the Empathy List #149: Are you afraid?
On fear, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, and evangelicalism's need for certainty.
Real quick: would you go review my book? (It’s helpful à la pitching the next project…)
And if you haven’t bought my book, today is the day. I DID NOT WRITE A BIBLE STUDY, I SWEAR. Instead, you’ll get storytelling and weird performance art and the politics of Bible reading and me geeking out about the origin stories of science. If you read this newsletter, you’re gunna love it, and disagree with it, and find yourself (I HOPE) wrestling with God. That’s the point, after all!
Anyway, thank you thank you thank you, and back to the normal programming…
Hello friend, Liz here.
Do you feel afraid?
I suspect many of us weirdo arty lefties who grew up in the stew of evangelicalism feel afraid for the future. (If you’re not a leftie, then you’re about to get a glimpse of what it feels like to be a leftie. Just keep on reading, pal.)
And we’re not just afraid for ourselves or our kids:
We’re afraid about climate collapse and the extinction of species upon species on our fragile, once-in-a-universe planet.
We’re afraid about McCarthyism within universities, public schools, media organizations, and nonprofits that is already limiting free thinking and expression (including the free expression of religious folks, btw).
We’re afraid for our siblings and friends and neighbors who could be deported at any moment, whether they are citizens or not. (And we’re afraid of the racism and xenophobia that underlies the reckless policies that could remove them.)
We’re afraid that the supreme court has no power to hold the American legislature accountable.
We’re afraid that our nation will perpetuate historic systemic failures and/or we suspect that this is already happening—for example, we’re afraid that El Salvadorian prisons are equivalent to concentration and/or internment camps. We’re afraid that cutting USAID will result in pandemics across the globe and the needless starvation of the impoverished. We’re afraid that Russia and Israel will continue their warmongering with encouragement from our nation (and with our tax dollars, I might add). And we’re afraid that in our own country, civil rights legislation will be abolished (not necessarily in name, but in practice. Then again, who knows?).
We’re afraid of our own powerlessness, of the frailty of our bodies and of democracy, of the briefness of our own lives.
Many things about which we lefties are reading and weeping and gnashing teeth do not relate directly into our lives. For those of marginal identities, however, particular injustices are vital and are daily concerns. Yet whether the fears we face affect us daily, likely we do not control the mechanisms that could solve the problems.
And so we are constantly confronting the truth that we are powerless. Each time we read of an upsetting event, we learn the name of another person harmed, or we hear of another unjust law (presidential order) passed that will harm still more people, our insides churn. What should we do? What can we do?
Our grief and anger are justified. And so is our fear. These are universal human experiences. Even Congressmen and women have expressed their own feelings of powerlessness—which may sound like they’re making excuses. Some of them are. Some of them are cowards. But others do not hold the legal authority required to take charge, which means that they, too, must reckon with their own limited agency.
When I consider my own agency, I must confess its smallness. I do have agency over myself and over those that surround me daily. Yet I do not have agency to direct organizations, institutions, nations.
I can use my own voice; I can amplify the voices of others within my sphere; yet I cannot force my voice to be listened to.
I want to point out these fears today because I want you to know that you are not alone. We do live in unprecedented times, and however much we wish to live in precedented times instead, these times are ours. Here I am in the state of Colorado in the United States of America on Tuesday, April 22 at 6AM MST (or whenever) speaking English, in my right mind and mostly able-bodied, the mother of two children, wife of one husband, owner of six hens, and a mostly unknown author who spends her days desperately tapping to her small circle of readers for the sake of justice and mercy.
Is that enough? Am I—are you—enough?
The answer is no. And the answer is yes. And I hope that your power and powerlessness will comfort you.
I wanted to reflect on fear today because, as I have been digging into the history of my people, the evangelicals, I continue to be struck by undercurrents of fear. The underlying motivation of so many of evangelicals’ beliefs, systems, and institutions is fear. We feared the future, the present, the “other.” We feared being wrong. We feared uncertainty. We feared God. We feared each other. We feared ourselves.
I used to blame evangelicals for instilling this fear in me. Yet fear is the universal human emotion. Why? Because we are fragile. We do not, cannot know the future. And someday, our future will include our own deaths. And, as beings determined to survive, the fact of our nonexistence is unacceptable.
I believe this is the primary reason that evangelicals are so afraid:
despite how scientifically they have sought to extract God from the Bible and church history, they still cannot be certain what comes after death.
And that is terrifying.
Now for another story about fear: as it turns out, the origin of biblical inerrancy is also rooted in fear.
I’ve come to believe that evangelicals’ fear of death has shaped even the way that they read the Bible.
We humans need certainty. And evangelicals, therefore, need the certainty that comes from believing God’s book is absolutely and in every way trustworthy. Because they need to know. They need to banish doubt because when we are able to know for certain, then, finally, we can be safe and we can trust God.
In evangelicalism, trust in God only arrives after we can grasp certainty.
So then, why is it so important to evangelicals that the Bible be absolutely perfect and faultless, kissed by the very mouth of God, God’s special message to us, untouched by the flaws of humanity, hermetically sealed to reach us today without bias or errors of interpretation or translation?
Because reading an inerrant Bible provides certainty. The Bible becomes the solid ground of reality, capital t Truth, and ultimate trust. Because when we are certain, we are safe.
I recently published a deep dive I made into the history of the 1978 Chicago Summit that produced the seminal document on inerrancy—the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy. Much of the reporting is entirely original, but I also had the help of many excellent scholars. I see this story as highly relevant to this moment in history. (And not only because we have so many white christian nationalists in the white house.)
I hope that, as you read this engaging slice of evangelical history, you can connect with your own tender parts, the parts of you that desperately want to know and to be certain and to be safe.
I believe that the (mostly) men who wanted certainty through this one doctrine were also afraid. I understand that.
What I do not abide, however, is how they reacted to that fear. These men who wrote the Chicago Statement recognized that their followers were afraid, and many of those men used their followers’ fear against them as a means of control and self-aggrandizement. They demanded loyalty in exchange for certainty. And their followers welcomed the relief of being certain.
I feel for these followers, even as I disagree with their choices. In fact, these followers are many of my older family members. They are the ones who brought me up in evangelicalism and who hoped to offer me certainty and stability in this life, with the Bible as the solid ground.
Unfortunately, I believe they got that wrong. The Bible cannot give us that. And even worse, despite their compromises with these abusive spiritual leaders, they are still afraid. The Bible—and these teachers of the Bible—have not given my relatives what they wanted. Certainty remains out of reach.
When I think of the story of evangelicalism in this way, I am able to be compassionate, even toward those relatives with whom I disagree. I find I am a better daughter, niece, daughter-in-law, etc., when I’m able to remember that they, like me, are only human, and that they, like me, are afraid.
So, as you read, consider the fear that continues to guide the evangelicals you know and love. I hope that considering their fear allows you to treat them with tenderness. I also hope that these reflections will allow you to treat yourself—you, with your own tower of fears and uncertainties—with tenderness.
Certainty is not the solution. Only love drives out fear. So let’s receive and give a love bigger than our fear.
Thanks for reading, my friends.
Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant
Tell me: what is making you afraid? And how are you seeking to be tender toward yourself and others amid your fear?
