a riff on Matt Loftus' 10 reasons evangelicals are cringe, 1 reason ...

https://mereorthodoxy.com/10-reasons-evangelicals-are-cringe

You can read the list for yourself this week before the post ends up behind a paywall.  The ten reasons are ... 

1. Evangelicals who could be elites are applying themselves to more important problems.

2. Evangelicals who could be elites are applying themselves to less important problems.

3. Most people are passive when it comes to elites and every subculture’s most prominent voices tend to regress to the cringe.

4. Cultural elites are quite rare and not always a function of skill or discipline.

5. Elite gatekeepers are biased against evangelicals.

6. Evangelicalism disowns its elites when they deviate from orthodoxy, and this is good.

7. Evangelicalism disowns its elites when they violate shibboleths, and this is bad.

8. Evangelical influence looks different from mainstream influence.

9. Evangelicals are biased against elitism because they do cringe things like focusing on their families.

10. The best evangelical elites are underground; you wouldn't have heard of them because you're not cool enough.

All of these can be collapsed into a simpler concept, though the concept is simpler in principle than the way I am about to express it.

Ethan Hein remixes "Dreams" across a dozen other works to illustrate harmonic/melodic divorce in popular song, and I can't resist making a response song about Charles Rose would likely say the rumblings of that divorce go as far back as Hector Berlioz and the divorce papers sure got signed by the time of Phil Collins era divorce-ballads

https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2024/the-melodic-harmonic-divorce-in-pop/

https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2025/what-key-is-dreams-by-fleetwood-mac-actually-in/

https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2026/what-i-learned-from-remixing-dreams-over-and-over/

https://ethanhein.substack.com/p/twelve-remixes-of-dreams-by-fleetwood

 

Dropping the vocal stem of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" on to the instrumental tracks of "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees sounds good.  It does also sound very funny.

 

Dropping the vocal line over Bach's legendary Prelude in C major from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier also worked quite well.  All the remixes are worth hearing not just for their novelty but as a way to underline Ethan Hein's blogging thread about the emergence of harmonic/melodic divorce in popular music.  Now if Charles Rosen were still alive he might have been tempted to clear his throat and say that the first rumblings of harmonic/melodic divorce were beginning to happen with the music of Hector Berlioz centuries ago.  Yeah, yeah, if you actually like the music of Berlioz and I kind of don't but point taken. And now I will digress, as I so often do.

Now I do have a thought about what is actually very important in Hein's remixes and what they have to do with music.  The most significant power in creating musical connections and developing musical possibilities is memory.  The intrinsic relationship between working memory and musical perception and interpretation goes at least as far back as Augustine of Hippo (whose De Musica is available in English translation at archive.org now). I have been very critical of Ted Gioia for his use and misuse of Augustine's complex and mercurial thoughts about music for some time now. Part of the complexity of Augustine's thoughts on music come from the simple fact that he wrote Books I-V of De Musica before his conversion to Christianity while Book VI was written after he had become a Christian. The good news for non-Christians who blanche at the prospect of reading one of the most famous Christian thinkers in history is that Books I-V don't discuss Christian doctrine at all for previously stated reasons. The bad news is that De Musica is regarded as one of the most punishingly tedious treatises on anything from antiquity.  Augustine himself realized it was so painfully dull that he opened Book VI with an apology for how genuinely boring everything he wrote in Books I-V actually was!

Modulating well is what the science of music was for Augustine and by "modulating" was not meant "changing keys".  Since everything in the treatise was about poetic rhythm in Latin poetics "modulation" is best thought of in rhythmic terms.  To put this in terms that may be clearer to hiphop than other styles of music, you could say that Books I-V were where Augustine established the scientific principles of establishing a flow.  Those concepts are by and large unfamiliar to me but I have friends who are into hiphop and rap and have explained the basic idea in theory and practice.  Part of my aversion to Gioia's handling of Augustine is how the Christian saint becomes symptomatic of the Greek of Greeks when he needs to be the emblem of "Pythagorean" music and thus a bad guy, but when Gioia wanted to question whether there was even such a thing as "Western" harmony he abruptly remembered Augustine was one of the great Christian bishops of Africa.  Right ... that's why I can't take Ted Gioia seriously when he so obviously moves goalposts. Augustine's thought is complex and remains controversial and it's more fair to him historically to not try to simplify him down to one or another side of a glib Substackified dualisms.

