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Monday, October 7, 2024 - 06:09 PM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

Many people believe that Evanjellyfish Christianity is rapidly displacing Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Britain. A historical analysis of this increasingly popular and trendy adaptation of Christianity reveals surprisingly deep roots and a well-established set of principles.

The first principle of Evanjellyfish Christianity is TOLERANCE. Tolerance is their ultimate, unquestioned virtue. The underlying multiculturalist principle here is that all moral or theological truths are relative and equal no matter what their source. In this chaotic system of theology, one truth is as good as another, and nobody’s truth is ever questioned—unless they believe that there are absolute truths. Believing in absolute truths is intolerant because it implies that some people are in serious error. Having to defend serious error and all sorts of nonsense and to suppress even obvious absolute truths for the sake of tolerance tends to make Evanjellyfish Christians fact and logic averse. Thus emotion always trumps facts and logic in their discourse, usually accompanied by much rambling nonsense.

Evanjellyfish Christians can become visibly shaken by the suggestion that tolerance is not an unqualified virtue. Try as one may, it is almost impossible to get an Evanjellyfish Christian to consider that perhaps they should be intolerant of evil or of moral and intellectual nonsense. That usually gives them a migraine headache. They are generally very surprised to learn that Jesus would tell a church in Revelation 2:20, “Nevertheless, I have against you that you tolerate that woman Jezebel….” Evanjellyfish Christianity is primarily informed by a belief in the innate goodness of man and the ideals of democratic egalitarianism rather than Scripture.

The second principle of Evanjellyfish Christianity is UNTHINKING CONFORMITY to majority or popular opinion, especially if supported by the mainstream media, publishing, and educational institutions. Unthinking Conformity is the backbone of Evanjellyfish Christianity. For the Evanjellyfish Christian, acceptance and respectability are more important than truth.  Knowledge or analysis that does not conform to popular and respectable opinion is avoided.  Curiously, Evanjellyfish Christians have a furious intolerance for any facts or straight thinking that might jeopardize their respectability or acceptance.  The politically correct environment of the college campus has become the ultimate training ground for enforcing the Unthinking Conformity essential to Evanjellyfishism. The fact that the Evanjellyfish positively avoids serious analysis and thinking should not be confused with stupidity, although it is often difficult to make a distinction. They are constantly in a state of denial that their slavish popular conformity is really just a form of moral cowardice.

The third principle of Evanjellyfish Christianity is LIBERTY UNLIMITED, referring to liberty of conscience. But contrary to traditional Christianity, in which there is a place for liberty of conscience on questions not addressed or given any ethical preference in Scripture, the Evanjellyfish Christian has a remarkable tendency to claim liberty in everything.  Scripture is not authoritative to them. They pick what verses they like and how to interpret them. Their private interpretation of Scripture is, in fact, remarkable in its devices. Each one has a personal ethical framework geared to their own success and enjoyment of life. They bristle at any Biblical contradiction of their private, self-centered morality. Their idea of liberty of conscience is a deification of their own idols and desires. As such, it will not submit to any threatening analysis.

A fourth Evanjellyfish principle is the notion that INEQUALITY IS EVIL. It helps to remember their second principle (Unthinking Conformity) to justify this as some sort of moral law. There are, of course, many areas where some kinds of equality are preferable, such as equal justice under the law.  However, the Evanjellyfish Christian expands the concept of equality to areas that make no common sense and cannot be justified by Scripture or a study of nature. They presume against God and nature that psychological differences between men and women need to be corrected to conform to their egalitarian vision of society. They even presume to overturn the divinely ordained nature of marriage and family. Economic differences seem especially unfair to them even when the difference is clearly attributable to hard work, perseverance, accumulated knowledge, greater risk taking, and special abilities. They refuse to believe some obvious facts—that many abilities have high genetic inheritability and that these abilities often have a substantial correlation with economic success. A curious characteristic of Evanjellyfish Christians is their constant demand for government mandates to enforce all sorts of silly and unreachable equality. Their approach to correcting presumed social and economic injustices is generally totalitarian.

The fifth and final principle of Evanjellyfish Christianity is PERSONAL PEACE and PROSPERITY at any PRICE. There is hardly any truth they will not ignore or suppress to achieve this. They will go along with the silliest and most inane proposals by demagogues, charlatans, and crackpots, so long as their personal peace, and prosperity can remain intact. They are incredibly vulnerable to verbal bullying in that regard. They grease the wheel that squeaks loudest however unfair or unwise. They are thrown into panic and headlong flight on the mere utterance of certain accusing words—racist, sexist homophobic, and Islamophobic, to name a few. Hearing such an accusing utterance, though it might be far from the truth, they abandon all reason and principle. They will even turn on innocent people to demonstrate their innocence. Their vulnerability to this kind of verbal bullying is known by many and used to manipulate them outrageously. They seek the appearance of righteousness rather than its reality, especially if the reality has a personal cost.  Evanjellyfish Christians are not opposed to costs as long as they are borne by other people, most frequently taxpayers. Evanjellyfish Christians are generally very compassionate with other people’s and especially taxpayers’ money.  It makes them feel good.

Evanjellyfish Christianity is not about truth; it is about avoiding and suppressing truth. It is a disfiguring distortion of Christianity, which we must vigorously resist.

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Mike Scruggs is the author of Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You; published in 2009. Mike is also a decorated Air Force combat veteran of the Vietnam War and the author of recently published books: Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You and The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths.  The books, a unique combination of personal experiences and a military and political overview of the war, can be obtained by calling The Times Examiner at (864) 268-0576.