There's a new and brief piece at Mere Orthodoxy by Brian Auten that discusses an evangelical dark web. There is a preface from Jake Meador.
Preface from Jake: The “evangelical dark web” is a designation adopted by a group of evangelical social media personalities and bloggers centered around a few various web sites such as For the Christian Intellectual, Pulpit and Pen, Sovereign Nations, and Enemies Within the Church. The movement is a self-proclaimed insurgency meant to combat perceived liberalism in other evangelical organizations and denominations. While it’s own positions are broadly in keeping with the political beliefs of the old guard Religious Right, it’s rhetorical positioning is more in keeping with a neo-fundamentalist stream of evangelicalism.
Auten's piece begins in a pretty straightforward way. It has reminded me that, as he used to joke from time, Mark Driscoll used to say he wanted to put the "fun" back in fundamentalism. But let's look at the checklist Auten provides because the range of behaviors might be what some readers would wish to attribute to a Mark Driscoll but they could just as easily be implemented by figures like John Shelby Spong or Nadia Bolz-Weber types and their associated fans. In other words, these techniques are techniques that don't have to be deployed by people because of specific doctrinal, dogmatic or political commitments. But in this checklist case note the target population of 18 to 30 year old males, that IS a target demography that fits with Mark Driscoll's lifelong mission statement about which people he's wanted to reach and present himself as a role model to.
https://mereorthodoxy.com/evangelical-dark-web/
One could assert that the self-proclaimed “evangelical dark web” is insurgent in character. Its overall aim is institutional takeover. Its intermediate aim is intellectual capture of the “target population” (e.g. 18-30 year old conservative evangelicals, particularly males).
Its strategy is multi-form and typical for insurgencies:
- embarrass the regime in power
- make it [the regime] appear weak and corrupt
- create (online) zones of counter-control
- tempt the regime in power to over-respond in a heavy-handed and/or inept manner
- through expansion of its captured target population over time, overwhelm the regime.
Its primary tactic: the rhetorical hammer.
Granting that characterization, an obvious question for those orthodox Protestant Christians who reject the evangelical dark web is how to run an effective counterinsurgency against the “evangelical dark web?” These are some embryonic thoughts: ...
For those who were at Mars Hill but more particularly between 1996 and 2008, one of Driscoll's methods was to contrast the Mars Hill community with traditional denominations, whether Episcopalians or Baptists or Methodists, which were presented as not taking scripture seriously or as insisting upon regulations, rules and restrictions that Driscoll and the other leaders said were not actually in the Bible. Driscoll honed the art of the public relational stance within which he presented himself as the sensible centrist. He wasn't John Macarthur nor was he John Shelby Spong. But, in summary, embarrassing regimes in power (more traditional denominations) and making them appear weak and corrupt was a fairly steady part of Driscoll's rhetoric in the earlier period of Mars Hill before it went into its second phase of multi-site organization. The first multi-site phase was around 1999 to 2004 ish when there was Harambee, Ballard and the U-District campus arrangement. The church consolidated down to a single site around 2004-2005. It was during that period that preaching consolidated around Driscoll more exclusively. In the earlier multi-site phase Mike Gunn preached at Harambee, Lief Moi preached at the U-District site, and Driscoll preached at Ballard.
On the matter of creating zones of counter-control, Midrash 1.0 and particularly 2.0 seem relevant. The earliest Midrash was a php discussion forum that had no moderation and was open to the public. Midrash 2.0 was a members-only strictly Mars Hill version of the same core idea but it had moderators, well, officially there were moderators but the extent to which it was moderated could be up for debate. Driscoll would eventually say in the 2013 through the present that the very idea of a php discussion forum was a bad idea but that is, to be terse, a rhetorical hammer move. Driscoll clearly had no problems with Midrash in its early forum when he was writing as William Wallace II.
For those who only read about "Pussified Nation" and have never read the whole thing you may need to know that despite reports of Driscoll's denigrating comments about gays and women that he reserved special vitriol for James Dobson and Promise Keepers. This would seem strange since people would imagine James Dobson to be on the Religious Right and therefore in the same basic wheelhouse as Driscoll. But ... if we're looking at Mark Driscoll's early activity in terms of a range of dark web activities then the focus we'll want to keep in mind is that it would make sense for Mark Driscoll, in Seattle, in the late 1990s, to emphatically declare that Dobson and Promise Keepers were the real losers. It was part of brand delineation.
