The End of Evangelicalism?

C. Irruptions of the Real ……………………………………………. 10

IV. THE EVANGELICAL BELIEF AND PRACTICE OF SCRIPTURE: TRAVERSING THE EVANGELICAL FANTASY OF

Evangelicalism …………………………………………………..... 29

APPENDIX A. ABSTRACT OF THE BOOK PROJECT “THE END OF EVANGELICALISM?” ……………………………………………………….. 36

N. American evangelicalism is in the midst of tectonic change. The past ten years have seen an unprecedented rise and fall of evangelicalism’s cultural influence in America. Amidst this change, how are we to evaluate evangelicalism as a faithful church in America? Amidst the various calls among evangelicals for a return to more protestant orthodoxy or even an abandoning of evangelical theological distinctives entirely, I propose we pursue an alternative approach. I propose we look at evangelicalism as a socio-political ideology undergoing a political crisis. Borrowing on the work of political/cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek, let us analyze American evangelicalism for its viability as a political ideology capable of sustaining a people amidst the new post-Christendom worlds it finds itself in. Let us survey its culture for signs of ideological breakdown. Let us interpret the new movements emanating from it as faithful/unfaithful respondents to the lacks revealed in evangelicalism as a social system. This kind of analysis will do more than advance a new theological adequacy for evangelicalism. I contend it will show the way towards a more robust political theology and practice for the cultural challenges that lie ahead for evangelicalism in N. America.

In what follows, I briefly define evangelicalism and then defend why the elusive political theory of Slavoj Zizek can help us understand evangelicalism and its political viability. I then proceed to outline specific parts of Zizek’s political theory that I will employ in an analysis of evangelicalism’s theology and practice. Specifically, I describe Zizek’s notion of “Master (Empty) Signifier” and then an amalgam of his ideas via the term “irruption of the Real.” I then analyze evangelicalism’s theology and practice of Scripture using these ideas (in what can mischievously be termed social psychoanalysis). I then close by using Alain Badiou’s “fidelity to the event” to understand politically some movements that have emerged in relation to evangelicalism in the past ten years. The result is an analysis that both reveals the weaknesses of evangelical belief and practice as a social politic and clears the way to advance a more politically robust theology and practice in its wake.

Much has been written in the last two decades about “the end of something.” We have been told at different times that we have arrived at the “end of metaphysics,” (Heidegger), “the end of modernity” (Fatima) or “the end of history” (Fukuyama). We are living in a post-Enlightenment, post modern, post Christendom or even “post-American” world.[1] We are asking what comes after Christendom, after modernity or after metaphysics. All of these phrases refer to an ending of sorts to a previous epic’s undergirding structures of thought, politics and/or economic life. Many thinkers advocate that evangelicalism is closely aligned, even birthed from within some of these same structures that seem to be coming to an end. Amidst all of these pronouncements, is it time then to also ask about the “the End of Evangelicalism”?

The past decade has seen a rise and fall of evangelicalism as a political presense in American life. In this short time-fame, we have seen evangelicalism go from being a dominant influence in American culture/politics to being vilified within that same American culture/media. Signs of its demise can be detected in numerous places in American media. The plethora of “hate books” against “the evangelical right” hitting the NY Times best-seller list in this decade highlights the decline of evangelicalism’s standing in American culture at large. Professional pollsters have reported the decline of evangelicals’ moral status in the eyes of American culture. David Kinnamon, for instance, of the George Barna polling group, assembles a troubling caricature of how American youth view evangelicals as judgmental, hypocritical and coercive.[2] Other reports are just as concerning.[3] Evangelical political activist Jim Wallis, in his latest book describes the current situations as “a Post-Religious Right America.”[4] Finally there are the new documents (with constituencies) calling evangelicals to renewal such as the recent Evangelical Manifesto, and the Ancient Evangelical Future Call. In the midst of all of these developments, movements have sprung from within evangelicalism in critique of evangelicalism. The emerging church, the missional church movement (begun in mainline Protestantism but then moved swiftly to evangelicalism), neo monasticism and even a liturgical renewal within evangelicalism could all be termed a response by ex-evangelicals to evangelicalism’s newly exposed deficiencies. All of these examples suggest that evangelicalism has reached a significant crisis concerning its own identity and survival. How then are we to interpret what is happening within evangelicalism as both a theology and a practice in North America? Do these developments signal an end for evangelicalism? Should the word “evangelical” be put to rest? Does it make sense to talk about a “post-evangelicalism” and what would that mean?

Of course many have already put their stamp on what this all means. There are current evangelicals like David Wells who see the decline as a fall from Classical protestant orthodoxy. He calls for evangelicals to renounce cultural accommodation and return to protestant orthodoxy.[5] David Tomlinson argues for a more open, inclusive and complex post-evangelicalism.[6] On the other hand, there are the endorsers of the recent Holiness Manifesto that call for a return to the central themes of Christ-like living as found within the Holiness movement. The endorsers of the Evangelical Manifesto call for the re-defining of evangelicalism via theology and a push forward towards a more inclusive evangelicalism. Others suggest that the term “evangelicalism” has become too amorphous to be of any value any longer. The term should be dropped permanently.

