Excellent piece and excellent reminder of how artificial the theological and political fault lines of American Christianity (and particularly evangelicalism) really are. Although he was active before my time, I first read about Koop in Phillip Yancey’s book Soul Survivor as one of the “unlikely mentors” who saved my faith from being destroyed by the church, and I resonate with both his theological convictions and his reticence about hitching those convictions to a particular political platform.
History has proven his reticence well-founded. If theological convictions are subordinated to a political platform, then those with no convictions can easily hijack that platform and co-opt its supporters to their own ends.
Nice reminder of that centrist evangelicalism that I've valued over my adult life. It was not difficult to find these friendly estuaries within West Coast PCUSA churches until more recently. And I recall Koop serving as an usher at 10th Pres, Phil, in 1973-74 when I occasionally attended there (James Boice was pastor). I shouldn't speak for others, but why not: I think Koop represented the sort of evangelical whom we easily identified with over my 30+years (1986-2017) with InterVarsity Press.
This is great, and a much needed reminder of an important sector of American religion that often gets missed, as it doesn't seem to compute in light of our polarized categories. I'm from the Northeast and mixed with a variety of churches for awhile (was even assistant pastor at a PCUSA church for awhile--I was also one of those Reagan-voting evangelicals super-excited about Koop's appointment) and it was fascinating how our more simple, radical boxes just didn't fit what was going on among such folk. (Once my very rich aunt introduced me to a very rich friend of hers at a party, since he was an Episcopalian and I was attending an Episcopal seminary, she thought we could talk. His first question was "Are you a fundamentalist?" It was rare to hear that as anything but a term of oppobrium, but I couldn't tell, and asked what he meant. "Oh, a lot of these rectors don't even believe in Christ's resurrection anymore!" I assured him I was, indeed, a fundamentalist.)
I would mention, beyond theology and politics, which are the places where we look for important differences among churches or Christians, to account for their sortings and affiliations, we should also be attuned to issues of style and aesthetics and worship. As Gillis Harp has put it, "the informal and ahistorical character of populist and revivalist worship" can seem "painfully irreverent" to Christians who hail from the older, imported traditions. American evangelicalism in its populist forms has :absorbed contemporary cultural norms—even tacky and kitsch aspects of American culture—uncritically and has forgotten historical forms," and some people just can't abide that stuff, at least not weekly in their home churches. So even where there might be total agreement on theology and politics, these folk would find it impossible to worship in certain communions. (This may be less true now than for someone of Koop's--born 1916--generation.)
I worked with Dr. Fauci in the 1980s and 1990s along with agencies Dr. Koop oversaw. Any person who has had a blood transfusion in the past 45 years owes their life to Dr. Fauci. Trump was not his first rodeo with a morally inept president. The Moral Majority, (which we now know were definitely not moral), pressured Reagan into not dealing with the spread of HIV even when the FDA knew and begged the President to allow them to start to treat the blood supplies. Regan and Falwell were fully satisfied to allow HIV run rampant in the US, effectively killing a generation of hemophiliacs, drug abusers, and gay men. Over the years the research revealed the majority of HIV entered the USA from business men who used prostitutes in Africa even though patient zero was a gay man. This past year I met with the National Hemophilic Association and discussed the horrendous sadness of dealing with this evil again.
Trump is just a repeat of the same evil. Jared Kushner said clearly on a recording with Trump, "it is just the old and immigrants who will die-that works well for us and weeds out voters."
Excellent piece and excellent reminder of how artificial the theological and political fault lines of American Christianity (and particularly evangelicalism) really are. Although he was active before my time, I first read about Koop in Phillip Yancey’s book Soul Survivor as one of the “unlikely mentors” who saved my faith from being destroyed by the church, and I resonate with both his theological convictions and his reticence about hitching those convictions to a particular political platform.
History has proven his reticence well-founded. If theological convictions are subordinated to a political platform, then those with no convictions can easily hijack that platform and co-opt its supporters to their own ends.
Nice reminder of that centrist evangelicalism that I've valued over my adult life. It was not difficult to find these friendly estuaries within West Coast PCUSA churches until more recently. And I recall Koop serving as an usher at 10th Pres, Phil, in 1973-74 when I occasionally attended there (James Boice was pastor). I shouldn't speak for others, but why not: I think Koop represented the sort of evangelical whom we easily identified with over my 30+years (1986-2017) with InterVarsity Press.
This is great, and a much needed reminder of an important sector of American religion that often gets missed, as it doesn't seem to compute in light of our polarized categories. I'm from the Northeast and mixed with a variety of churches for awhile (was even assistant pastor at a PCUSA church for awhile--I was also one of those Reagan-voting evangelicals super-excited about Koop's appointment) and it was fascinating how our more simple, radical boxes just didn't fit what was going on among such folk. (Once my very rich aunt introduced me to a very rich friend of hers at a party, since he was an Episcopalian and I was attending an Episcopal seminary, she thought we could talk. His first question was "Are you a fundamentalist?" It was rare to hear that as anything but a term of oppobrium, but I couldn't tell, and asked what he meant. "Oh, a lot of these rectors don't even believe in Christ's resurrection anymore!" I assured him I was, indeed, a fundamentalist.)
I would mention, beyond theology and politics, which are the places where we look for important differences among churches or Christians, to account for their sortings and affiliations, we should also be attuned to issues of style and aesthetics and worship. As Gillis Harp has put it, "the informal and ahistorical character of populist and revivalist worship" can seem "painfully irreverent" to Christians who hail from the older, imported traditions. American evangelicalism in its populist forms has :absorbed contemporary cultural norms—even tacky and kitsch aspects of American culture—uncritically and has forgotten historical forms," and some people just can't abide that stuff, at least not weekly in their home churches. So even where there might be total agreement on theology and politics, these folk would find it impossible to worship in certain communions. (This may be less true now than for someone of Koop's--born 1916--generation.)
I worked with Dr. Fauci in the 1980s and 1990s along with agencies Dr. Koop oversaw. Any person who has had a blood transfusion in the past 45 years owes their life to Dr. Fauci. Trump was not his first rodeo with a morally inept president. The Moral Majority, (which we now know were definitely not moral), pressured Reagan into not dealing with the spread of HIV even when the FDA knew and begged the President to allow them to start to treat the blood supplies. Regan and Falwell were fully satisfied to allow HIV run rampant in the US, effectively killing a generation of hemophiliacs, drug abusers, and gay men. Over the years the research revealed the majority of HIV entered the USA from business men who used prostitutes in Africa even though patient zero was a gay man. This past year I met with the National Hemophilic Association and discussed the horrendous sadness of dealing with this evil again.
Trump is just a repeat of the same evil. Jared Kushner said clearly on a recording with Trump, "it is just the old and immigrants who will die-that works well for us and weeds out voters."
In short: an opportunist