Evangelical Anxiety

If you’re like me, you’ve had some strange and unexpected conversations over the last few years. I never imagined I’d spend hours on the phone with former students discussing whether or not they should leave their kids alone with their parents or, in one instance, if it would be prudent and appropriate to contact the F.B.I. concerning what their dad (and friends of their dad) might be planning to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in Washington, D.C., but here we are. Welcome to Nashville.

I say all this to note how excited I am to have read Charles Marsh’s Evangelical Anxiety. Charles is a friend and mentor. He persuaded me years ago that memoir is the answer. I didn’t take that to mean that everybody needs to get a book deal. I took it to mean that if we bring forth what is within us, what is within us will save us, and that if we don’t bring forth what is within us, what is within us will destroy us. Toxic personalities, we might say, are traumatized personalities. We have got to deal with the inner situation. In the American scene, untreated evangelical anxiety often takes the form of taxpayer-funded domestic terror. We have work to do.

Charles Marsh is doing that work, and, spoiler alert, he’s doing it as a Christian. This is what makes him a clear and present threat to the God Grift. He’s the real deal, and his realness exposes and shows up, as it has for years, those who only make use of the Christian tradition to accrue cred and coin. He follows an essential rule of good writing about heavy things: Implicate yourself first. If you can’t or won’t, why bother? Charles bothers. Christianity is transparency or it’s nothing at all. Charles opts for transparency. It’s a risky move, but it’s also a profound gift. Given the threats we face on account of Christian supremacists accorded inordinate public trust, Evangelical Anxiety is also a form of public service.

I could go on and on about Charles’ commitment to the health and thriving of so many people I know and love and admire. One example that you might not know about is my brother, Jon Foreman. If memory serves, Jon was introduced to the Beloved Community icon, John Perkins, by Charles. Sweetness followed. Out of their relationship arose, for instance, this amazing song. Give it a listen.

But I digress. I have the supreme privilege of publicly discussing Evangelical Anxiety with Charles at Parnassus Books tomorrow night (Monday 7/25/22). Local author Amanda Haggard has a very kind write-up right here. You’ll want to pre-register. It will, I think, be amazing. Consider coming out.

Please also read and perhaps share and discuss Charles’ Rolling Stone interview with Alex Morris. I suspect it’s the first time Public Servant 45 has been referred to as a “grace pimp.” I find the image helpful.

I was recently asked to offer advice about what to do in light of misogyny, white supremacist terror, and climate denialism coming at us, as it has for most of my life, under the banner of “biblical solutions,” “family values,” and “conservatism.” I don’t have much to offer apart from small, meaningful actions which, as they always have, add up to movements. I say this to offer Monday’s event (and/or the reading of a book like Evangelical Anxiety) as one more small, meaningful action. We are a beginning.