The Ideology Underneath
With American public schools falling behind and an increasing distrust of the public school system, Emma Green, a columnist for The New Yorker, spotlights a trend in American education: families are substituting public schools with charter schools that focus on the classics.[1] With a foundation of ancient Greek and Roman writers, the pillars of classical education include a commitment to knowable objective truth and the cultivation of virtue.[2]
An Unavoidable Question
This shift is producing remarkable benefits. However, it is not without its critics. One voice Green highlights is Diane Ravitch, an education activist and scholar. “[Classical charters] have become weapons of the Right as they seek to destroy democratically governed public schools while turning back the clock of education and social progress by a century.”[3] It is worth noting that “democracy” and “social progress” are indebted to the thinkers studied as “classics.” Granted, with classical education’s emphasis on the Western writers of Greece and Rome, there is a lack of balance with non-European thinkers. This is a growth area classical education ought to explore. Nevertheless, there is a question we must face when we heed Ravitch’s critique of classical education utilizing the values of Western culture (such as social progress and democracy). It is the same question we face when contemplating the values passed on as “the good life,” morality, via classical education. The question is “Who determines the values?”
What we have is an ideological breakdown. When morality and values are disembedded from an originating, benevolent Creator, we are left with deciding for ourselves what is honorable and good. When I was in graduate school at Talbot Seminary, I had a theology professor tangentially and surprising give statement of intellectual humility: “Everyone’s theology leaks.” By this, he meant we all have theological beliefs that are wobbly. If I can be so bold, this is even more evident in ideologies that are not within the Christian tradition.
Petrusek’s Evangelization and Ideology
This is what Matthew Petrusek highlights in his recent book Evangelization and Ideology.[4] What Petrusek desires for his readers is a robust understanding of the epistemological underpinnings and pitfalls of the most influential ideologies shaping today’s political discourse. Petrusek contends that the contentious and divisive nature of our political conversations presents an opportunity to provide a better story, a more robust and beautiful “ideology” of faith: “In ways that may not have been possible in previous decades, when secularization trends were palpable but not yet dominant, the Church has a unique opening to re-enter the sociopolitical fray, re-engage the secular mind, and call the culture back to Christ-provided we can effectively understand and respond to the contemporary ideological battlefield.”[5]
Petrusek’s work highlights four influential ideologies of our day: utilitarianism, classical liberalism/libertarianism, progressivism, and non-theistic conservatism. For the purpose of this blog, I will engage with non-theistic conservatism as it is, in my opinion, the most insidious for the American Church.
Non-Theistic Conservatism and the Church
Petrusek describes non-theistic conservatism as “Aristotelian aristocracy and Lockean hyper-individuality”[6], or, in other words, dependence on privilege and individual economic advancement.[7] The Church has become culpable of not only giving in to this ideology, but perpetuating it.[8] The Church has not always been an agent of this ideology of non-theistic conservatism masked in “God’s provision and blessing for hard work.” The early church demonstrated a community that dismissed hierarchy based on means and status. It was a family that has “everything in common.”[9] The Church also elevated the poor, which was a radical in those days (and still so today), and lambasted the sin of greed and covetousness. However, Lesslie Newbigin points out a shift that happened:
The eighteenth century, by a remarkable inversion, found in covetousness not only a law of nature but the engine of progress by which the purpose of nature and nature’s God was to be carried out. The enormous consequences that have followed from this reversal of traditional values are familiar to us. It has shattered the age-long assumption that the world we inhabit is basically stable and finite and that consequently economics is mainly about the sharing of limited resources. It has shifted the focus of attention from distribution to production. It has made us familiar with the idea of ceaseless and limitless growth, of unending possibilities of increased mastery over nature that provides increased resources of food, materials, and energy. This is a world in which economics is mainly about increasing production, and it is assumed that if everyone pursues his rational self-interest, production will grow and distribution will take care of itself. Two hundred years after the Enlightenment, we live in a world in which millions of people enjoy a standard of material wealth that few kings and queens could have matched then, but in which the gulf between the rich minority and the abjectly poor majority is vast and growing, a world therefore threatened as never before by destructive violence.[10]
The reality is our ideology provides a hint at our idolatry. And when one possesses an ideology of market-based aristocracy, the god becomes the market, or fortune.
