violence. And it seems to me that America, even under a Democratic president, will continue to make war. Since we are nation dominated by followers of Jesus Christ, I wonder: how can this tendency to support violence be a normal attribute of a nation so evidently loyal to the one who is called the Prince of Peace?
Your thoughts and final question are definitely thought provoking and worth wrestling over. If I might, I would like to broaden the question:
How can the tendency to support violence be a normal attribute of any nation so evidently loyal to Buddha, Shiva, Torah, Allah, or whatever secular leader of prophet? It seems from my reading of the present and history, violence is ingrained within every human culture and the strange ones are those who choose to go the non-violent path. Different religions and even secular leaders who claim no faith basis for their actions often tap into a passionate defense of their way mixed with a passionate hatred of the other and find a way to foment brutality in the name of faith or nationalism or tribe.
On another note in your article, as a Christian pastor from the liberal, mainline perspective, I find it extremely difficult to speak about issues of war and violence in a community that envisions itself as a gathering of diverse Christians. When I preached a series of sermons before Hybels and others on the upcoming war, the mainline conservatives in my congregation shuddered but respected me. The mainline liberals liked it but did nothing to organize. And the few Christian radicals already involved in organizing against the way said it was about time. Preaching “prophetically” in mixed company is always hard. On the other hand, my experience in many conservative, evangelical congregations has been that preaching on issues of support for the Bush wars was easy. What was harder and what was not supported in the those congregations was when Clinton called the military to serve in Bosnia. In many of those cases, the congregations didn’t know what to do and how to mix their faith and desire for violent defense of their nation.
I try to give an account, in the context of the Gaza massacre, of the disturbing phenomenon you discuss of Christians siding, not with victims as is their supernatural duty, but with the victimizers, here:
I conclude this way:
“Though Hamas is no innocent victim, for it certainly shares some of the blame in the death of innocent Palestinians by providing the pretext—though, of course, not the justification—for Israel’s grossly disproportionate use of force against them, those siding solely with Israel in the Gaza war, and those who refuse in principle to utter one word of condemnation of the Israeli regime, or any regime, institution, group, or person, for what are manifestly immoral acts, are in principle expressing their perennial loyalty to the victimizers. As Gil Bailie’s and Rene Girard’s pioneering work on the origin and nature of violence reveals (see especially Bailie’s Violence Unveiled and Girard’s The Scapegoat), being an authentic Christian means, almost more than anything else, being on the side of the victims in all instances of violence. Jesus, being the sacrificial victim par excellence, is the Divine Defender of Victims. Satan, on the other hand, is the demonic defender of victimizers.”
The only common denominator that explains the folly with religion is mankind. Once you eliminate this factor, and only then, will religion truly reach its apex. As most religious dogma states, we are imperfect, and therefore, are not worthy of calling the shots. So religion will continue to be handicapped.
I would suggest that any and every religion that claims to possess the “one true revelation/way/ faith” has effectively declared war on all other faith traditions and cultures.
And given the opportunity will use what ever means it can to convert all of humankind to this “one true way.”
Both Islam and Christianity specialize in this impulse and tactic.
I would suggest that anyone who claims to know that no religion has exclusive access to the fullness of truth is committing the same “impulse and tactic” as that which he condemns in others, and that he would be just as intent as the religious fanatic of converting all humankind to the “one true way,” in this case, the one true way of the non-existence of a one true way. Obama and Caldwell make the same self-contradiction. Obama writes:
“I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up a suspicion of dogma. And I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others. I’m a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at it’s [sic] best comes with a big dose of doubt. I’m suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding. I think that, particularly as somebody who’s now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart, there’s an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.”
Of course, there is something immediately attractive about Obama’s position here. For, it expresses a partial truth, namely, that we should be suspicious of our capacity to grasp comprehensively and exhaustively any truth, let alone those bearing upon supernatural reality. That a lack of such subjective suspicion on the part of individuals and nations has led to grave evils is indubitable, as Miss Caldwell suggests. This is the legacy of all fanaticisms, whether secular ones like neoconservatism or secular humanism, or religious ones like Puritanism and Jihadist Islam. However, Obama and Caldwell conflate a healthy Socratic skepticism regarding one’s grasp of dogma with the hubristic and perfidious skepticism towards the possibility of dogmatic truth per se.