Alongside these many voices, I propose an alternative avenue of interpretation. I propose we look at evangelicalism as a socio-political ideology undergoing a political crisis. Let us look at evangelicalism as a culture unto itself with beliefs and practices that produce in essence an ideology that forms a particular kind of people. Borrowing on the work of political theorist Slavoj Zizek, let us examine the theology and practice of evangelicals as an ideology which orients its subjects to the world. Instead of focusing on advancing the evangelical brand of theology in relation to intellectual challenges, let us examine the social field of evangelicalism for its lacks as revealed in its ongoing way of being a people in the world. This will enable us to ask questions such as: What do our most sacredly held theological objects reveal about what we live for as a people in America? What do some of the recent unsightly events of evangelical life broadcast upon the screen of American media reveal to us about the viability of evangelical theology and practice? How might evangelicalism provide “the site” for new movements faithful to the gospel as revealed in our own failings?

Of course all of this assumes there is a viable socio-cultural entity in N. America one could label evangelicalism. Amidst the many debates surrounding this issue, I wish to affirm that there is. In this paper, I will be following the work of historians Mark Noll and David Bebbington who define the marks of evangelicals as 1.) a high view of the authority of the Bible, 2.) an activist engagement with culture (in ways peculiar to evangelicalism itself) and 3.) a strong belief in a personal conversion experience. [7] All three of these emphases have strong roots within the historical development of evangelicalism in N America. Sociological evidence substantiates that evangelicals coalesce around these central commitments and practices to this day. It is this evangelicalism that I will examine in this paper. In the book project, from which this paper is derived, it is these three issues in particular – the doctrine and practice of Scripture, the doctrine and practice of church in society and the doctrine and practice of salvation - that I wish to engage as they appear within the Symbolic Order of evangelicalism in America.[8] In what follows, this paper focuses upon the first of these three doctrines, the belief and practice of Scripture as an ideology in American evangelicalism.

In order to examine evangelicalism as a politic of belief and practice, we need to make explicit the assumptions concerning the nature of political structures that I will be using in this paper. In what follows, I will first describe the assumptions concerning Zizek’s political ontology of lack. Then I will describe two basic Zizekian concepts I wish to employ in the analysis of evangelicalism that follows.

Regarding the socio-political assumptions undergirding this paper, the following analysis draws upon the political theory of Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou and other, including Mouffe and Laclau and Jacques Lacan. These theorists all assume that there is an ontology of lack at work in political systems. Drawing primarily upon political/cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek, this paper also assumes that socio-cultural political systems (the ideological way of seeing the world that binds a people together) are structured around a lack. Political systems therefore are never complete. Following Laclau and Mouffe, Zizek says every system is founded upon an original “trauma” which resists symbolic integration. This founding event (“trauma”), which says we are this and not that, we are for this and against that, produces an “impossible kernel” which can never be totalized. There is a fundamental antagonism that lies at the core. Every attempt to come to a final resolution, a political system at rest, is therefore doomed to failure.[9] Every solution, every promise must be provisional. Every political system is awaiting an irruption revealing what it cannot give an account for.

Another way of talking about this lack, is to say that radical difference is inherent to any system of signification. The differences manifested by the system constitute one another. In Marxist terms, the proletariat is dependent upon the capitalist and the capitalist upon the proletariat for their very existence and vice versa. Political systems are structured around these differences as opposed to these differences being resolvable via some Hegelian Aufhebung (as conceived by the traditional given account of Hegel, not Zizek’s). The subjects of such a political order find their place and identity from within this Symbolic Order. Who they are is defined by who they are not, not by what they have or are, but what they are promised and pursuing. The system of signification is therefore inherently unstable. We should not seek out an ontological stable center that grounds this system of belief and practice. We should not examine our socio-political systems for whether they got reality right! Rather we should seek to understand the lacks/objects around which the identities are formed.[10] In so doing we not only see the short comings (what it is missing) of the social system but also what drives it and where it might be going. We make an opening for a more truthful politics to emerge via a truth-forming event.

