infinite improbability

Required reading for evangelicals

It's not often that you come across an article in a fashion magazine that's worth reading, let alone worth recommending to others, but when I was reading Elle out of boredom the other day in the breakroom at work, I came across an article that I think demonstrates some of what I think is wrong with much of American evangelicalism. In the article Confessions of a Very Good Girl, the author is ostensibly writing about the Girls of Grace conference for teen girls that's put on by Point of Grace, but the article is really more about the author's journey away from Christianity than anything. The reason I think the article is important is because the world that she described growing up in is one that I recognize, not terribly unlike the world in which I spent the first 16 or so years of my life, and as wrong as I believe her conclusions are, I can understand the path she took to get there. In a sense, I too rejected the religion of my childhood, and while I only rejected my Southern Baptist/fundamentalist/charismatic roots in favor of a Reformed outlook (and while the PCA is evangelical, it's just not the same as the non-Reformed branches of evangelicalism, at least as I've experienced them), it was some of the same forces that pushed me that way that pushed the author out of Christianity altogether. How did I end up at this destination while the author ended up elsewhere? I suppose it comes down to the Grace of God. In any case, the article is quite sad, and I think the church needs to pay attention to stories like this--if they don't, they're going to lose the younger generation. I plan on writing more on this over the course of the next few days, but for now, I give you this quote from the article:

Marc Jacobs coats, however, do not a revolution make. Swap 1980s stirrup pants for the sea of pastel hoodies before me and you have an idea of the catechism I received. I spent my South Jersey girlhood going on retreats and attending Bible studies and singing songs with lyrics like “Lord, you are more precious than silver.” I had friends whose parents forbade them from listening to Madonna or watching The Smurfs because its villain was a wizard. My parents sent my sister and me to Christian school, where story hour meant films like A Thief in the Night—a piece of apocalyptic pulp fiction from the '70s that preceded the best-selling Left Behind novels—a movie that traumatized me so much that I can't remember any of the C.S. Lewis they read us. My family attended an archetypical evangelical megachurch that started in our pastor's house, then moved into its own building, and when it outgrew that little sanctuary began meeting in a sprawling complex that, were it to be glimpsed from the air, would surely look like the Pentagon. The church has dispensed with hymnals and now relies on a worship team—you've seen the Time-Life commercials—and the PowerPoint presentation of lyrics.

That quote describes my childhood experiences in so many ways (though, one thing I am thankful for is that my parents put a lot more emphasis on quality Christian literature like C.S. Lewis instead of the flavor-of-the-week Christian fads).

Related reading: Discoshaman over at Le Sabot Post-Moderne has a few interesting posts, particularly the second one, where he relates how he became Reformed, and which kind of relate back to the ideas that I'm going to be developing in the next few posts.