Obama and Caldwell expose the inherent irrationality of liberal ideology. To be a priori unwilling to accept the truth of any dogma with certainty is to be certain that no one can be certain of the truth of any dogma. Obama’s and Caldwell’s apparent intellectual and spiritual humility is thus the precise opposite, for they harbor no suspicion or skepticism as to the possible untruth of their dogmatic belief in the uncertainty of all dogmatic beliefs.
For Obama and Caldwell, religious certainty is impossible, and the belief that it is possible has produced and will continue to produce massive evil, they think. However, Obama and Caldwell themselves, due to their own religious certainty, are, following their own logic, bound to cause “an enormous amount of damage done around the world,” “have “effectively declared war on all other faith traditions and cultures,” and “given the opportunity will use what ever means it can to convert all of humankind to this ‘one true way.'”
It seems Miss Caldwell has herself declared war. Well done ma’am!
In all seriousness, most of Miss Caldwell’s comments, which seem to come up with remarkable regularity on this blog, are little more than reductionist guff. It is quite amazing amidst such healthy and intelligent debate that she should even bother to contribute such patronizing nonsense time after time without any proper substantiation or support.
It is also remarkable that someone who would chastise others for ‘declaring war’ on different belief systems, should be quite so vitriolic and uncompromising in her own opinions. As usual, the ultra-liberal is utterly illiberal.
I would like to agree with Mr. Puri’s statement and expand upon it by arguing that the folly of many institutions, not just religious institutions, is mankind. Taking, for example, political institutions, I would argue that no matter how well-theorized a belief system or potentially beneficial an institution seems to be, when given to human control, the possibility, or, perhaps, the probability, of failure to perfectly implement the original ideals of those systems or institutions increases.
Based on the theory of an equal distribution of wealth and the elimination of exploitation, didn’t Communism sound pretty nice at one point?
Human beings, having the ability to interpret anything and everything according to our own personal understanding, are just as capable of misinterpreting anything and everything according to our own understanding.
Therefore, I would suggest, as a possible answer to Wellman’s original question, that the reason for “such a frequent close correspondence between American Christianity and war making” is that American Christians who support the Iraq War for religious reasons have misinterpreted the Christian faith.
It is important to remember that not many people, myself included, who claim to be Christian act in complete accordance with the teaching of the Christian faith, or even fully know and understand the teachings of the Christian faith.
It would seem, then, that the solution to militarized, war-mongering Christianity would require, at the minimum, an authorized and definitive interpreter of the Christian faith, appointed by Christ Himself for that purpose, protected from error on all matters involving faith and morality. If we say that such an interpreter doesn’t exist, then we are left with the inevitable and unsolvable problem of a politicized and tribalized Christianity bound up with the idols of the cave and the marketplace. If we say such an interpreter must exist, logically, else we end up with religious war-mongering, sectarianism and subjectivism, then it is incumbent on those who complain about distortions in the Christian witness to discover and obey it. If we say that such an interpreter does exist, and that we know it, then we must make sure to conform our minds and actions with it. Sad to say, many Christians who should know better do not: witness a few years ago Michael Novak, for example, trying to convince John Paul II that the Iraq invasion was just by Catholic standards. I think the issue here is part of the bigger issue of the proper relationship and bounds of Church and state.
Ultimately, only Jesus Christ has the authority to settle the just bounds between Church and state because He is the author of both. By the fact of His Incarnation, he brought together Church and state, Heaven and earth, divinity and humanity for the first time, and after bringing them together, He commanded their proper separation: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Therefore, in order to know we owe Caesar and God today, we must listen to His authentic and infallible mouthpiece. Unless we have access to the voice of Christ in this way, there is no way of solving the problem; it is mission impossible.
