There are socially conservative evangelicals who want to “take back America.” They are looking for a Christian version of the “Bad Orange Man” to critique the culture and to defend them from unbelief, feminism, and the social revolution. Like the social radicals, who are burning down businesses in pursuit of their eschatology, this evangelical apologist burns fields and pickup trucks.

That “no quarter November” passes for “edgy” cultural apologetics tells us something about the state of the evangelical mind or the lack thereof. That defense of Western Christendom is to apologetics what comic books are to literature: a cheap, graphic imitation of the culture. It is momentarily thrilling for angsty teens but ephemeral and really just pulp.

In The Abolition of Man (1947) C. S. Lewis did not set bash any flower pots nor burn any pickups but he did actually criticize the culture profoundly. The fire he set continues because it actually illumines our time. The fire he set was in the intellect, the imagination, and even in the soul. It was grounded in a genuine engagement with the great Christian tradition. All these years later we are still learning from that book because it was true and beautiful.

Dear Christian, in 73 years no one will be reading the Pyro on the Palouse but they will be reading Lewis and others like him. Make the better choice.

© R. Scott Clark 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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