Another way to see this lack at work is to notice the role certain objects of belief play within a political system. For Zizek and other ontologists of lack, political ideologies coalesce a people around a desire for something which always lies beyond reach. It is an object which the people can all believe in which somehow holds at bay the full revealing of the lack that lies at the core of the System. These objects of ideology then point to the void at the core of each political System. In America for example, this object could be the ever elusive “American Dream” or “freedom” which somehow holds Americans together despite the gapping antagonism between the haves and the have-nots. It is the promise of something we all pursue yet it is beyond final representation.”[11] Or perhaps an even better example, is the way anti Semitism historically has functioned within Germany. In essence it enables a whole nation to define itself as not Jewish. It enables the German people to do without certain economic desires by casting those energies towards the ideological figure of the Jews.[12]

Like other forms of politics, I contend it is possible to examine N. American evangelicalism as a political system formed out of a lack. It is a Symbolic Order that interpellates its subjects giving each of us a place and an identity (subjectivity) with coordinates for how to live life in relation to God, each other and those outside us who are not evangelicals. In this way, evangelicalism is an ideology. Yet behind this Order, at its core, can be seen some fundamental antagonisms (lacks) which remain unresolved. Zizek (following Lacan) calls this “the Real.” He examines ideologies for the way they function as “fantasies” that hide these antagonisms at the core. I contend that Zizek and friends can help us see how basic beliefs and practices of evangelicalism function as fantasies covering over antagonisms meanwhile distancing us from the true politics we should be engaging as Christians. This kind of Zizekian political analysis can expose inner cultural contradictions and antagonistic drives that lie at the base of evangelicalism as a social activity and as a church.

Having said all this however, there are limitations to this kind of political analysis. For instance, I do not wish to embrace the ontological/metaphysical assumptions under which these theorists operate.[13] I do not wish to imply or assent to, for instance, the claim that the doctrine of Scripture or our salvation in Christ is “a fantasy” in the terms Zizek lays down. I do not wish to assert that “the Real,” in its Lacanian sense, is all we have behind what we believe and practice.[14] I do however, want to suggest that it is theologically productive to ask how the ways in which we speak about and practice Scripture function ideologically as a “fantasy” within the evangelical field of ideology in Zizek’s way of using these terms. For this enables us to go beyond discussing the adequacy of our theology in terms of its historical and Scriptural orthodoxy to the additional questions of how our theology and practice function in terms of building a viable politic, a way of being and living together in the world. Putting Zizek’s ontological assumptions aside therefore, Zizek’s mode of analysis is valuable as a social psychoanalysis of sorts upon the way we live and behave as a people. It provides understandings on how a given politic works which can then be used to build a more politically robust theology.

According to Zizek, each ideology, each socio-political culture, requires fantasies that bind a people together. As discussed above, these fantasies hide the lack so that the subjects can stay adhered to and within the social entity. According to Zizek, we can traverse these fantasies in order to discover places on the ideological field where the lack is revealed. We can see the way the objects of ideology work to keep us locked within a political structure. We can catch a glimpse of the drives behind the system of signification. We can perform this exercise by employing two strategic ideas primarily gleaned from Zizek: 1.) the notion of “empty signifier,” and 2.) the notion of an “irruption of the Real – an amalgam of a group of ideas found within Zizek’s writings. I propose we use these two central notions to analyze the fantasies that hold evangelicalism together as a belief and practice.

A central piece to Slavoj Zizek’s early political theory is his notion of “ideological cynicism.”[15] Subjects of the first world, Zizek says, are too smart to become duped by the political ideologies of Western states. We know it’s all just more “political spin.” Instead, ideology must take on a different form in today’s cynical climate. Here, we are offered ideologies to appease us, to make us feel better about ourselves, so that those in privilege can keep on conserving what it is they really desire. So now, we look at the ideologies spinning across the political process, and instead of politically observing “they do not know it, but they are doing it,” we observe “they know it, but they are doing it anyway.”[16] In essence, we listen to all the new political speeches and new political options given the electorate and we know nothing will really change. Yet we participate in it anyway. Zizek suggests that political ideology now serves a cynical function, giving the citizenry a Big Other to believe in, making us feel better about ourselves (morally) while, beneath what we say, we are content with the status quo in place.

Such ideology, Zizek says, must provide a fantasy wherein the citizenry can act as if we believe. We may know the president is a “tool” of multi-national corporate interests, nevertheless the U.S. government provides the fantasy that enables us to act as if “the President incarnates the Will of the People.”[17] Zizek emphasizes that no one knows what these fantasmic “objects” (or political words – “Will of the People”) actually refer to. No one has ever actually seen it with his or her own eyes. In this way they are “empty signifiers.” Similarly, “the party” in Stalinist Russia, “God” in theocracy” or “freedom” in democracy are all “signifiers without the signified.” Yet they function as “master signifiers” in that they hold a people together in that System. They are points on a quilt (point de capiton) holding the ideology together by which all society’s subjects find their orientation in society. A key aspect of these “signifiers” is that they allow for enough distance between the subject and the unifying fantasy such that the signifier can bind a whole community together.[18] In so doing these signifiers allow us to consent to what we know is a lie so that we can avoid the Real. To quote Zizek:

“… the coordination (between the subjects in a political community) concerns not the level of the signified (of some positive shared concern) but the level of the signifier. (In political ideologies), undecidability with regard to the signified (do others really intend the same as me?) converts into an exceptional signifier, the empty signifier, the empty master signifier, the signifier without the signified; nation, democracy, socialism and other causes stand for that something about which we are not exactly sure what it is. The point rather is that identifying with the nation we signal our acceptance of what others accept, with a master signifier which serves as a rallying point for all the others.”[19]

Uncovering these master signifiers, these sublime objects, enables us to see just what holds us in the ideology’s spell. And so Zizek’s method is to “traverse the fantasy” for these master signifiers so as to reveal how they work to bind subjects into an ideology, indeed a web of social complacency. For Zizek, these signifiers allow believers to become complicit with ruthless systems like Stalinist communism or the carnivorous capitalism of late modernity. The aim of uncovering the master signifiers of an ideology is not to somehow critique the ideology directly but rather to show how we practice these belief structures without really believing them, without really taking them seriously.