Yet, there must be a solution because Christ commanded us to solve the problem. In short, Christ must have given us a sure and “from the outside” way of determining His will regarding the proper ordering of Church and state. Anything but a living, visible, unified, universal, hierarchical, concrete, corporal institution whose unity, holiness, universality, and apostolicity can be recognized by all “from the outside” could not afford us the clear determination of Christ’s will in this regard. Anything less would inevitably perpetuate both the denial of access, and the subjective uncertainty of that access, to the definitive truth regarding Christ’s will, a denial and uncertainty that would make the just separation of the prerogatives of Church and state impossible. What we would have without it is either outright war or the Procrustean attempt to make the message of the Gospel fit into the arbitrary, war-mongering will of whoever happens to be ruling the state, in short, chaos or a hopelessly compromised Christianity.
Is our only alternative a perpetual chorus of liberals like Bush and Obama telling us what reality is and what the “true” Church is and what God wants, people who claim to know something they don’t know and to do something they can’t do? Is there no end to the Lockes, Rousseaus, and Rawlses; the Jeffersons, Madisons, and Wilsons; the Novaks and the neo-conned-Christians, that is, deluded, prideful men daring to instruct the Church as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God?
I think there are a number of cultural correlates that serve to help explain many aspects of the divide you mention.
First, one might take the somewhat cynical stance that there is something warped or disingenuous about the self-proclaimed religiosity of many Americans. One of my favorite articles in this genre is from Harper’s, “The Christian Paradox.”
Related to this idea is the critique that Evangelicals aren’t pro-war because of some substantive theology, but because of their close positions to political power. Greg Boyd takes something like this stance in his book Myth of a Christian Nation. I would point out in this context that Augustine was very important in the development of “just war theory”—indeed, historically corresponding with the mixture of Church and Roman power.
On why liberal opponents of war are more docile, I think it stems from a related theological position they take in contrast with Evangelicals. They don’t just differ on policy positions, they differ on whether politics and theology should mix at all. A liberal pastor will not only have substantive reasons for opposing an Evangelical pastor on the question of war, but he (or she… since we’re talking liberal pastors!) will have substantive reasons for opposing the Evangelical on whether pastors should be engaged in political dynamics at all. Martin Shelton-Jenck, above, gives some thoughts on why he is more hesitant to preach on such topics.
The key question is why Christian theology doesn’t constrain Christian support for war. While I have only a little skepticism about the notion that the New Testament is a non-violent document (I think there’s probably a muted way in which the continually-mentioned violence of hell in the New Testament seeps into Christians’ notion of earthly justice), I think the much more problematic notion is this: the idea that Christian theology is the primary way by which evangelical Christians understand either their faith itself, or through which they articulate politics. A professed ascription to the “full authority of Scripture” notwithstanding, everyone’s understanding of Scripture is mediated by interpretations, in church, in cultural exchanges, and through interpretations of history and tradition, and this has been the subject of a deluge of scholarship. To me, the question for Protestants raised by Wellman’s question, then, is this: who’s at the wheel when it comes to Biblical interpretation and relating it to politics? Pastors? The media? Right-wing politicians? Chiliastic fervor?
We could ask the question of the disconnect between Christian faith and violence for each war individually—a few denominations aside, I’m not aware of a significant domestic Christian protest against any American war at its inception—but the question here seems to be for the Iraq War in particular, against which there was a lack of significant dissent from every auspice of mass culture, and this is where it seems important that dissent was little different, per this study, among “liberal” Protestants (are these mainline Protestants? Wellman doesn’t say) than among evangelicals. If I were to launch an investigation into the causes, I’d start in three directions: 1) rationale offered for the war, 2) access to media sources which intervened in the rationale, and 3) cultural traditions and social imaginaries which bolstered the rationale.
There are obviously a lot of contingent circumstances with the war in Iraq, but I’d submit that one issue that cuts across all three categories is the notion of the “Crusade,” a cultural trope to which this war had an oft-noted significant geographical and religious proximity from its first framing, and which was given cultural currency not only by Bush’s religious rhetoric, by the various Muslim leaders who repeated it, but also by media flippancy (“Bush’s crusade”, etc.) on all fronts. The crusades loomed large in the social imaginary of this war, and still do, or else why would Obama have had to insist in Turkey two weeks ago that “The United States is not and will never be at war with Islam”? And why else would it have been headline news?