When William Wallace II writings made headlines there were headlines to the effect that Mars Hill lost members over Driscoll's homophobic and misogynistic rants and that's possible, but that is more in the realm of editorial commentary rather than analysis of what Driscoll was saying and what the social and historical context was for his stunt. I've written at some length on how Driscoll's agitprop in "Pussified Nation" (which you can read pretty much in full at Wenatchee The Hatchet if you go through the posts with that tag) is probably best thought of as a kind of agitation propaganda to see who would be on board with what would later be called Dead Men, an integration propaganda campaign in which men in the 18-30 range, more or less, were summoned to participate in becoming more active and integral parts of the Mars Hill community. Extent writings from Mark Driscoll as William Wallace II can be read at Wenatchee The Hatchet by way of a tag, too. What is striking about that persona is that through WWII Driscoll explained what he intended to do, to rile people up, criticize the way things were done (particularly by the James Dobson/Promise Keepers wing) and see who was with him on his mission to do better. Midrash 1.0, though Driscoll has long since repudiated it, was an essential aspect to William Wallace II's activities.
I'll go as far as to suggest that the rise of Mark Driscoll is inexplicable without reference to the concept of the "evangelical dark web". The people at Mars Hill who set up the church website and the php discussion forum circa 1998-2002 may not have realized they were making evangelical dark web, the beta version, but that is in essence what they developed. That was, per Brian Auten's taxonomy of methods used by participants in the dark web, the formulation of a means of counter-control by younger guys who founded Mars Hill, if we want to discuss what they were doing as a kind of prototype to a "dark web" system before there was a more recent "dark web" to discuss.
At the risk of casting the net a bit more widely, Driscoll wouldn't even be all that unique in developing a proto dark web system. Douglas Wilson has arguably done more or less the same thing in his orbit. What writers on the progressive and left side have noted is the extent to which what they identify as alt-right or new right groups have appropriated the techniques of the left as a way to poke fun at establishments. It may be the case that the nascent alt right groups have learned enough about left/progressive tactics to turn them around on the left. Since I've referenced Jacques Ellul in the past I might suggest that the techniques of mass media technocratic cultures for assimilating, agitating and integrating partisans isn't strictly "left" or "right".
When Auten turns to a practical set of methods to address the evangelical dark web a number of things stick out.
...
Granting that characterization, an obvious question for those orthodox Protestant Christians who reject the evangelical dark web is how to run an effective counterinsurgency against the “evangelical dark web?” These are some embryonic thoughts:
Counterinsurgency has three traditional components: isolate and degrade insurgent activity, build target audience resiliency (e.g. strengthen, defend, and counter-radicalize), and lastly, if and where needed, reform the at-risk regime.
For countering the evangelical dark web particularly, these steps will need to be taken.
[1] Demand citations and evidence for every assertion. Demand context for every pull quote. Fact check every infographic. Force them back to original sources (books, dissertations, etc.) at every possible juncture.
[2] Question all characterizations every time (e.g. if they say someone is a “socialist” or “cultural Marxist,” always make them define the term and support the assertion with evidence).
[3] Interrogate the interrogator: research, write and post accurate stories about the individuals and groups in the “evangelical dark web” (e.g. what things have they been involved with in the past; previous attempts at this type of activity; how do they get their funding?)
...
Having been part of a journalistic process chronicling the Mark Driscoll plagiarism controversy of late 2013 these general observations have substance. Mark Driscoll was not really "taken out" by secular or progressive or liberal media. His reputation collapsed when Reformed and evangelical conservative writers began to dig into the allegation that he was a plagiarist and substantial evidence was found that he had used the work of other authors without giving them credit in the first editions of his published books. Those books have since been revised and updated in second editions. For those who weren't following the coverage of the time, when Janet Mefferd provided evicence of Mark Driscoll's plagiarism she pointed out that she wasn't even the only or even the first person to have broached the topic of Driscoll and intellectual property, and linked to work I had already done before her. Of course her materials were taken down and her show did end up off the air but that is more a question for how institutional Christian media platforms handle dissent, which is thematically related to the evolution of an evangelical dark web but not exactly the same as that.
Auten mentions something in his point 5 that I want to consider.
