The Original Talk Hard: Defending the Role of the Critic in Christianity. Lots I would change in that essay, but it still holds up 6 years or so later.

Recently, I received an email from someone who has been a longtime reader of this blog, giving his reasons for being a regular reader and generous supporter.

This particular reader appreciated the writing I've done on the subjects of mental illness, psychiatric medication and emotional health. As this person is a professional in those fields and far beyond me in understanding, I was understandably happy to read that email.

I have received many thousands of emails in the last 8 years of Internet Monk. A sizable portion express appreciation for something that deserves a moment's consideration: that this blog is one of the few places some folks have found where certain points of view can be discussed with relative civility.

I won't attempt a listing, but any regular readers will know that I've made it part of the mission of this blog to be present an alternative view of any number of issues within evangelicalism in particular. I do so with provocative writing if possible, and with active moderation of the discussion. I've done this without expectation of finding there would be thousands of people reading and thinking "SO I'm not the only person who feels this way." In fact, I've expected considerably more hostility and objection than I've received.

Recently, the IM comment threads have started routinely going over 100 comments. Interpret that as you will. In all the time I've done this blog, I have temporarily banned around 20 people, and absolutely banned 2.

Yesterday, a commenter aired the usual complaints at me:

I don't affirm inerrancy.

I'm critical of "my brethren."

I give "Papists and liberals" plenty of space.

I limit conversation.

Of course, as most readers know, I fully affirm the truthfulness of the Bible in the language of the Second London Confession and the Westminster Confession. Ask any of the dozens of advocates of gay marriage and gay ordination how I'm doing on taking the Bible seriously. What I'm not doing is allowing the word "inerrancy" to become a code word for a set of positions I don't believe the Bible teaches. I'm not turning a blind eye to the hypocrisy that the "inerrancy" stampede has foisted on my denomination. Give me a confession made before the word "inerrancy" was invented, and I'm perfectly content.

There are thousands of people who don't buy the kind of flat, literalistic inerrancy that is being sold among conservative evangelicals today, and, sorry to disappoint the gallery, but we don't have to. Being a Baptist doesn't force me to buy the search for the ark, young earth creationism, Hamm/Hovind, complementarianism, homeschooling, conspiracy theories, Dobson's view of politics, bad Christian art, arrogant leaders, bad scholarship or the SBC's view of itself as compared to other denominations.

Yes, I am critical of some of my brethren. I've never lived a day in Protestantism that there wasn't a critical conversation going on. If the memo has gone out that we've stop asking questions and contending for answers, I didn't get it. My blog is one tiny voice in the midst of a massive evangelical self-promotion machine. When I first called for the outing of Osteen as a motivational speaker, what had you heard from anyone in the evangelical establishment about him? (Oh, that's different. Of course it is.)

The animosity some have towards this writer and this space comes simply because I have staked out a different position than they've been led to believe is the only allowable, God-endorsed, position allowed by the Christian worldview. Their orthodoxy, and the God who sponsors it, requires that dissent be quenched as an act of faithfulness. When I express dissent and protect its expression by others, I'm certain to be told by some amateur fundamentalist Freudian there's something psychologically wrong with me. (Friend, if you believe you are the ultimate measure of mental health, please go on a world tour so the rest of us can see what it looks like. But just between you and me, I wouldn't quit my day job on that one.)

The commenting voices at this site give witness to another view. There are Protestants who aren't Catholics and don't hate Catholics. There are Catholics willing to talk with Protestants as fellow Christians. There are Orthodox and mainliners seeking to relate to evangelicalism. There are Lutherans insisting we all know nothing about law and gospel. (That's a joke.) There are Baptists who question the "What we need is more evangelism!" mantra. There are evangelicals who have nuanced views on the issue of abortion, women's ordination, the nature of homosexuality and the Christian view of mental illness. There are people who give "Papists" and "liberals" space to talk just like the other kids in the class. There are many of us lost in the evangelical wilderness trying to find a drink of water and some food.

