I concluded after reading J. D. Greear’s new book Everyday Revolutionary that there was nothing new in it. Greear promotes the same third way model of cultural engagement that he has supported for the past decade. The only change is a slightly stronger criticism of the Democrat party and a confused attempt to elevate public witness above social justice activism while also insisting that the Church should engage in social activism on clear biblical issues, whether those issues lean to the right or the left, as long as the Church’s reputation remains as non partisan as possible. Confused yet?
One of my biggest complaints about popular Christian resources on cultural engagement over the past decade is how often they are able to say a great deal without saying much at all. Greear likely understands the evangelical temperature and knows how to play it safe. He does not address the hot button issues that concern evangelicals, such as immigration reform or criminal justice, except to speak about social justice in broad terms while making sure to check the basic moral boxes on abortion and LGBTQ+ normalization.
Greear wants Christians to “distance ourselves from political corruption associated with our name” (52) for the sake of preserving our witness. This public relations problem should, in his view, motivate those of us in more conservative settings to speak more loudly about the “weaknesses, inconsistencies, or outright evils associated (whether rightly or wrongly) with the political Right.” (98) I suppose this is his explanation for why he, as the President of the SBC, pushed the needle to the left on the church too reforms, efforts to address racial disparities, and his softened rhetoric on homosexuality.
To be fair, Greear says some true things, but even those points often become confusing. I appreciated his attempt to cultivate a “theology of place,” (31) in which Christians remain aware of their local context and understand how their relationship to that place fits into God’s plan for their life mission. Yet at the same time, Greear stresses an “‘exile’ identity” that he believes holds the “key to understanding our role” (17) in society.
These two ideas can certainly fit together, but Greear seems to think that our heavenly identity should lead us to view social activism as insufficient, imprudent, a distraction, or at best a secondary result of our witness. However, living in this world requires both individual Christians and the institutional church to take strong stands against abortion, gender ideology, and the kinds of social arrangements Martin Luther King Jr. opposed. Greear criticizes George Whitefield for failing to stand against slavery to such a degree that he says he cannot in good conscience quote him from the pulpit.
Perhaps the most definitive statement about the book is found within the book itself: “These waters can be a little murky and we should be gracious with one another as we attempt to figure it all out.” (181) I am not so sure it is the waters that are murky though. The contrast between Christians and the surrounding cultures have never been more stark in Greear’s generation.
My suspicion is that Greear himself is not sure how to face the negative world that stands right in front of him. He does not want to alienate either political side of the purple city he lives in, he wants to rise above the media image of Christians as people who accommodate bigotry, and he wants to distance himself from the “weird” (56) fundamentalist leaning background of legalistic rules that shaped his early life. His approach offers a set of basic principles that most self described Christians can accept, whether they lean to the right or the left, but it provides very little application and at times contains seeming contradictions. It is convenient, though. A Christian can justify social activism as a gospel stand or justify silence as a gospel witness. This is likely how the book will function, not only for Greear, but also for pastors who failed the tests of 2020 and still cannot bring themselves to admit their failures in plain terms.