I propose to follow Zizek in a similar analysis of evangelicalism. By isolating the empty-signifiers within evangelicalism (traversing evangelicalism’s fantasies) and by showing the way certain empty-signifiers work within evangelicalism, we in essence reveal the ways we evangelicals are passivized. We expose the ways we really do not take seriously our own beliefs. We disclose the ways we participate in evangelicalism in order to be complicit in social systems which we might otherwise see as contrary to the gospel.

A second concept within the political theory of Zizek is the notion of an “irruption of the Real.” This concept is not really used as a means of analysis by Zizek.[20] Nonetheless, I wish to use the term to amalgamate a few different ideas found within Zizek. By definition, as we have already alluded to in our discussion of political ontologies of lack, the Symbolic Order can never entirely contain the Real. The Real is a fundamental social antagonism (the Real) that lies at its core. It is this moving contradiction that can never be resolved. There will always be something excluded by the ideology to preserve what has been accepted. And this process will always be in negotiation. If it were resolved, there would be no reason for a political system to exist. Political systems are therefore always unstable. We should therefore expect irruptions, destabilizations, embarrassing encounters that reveal what has been excluded, the drive behind why we all believe, and the hidden void at the core of the system.

These kinds of irruptions of the Real provoke tears in the ideological fabric which reveal its void. These ruptures can prepare the way for a much more direct engagement of the System’s lacunas by movements and leadership emerging from within it, what Zizek would call “a decisive revolutionary Act.”[21] Locating these irruptions can help us understand what the lacks at the very core of the ideology’s belief and practice are. They can help us understand what the new movements emerging from these irruptions are reacting to and in what ways they emerge in continuity or discontinuity with the previous Symbolic Order.[22] Traversing political systems in this way, looking for these irruptions, can reveal much about what is being left unsaid, what is being excluded, where the chief drive lies behind the system’s very existence and from what and to where new movements are arising.

Within these political theories, these irruptions can appear in various ways. I suggest two pieces of Zizek’s political theory that can be helpful in illumining these events as irruptions of the Real: a.) overidentification, b.) jouissance.

a. Overidentification: For Zizek, ideology is immune to overt criticism because even its progenitors do not believe its own declarations and they know its constituents do not either. The strategy of overtly criticizing ideology misses the point because every ideological discourse has already been internalized its own critique. Zizek therefore proposes the tactic of “over-identification” (a psychoanalytic term). He proposes we believe the ideology so much that its incoherence is exposed. He proposes we push the implications of what the ideology purports in order to reveal its absurdity and in the process – what it is hiding.

When we over-identify with an ideology, the distance is removed between the subject and the master signifier. The subjects, in essence, get too close to the Real and an irruption occurs. In the process the ideology’s inconsistencies (idiocies) are revealed. An example, Zizek often cites, is the artist group NSK in Slovenia during the time when it was still part of the Soviet Union. Instead of overt critique of “the Party,” the NSK would perform these unabashed displays of support for the current fascist regime. They would in essence support fascism more than even the fascists themselves would support it. Before a concert, the Laibach band would perform an explicitly excessive nationalist speech on protecting the purity and honor of the Serbian people. They would dress in military uniforms, enact Mussolini gestures, and read from their “manifesto.” These performances were so bald and uncompromising that they in essence disallowed anyone in the theatre any critical distance from what they were doing. It was either join in or be repulsed![23] As the audience viewed this display, they were horrified with the actual reality of fascism as well as their own complicity with it. Zizek believed this kind of overidentification created a space for the audience to now resist. [24]

Another way to describe this over-identification is “subversive conformity.” Zizek says that in order for an “ideological edifice to occupy the hegemonic place … it has to compromise its founding message.”[25] He says “the ultimate heretics are amply those who reject this compromise.”[26] It is not the act of non- conformity therefore that disrupts the system and reveals the lack, but the act of total conformity. This is because subversive conformity occurs fully within the ideology as opposed to from without. In so doing one must give up the point of distance that actually supports the ideology. According to Zizek, this is what the ruling ideology fears the most. It is the fanatic, who overidentifies without keeping an adequate distance. Such acts of subversive conformity make explicit the implications of an ideology. They cause an irruption of sorts that reveals to all what could not be spoken if the ideology was to go on reproducing itself.[27]