[5] Fight the temptation to get certain outlets or personalities to do battle on your behalf. A critique of the “evangelical dark web” by the Gospel Coalition, ERLC, the New York Times, Washington Post, or the Southern Poverty Law Center, or a byline by Emma Green, Peter Wehner, John Fea, Warren Throckmorton, et. al. will backfire and easily become ammunition for the next round of attacks.
When one of my relatives wanted to learn about Mars Hill in 1998 he asked if the church could provide a doctrinal statement. What he got was a photocopy of the
1998 Mother Jones article that discussed Mars Hill and other churches. In hindsight it seemed sketchy but it arguably gets at the heart of Auten's warning, if Mark Driscoll and the early Mars Hill Church could be seen as a forerunner of what is today's evangelical dark web then hostile press from a vetted institution, particularly in the press, will be used as publicity material for the group that received negative coverage.
Within Reformed communities The Gospel Coalition is being regarded more and more as a bad joke. One of my friends from the Mars Hill days and I were discussing TGC a couple of years ago and he said that he's found that among the ex-MH people we know fewer and fewer take TGC seriously, particularly when the topic is whether they're saying things that could be construed as historically Reformed. Now folks with an Internet Monk or Boars Head Tavern background might reminisce about the Truly Reformed a bit, but this is to say that Auten's caution has cause. Even among writers in the progressive and left wing there have been some criticisms about the way the Southern Poverty Law Center has handled things. Take Nathan V. Robinson's "
The Southern Poverty Law Center is Everything That is Wrong with Liberalism".
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the wealthiest civil rights organization in the country, has ousted its founder, Morris Dees, and president, Richard Cohen, amid unspecified allegations of workplace misconduct by Dees. Dees had been with the organization since creating it in 1971, while Cohen had joined in the mid-’80s, and the SPLC’s shake-up can be seen as part of the MeToo reckoning in which conduct that was accepted for years is finally being dealt with appropriately.
But the organization has long been dysfunctional in even deeper ways, and the story of Dees and the SPLC is useful for illustrating some of the worst and most hypocritical tendencies in American liberalism. If we understand the full extent of what went wrong in this organization, we’ll better understand the ways in which a shallow “politics of spectacle” can take hold, and see the kinds of practices that need to be categorically rejected in the pursuit of progressive change.
The Southern Poverty Law Center perfectly
shows social change done wrong. It was a top-down organization controlled by an
incompetent and venal leadership.* It was hypocritical in the extreme,
preaching anti-racism while fostering a racist internal culture and being led
by men whose own commitment to equality was questionable. It didn’t care about
listening to and incorporating the viewpoints of the people it was supposed to
serve. It was obscenely rich in a time of terrible poverty, and squandered much
its considerable wealth. Finally, it picked the wrong political targets, and
focused on symbolic over substantive change. Each of these practices goes
beyond the SPLC, and is endemic to a certain kind of “elite liberalism” that
desires “progress” without sacrifice. It is the kind of liberalism recognized by
Phil Ochs in 1966, and its chief characteristics are a deep hypocrisy and a
lack of willingness to seriously challenge the status quo.
Now having not read much by John Fea I don't have anything to say about Fea, but having read Warren Throckmorton over the years I would say there's a thought experiment to do. Since Trump has been elected Throckmorton has made reference to the "court evangelicals" who approve of Trump's policies and ignore Trump's conduct. I didn't want Trump to get the nomination and regarded it as bad that he won ... but I have also written about how as racist presidents go Trump may be bad but he's not necessarily Woodrow Wilson ... or even where Native American concerns are involved a Theodore Roosevelt.
Here's a thought experiment, imagine that someone were to describe the late Rachel Held Evans as a "court Episcopalian" in the way that Warren Throckmorton makes mention of "court evangelicals" in his more recent writing.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/29/president-obama-announces-more-key-administration-posts
Rachel Held Evans, Appointee for Member, President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Rachel Held Evans is a Christian blogger and the author of Faith Unraveled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and Searching for Sunday. In addition, Ms. Evans speaks at retreats, conferences, universities, and churches across the country. She has been featured on NPR, Slate, The BBC, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNN, The View, and The Today Show, and in 2012, she was named one of Christianity Today's “50 Women to Watch.” Ms. Evans received a B.A. from Bryan College.
