The Mediocrity of Christian Discourse
Take a look at this exchange:
To recap:
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President, Albert Mohler: “It's not so much that I think empathy is wrongly defined. It is the fact that I don't think empathy is a thing. I don't think it's real.”
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Ethics Professor (and, depending on whom you’re talking to, Mohler’s heir apparent and/or his preferred choice to take the reins of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission), Andrew Walker: “Spot-on.”
Christian author and former research professor of English and Christianity and culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Karen Swallow Prior: “What a difference a decade (and a change in the political winds) can make:” [sharing a 2014 post from Mohler, titled Lead with Empathy…
Andrew Walker: “Dr. Mohler hasn’t moved. The definition of empathy has.”
(emphases mine, read them again)
There are so many aspects of this exchange I could speak to, but there is one thing in particular I want to get across to the reader: This exchange is a result of decades of Christian discourse being geared to the lowest common denominator, folding back upon itself, to where an ethics professor at a flagship seminary cannot even keep his boss’ mediocre, podcast-level talking points straight. In my experience, Christian ethics professors on X are some of the most consistently willing to say anything to justify extremist political stances syncretized into the faith. Walker often presents himself as a double-minded man, one day writing against the white-nationalist element of self-described Christian Nationalism, and the next presenting at a conference put on by the movement’s most notable benefactor, alongside some of its most extreme personalities.
Ultimately, there are no supposedly immutable ethics at SBTS that cannot and will not take a back seat to denominational and Christian media industry politics, ecosystems now beholden to the religion of Cultural Evangelicalism. Again, we are reaching a phase where the lowest common denominator “reasoning” of the podcast world, its mediocrity, is becoming the dogma of a nearly two-century old, flagship evangelical seminary. There will surely come a schism over it.
Utter incoherence.
I was just this week reading back through the chapter on immigration in Darrel Bock’s 2016 book “How Would Jesus Vote?” On page 83, he writes:
Deuteronomy 10:19 says the same kind of thing, using the refrain “for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” This empathy was meant to drive how the Israelites saw and treated those from the outside.
God commanded His chosen people, the nation that bore His name, to treat others based on what they knew about how it felt to be in that situation.