Recently, Allie Beth Stuckey appeared on the internet show “Jubilee,” where she sat surrounded by twenty liberals who profess Christianity to discuss their disagreements. Allie did a great job on many of the questions from what I saw, and she deserves credit for being willing to sit in the hot seat to defend the faith.
There was one exchange that drew particular attention, a duel with Tim Whitaker over the Bible and slavery, where she seemed to have more difficulty than in some of the other exchanges. To summarize, Whitaker pressed Allie repeatedly on whether the Bible condoned slavery by regulating the practice instead of opposing the institution outright. His point was that morality evolves beyond the Bible’s ancient applications. Stuckey was put on the defensive, and if her understanding of the Bible and slavery came from most of the current apologetics industry (Tom Holland seems to be the most quoted on this currently), why wouldn’t she be?
Ironically, that line of reasoning is more common among atheists and skeptics who reject Christianity altogether. They discard the Bible because of what it says about social issues while reading it entirely through the lens of the modern world. You know, the modern world with its sweatshop labor, cobalt mining, prison system, generational welfare, and socialism. Thank goodness we don’t have slavery.
That exchange made me reflect on the Christian apologetics industry. In my estimation, the neo-evangelical world still struggles to navigate social issues because we often try to defend Christianity while appealing to social liberals at the same time. I don’t think this is intentional so much as habitual. It’s the way we’ve operated for decades.
I used to be into apologetics like it was my job. Every debate on Apologetics 365, every WLC and RZIM podcast, The Truth Project and Tactics by Koukl, books by Bahnsen, Moreland, Lewis, and others. It was my life. I was an avid evangelist in college, which naturally led to a lot of impromptu debates.
Slavery, women’s rights, and homosexuality came up often, but I was never satisfied with the answers from classical or evidential apologists. Their responses always put me on the defensive. God was against slavery, gender inequality, and harsh treatment of homosexuals, until a smart atheist produced verses that didn’t seem to fit.
I quickly moved to presuppositional apologetics: Van Til, Michael Butler, James White, Doug Wilson, and, of course, everything Bahnsen ever wrote. It worked better to simply say, “Thus saith the Lord,” and let them try to defend a worldview with no bearings.
Then, around 2017, I started rediscovering the Classical tradition. I read mostly early church fathers and realized their arguments presumed common notions. I also began reading more in the Burkean conservative tradition. I had always been influenced by the Southern Agrarians, but I was beginning to see the fallacy of presentism: Butterfield’s Whig Interpretation of History, Scruton on aesthetics, Bradford on the Constitution, Weaver on modernity. We were living in a grand experiment that wasn’t exactly working.
After 2020, people began to see that for themselves. Many are now searching for alternatives to the liberal order, some of them downright strange. Yet most seem to recognize, from nature itself, that they must harmonize their lives with something greater. And most who think this way understand that we’ve lost something of value from the past.
All this to say, Christian pop apologetics as a field hasn’t caught up with where society is. They’re just now addressing the woke intrusion, which was something that needed to be dealt with before 2020. It’s not any one person’s fault, and I don’t hold hard feelings toward my former teachers. But the nature of neo-evangelicalism is to give the simplest, most abstract answer in the most palatable form. It’s an unspoken principle.
After studying the origins of neo-evangelicalism (The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, Fuller’s early years, Graham’s ministry), I’ve concluded that the project is built on cultural acceptance. Reaching the culture often means dumbing down things that aren’t meant to be dumbed down and adopting disciplines (psychology, sociology, etc.) that often conflict with our ancient and timeless faith.
That’s why so many popular Christian books and sermons have a reputation for being simple. The sophisticated ones usually aren’t theologically rich; they’re more like TED Talks, weaving in the latest ideas consumed by blue-city dwellers.
It’s just where we are. My hope is that neo-evangelicals will abandon the metrics of industry success, celebrity, and managerialism, and instead return to rich content, traditional ways, and merit. I’m skeptical that market forces can get us there. It will have to come through local churches.
Today, the best apologists I know are people you’ve probably never heard of. They’re mostly street preachers who know the Bible deeply and sprinkle in a few classical or presuppositional insights.
