“And I get it. I really do,” writes David French in a recent blog post. “In a deeply divided nation where millions of people have convinced themselves that the church is under unprecedented siege, you want Christians who possess a public platform to ‘defend the church.’ There is a deep and profound human desire for advocacy.”
While French seemed to deny the legitimacy of these concerns (after all, people had merely “convinced themselves” of a threat), he also claimed to sympathize with this sentiment, this “deep and profound human desire for advocacy.” Nonetheless, French rejects their call for public advocacy and public defense. In fact, he does more than just reject it. French confesses the sins of his own past participation as a Christian advocate. He writes:
“I now see that my young desire for ‘more Christians in politics’ and ‘more respect for Christians in public life’ was part of the plank in my eye. Indeed, it helped make me gullible and tribal. I found myself loath to admit or confess sins in the church and quick to defend Christians from external fire. By contrast I was often eager to critique secular cultures and slow to respond when my own narratives came under credible attack.”
In French’s mind, and this is important to grasp, Christians as they currently exist seem unworthy of a public advocate, just as they seem unworthy of public representation in such public spheres as politics due to their collective guilt for being among the vaccine hesitant and the skeptics of the 2020 election results, which French labels “two of the most destructive political and cultural movements of this new century.” Until Christians stop being such an embarrassment by dropping the ball on what he considers to be “the most basic” things, French concludes “we don’t need more Christians in politics.”
French’s approach should be emphatically rejected as a possible course of action for public Christians in any age, but should be rejected most especially during the age of what has been dubbed the end of the neutral world and the dawn of the negative world, which Aaron Renn has characterized as a situation in which “being a Christian is now a social negative, especially in high status positions,” and “Christianity in many ways is seen as undermining the social good,” and “Christian morality is expressly repudiated.”
Contra the French model, we should be advancing a strategy characterized by a militant, unwavering, unapologetic advocacy of Christian people best characterized by the following three points:
First, anti-defamation: a strategic shift away from the all too common “lean left, punch right” policy of the neutral world towards a more self-conscious policy of defending fellow Christians against the negative impact of life in the negative world. Public Christians should use their platforms to push back against detractors in the media, in the workplace, and in our educational institutions. Public Christians should take the opportunity to inform our detractors who we are, what we find unacceptable, and demand that the proponents of the negative world treat us with respect.
Second, don’t throw your people under the bus: isolated stories of some alleged Christian allegedly misbehaving should be treated as isolated allegations rather than a cue to rush to a microphone to denounce Christians in general. In the negative world, needlessly spilling blood in the water only invites sharks, not prospective converts.
Third, hype your people: public Christians should function as a hype man for their people. Christians are great members of society. Our presence is a net benefit. The people claiming to represent us in the public realm should talk about that when talk against us turns negative. The more we push back against the negative world narrative that Christianity undermines the social good, the better we can navigate ourselves out of the current situation.
These seem like simple guidelines, but one of the reasons why some people reject this approach is that it requires a type of identity politics that people like French are unwilling to embrace. In his own words, “virtue should be the guiding concern of Christians in politics, not identity.” A full embrace of the policies of opposing Christian defamation, standing in solidarity with fellow Christians rather than jumping the gun to throw them under the bus, and hyping Christians would be out of step with French’s understanding of individualistic virtue. Nevertheless, this or something like it is the necessary course of action moving forward.
Ｐｈｉｌｉｐ Ｄｅｒｒｉｄａ 