The Pugnacious Irishman

For all its vague mushyness, Obama’s harping on hope and change is right about one thing: things are a changin’.  Young Evangelicals, for example, voted for Obama in much larger percentages than they voted for Kerry or Gore.

Not all change is good change, so Hugh Hewitt recently sat down tith John Stonestreet of Summit Ministries in an attempt to get a hold on what’s happening in the Church’s younger crowd (follow the link for the complete interview.  I’m just posting snippets of it.)

BTW, Summit Ministries is a must-attend for any serious young Christian.

John Stonestreet, photo credit: summit.org

(My comments in italics)

HH:And what do they (young Evangelicals) think about the Obama abortion agenda, for example?

JS: Well, I think there’s two things on the abortion thing. One is I think a lot of Evangelicals think it’s an old issue. It’s just not in the forefront of their minds. Now it’s not because they don’t hear about it. I think they hear about it all the time. I just don’t think…and they care personally about it. I just think they don’t think that the government answer to that problem is going to work. The other thing is, and I really fear this, in fact this came up at a panel of a Christian college that I’m aware of during the election season, and that is that the abortion issue is a lost issue. And I think there’s a myth going around that in the last ten, fifteen years, no progress has been made on the life issue when in fact, the opposite was true, and within the first two months here, we might see Obama roll back just about all that progress. (emphasis mine)

I can definitely confirm this. I’ve had many discussions with Christian friends who have grabbed onto the “abortion is a lost cause” way of thinking. And Stonestreet is right; it is an absolute myth that no progress has been made.   I mean its complete ballyhoo. To cite just one example, in the 1990’s, Mississippi enacted several pro-life laws (parental notification, partial birth abortion ban, conscience protections for those in the medical field) and experienced an abortion rate decline of 52% from 1992-2000. Michael New documents several other examples and studies here and here.

When I’ve brought this information up in discussions, the denial and hand waving–among young, passionate Evangelicals, mind you–is staggering.

HH: What about other issues, though, because obviously Obama is a generational shift, and he’s very charismatic. He was very cool. But do young Evangelicals, for example, oppose the intervention in Iraq to free a country and bring democracy there?

JS: Oh, yeah. I think here’s the issue. It’s what you said, is he’s cool. I mean, if you think about it, Obama looked like every image of a good leader that we see on TV all the time. And we’ve got to understand this is the most mediated culture ever, mediated generation ever. And so he just looked familiar to them, and McCain did not. I mean, you look at what a good leader is according to every movie, every TV show, you know, and so on, and that’s what Obama looked like. And McCain was never close to that. So I think he was really cool.

You know what? He’s right…I’ve never thought of that before. From 24 to the West Wing and beyond, most good leaders do give off that hip, younger vibe. Obama is very “Mac,” (as opposed to PC) you know. Unfortunately, to paraphrase J.P Moreland, the makeup man is king these days, much more important than the policy maker.

HH: So they’ve seen generation after generation flow through their summer conferences, their conferences out around the country, et cetera. And they’re no different from anyone else. When I was there last summer, they’re all texted up, they’re all wired up. They’re all that.

But are they less intelligent…when it comes to the world than previous generations?

JS: Well, that’s really a good question. I think there is. I mean, our students, I don’t think so. I think we see them, and we see that they want to be challenged. What I fear is that specifically in terms of the Evangelical world, we thought that they’re less intelligent, and so we’ve made them less intelligent. In other words, we think that youth group in church should only be about pizza and yo-yos, and we don’t really challenge them. And what we found is that if you really challenge them, they come alive.

This is another homerun comment. As I’ve said before, (and here also)  if you challenge youth with hard stuff, they perk up. More Bible, less hang out time. More theology and apologetics, fewer social games. That’s Brett Kunkle’s take, anyway, and the guy knows what he’s talking about.

HH: You know, it’s interesting, John, I’m preparing obviously the adult conference at Summit, it’s a big deal, and so I’ve been doing a lot of work on this and researching what I think, but I want to ask you, as you talk to your faculty, Summit has the best faculty, I mean, you just bring in the smartest guys in the world of Evangelicalism to Colorado Springs to talk to these kids, to these young adults…

JS: Right.

HH: Are they discouraged? Are your faculty discouraged?

JS: No, you know what I’m seeing in a lot of these guys, and in fact, I was just at another meeting of a lot of Evangelical leaders a few weeks ago, and what I’m seeing is that there is an idea now that we’ve got to stop focusing so much on issue by issue by issue. I think the conservative right has done a good job promoting here’s what we believe about this issue, issue, issue. I don’t think they’ve done a good job doing some sort of long term systemic preparation of helping students think from a Biblical framework. And that’s what I’m hearing from our speakers, that is listen, we’ve got to back up, because if a student can’t distinguish between the moral significance of abortion and the moral significance of global warming, we haven’t done our job giving them the foundations from which to think. And that’s really what we’re going after at Summit, and a lot of our professors are doing the same thing, saying listen, I mean, these aren’t morally equivalent issues on any level. So let’s go back and say how should we think before we start approaching these issues? That’s the foundational work I don’t think was done for this generation.

Yea verily and amen…this is another reason to get behind guys like Brett.

I simply love what Hewitt is doing.  I’m glad he’s stepping up and being the catalyst for such a needed conversation.