I don't endorse all these views or their opposites. There are a number of issues where I'm not sure what I think, but I am determined to not be railroaded into being told that I must endorse or bow down to positions that I do not hold, am not required to hold and are not my conviction. I'm just as determined to tell my audience that other views exist as held by REAL PEOPLE.

If you look out in the back yard of the last twenty years of battles in the Southern Baptist Convention, there's a baby in the bathwater. That baby's older name was "soul competency." More recently, he went by the name "priesthood of the believer," but I like the previous name much better. In the "battle for the Bible" in the SBC, the moderate/liberals took those terms and used/abused them, causing conservatives to spend most of two decades bad-mouthing "soul competency" and "priesthood of the believer" as anathema to Bible-believing Christianity. Some of that response was necessary, but some of it has been singularly unfortunate and overblown.

In truth, Baptists have historically stood with the individual in his right to have his/her own convictions in regard to what scripture or a person's own religion teaches. We sided with that principle when it caused us to defend Muslims and atheists. We sided with that conviction as a proper summary of Luther's contention that his conscience about the Bible was adequate defense as to why he stood against the Pope. We defended that principle as essential to the classic definition separation of church and state endorsed religion. We understood that, without embracing all the tenets of anarchic individualism, it was right to protect and hear the minority. We rejected, historically, the tyranny of a class of theological enforcers and their political ambitions. We defended confessionalism, but we did not mindlessly defend all levels of uniformity. We realized, after painful lessons in the civil rights era and beyond, that the majority and their Bibles can be completely wrong.

Today, we live in an evangelicalism that is enamored with numbers and success. And of course, those vast numbers are told they must think, write, worship, vote, educate, live, preach and teach identically to one another because they possess the truth. (Or someone at the home office does...somewhere.) This is the sadness of being ranted at about the "sin" of refusing to use the proscribed word to describe inspiration or of daring to differ with some well-funded, fat cat majority with a mailing list. I may be wrong, but this web site is exercising something Baptist Christians used to care deeply about: dissent. But in today's atmosphere of sheeple following the media and denominational shepherds, we place no value on dissent. It's far more impressive to rant about my failure to appreciate the fact that anyone who waves a Bible around should be free from having anyone actually differ with them. It's now good, conservative sport to tell a dissenting fellow Christian that, as I heard today, my faith is about to collapse and/or I'm going Catholic. All this- ALL- because you have steadfastly decided other views are not worthy of your RESPECTFUL appreciation.

The reason I am unafraid to side with the dissenters and those asking questions that aren't allowed is that history is moving to our side. The manipulators of orthodoxy are in trouble. They've taken our confidence and put the screws to us for the sake of their own power. The celebrity-driven churches are, for the most part, going to be exposed as having no clothes. The laboratories that produce these evangelical clones are shutting down as the experiments seem to have gone horribly wrong. The deluded majority can act as if they have squashed everyone's arguments and rendered all competing opinions foolish, but in fact, quite the opposite is happening. A lot of people are dissenting, even in an atmosphere of intimidation and spiritual abuse. Write all the books and blogs you want. Have a conference and get 3000 men to wring their hands with you. You aren't gong to stop the collapse of the kind of authoritarian fundamentalism that wants to keep all of evangelicalism in a stranglehold. It's over.

Occasionally, I write with the express purpose of sounding a wake up call. I'm provocative and my audience appreciates that in my writing. I am not sounding so much of a call to arms as a literal wake up alarm to the sluggish and the sleepy. We are standing on the brink of momentous changes in the evangelical world. Many Christians brought up in a fundamentalism with all of the answers have discovered things are much different than they would have anticipated. They are exploring this new world, even as the old one is still shifting beneath their feet. Part of that experience is being told you shouldn't speak or write what you feel. The better part of the experience is ignoring that, and speaking exactly what you're thinking, feeling and discovering. "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say," as Will Shakespeare put it.

In the meantime, I consider IM a public service to people who need to get out of the way before a chunk of crumbling evangelicalism falls on their head. If the house isn't falling where you are, that's wonderful. Make whatever you want out of the reports from my part of the house. That's your privilege as a reader.