Overidentification can happen intentionally through “acts” of provocation by individuals such as the NSK. On the other hand overidentification can also happen quite unintentionally through irruptions of a public figure, a piece of art, a piece of media or cultural symbol that just takes the ideology too far, too literal so to speak. It is these unintentional, unprovoked, yet glaring irruptions of overidenitification that I wish to focus upon in the analysis that follows. I contend these kinds of irruptions happen often upon the socio-cultural plane of evangelicalism’s belief and practice. They reveal the full implications of evangelicalism which somehow remain unspoken. They open the space within evangelicalism for change.

b.) Jouissance: A second way an irruption of the Real can happen is through a manifestation of jouissance. “Jouissance” is a French word most often interpreted by “enjoyment.” Jouissance kind of enjoyment however is much more intense than that. It is indeed a sexual-like excessive pleasure or pain that drives the very core of an ideological system. It is driven by the internal lack behind a system that takes the form of an incompleteness.[28] For example, after I fail at getting the job promotion, I now become motivated to prove my employers wrong at all costs. The satisfaction of doing well at my job has been replaced by a revenge “I’ll show them” kind of drive. In social groups, jouissance most often reveals itself in a perverse sort of enjoyment exhibited by individuals or groups within the ideology.

Zizek asserts that there is always a perverse enjoyment that holds a community together under any given ideology.[29] There is a shared enjoyment that keeps us in domination to a given order. It is an object/master-signifier that eludes our grasp. And when there is nothing that we really believe in, we hold on all the more to these objects (“sublime”) that we depend upon to be at all. The American Dream, home ownership, retirement security, the modern nuclear family and financial independence are just some of the examples of where jouissance is manifested in American capitalist politics. These objects and the way in which they are spoken about, have a unique hold on Americans that go beyond the simple need for housing or sharing in marriage. There is something excessive about this pleasure.

For another example of jouisance, recall the fascination that gripped everyone on 9-11 as we watched the airplanes entering the twin towers again and again. The nation was galvanized as never before in a display of reverence and patriotism. A perversive revenge was emitted among everyday Americans and indeed through the media. It was more than outrage over injustice. It was indeed excessive lustful pride at being an American. “How dare they attack the United States of America on our own ground.” There was a sense of energy and purpose to America to the point where we felt energized, alive and even glad this all happened. This is the manifestation of jouissance.[30]

Zizek believes that every ideology is supported by a socio-political fantasy via jouissance. It is an imaginary that provides the point of excessive irrational enjoyment that accounts for the hold of an ideological edifice on the subject. And whenever such jouissance irrupts, it often comes too close to revealing the “what I really fantasize about” that lies behind the beliefs and practices the individual (as subject of the ideology) follows.

Zizek, in his earliest works, hopes that the hold of these objects upon us will be loosened by simply revealing the jouissance. Jouissance, by definition, is unrecognized. This unrecognition keeps the subject fixed within the grip of ideologies. Yet if the emptiness (lack) of this jouissance were ever to be revealed, it would be very disruptive to the ideology for it is in jouissance where the real political power resides. The task then is to traverse the ideological fantasies which play on jouissance. By finding the irrational expressions of jouissance which appear on the surface of the political order, hopefully we reveal the hidden drives and the empty signifiers that uphold an ideology. The jouissance dies. A space for change is opened up.

Evangelicalism is a prime candidate for such a traversing. It has its own versions of jouissance. Traversing evangelical culture for such irruptions can not only reveal the unspoken drives behind the ways we speak about Scripture, the church’s relation to society and salvation. Such irruptions, once recognized, may also open up space for change.

The goal then of what follows is to locate the ideological objects (of evangelical belief and practice of Scripture) that fixate the subjects of evangelicalism for the purpose of uncovering the way these objects work in the ideological field evangelicalism. Let us survey what antagonisms these irruptions reveal in the evangelical system. By so doing we in essence expose the fissures in the Symbolic fabric of evangelicalism. These ruptures then provide the openings for change. By scoping out these openings, we can understand how certain church movements (including emerging, missional, neo monastic and ancient future forms of church) are manifestations of a new faithfulness emerging forth from these same ruptures.

IV. The Evangelical Belief and Practice of Scripture: Traversing the Evangelical Fantasy of “the Perfect Book”

Evangelicals have long defined themselves by their allegiance to a high view of Scripture. Over its history, they have affirmed this view of the Bible as “verbally inspired, inerrant in its original autographs.” This articulation of the doctrine of Scripture, according to some accounts, had its origin in the modernist-fundamentalist controversies at the turn of the latter century when many sectors of American Protestantism reacted against academic attacks on the historical veracity of the Bible.[31] During this time, evangelicals responded to professors and pastors emanating from mainline protestant seminaries who were using higher criticism to undermine the historical veracity of the Scriptures, the literal accounts of Jesus as well as central evangelical doctrine of the substitutionary view of the atonement in Christ. From these modernist controversies, this central doctrine of evangelicalism regarding Scripture emerged that affirms “we hold that the Scriptures are infallible and inerrant in their original autographs.”

