A Letter to My Anxious Christian Friends

A short book full of so, so much. I went through a lot of thoughts and a lot of emotions reading this book.

At first, I followed a lot of what he said.

Though I did begin to wonder how he could remain objective about the "right" and the "left" when so many ways he characterized these issues didn’t seem quite so objective.

And at first, thought it began to fall apart in chapter 7 with:

“I think we have good reason at this time in our long national sojourn to be anxious about the erosion of the moral (and religious) ethos that once formed and constrained our expressions of the maximized liberty of our political system. The delicate balance that the founders expected—a free people, but not utterly free, because they are shaped and constrained by the force of a powerfully religious and moral culture—is in the process of being lost.”

And I thought this because what I see too often is that the "religious ethos" often acts against the "moral ethos". I am seeing that secular people act in more moral ways than religious people. And he even gives evidence of this in previous chapters. And here he wants to connect morality directly to degrading entertainment and corrupt corporate heads. But, what about the right and their rejections of civil rights you've gone on about in the previous 6 chapters?

And another example, chapter 9 doesn’t seem to mesh with many conservative viewpoints - with its devotion to equality, figuring out your privilege, and how extensive racism truly is.

And it seems to continue in that vein.

But then, about one-third of the way through the book, I realized what Gushee was actually trying to do here! He’s taking a page from Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. He's framing! Holy crap! This is the holy grail! The above quote is obviously from a Christian perspective. And he’s talking to Christians. It really makes sense. Gushee is a Christian, talking to Christians, from a Christian perspective. It really is a great work - and it took me a couple times of reading to get that.

He talks about it all. Patriotism, left vs right, guns, abortion, race, climate change, the death penalty.

Wow. This book is amazing. One of the first examples I’ve seen of truly trying to frame the issues in this manner.