Christian revival is no surprise in an age of public shaming

I hadn’t looked at at this way, but the author’s argument, in different words, is that Christianity is gracious (as in, characterized by grace) and modern Western culture (left and right; there is no difference anymore on that axis) is not.

Some more…

Modern secular morality, by contrast, is extremely censorious and has a strongly arbitrary element, as we have seen in the last decade or so of “cancel culture”. People have been subjected to storms of anonymous criticism, resulting in lost jobs and lost livelihoods, with no clear limiting principle and no real interest in proportionality. To make matters worse, this is all highly impersonal and offers no clear pathway for restoration and forgiveness. Were those who loudly condemned Professor Tim Hunt, or Danny Baker, or the scientist Matt Taylor, interested in those men having a way back to the good graces of official opinion? It seems unlikely.

So much of this activism has a hard political edge, too. The grimly fanatical climate activism that we have seen in the last few years makes revolutionary demands, and is unconcerned with the compromises and concessions to humane individualism that characterise normal human political life.

I've been suspended and kicked out of social media groups a few times over the past few months for anodyne comments questioning the category of "non-binary" (an expat group), and pointing out that attacking authors as "bigots" for merely holding conservative views is the technical definition of bigotry (a fantasy/sci-fi group).

Keep in mind I attacked no one and my comments even received a decent amount of support (probably part of the problem).

My absolute favorite, though, was several years ago. A guy who ran a rather high profile, international education blog came out with a post attacking an international Christian school for refusing to hire LGBTQ+. A big story at the time. I and a few others in the comments defended the school and he locked the comment section, claiming that he had evidence that I was a "sock puppet" account of the same person as the others, trying to hijack his comment section. I emailed him and asked him why he was lying about me, but of course received no reply.

Anyway, these sorts of things have never happened in a Christian social media group (including here!), even when things have gotten quite sharp or heated.

No question in my mind who the truly "tolerant" ones are.

A caution on this topic… and so many others.

Human nature is that our attention is drawn to loudest and most flashy thing. And then—also human nature—we start generalizing. So that often means we define whole categories of things by their worst examples.

Which can be accurate. Rattle snakes should be avoided, etc. But often it isn’t fair to the majority because the worst examples may or may not be representative. And of course there are individual exceptions who suffer.

All that to say there are some pretty oppressive, intolerant Christians, and there are some pretty tolerant and respectful left/woke/liberal—whatever term you want to use. For what it’s worth, in face to face conversations, I’ve found a lot of folks with a social/political left point of view to be interesting, thoughtful, attentive and respectful people.

Online… well, everybody seems to get worse.

Back to the article:

The thesis that the Christian faith is, at its core, about forgiveness and justification and clear, consistent moral standards is different from the thesis that Christians are more tolerant people. The latter might hold up pretty well, too, nowadays. I’m not sure. As “evangelicals” gain more power, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

It has certainly not always been the case for Christendom in general! But there has always been a gap between what the faith is and how humans do the faith.

I believe the author is on track that western culture today is dismissive, judgmental, and unforgiving—and all that according to arbitrary, often self-contradictory standards. So those looking into Christianity as a better place to figure out right from wrong and how to deal with moral failure are definitely looking in a better place.

“At its best, Christianity is not a moralistic religion — in other words, it does not place the expectation of perfect behaviour at its core. It is repentance and reconciliation, not respectability, that are central to the internal logic of the faith. The Christian moral system is also coherent and predictable.”

Christianity is highly moralistic. We have many commands. Jesus said they all hang on Love God and Love others. But even so, those other "lesser" commands do receive support from those two greatest commands.

The Christian distinctive (and it was so in Judaism, but cryptically) is that total moralistic success is impossible. That leaves us in need of an atoning, cleansing, forgiving sacrifice, which Jesus gave.

We are left with a both-and version of morality. We are both required to be "holy" as He is holy--and we are in need of, as the article says, repentance and reconciliation.

Naturally Christians can be highly intolerant, Aaron. And progressives can be very tolerant.

My point was contextual and related to my own experience. In decades of social media activity, I've never been punished on a Christian forum, even when things have gotten heated. And I've belonged to many. The opposite has happened many times now.

I think that's kind of significant and worth reflection as its own kind of evidence.

What you call "generalizing" is seeing patterns. It's natural and valid, under the right circumstances. I am speaking from my own experience after all.

And to clarify the link back to the OP, I'm speaking specifically to different online ecosystems tendency to bring tools/shame/tactics other than dialogue to punish or censure their ideological opponents.

It's anecdotal, sure, but so is everything that happens to someone.