Which Evangelical Group Do You Belong To?

The Proverbs of Social Media: Part Nine

Photo by Will Francis on Unsplash

One of the things the last week showed was the deep cultural divide within evangelicalism. How to parse that divide is no easy task. Edward Hamilton describes it as a division between “high trust” and “low trust” individuals, which makes a good deal of sense to me, especially post-COVID. But if you push this too far it starts to break down. For example, in general, “high trust” individuals tend to be those who “trust the authorities” on vaccines and climate change but are skeptical of authorities when it comes to church abuse scandals.

Another friend of mine suggested that much of this division comes down to class conflict, which also makes sense and maps on to Hamilton’s theory. Echoing the larger class conflict we’re seeing across the United States between the “elites” and the popularists, evangelicals are split between legacy institutions and leaders, and popular, democratic, primarily young alternatives (with some token older patriarchs as leaders, like Doug Wilson). The legacy institutions and leaders tend to be “high trust” whereas the younger popularist group tends to be “low trust.”