My obligatory David French response wherein I tilt at windmill of his hatred of the politics of his fellow evangelicals, saying that either these come from theology (which case the politics are acceptable) or culture (which case the politics are unacceptable):
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I feel like there’s an additional component outside just the binary choice of theological conviction versus culture, namely "the truth”. I understand that THAT greatly depends on the media, which is why we’re where we are. The truth is extremely hard to discern in an environment where the press is utterly untrustworthy.
Reaching for alternative media services is the most rational thing evangelicals can do. In fact, they are derelict as citizens if they don’t. Their choices seem not so much predicated on cultural predisposition or theological predisposition but a search for the truth which is the natural recoil from constantly being lied to.
It’s rational to see the exemption to covid distancing policies for riots in the summer of ’20 and wonder, so, social distancing is not required if the cause is righteous?
It’s rational not to trust Fauci and the medical establishment given their own inconsistencies and the change of goals from "flattening the curve" to whatever we’re doing now (I guess the goal is vaccinating the unvaccinated to protect the already vaccinated.)
It’s rational to distrust the ‘20 election results given the concerns of U.S. senators and HBO documentarists in 2018 concerning the potential for fraud.
It’s rational to see BLM as an inversion of the Civil Rights moment.
If self-defense is valid in the individual sphere, I’m not sure why it shouldn't be in the social sense.
2 comments:
Hey, stumbled onto your blog while googling the Latin phrase in your header—referred to in Wilberforce’s book, Practical Christianity (my afternoon reading). Struck forcibly by two things as I scrolled through your previous entries: 1) You appear in many ways to be a kindred spirit (the quote from Middlemarch was wonderful); 2) Your antipathy toward David French (or maybe the antipathy you feel from him) is the opposite of my reaction to the man and his work. It’s the conundrum of these times that true believers are so pitted against one another. And I agree with you that perhaps the issue lies with what is TRUE. If we could all agree on that, I think we would be reaching the same conclusions. But for reasons that are hard to fathom, we are choosing different sources to trust. That is probably the conversation I most want to have with believers taking opposite sides from me: Where are you going for truth, and why?
Hi Tracey, thanks for reading!
Finding a credible alternative source is challenging to say the least but I think it will shake out in the next few years as we see how newer sources do over time. I think Andrew Sullivan exposes the old sources well here:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/when-all-the-media-narratives-collapse-650
Personally, I trust Alex Marlow at Brietbart because he’s been consistently accurate over the past few years. Mollie Hemingway understands where we’re at. The Epoch Times is good on China and understands them better than most. Richard Hanania on Substack is good.
I think David French means well but is missing the moment. I think he should read "Prayer as a Political Problem” by Jean Danielou if I should be so bold.
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