Laurie M. Johnson
The Gap in God’s Country
A Longer View on our Culture Wars
This book – The Gap in God’s Country, A Longer View on our Culture Wars – written by Laurie Johnson, a professor of political science at Kansas State University, president of the Maurin Academy (https://pmaurin.org), and a friend of mine, is densely well written, yet easily understood, informing and fascinating, and compelling in the depth and logic of its read.
This posting is not a book review but mainly written to share the paragraphs from this website – Writing In The Shade Of Trees – that Professor Johnson quoted in her book, and my thoughts about this event that is for me a professional milestone for my own writing. I have not read the entire book as of yet – I only received this book as a gift a little more than a week ago – but I have carefully skimmed the entire book and also read a few select passages in depth.
The overall structure of the book is explained in the Introduction. As stated, the book’s subject is “finding common ground in a highly divisive social climate.” The first chapter is then “an explanation and defense of drawing from different theory streams that people usually assume cannot be combined: conservatism, leftism, psychology, and Christianity.” Chapter 2 titled “Unsettling 1: Leaving the Farm” and Chapter 3 titled “Unsettling 2: Nonstop Change” explore the social and economic effects of the demise of family- owned farming and of ever-increasing automation.
Chapter 4 discusses “the nature and impact of the drive towards secularity in the modern world.” And Chapter 5 delves into “how major economic interests were and are benefited by the promotion of a certain type of “free market capitalism” ideology, an ideology that resembles a religion”, and also discusses how America Christianity has picked up a neoliberal ideology that includes “the motive to remove the unclean by scapegoating; the tendency to color every part of life with religious meaning; purification of public spaces; the promise of perfect peace, security, justice, and abundance for those who stay faithful; etc.”
Chapter 6 discusses the problem of Christian nationalism, and the confusion of American patriotism with the tenets of Christianity, and Chapter 7 presents an argument “that a reorienting of the Christian church could yield some very promising results”.
Chapter 8:”Conclusions” offers hope where Professor Johnson points “the way to some concrete measures that can be taken by conservatives, progressives, and Christians of all kinds to make the situation better.”
I will read this book now from cover to cover when I finish with my present book, as I believe, just from my skimming and a few in-depth reads, that Professor Johnson within her book, offers many new perspectives and insights into the dynamics of the processes that have brought us as a nation to where we are today. And with this understanding, prayerfully we may be able to better navigate through our troubled times for the common good of our nation and all our various peoples, and better able to pursue fulfilling the Two Great Commandments of loving God with our whole mind, heart and soul, and loving all our neighbors as ourselves with even more intelligence, focus, and understanding.
Also in her book, in Chapter 6 – Religious Strong-Arming – on page 205, Professor Johnson, quotes from one of my postings – The Broken Coffee Cup – Part 3 (see specific link below) – in which I used portions of the letters I had written over an eight-year period – all without a response – to the Evangelical Church I had attended for over forty years. In these letters, I expressed my concerns over the ever-increasing political overlays of Christ and His gospel in their preaching and teaching ministry, and the inner turmoil this produced within me and in my life. Below are three paragraphs from the book. The first paragraph is an introduction to the next two paragraphs in which I am quoted:
What causes thousands of people to shut off their critical thinking skills to the point that they would either ignore years of contradictory behavior from their church leaders or endure years of outright abuse from them before they even think of separating from a church and finding someplace else to go? Why wouldn’t a good percentage of those thousands of Grace Community Church members be able to see that they had gotten themselves into a cult of personality, and more, an actual self-reinforcing, life-draining, and money-draining cult that could even put some of them in the way of bodily harm? How could churchgoers sit through communion service hearing other people being called out by their lead pastor and not think that they might be next? Why do people get attached to this kind of warped strong community and stick with it despite all the warnings signs?
For church member Chris Orozco, the moment came in and around 2015, when he realized that MacArthur was preaching politics instead of Christianity and wrote him a letter of objection. As he recapitulated in another letter to MacArthur, this one in 2017 after the Trump election, and after forty years of membership at Grace Community Church: “In your political pronouncements, I did not hear God’s word preached, nor did the light of the gospel of salvation shine forth, and Christ was not lifted up or honored, but rather your words lifted up and installed upon your pulpit an ideology and a political party rather than the gospel and Christ as the focal centerpiece. This created a huge stumbling block for me in continuing to sit with peace of heart and soul under the teaching ministry at Grace.”
Perhaps the reason that Orozco’s realization came only after forty years was that the church had drifted slowly over those years into error, having started out with fresh and good intentions. But also, Orozco points out repeatedly that leaving the church meant huge and lasting losses of relationships, social stability, and personal identity. As he began to realize that he no longer felt at home, and that he was reworking his identity in opposition to the church’s pronouncements, Orozco experience the pain of exile, something like the sense of sorrow and emptiness that comes in the wake of a divorce: “I also began to suffer a great sense of loss – loss for the comfort and confidence I had known and felt within the teaching at Grace, and loss because of the growing separation I experience from the community at Grace, from the family of believers of which I was once joyously part.” So difficult was this process of separation that he did not officially leave the church until September 2020 after the church’s now familiar Trump-inspired politics festered in his consciousness for quite a while, and only after an extraordinary effort in the way of correspondence to try to get MacArthur and other church leaders to see that they were making mistakes.
It was strangely still painful reading again just short portions of what I wrote about my journey away from the Evangelical church and its affects upon me and my life, but at the same time, I was gratified that a college professor considered the quality of my thought and writing worthy of being quoted in a book whose audience is both popular and academic.
Professor Johnson mailed a copy of her book to my wife and I, and inscribed a note to us with which I will conclude this posting:
I am grateful for your friendship and your insights. Chris’s blog and conversation are in this book because they helped me understand better what a struggle it can be. Here’s to hopefully better times ahead!
Laurie J 11/5/24
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To view The Broken Coffee Cup – Part 3, Please use the link below.
To View all Letters & Correspondence to My Former Church & All Posts Concerning My Former Church, Please Use Link Below:
To view all book reviews in Books Read, Thoughts Upon Them, please use the link below.
Books Read, Thoughts Upon Them – Writing In The Shade Of Trees
To view all posts in the Moments of Seeing & Occasional Pieces, please use the link below.
Moments of Seeing & Occasional Pieces – Writing In The Shade Of Trees
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