The Crusades, for the average Protestant, I suspect, are understood at the level of myth and iconography, right alongside King Arthur; but they’re at least symbolically suggestive in the culture as “Camelot” has been. Wellman, in any case, probably picks the wrong millennium in which to start considering the theological hypocrisy of Christians supporting war as a general issue. As an aspect of the tortured complexity of religious identity, the question of how Protestant Christians have, almost across the board, found a way to unite the politics of warfare with an array of relationships with the New Testaments is certainly worth asking in this particular case, at a time when Protestant Christianity has been thought to be in its ascendancy. For me, it raises questions about the nature and health of both Protestant Christianity and of Christian history among Christians themselves. It makes Christianity seem to be, at best, the wingman of tribalist politics and the dupe of ingrained traditions. But that, too, is certainly only a matter of interpretation.
One of the issues central but not focal to Wellman’s essay is that of justice. He uses the term in several different contexts, beginning with Jeremiah Evarts’ fight against Cherokee oppression, which showed that “his voice was strong for justice.” Being “strong for justice” means, in this first instance, fighting an oppressor who is denying universal human rights. It is an example of justice that invites comparisons to those Christian evangelicals who justified the Iraq War as a means of “liberating an oppressed country” (qtd. in Wellman). This implied definition of justice as “righteousness…and the need to name evil and deter it” has a slight vigilante ring, which is especially intriguing when taken in contrast with the justice mandated by just-war ethics.
Wellman mentions just-war theory in his piece, but he does not address the core question that makes it so compelling as an ethic of justice: Whose justice is represented here? It seems to me that contemporary rules of war have been established by powerful governments, so according to those rules only governments can sanction violence. I say this because it is generally non-sovereign groups (frequently religiously-bound) that have been called terrorists, the label implying that they have initiated violence where violence had not been sanctioned. The curious part of all this lies in the fact that the world at large does not accept as “legitimate” that violence which is perpetrated by non-governmental agents with religious motivations, yet the Iraq war has been justified by many evangelicals (as seen above) as a righteous liberation effort identified closely with Christian ethics.
Why is this seen as acceptable and even noble (“sacrificial patriotism”) while many other groups’ religiously-coded violence is dismissed as terrorist activity? I believe it comes down to more than merely a difference of perspective. Rather, the key idea here is differentiating between violence inspired by religion (which we deem to be an ethical justification and thus acceptable) versus violence motivated by religion (which appears overtly political and thus unacceptable). On a similar note, inspiration seems mostly to affect individual supporters, while motivation affects leaders’ decisions.
Recall John Rawls’ concept of public reason, which holds that people can and ought to justify their opinions/actions with reasons appealing to people of diverse positions. We don’t consider religiously-motivated violence to dovetail with just-war ethics because it does not appeal to public reason. On the other hand, religiously-inspired violence presumably has publicly acceptable reasons motivating it.
One further question to consider, which I touched on above, is the difference between justice as a legal term and justice as a religious concept. I think this distinction also has some bearing on what justice/justification is deemed legitimate.
James Wellman is right to observe a “frequent close correspondence between American Christianity and war making.”
There are two issues at stake here: the first – the ineffectiveness of religion in pacifism or in anti-war movements. The second—the correspondence of religion with war, even though religious tenets are purportedly antithetical to war. In this post I will focus mostly on the first issue—the ineffectiveness of religious pacifists in anti-war movements. Specifically I will examine Wellman’s example of Bill Hybels, a pastor who is against the current Iraq war and Wellman’s example of Jeremiah Evarts, a religious pacifist who objected to Indian Removal during President Andrew Jackson’s tenure in office. This post argues that Evarts and Hybels’ religious pacifist rhetoric can be classified as prophetic speech. Once classified as prophetic speech, it is possible to view Evarts’ and Hybels’ political roles through the established understanding of the power of the prophetic and the powerlessness of the prophet in politics.