There's no compelling reason to not regard the late Rachel Held Evans as a "court Episcopalian" in the same way that, say, Franklin Graham, could be said to have a "court evangelical" connection with the Trump administration, is there? That any of these "court" religious leaders may only have a position that is a formality without actual political influence and that referring to them at all is basically a waste of time is where I land, personally, but I recognize that a lot of people will disagree with that position. Granting that difference of conviction ...
For denizens of any dark web those kinds of rhetorical flourishes on the part of writers like Throckmorton signal their ultimately institutional loyalties and that is getting at what Brian Auten's warning is about; relying on figures such as Fea or Throckmorton or establishments such as The Gospel Coalition or the SPLC will boomerang in connection to dark web campaigning.
Within the history of Mars Hill if criticism came from Slice of Laodicea, the Sola Sisters or John Macarthur in general these criticisms were categorically ignored. These were regarded as anti-charismatic institutional rejection of whatever Mars Hill in general and Mark Driscoll in particular was about. A similar dynamic happens across the theological and political spectrum where once people are identified as residing in a particular doctrinal or political position they are not to be taken seriously. Think of it as being akin to people who read AlterNet not going out of their way to read Pat Buchanan and vice versa maybe.
Now, obviously, from the
sheer amount of material I've written about Mars Hill Church I believe it's a topic that merits scholarly, historical and journalistic investigation. Auten's recent piece on the evangelical dark web has reminded me that there's a great deal about the roughly twenty year history of what used to be Mars Hill Fellowship and then Mars Hill Church that could be a case study in a church that helped to pioneer techniques and technologies that helped lay a foundation for what is more recently called the evangelical dark web. At the moment the only academic monographs that have addressed the history of Mars Hill have come from more progressive or non-Christian writers.
I recommend Jessica Johnson's Biblical Porn as, so far, the only academic monograph discussing any aspect of Mars Hill that I consider to be worth serious study. I've got my differences of conviction with Johnson which, if you've read more than a dozen posts here you'll know already, but her work is what I regard as the first serious step toward a chronicle of Mars Hill in academic literature that relies on enough primary source material to be taken seriously. To go by how evangelicalism as a whole and low church Protestantism in the United States have decided to handle things, there are not likely to be any other academic monographs examining Mars Hill as a case study in theological, technological, social or other developments. Driscoll himself seems to be leaning toward acting as if those twenty years of his ministry in some sense just didn't happen.
The rise and demise of Mars Hill Church may be one of the more useful case studies of how a church that in several respects helped create an evangelical dark web has ended, with the spin off churches surviving (with exceptions like the late and dead Mars Hill Portland assimilated into Door of Hope) but as more conventional evangelical church entities.
"I submit to the elders, and they discipline me I promise you that. There's a few that like to remind me continually of my arrogance and they're very good at it and I thank God for them. There have been certain decisions that I've wanted to make in the church, there's been certain things I've wanted to do and they've said 'no'. And in retrospect every time they have been right, every time they have been right and I have been wrong. And I thank God for that headship because otherwise I would have messed things up. It's good to have Godly wise headship."
-How to Take a Wife part 1, 3/17/2001 00:46:40
Here we are in 2019 and Driscoll seems reluctant to discuss the history of Mars Hill beyond a few general statements about how there was a governance war and how some guys felt he needed to repent but didn't explain what that would entail. In 2001 Driscoll was willing to say he needed elders to check his arrogance and that when he'd wanted to make certain decisions those decisions got shot down and, in retrospect, every time they had been right. That's something to bear in mind as a contrast between the Mark Driscoll of 2001 and the Mark Driscoll of 2006-2008. Based on Driscoll's own account in
Confessions of a Reformission Rev the signal change in his thinking about governance, real estate and leadership principles may have happened after a
conversation with Larry Osborne and another innovation in the "shoot your dogs" variety happened, apparently, after Driscoll had conversation(s) with
Jon Phelps.
The history of Mars Hill Church as a potential case study of dark web pioneers suggests that by the time evangelical dark web now gains traction it will most likely turn into the institutional system it has critiqued but with, to go by observations I've been able to make about the late Mars Hill, even more incompetence, graft and cult of personality than the institutions Mars Hill leadership at one point spoke and wrote critically about. That doesn't mean anyone involved in the earliest years of Mars Hill was insincere, far from it. That's what makes the self-immolation of Mars Hill seem sad but that's another topic for some other time.