This way of speaking about Scripture was fashioned by several theologians of that era led most audaciously by B.B. Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary. In his classic statement entitled The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible[32] Warfield defends the Bible’s authority in terms of its verbal inspiration by the Holy Spirit (God-breathed) whereby it must be historically, and in every other way, inerrant. Unique to Warfield’s apologetic was that he added in addition to “the Bible is verbally inspired by God, it therefore must be inerrant “in its original autographs.”[33] Many important figures in evangelicalism followed Warfield, including Carl F Henry, Harold Lindsell, J I Packer and, at times, Clark Pinnock, in defending a view of Scripture that included plenary verbal inspiration, propositional truth, and inerrancy in the original autographs. The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy canonized this statement for evangelicals in 1978. Today evangelicalism lies under the formative influence of the “inerrancy” doctrine of the 1920’s even if the use of these exact terms has passed out of the vernacular of much evangelical belief and practice.

To this day for instance, evangelical congregations regularly practice this sense of the doctrine of Scripture through the practice of “expository preaching” in Sunday services.[34] This style of preaching emulates the evangelical doctrine of Scripture by emphasizing word for word exegesis, staying as close to the text as possible, putting a lot of trust in seeking the original author’s single intent through the aid of historical critical exegesis. All of these aspects of the practice make sense when one considers the manner in which this founding evangelical doctrine emphasizes the verbal nature of inspiration – “every word is inspired,” i.e. every word is inerrant and communicates truth propositionally. In addition, many evangelical churches practice a form of Bible study, both group and personal, described as inductive Bible study. This method of Bible study is also underwritten overtly or implicitly by the evangelical doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. In fact, B. B. Warfield and the Princeton theologians introduced this very method of Bible study in the 1920’s seeking a hermeneutical objectivity in Biblical interpretation. With an almost scientific zeal for objectivity, they sought a method that allowed “the data of Scripture” to speak for itself.[35] Behind these practices of Scripture lie the founding doctrine of inerrancy and the verbal inspiration of Scripture.

Having said all of this, “inerrancy” has receded as a strategy among intellectuals in most evangelical denominational and academic settings. Many organizations have traded words such as “infallible” or “accurate” for “inerrant.”[36] Others have dropped “the original autographs” phrase. Still, the idea of the inerrancy of Scripture as well as the coinciding idea of “verbal inspiration” linger on in the majority of doctrinal statements of organizations, academic institutions, denominations and churches that wish to identify as evangelical. In evangelical seminaries, the continual push for historical critical studies and the centrality of authorial intent in hermeneutics reveal the legacy of these doctrines in evangelical doctrine and practice. The word “inerrant” may not occur in the vernacular of evangelical church life. Nonetheless, this doctrine and its underlying conceptualization continues to drive evangelical practice of Scripture.

How does this inerrant Bible, the divinely inspired document impervious to human error and hermeneutical vacillation, function as an object within the ideological field of evangelicalism. How does it work to bind a people together as evangelicals? How does this particular doctrine of Scripture function as an “ideological fantasy”[37] within evangelicalism? Are there any irruptions of the Real surrounding Scripture and truth upon the plane of evangelicalism that can tell us what drives how we talk and practice Scripture as a political whole?[38]

The idea of “inerrancy,” including the constellation of ideas surrounding it, binds evangelicals together in ways Zizek would label as an empty signifier. The inerrant Bible is an object of ideology which coalesces a people around it called evangelical. We can see this, First of all in the way the “inerrant Bible” has the elusivity of an object that ever eludes our grasp. No one really knows what “inerrant according to the original autographs” means. Second, the doctrine of “inerrant Scriptures” does little work in actually exerting direction in the way Biblical interpretation flows out into evangelical doctrinal /ecclesial practice. It means different things to different people within the confines of the evangelical ideological edifice. In other words, the inerrant Bible functions in evangelicalism as a signifier without a signified.

To expand, the elusivity of the ideological object of “the inerrant book” is no better illustrated than in the phrase “inerrant according to the original autographs.” This phrase was part of the original articulation of the doctrine by B.B. Warfield.[39] It lingers on in many evangelical doctrinal statements to this day. In obvious ways such language highlights the sublime nature of such an object for ideological purposes. For no one has yet seen these original artifacts and no one expects to. Rather, the notion of a perfect replication of the original autographs lies in the future as continued textual research provides more and more clues. “The original autographs” therefore give us an object that we are in constant pursuit of yet is simply unattainable. Even if we could produce the actual original script written by the apostle Paul, who could verify it? In this way, at its earliest founding, the evangelical doctrine of Scripture was dematerialized in Zizekian terms.