So, the thing about memory and music is that juxtaposition and rhythm are significant.  Hein's experiments show that it is possible to reconceive melodic materials in shifting harmonic and rhythmic contexts.  This is only possible if he you have refined your powers of associative memory to the point where you can drop a Stevie Nicks vocal over the instrumental tracks of a song by the Bee Gees.  Leveraging associative memory for musically expressive purposes is what Johann Sebastian Bach did when he created a fugal first movement for the Credo of his Mass in B minor by using the incipit of the ancient plainchant as the subject of his fugue. Once we consider that the fugal subject is the incipit of the Credo then this could be considered one of the more epic sample flips in "classical music", to go back to a post Ethan Hein did called "fugue as sample flip". Ethan Hein and I have gone back and forth about fugue as sample flip in the past and I feel like a chump for not thinking of the Credo from Mass in B minor as a sample flip earlier. 

 

The paradox of Stevie Nicks' vocal fitting so readily over a Johann Sebastian Bach prelude is that 18th century music tends to be so contrapuntal the prospect of such a juxtaposing working is surprising.  The juxtaposition totally works but that is what a "textbook" approach to classical music cultivated since the long 19th century would tell you isn't supposed to happen and shame on you for thinking it!  But those kinds of juxtapositions, as we have just heard and seen via Bach's Mass in B minor, were what happened in actual 18th century practice. But there is a sense in which the Mac/Bach mash-up comes off as a surprise because harmony and melody in Western theory and practice was very married and, if we just run with Bach's life and times as a jokey analogy, had twenty kids where the family resemblances were not hard to see.  As a friend of mine in college once joked, fifteen generations of Bachs had a penchant for sounding similar. 

Temporal disjunction as a basis for musical exploration has been going on for a long time.  In the 20th century we could look at something like George Rochberg's Caprice Variations for solo violin on a theme by Pagannini. The 1970s was an interesting era in both classical music and rock/pop because of the different kinds of experiments in musical code-switching that were going on.  I had a somewhat short (for me) reflection how George Rochberg's landmark string quartets from the 1970s were composed around the same time Stevie Wonder wrote "Living for the City" and both American composers can be heard and interpreted as experimenting with code switching, how to shift pitch vocabularies mid-work.  I think overall Wonder's song has had more staying power but my point is that we've been living in an era in which, as Leonard Meyer put it, not everyone is going to like the same music but democracy should ensure everyone is free to like whatever they like. 

So it can be useful to study popular song where the divorce between harmony and melody has been firmly established since Kramer vs. Kramer.  Back in the days of Berlioz, to keep running with the gag, harmony and melody were a little out of sync and maybe spent a lot of time in separate rooms of the same house,  but neither was actually consulting with divorce attorneys yet and the divorce papers were definitely not finalized.   By the time Phil Collins showed up with his 1980s era divorce-pop harmony and melody were most assuredly living “Separate Lives”. Some forty years on I think we could say that Phil Collins (love him or hate him or whatever) became one of the maestros of the divorce pop song. 

You might find the humor groan-worthy but I don't care any more.  You listening?  I don't care any more!  

a new era, a new capital campaign, a new building acquisition, and remembering what happened back in 2006 when Mars Hill acquired one of its biggest boondoggles.

https://religionunplugged.com/news/2023/6/20/mark-driscolls-safe-space-in-arizona-2zxze

Mark Driscoll’s Safe Space: How The Embattled Pastor Built A New Church

Chris Moody  October 2, 2023

…

Meanwhile, Chase’s older brother, Landon Chase, became engaged to one of Driscoll’s daughters. But as Landon Chase spent more time with Driscoll, he began to grow distant from his family, Luke Chase said. It was around this time that people in the church began commenting to Luke Chase about his parents, who would soon join the Driscolls as in-laws. According to Chase, church leaders urged him to stop speaking to his parents. They told the impressionable teenager that his parents were “toxic” and that he should cut them out of their lives. (A few years later, in 2022, Driscoll delivered a sermon entitled “When to sever ties with toxic family members?” that explored the topic.)

 

Before Landon Chase and Ashley Driscoll married, the Driscolls invited the Chase family to their home for dinner. During the meal, Driscoll announced that he wanted to offer Landon a full-time job at Trinity Church, which would pull him away from the nonprofit that he helped found with his family. It came as a shock to his parents, who had relocated the family to start the organization with Landon. A few minutes later, Driscoll started making negative comments about the Chase family. According to Luke, Driscoll stood up over Pauline Chase and began berating her. He told her she was a terrible mother and person until she was brought to tears. 

 

“He tore my parents to shreds,” Luke Chase said. “Mark wanted to be the alpha parent and cut my parents out of the equation.” 

 

The Chase family was left in shock. Doug Chase later demanded that Driscoll apologize to his wife, and he refused. 

