By Matthew Brake

I grew up in the 1990s (a time, which I’ve come to realize, is as long ago now as the 1960s were for me back then. I’m struggling to deal with that).

And I was raised in the heart of conservative evangelical culture war country. After I became passionate about the Christianity I was raised with at the tender age of 13, I threw myself into the budding and increasingly commercialized evangelical youth subculture, and not just the youth subculture, but I was a regular watcher of Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club.

For those who aren’t aware, Pat Robertson is the name of one of the main “culture warriors” of the 80s and 90s, along with Jerry Falwell, who condemned abortion and LGBTQI+ people and causes with fervor. Robertson once gave a speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention condemning homosexuality, and after 9/11, Falwell blamed that tragic day on, among other people, gays and feminists (by which he meant because they exist and kept insisting on existing, God had removed his invisible protection from America, and thus, America was susceptible to the plots of her enemies).

It was culture warriors like Robertson and Falwell who encouraged conservative evangelicals to boycott Disney World because they had allowed a Gay Pride Day, or as those in my then-circles pejoratively referred to it, “Gay Day.”

Moving into the 2000s, many in my generation (or at least my circle of friends) became…let’s say “discontent” with this culture war style of Christianity. Many of us had become friends with the very gay people Robertson and Falwell preached against, and the “gay boogey man” the Christian Right preached about (sometimes relating gay people with pedophiles, an old and inaccurate anti-LGBTQI+ trope) became defanged. We heard stories from the LGBTQI+ folks we knew and read stories from others about their failed attempts at conversion therapy, getting disowned by their parents, and their suicidal thoughts and self-hatred.

Many in my generation decided that, if people were leaving Evangelicalism, it wasn’t because people were “compromising” about things like creationism, inerrancy, or support for gay marriage, but because of the harshness, mischaracterization, and outright lies of the Christian Right’s culture warriors, who preferred their straw man of “LGBTQI+ people are a threat to western civilization” to the realities, complexities, and pain that LGBTQI+ people have experienced in Evangelicalism.

Different friends chose different paths.

Some went the route of condemning the culture wars and adopting an Anabaptist position, wherein they might not affirm LGBTQI+ fully, but they recognized the hate slander of the Christian Right for what it was and tried to find some “middle way” between adherence to what they saw as faithfulness to Scripture and the love of God toward LGBTQI+ folks.

Others adopted a more progressive route, allowing their consciences (and scholarship addressing and seeking alternative interpretations to the traditional LGBTQI+ “clobber passages” in the Bible) and mutual humanity to inform their full acceptance of LGBTQI+ people.

Still others remained pretty conservative, but at least recognized that they needed to be nicer (at least) and engaged in good faith conversations with LGBTQI+ communities.

While my hope would be for full acceptance of LGBTQI+ people in society, there was at least the shared understanding that the white evangelical church (particularly white, conservative, culture warrior evangelicals) had done LGBTQI+ folks dirty.

The more things change…

In the past few years, with the rise of Trump and the “New Right,” the culture wars are making a comeback! And what’s discouraging to me is there’s a whole new group of younger leaders (Sean Feucht, Matt Walsh, Charlie Kirk) who seem to have looked at the culture wars of the 90s and thought, “No no. THAT’s what we need more of!”

Perhaps, you’re familiar with their latest attempts to boycott Bud Light and Target for their support of LGBTQI+ pride.

Where I had hoped leaders emerging from my generation saw the culture wars of the past as a mistake, apparently the young leaders of the New Right see it as some sort of Golden Age of fresh ideas for Christian witness.

Personally, I look at those past boycotts of Disney and think, “What an adventure in missing the point!” Apparently, these guys saw something else.

I’ve noticed over the last ten years that some of my friends, who’s evangelical faith was “nominal” at best, have had kids, and as they’ve had those kids, they’ve decided to become more devout in their faith, which I guess for them has meant becoming as fundamentalist as possible. They’ve thrown themselves into these new culture wars (which also include things like being anti-vax).

I’m sure if any of them read this, they’ll call me “woke” (or at least “soft woke,” which I think just refers to white evangelical pastors who used to be missionaries so they aren’t as ethno-centric as a lot of conservative American Christians, or pastors who actually take time to listen to Black communities and churches about why they often don’t vote in alignment with white evangelicals).

I had hoped that “culture war Christianity” would die out with the passing of the torch to Millennials and Gen Z, that we had come to recognize the harm it was doing to Christian witness (I don’t have time to write on this here, but I’ve made arguments in the past that whenever there’s been a surge of culture war Christianity, there’s a drop off of people who call themselves Christians in various polls), not to mention the harm it was doing to LGBTQI+ people themselves.

The people who drop out of Christianity because of the culture wars aren’t doing so because they aren’t willing to “stand up for truth.” Often, it’s because culture warriors create straw men and mischaracterizations of the communities they demonize. When they do engage in a debate, it’s not in a spirit of dialogue and listening (to the pain and stories of others), but the type of “gotcha” punditry style debate that doesn’t teach anyone anything. Their meanness is only matched by their bad faith engagement with those they condemn.

I thought my generation had broken out of the “good Christians vote for Republicans and against gay people” mold, but I guess I was wrong.

How long will it take for the next generation of evangelicals to realize that this is the wrong way?