This is an invitation for the Church to consider where we have had our hearts entangled with the market, thus causing idolatry. Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, goes from the subject of money to anxiety. “You cannot serve both God and money.25 Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing?”[11] The anxiety highlights the idolatry. My argument here is not to say those who are diagnosed with a mental health struggle like anxiety just need to “check their idols.” Rather, it is to highlight the connection between what worries us and what our hearts love the most. “For,” as Jesus says, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”[12] What if what we treasure gives us a hint at our ideology? And what if, as Petrusek contends, ideology is a critical space for evangelism? But this starts with the Church examining our hearts, repenting of our unconscious (or conscious) ideological allegiance to non-theistic conservatism, and invite people into a better story to live out.
[1] Emma Green, “Old School: Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative?” The New Yorker, March 11, 2024, 12.
[2] Ibid., 13.
[3] Ibid., 12.
[4] Matthew R. Petrusek, Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond to the Political Culture (Park Ridge, IL: published by the Word on Fire Institute, an imprint of Word on Fire, 2023).
[5] Ibid., 3.
[6] Ibid., 372.
[7] My words summarizing how I understood Petrusek.
[8]By “the Church,” I am speaking of my context of American pre-dominantly white, western Church. To see an in-depth pathway for how this happened, see Jason Paul Clark, “Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship” (2018). Faculty Publications – Portland Seminary. 132. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/gfes/132
[9] Acts 4:32-37.
[10] Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1986), 109-110.
[11] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Mt 6:24–25.
[12] Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34.
About the Author
David Beavis
David is Australian by birth, was raised in Southern California, and is the Youth and Young Adults Pastor at B4 Church in Beaverton, Oregon. David and his wife, Laura, live in Hillsboro with their dog, Coava (named after their favorite coffee shop). M.A. Theology - Talbot School of Theology B.A. Psychology - Vanguard University of Southern California7 responses to “The Ideology Underneath”
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David
This jumped out at me:
Diane Ravitch, an education activist and scholar. “[Classical charters] have become weapons of the Right
an alternative school choice is a weapon? This is an interesting thought. Choice in education is as important as free speech.
I love this question: “Who determines the values?”
great discussion
It’s late and I am struggling to think critically. This is how far my thoughts are able to go tonight.
Good job almost Dr. Beavis
Thank you Kristy! I look forward to reading your blog in a minute!
David, great post. You wrote, “The reality is our ideology provides a hint at our idolatry. And when one possesses an ideology of market-based aristocracy, the god becomes the market, or fortune.” So true. It makes me think of how people get so caught up in ‘stuff.’ The idea of the Prosperity Gospel comes to mind. Or keeping up with the Joneses… bigger and better and more of everything. I come from a place of privilege and wealth.
I admit, I love shopping – I love spending money, but more often than not, for me it is spending money to buy something for someone else that brings me the most joy. Several friends call me “Fairy Godmother.” My treasure is not in the wealth I have or the ability to spend money, it is in the joy I can bring to others and in sharing the love of Jesus in a tangible way to people.
My problem with Petrusek’s argument is, as you quoted, “Everyone’s theology leaks.” He argues that “Truth is truth is truth (pg. 136), but in trying to impose a moral truth onto a political agenda, how do we rectify our wobbly theology? How do we know that the laws we strive to enact are in fact aligned with ultimate Truth? How is it loving our neighbor to impose on them the burden of our unseen misunderstandings? I think there are no easy answers.
Thank you for expressing your thoughts. A careful examination of our hearts is a good place to start.
Thank you Shonell! It is certainly a good place to start, but a hard place to start for sure.
Your post is interesting to me as I work in the education field. There is a breakdown on multiple levels. I thought the way you tied this ideology and the Church together with what is going on in our education system today was absolutely fascinating. I like your answer as well… it “starts with the Church examining our hearts, repenting of our unconscious (or conscious) ideological allegiance to non-theistic conservatism, and invite people into a better story to live out.” Thank you, David, for a very thoughtful post.
Thank you Tonnett for your encouraging words! And yes, the education field is on the front lines of this conversation.