Pastor Bill Hybels’ sermon “Why War” fits all three of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s (the Jewish theologian) criteria for prophetic voice. First, Hybels articulates the injustice of the Iraq war as a symptom of a broader, graver social malignancy. Hybel’s sermon asks each person to rethink their approach to the war in relation to realism, just-war theory, and pacifism. By situating the Iraq war in the broader context of social approaches to conflict, Hybels’ sermon meets Heschel’s criteria that the prophet views the injustice as a symptom of a much graver social concern. Second, Hybels’ sermon is a speech, so Hybels meets Heschel’s criteria that prophets vocalize against injustice. Third, by virtue of Pastor Hybels’ position as Pastor, Hybels’ sermons are understood to appeal to a common humanity or a higher truth, meeting Heschel’s third criteria that prophets appeal to a common humanity or higher truth,
Jeremiah Evarts essays similarly meet Heschel’s criteria for a prophetic voice. Evarts’ writes that Indian removal stains the “national character,” demonstrating Evarts understanding of Indian Removal as a symptom of a broader, graver social problem. The essays stand in the face of injustice, and while they are not vocal, they are the written log of many a distilled sermon. Last, Evarts’ essays appeal to a higher power and common truth, as when Evarts writes that the Indian removal should stop because it is owed to “themselves and to mankind”.
That Evarts and Hybels meets Heschel’s criteria for prophetic voice is not to suggest they are prophets; rather, understanding their possession of prophetic qualities provides a framework through which to examine their political role in society.
To the extent Evarts and Hybels are viewed as espousers of the prophetic, they can be seen as prophets; in this light, their political ineffectiveness is not particularly surprising. Prophets necessarily operate outside the structures they denounce, a tough seat of power to successfully politically negotiate. The prophet, as understood from the Bible, is chosen by God to receive the word of God and to share that word with the people. As such, he is distinct from the masses even as though he is not divine, and distinct from divinity though he is singular relative to the masses. In this way, he is outside the structures of society, and it is from that perch he professes his prophecy.
In modern, more secular times, the distance between the prophet and the masses has been maintained. By virtue of voicing a dissenting view, a prophet and their community become separate entities; the voice of dissent highlights that the prophet and the community are no longer united by the same underlying philosophical tenets. A prophet, necessarily outside the community, finds himself in a tough seat from which to negotiate substantial political power. Both Hybels’ and Evarts’ fail to substantially change the course of the injustices they face (the Iraq war and Indian removal, respectively). If the prophet is lucky enough to achieve mainstream success in the modern era (and some have—Barack Obama’s prophetic rhetoric in the 2004 Democratic Convention launched him as a national political figure), than he is no longer a prophet, for he cannot successfully decry the system he leads. Since prophets are necessarily outside the system they desire to change, it is difficult for them to have ultimate power of direction within the structures they denounce.
(Note here: Prophets have earned their reputation as ineffectual ever since Amos graced the Old Testament decrying Israelites social and economic sins as likely to bring about catastrophe. No one heeded his cry and catastrophe struck, even though Amos had foretold its arrival. That Hybels and Evarts are ineffectual prophets should surprise only those who neglected Sunday school.)
While the position of a prophet may be inherently politically ineffective, prophetic rhetoric is a remarkably politically powerful tool. What makes Evarts and Hybels’ memorable and notable is their use of prophetic rhetorical power to introduce a glimmer of possibility capable of turning injustice into justice. This glimmer of possibility simultaneously critiques the human capacity for good while maintaining that there are good people, rupturing a linear historical narrative of what was with an inquisition of what should have been.
An elementary rhetoric student would identify the defining features of prophetic rhetoric as the same features that make it politically potent. Since prophetic rhetoric takes a specific injustice, which can be told as an anecdote, grounds it as a symptom of a broader social critique, and then appeals to a higher, common truth, it meets basic rhetorical criteria for a strong structure. That Hybels’ and Evarts’ rhetoric is unsuccessful, despite its rhetorical strength, introduces an unnerving critique of the human capacity for good into a history of humanity that we like to regard as one of progress and innovation.
For this reason, prophetic rhetoric is notable or memorable in a historical narrative. The critique it introduces of the human capacity for good is important, but more importantly, it ruptures a linear, monolithic history with the question: “Did things have to end this way?” In this way, the prophetic voice against injustice speaks to all times and all injustices, forcing those who hear the call to look at injustices around them and act.
Hybels’ and Evarts’ are politically ineffectual to the extent they stand as prophets, but are notable and memorable in history to the extent they espouse the prophetic.