Zizek asserts that when we make the fetish (the object of ideology) invisible, it strengthens its hold on the people being subjectivized. The invisibility makes for a more powerful spectral domination that creates a distance between the individual and the object but also makes space for a much more expansive imaginary that makes the object that much more immovable within our ideological fantasy.[40] The “inerrant Bible according to the original autographs” makes for such a powerful ideological object. In fact the worst thing that could happen would be the actual discovery of the original autographs. In Zizek’s terminology, we would be getting too close to the Real and the reason for our coming together to search the Scriptures would be evacuated. This quality of the inerrancy of Scripture is revealed at times when someone comes too close to actually finding something approximating the original autographs. We all remember for instance the feeling of horror we evangelicals felt (well not me since I wasn’t alive) at the appearance of the Dead Sea scrolls.

In regard to the way “inerrancy” does little work yet remains an ideological object, the “inerrancy” doctrine (and its variants) functions to hold together a wide variety of institutions and churches which have little in common except the desire to self-identify as evangelical. In this way, “inerrancy” functions as a Zizekian “master signifier.” Groups as diverse as National Association of Evangelicals, Christianity Today, Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Community Church, Willowcreek Community Church, Saddleback Community Church, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Moody Bible Institute, World Vision, Wheaton College, numerous evangelical denominations, numerous Pentecostal groups, numerous tele-evangelist operations all claim one of the evangelical inerrancy variations to articulate what they believe about the Bible. The differences in versions of the gospel preached, on doctrinal issues such as sanctification, ecclesiology, soteriology and other matters of the faith is broad. Yet somehow they all adhere to a perfect book that is verbally inspired and propositionally true. Since, rarely are any doctrinal or pragmatic issues influenced by an appeal to inerrancy, these organizations are essentially using “inerrancy” as a means to self-indentify as evangelicals. They in turn can also appeal to an evangelical allegiance. I suggest then that “inerrancy” along with its variants has become a master signifier within the quilt of evangelical ideology that holds this people together in a given politic, yet it is a “signfier without the signified.”

The doctrine of “inerrancy” is rarely talked about in evangelical churches or organizations except in moments when an organization has to prove its orthodoxy.[41] The term is often found in doctrinal statements that seek to prove the church credible for those seeking a church to be loyal to. Such statements often coincide with appeals to donors for money. The idea of inerrancy is a badge used to assert the organization’s, church’s or one’s own personal evangelical orthodoxy. “Inerrancy” serves to generate a certain ideological identification that we are conservative Bible believing evangelicals who somehow can be trusted. It serves to identify a group as “not-liberal.” This idea of the “inerrant Bible” however means less in terms of what each evangelical organization or church actually believes about biblical interpretation, the manuscripts and/or internal contradictions as exposed by higher Biblical critics. In this way, again, it functions as an empty signifier, as an ideological object for evangelicalism to gather a people together into to a particular political way of life.

We could then summarize the evangelical ideological stance towards inerrancy following Zizek’s famous quote of Peter Sloterdijk - “They know inerrancy does not make sense, yet they use it (in their doctrinal statements) anyway.” In other words, the term “inerrancy” plays no useful role in defending a high view of the authority of Scripture in churches and/or denominations. The old Warfield defenses have lost all currency in the current cultural milieu. No one appears to be even slightly interested in the inerrancy defense, except the most entrenched of apologetics oriented evangelical seminaries. Nonetheless it functions in a way that self identifies one as an evangelical and it holds evangelical constituents firmly fixed within the evangelical ideological edifice. In this way, the idea of “the perfect book,” of the Bible without error, is really a master signifier that gathers a people around it, makes us feel comfortable with another, sets us over against those who don’t “believe in the Bible,” even though we really have no idea what we might mean when we refer to the Bible as “totally without error” or what it might mean to say we really believe the Bible.

Some may say that the ideological hold of “the perfect book” is diminishing over recent days. We should however be careful here not to imply that the hold has become less just because the words “the Bible inerrant in the original autographs” are spoken less in evangelical churches/academies. Zizek says there is a dimension to ideological cynicism that implies that the illusion of ideology “is not on the side of knowing.” It is in “what the people are doing.”[42] In other words, the hold of ideology upon the subject is perpetuated in the illusion as structured in the practice. Contrary to belief being something interior for Zizek, belief is exterior “embodied in the practical effective procedure of the people.”[43] I contend therefore that one can best see the ideological hold of “the perfect book” upon evangelicals in its core practices of expository preaching and personal and group “inductive Bible” study. Both of these practices regularly reinforce the reality that this Bible in every word is inerrant and to be learned rightly and cognitively as a fundamental practice of the Christian life.

These insights help illumine the dysfunctional ways our evangelical doctrine and practice of Scripture functions in the formation of a people (or a politic). For one way Zizek’s empty signifier functions is to interpelate the subject (Althuzzer) into the ideological system by allowing sufficient distance from the Real for the subject to in essence be shielded from what these beliefs might actually demand of us. This is part of Zizek’s ideological cynicism. The signifier without the signified in essence allows us to believe without believing. It even allows us to be servile to, complicit in systems which we know are not just all the while acting as if they are. Could the “inerrant Bible” function in this way within the ideological edifice of evangelicalism?