 

Luke Chase left the church shortly after that. At the time he spoke to Religion Unplugged, he said that his brother Landon Chase who formerly served in the church as its “Pastor of Fun” had not spoken to him or his parents for more than a year. The only way they were allowed to contact him was through a P.O. Box, where they could send letters, Luke Chase said. For a long time, they did not know where he lived. Luke Chase said they began talking again late in 2022. Landon Chase, who now works in real estate, did not respond to a request for comment.

 

“I used to feel angry,” he said. “Now I just feel disappointment and sadness for everyone who's still there.” 

 

Mark Driscoll positioning himself as someone who can say that he, unlike your parents, hasn’t sold out to the American Dream was something he was doing back in the 1990s, as documented by Mother Jones.  The irony of Mark Driscoll rolling out literally therapeutic jargon from Murray Bowen in the last five years in books such as Leave and Cleave: A 21-day Family Systems Journal or Fix Your Family System: Breaking Toxic Patterns Through Biblical Wisdom would be hard to overstate.  This is the same Mark Driscoll who told Mother Jones he was a very confrontational guy and not some pansy-ass therapist but that was back in the 20^th century.

 

Interestingly, while the article by Moody referred to Chase as working in real estate, according to the RealFaith website, Landon Chase became CEO of the ministry in 2022.

 

https://realfaith.com/who-we-are/

CEO, Leadership Team

Pastor Landon & Ashley Chase

Built for ministry. Driven by purpose.
Fueled by the gospel.

 

Landon and Ashley Chase are a husband-and-wife team with a passion for helping people discover God’s purpose and walk it out with conviction.

 

Ashley co-founded RealFaith in 2016 with her dad, Pastor Mark, and has been a key voice ever since—writing, speaking, and co-authoring Pray Like Jesus to help families grow in their faith.

 

Landon became CEO in 2022, bringing entrepreneurial grit and bold vision. With a business degree from Point Loma and a track record of growth, he’s led RealFaith to expand into over 150 nations and sustained 75% year-over-year growth—all while staying grounded in Bible teaching and spiritual authority.

 

Together, they’re raising their son Indy, staying rooted in their local church, and equipping families to follow Jesus in everyday life.

 

Whatever Chase’s achievements in real estate have been, they go unmentioned.    As it stands there is a capital campaign in the works

https://www.trinitychurch.com/legacy

 

4. What is the commitment of Pastor Mark and Grace to the future of Trinity?

Our church family was started by the Driscoll family who all serve together. The family feels called to Trinity Church by God, loves the church, and feels very loved by the church. At the 2025 annual Board of Directors Meeting Pastor Mark asked to sign a 10-year commitment and did so to ensure that everyone knows he is fully committed to Trinity Church and plans to preach there for the rest of his life. 

 

Well, where are the members of the Board of Directors listed? Who are those people? Driscoll asked the Board to sign a 10-year commitment? Why?  Isn't he and his whole family committed?  Then again, this is the same guy who told people in Seattle "6 Reasons Why I'm Not Going Anywhere" in 2010. Then 2013-2014 happened.  So ... maybe he needs to sign a document that requires him to stick around for ten years because, well, Seattle happened.  Okay, fair enough. If even Mark Driscoll knows he has to sign a ten-year commitment document ... well ... hey ... publish that. 

If the capital campaign of circa 2005 from the Mars Hill years era 20 years ago is any indication then the last thing you should do is give to a new capital campaign where the people who just bought the building plan to submit permits to the city.  I mean, sure, Seattle is Seattle and Arizona is another state. A good chunk of men and women I knew twenty years ago in Mars Hill would not seriously dream of living in this city now. 

Still, go back and read Confessions of a Reformission Rev from 2006 and read about that building purchase he touted at the end; consider that that facility never actually became what Mark Driscoll said it would become, the permits situation didn’t change; I had learned privately that a local business owner in the region urged the Mars Hill elders to not buy the property that became the Mars Hill corporate headquarters because it was only zoned for industrial use but the Mars Hill leaders went and bought it anyway.  As one told me, the surmise was that the real estate market was great and, at worst, the property could get flipped.  Then the 2008 housing bubble hit and Mars Hill ended up being stuck with that boondoggle until its death.

 

It could be that the Driscoll clan has become more savvy and competent about real estate acquisitions in the last twenty years. That’s entirely possible. But before people in Arizona dig deep to give to the new capital campaign they should consider that there was a capital campaign decades ago for a building that didn’t pan out. 

yet another Acts 29 leader has had to get removed

https://julieroys.com/acts-29-vp-removed-from-leadership-after-confessing-to-long-term-extramarital-relationship/

 

The Roys Report account eludes to Mark Driscoll being expelled from Acts 29 leadership and while that’s certainly one way to put it, the TRR reference is to Christianity Doay coverage.  For those of us who were chronicling things here in Seattle there are other ways to cite the incident.