I am critiquing this piece
I offer the link so you can make sure that I am not mistreating Dr. Lucas.
I do not like Dr. Lucas. I have read enough of his material, scanned some of his course syllabi, and have viewed some of his teaching sessions online to know that Jude would have labeled him as “a blight among your love-feasts.” If, as Michael Dukakis said about Ronald Reagan in the 1988 Presidential campaign, “a fish rots from the head first,” Dr. Sean Michael Lucas is just one example of how our Seminary Leadership is a rotting fish. This article screams support of all those observations.
In this column, Dr. Lucas is reviewing a book from a Calvin University Professor who teaches Gender studies at Calvin. (Women Professors at Calvin who teach Gender studies is certainly going to be the first place I go to enrich my reading.) The book is titled, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.” Now, even the title here would set off a Geiger counter adjusted to locate radioactive Cultural Marxism. However, our Dr. S & M Lucas wades right in approvingly.
Lucas starts the piece off by informing us that he has the street cred to legitimately hate Biblical Christianity. He attended Bob Jones University. Lucas then spent some time at Falwell’s Liberty University. He did some work under Bill Gothard, He was a Presbyterian Pastor in a denomination that opposed women in office. We clearly get the impression that Dr. S & M Lucas was scarred by his conservative affiliations along the way and that the rest of this piece is going to be his payback for how those terrible people hurt his feelings in days gone past.
Dr. S & M Lucas insists that the book authored by a Gender Studies Professor at Calvin College is spot on in her analysis,
And especially true and irrefutable is Du Mez’s main contention. In trying to explain the pervasive evangelical support for Donald Trump, Du Mez argues that this support “was no aberration, nor was it merely a pragmatic choice. It was, rather, the culmination of evangelicals’ embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad”
Especially true and irrefutable?
I would refute this as especially false by noting that Evangelicals had just lived through 8 years of Obama’s promise to “fundamentally change America,” and after 8 years they decided they didn’t want Obama’s change. I would refute Du Mez’s especially false claim by noting that in voting for Trump Evangelicals embraced the militant survival instinct. The Economics of the Obama administration was transferring wealth to the top 1% and so wiping out the Middle Class while at the same time showing a profound commitment to elimination of any and all National and social-order identity by an essentially open borders policy.
Also, I would like to point out that Scripture teaches that patriarchal authority is God’s norm for social-orders, starting with God’s patriarchal nature of Father and continuing with creating the woman for the man. So, DuMez’s and Dr. S & M Lucas’ disgust with patriarchy is something they are going to have to take up with God. In point of fact, a healthy Presbytery would be investigating Dr. S & M Lucas’ contretemps for patriarchy by bringing him up on charges. But alas … Presbyteries don’t do discipline any longer.
Finally, concerning that quote above, let’s keep in mind that Trump projected American power abroad fewer times than any President in recent memory and, speaking only for myself, I would have loved to have witnessed some of that alleged callous power at home during the summer of 2020’s riots in American cities.
So, we see that what Dr. S & M Lucas calls “especially true and irrefutable,” is complete bunkum. DuMez’s claims are especially not true and are easily refutable.
Now, keep in mind that I did not vote Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 and counseled from the pulpit that Christians had no business voting for Trump. However, I understood that many of the people I serve as well as many of my friends would ignore me and vote for Trump because he represented a safe harbor from the escalating cultural Marxism as seen in people like DuMez and Dr. S & M Lucas.
Lucas next complains about Billy Graham. He doesn’t complain about Graham’s Arminianism. He doesn’t complain about Graham’s shallowness. He doesn’t complain about Graham’s parlor tricks to manipulate people to respond to his insipid messages. No, what Lucas complains about is that Billy Graham was trying to “bring revival to America through a restoration of order to families, churches, and eventually nations.” Now, of course, Graham was never going to be successful at that given his methodologies but was it really so bad of Graham to desire a restoration of order to families, churches, and eventually nations? Lucas seems to think it was a bad thing for Graham to want that.
Lucas and DuMez place White Evangelicals in the dock repeatedly. Lucas, citing DuMez approvingly writes,
“At the heart of this realignment (in the ’60s) were attitudes toward civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and ‘family values,’” Du Mez wrote. “For conservative evangelicals, a defense of white patriarchy would move to the center of their coalescing cultural and political identity” (33).
