What is my plan to gain a more robust analysis of how ARC has effected me? To continue to LEARN and to SEE and UNSEE. To learn more about what ARC is and how it has woven itself into the fabric of Christianity and America. By learning to see it more clearly I can notice how it has affected my worldview, identity and faith. For example, I recall when I read the book “Crazy For God” by Frank Schaeffer, it was a transformative revelation to me. He affirmed as true what I had only suspected. A small group of men really can and did have an undue amount of power over how our country thinks as it relates to ARC! His subtitle says it all, “How I Grew Up As One of the ‘Elect’, Helped Found the Religious Right, And Lived to Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.”  It was revelatory to discover that what I thought were my or my church’s opinions based on sitting under “good Bible teaching”, were really originally created by a group of conservative Christian men who got together in the 1970’s and decided they would work together to keep a grip on power. They woud do this by rolling out what political conclusions they wanted Bible reading Christians to glean from the Bible and apply to American politics.

These men who you may know as the founders of the Religious Right and Moral Majority leaders, put a plan together to gain the mindshare of American Christians. They did this in order to harness and consolidate a 30-60 million person voter block who they could control to elect who they wanted in office. They chose the topics of abortion and Israel to rally behind and preach about in order to create single-issue voters. For example, they chose to take abortion from the Catholics and make it an inflammatory Protestant political issue. And they came up with ideas about how Bible teaching on these topics would be taught – as no less than causing God’s curse on America if you don’t do what they say. They created the “lenses” through which millions of us would see these issues. They successfully assembled a marketing plan to wash our minds with their chosen “truths” – what an incredible feat. And it worked!

For a long time it has worked. Frank Jr is the son of one of these men, Francis Schaeffer, a Christian author who I grew up having a lot of affection for from afar. Frank Jr (who became a personal acquaintance as I sought to interact with him about his ideas and experience) wrote in his book about his own transformation of coming to see the hunger for power behind the ideas. And this power was in, and would stay in, mostly older, white, male hands. They saw themselves as our leaders with the knowledge (or self prescribed responsibility?) to lead the rest of us into “the right way” to live, believe – and VOTE. Frank’s subtitle reveals how, after seeing behind the curtain and coming to disagree with what he saw, his story became one of turning away from the ARC and the tribe he grew up with.

This book was instrumental in my coming to SEE, LEARN, NOTICE how I had been conditioned to believe. It helped me understand why millions of American Evangelical Christians’ beliefs are so distinct when compared to the rest of the country and world. My hope is that books like this from Frank and that from David Gushee will continue to impact readers, thinkers and voters who wish to be free from the influence of the political control of ideas rooted in ARC. Schaeffer’s ideas help me understand Gushee’s ideas better.

In short, my plan of action is to continue to Learn, Notice, Contemplate and Use my Influence to Reinvent ways to help others see and question their interpretive programming as well.

Related to these topics of seeing things anew and helping people question our programming and the past, I want to add a note about the photos I have attached to this post and how they relate to this topic. I accompanied my son on his field trip to the Phoenix Art Museum today and snapped these photos. Here is an example of art used as activism. I appreciated how this artist, Kehinde Wiley (ne 1977), is seeking to cause us to SEE and NOTICE and RETHINK our PROGRAMMING. He is doing this by creating paintings that act as commentary on the way old masters of Flemish portraiture painted people in their society. These are representations or modern remakes of famous paintings by the famous 15th century Netherlandish Northern Renaissance oil painter, Hans Memling (ne 1435). These are one artist’s attempt to help us “see” and question our assumptions and past norms as they relate to race, power and representation. We could go more deeply into how this relates to power politics and messages about privilege and representation today. I appreciate what this artist is doing here. And as both a theologian and an art historian who appreciates Flemish Renaissance art I was impacted by what is being said here – there is so much! I offer it to you to ponder as commentary on our past and also on our present. It is an example of someone using their creativity and vocation as a way help others “see anew” and question both the past and present structures of power and representation. How creative is this method of confronting our ideas but in a non-violent way.