Introspection time for evangelicals

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-introspection-time-for-evangelicals/2014/09/25/69263bee-44df-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html

By Michael Gerson
Opinion writer
September 25

Christian conservatives are often the subject of study by academics, who seem to find their culture as foreign as that of Borneo tribesmen. And this is a particularly interesting time for brave social scientists to put on their pith helmets and head to Wheaton, Ill., Colorado Springs or unexplored regions of the South. They will find a community under external and internal cultural stress.

It is fair to say that some cultural views traditionally held by evangelicals are in retreat. Whatever the (likely dim) future of political libertarianism, moral libertarianism has been on the rise. This is perhaps the natural outworking of an enlightenment political philosophy that puts individual rights at its center. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy described this view as the “right to define one’s own concept of existence.”

Whatever else traditional religious views may entail, they involve a belief that existence comes pre-defined. Purpose is discovered, not exerted. And scripture and institutions — a community of believers extended back in time — are essential to that discovery. This is not, to put it mildly, the spirit of the age.

It was not, as far as I can tell, really the spirit of any age. But many evangelicals believe it was, subscribing to the myth of a lost American Eden. There has certainly been a cultural shift in the United States on religion and public life. But it has largely been from congenial contradiction to less-sympathetic contradiction. There is more criticism of the (thin) veneer of Protestant spirituality in public places. There is also a growing belief that individual rights need to be protected, not only from the state but also from religious institutions that don’t share public values. In the extreme case, this means that nuns who don’t want to participate in the provision of contraceptives are interfering with conceptual self-definition.

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