Now keep in mind that in the 1960’s America was 84% white. Should it be surprising that white Christians who love their family and people would defend white patriarchy? Would we fault the Japanese for defending yellow patriarchy? Next, everyone knows of the demonic attack on “family values” that occurred in the 1960s via the sexual revolution. Why would it be untoward for white Christians during this time to defend white patriarchy? What DuMez and Lucas are asking us to embrace is that somehow esteeming Christian white patriarchy was somehow a weakness in light of the Civil Rights movement as animated by a Marxist worldview and in light of the 60’s sexual revolution. DuMez and Lucas criminalize that which is most estimable.
Throughout the piece John Wayne takes it on the chin for being the embodiment of White Evangelicalism. This is humorous given John Wayne and his three marriages. Over life Wayne married a Mexican, Panamanian, and a Peruvian, and so was hardly someone who was a white nationalist, and yet John Wayne is the villain. Go figure.
Dr. S & M Lucas complains that white Evangelicals during the Reagan era 80’s thought;
“The Soviets were evil, Ollie North was a hero, and Americans were under siege. In order to preserve the next generation, the Christian homeschool movement rose up to equip parents in the training of their own children away from the godless factories of public education. The homeschool movement reinforced the linkage between evangelical Christianity, patriarchy, and Christian nationalism.”
This is quote really is quite shocking. Does Lucas think that the Soviets were not evil? Maybe the next book that Dr. S & M Lucas might read is “The Black Book of Communism.” Does Lucas not believe that Government schools are not godless factories that Christian parents in the ’80s were right for eschewing? The literature all across the ideological spectrum testifies to the abject worthlessness of Government schools. I thought it was love and not white patriarchy that motivated parents in the ’80s to home-school their children.
While we are at it, let us note the assumption of Dr. S & M Lucas’ that Christian nationalism is an evil to be avoided. Says who? Dr. Sean Michael Lucas? HA! Would Dr. S & M Lucas prefer Muslim Nationalism or Jewish Nationalism? I’m sure he would. These upside-down presuppositions are shot through this article. White patriarchy is bad. Christian Nationalism is bad. Home-schooling is bad. ‘Family Values’ are bad. Restoration of order to families, churches, and eventually nations, is bad. The 1960’s civil rights movement is good. Do you see the upside-down, inside out, anti-Christ worldview in which Lucas dwells?
Lucas goes on to complain that too often Evangelicals often allow other apriori ideological and cultural commitments to serve as glasses through which they read their bible and form their theologies. Lucas never contemplates for a moment that instead, he is the one guilty of letting his Cultural Marxism apriori commitments and presuppositions to be that which is shaping his theology – such as it is, and which shapes his bitching and moaning about Biblical Christians fondness for white patriarchy, Christian nationalism, home-schooling, and ‘family values.’
Really… I don’t know where Lucas finds all these kinds of Evangelicals he complains about. I suspect that anybody who isn’t as far left as Lucas is is automatically one of these evil Evangelicals. Personally, I find a large percentage of Evangelicals to be as far left as Dr. S & M Lucas.
Lucas sees himself as someone who is “daring to question the status quo.” What a joke. Lucas is the status quo. The overwhelming majority of the leadership in the Church is exactly where Lucas is. They hate all patriarchy, which is to say they hate the whole backdrop that allows the Scriptures to make sense. They prefer either matriarchy or eunuch-archy. Strong white men scare the Hades out of effeminates like Lucas and the Seminary leadership kaffeeklatsch crowd to which he belongs.
Dr. S & M Lucas closes by accusing his mystical Evangelicals of voting out of fear, which Lucas tells us is un-biblical. But I have another explanation for the voting habits of those Lucas loathes. I contend that those who voted Trump, though misguided, were voting in keeping with Romans 12:9; “Hate that which is evil and cling to that which is good.” Those who voted for Trump were voting out of the biblical instinct of hating Cultural Marxism. They voted for Trump because they hated Feminism, hated Globalism, hated “It takes a village to raise a child” thinking, they hated the loss of borders, they hated the thought of disinheriting their children. They were not voting out of fear per Lucas. They were voting out of a Biblically inspired hating of evil.
I think they were misguided in voting that way but I think that because I was never convinced that Trump was a white-hatted champion, who supported patriarchy, ‘family values,’ and Christian nationalism. If he had been I would have crawled over broken glass to have voted for him. Just as I would crawl over broken glass to cast a vote excommunicating Dr. Sean Michael Lucas.