I suggest this is so. For in a strange way, the evangelical fantasy of a perfect book allows us to believe we have the truth while at the same time remaining distant from actually engaging in it as a way of life. It allows each of us, as well as our institutions, to assent and identify unabashedly with the Truth of the Word without it truly meaning anything. We can (to crassly over-simplify) be prosperity gospel preachers indulging in avaricious capitalism, we can be mega churches selling a self-help gospel, we can be churches of all types, yet still self-identify as being “not-liberal.” Evangelicals have lost the means to determine and converse what biblical faithfulness might entail. Even worse, the ideological interpellation that occurs when we assent to the Bible as inerrant, infallible, subtly draws on a jouissance (which we’ll get to in the next few paragraphs) that says (subliminally) we’re in and others are out, we’re right and you’re wrong, we know the right way. This leads to evangelicals making the gospel territorial all the while avoiding the engagement of the ongoing Mission of God in a people that the Scriptures witness to and in Christ, calls us into.

It is this distancing aspect of the empty signifier within Zizek’s ideological cynicism that should give us evangelicals pause in the ways we have spoken about and practiced our doctrine of Scripture. The “inerrant perfect book,” as illustrated by the “ever elusive” original autographs, becomes a distraction, an end we seek that keeps us from embodying the Truth, the story, the narrative, indeed the Mission that this book is really all about. The book, in almost too subtle of ways, becomes a dead inert book distracting us from the living reality of the Mission of God recounted and extended to us through the apostolic Scriptures as handed down to us through the church. Instead through the way we speak and the way we practice Scripture as evangelicals, we are held fixated by the Sublime object of the inerrant word. We parse it, exegete it, defend it, uphold it, inductively study it, take notes on it, all the while we are distracted from ever fully participating in the Story as a people of God in what Kevin Vanhoozer calls “the Drama of God.”[44]

C. Evangelical Overidentification/Jouissance? George W. Bush as an Evangelical Irruption of the Real

What drives the evangelical way of speaking and practicing of Scripture that has such a hold on evangelicalism as a social politic? In Zizekian terms, what fundamental antagonism lies at the core of evangelicalism that is held at bay by (and holds together people into) this ideology of the inerrant Bible? To answer these questions, I have proposed that we look for irruptions on the cultural plane of evangelicalism that manifest the phenomenon of overidentification and/or jouissance. I propose we look for episodes of actual evangelical figures “acting-out” overidentification that in turn exudes jouissance onto the cultural scene of American media for all to see. By using the word “acting” I do not imply that these episodes are intentional acts by the evangelical actors. Rather these instances will most often be unintentional acts that will reveal the Real that lies behind evangelical belief and practice for all, but especially evangelicals, to see. Much like Zizek examines films, we can examine these episodes for the way they illustrate the internal contradictions and energies that drive the politic of evangelicalism.[45]

In terms of the evangelical ideology of Scripture, there are many outbursts of excessive overidentification with knowing the Truth about God inerrantly as revealed in Scriptures. There are for example the “King James Only Baptist” churches who affirm the King James Version as the only verbally inspired Bible. These KJV Only Baptists in effect believe too much in the inerrant verbally inspired Bible. Yet the proliferation of translations in effect diffuses the ideological hold of “the inerrant book.” Instead of sacrificing the ideological force of “the inerrant Word,” they must extend the “inerrancy”claims to a specific translation. In so doing however, they expose the Real of the inner contradiction latent in the doctrine itself. To those outside the world of the KJV Only Baptists, this appears absurb and reveals the lack behind the doctrine of inerrancy. It is a classic case of overidentification revealing the absurdity and manipulation behind the ideological use of this belief and practice of Scripture. In addition, there are overidentifications of other kinds. The excessive prophecy conferences and the jouissance revealed at knowing what “the signs” of the book of Revelation really mean. The vigorous pronouncements of James Dobson and his Focus on the Family organization, the coercive hubris of since deceased Jerry Falwell and his “The Moral Majority,” and the diatribes of Pat Robertson against disaster victims claiming God’s judgment of wrath against them for their stance of homosexuality are all outbursts of overidentification on the field of the evangelical politic in United States. The phrases used by these evangelicals inevitably include the adjective “Biblical” to assert the correctness of their pronouncement as if there could only be one interpretation (their interpretation) of the inerrant Word. This however reveals the jouissance that covers over the inherent contradition of even saying such a thing. These are irruptions of the Real for those who look on in horror and recogize they can no longer believe something just because “it is Biblical.”[46]

A sign that there is destabalization around these “irruptions” is the excessive bestseller “hate books” have been aimed at the arrogance/and or coercion of the evangelical right.[47] Many of these books have been written by people raised as evangelicals who have left the fold. Additional media and professional polls reveal an excessive cultural energy around this issue of evangelical arrogance.[48] All of this works to confirm that these are irruptions on the surface of the evangelical ideological plane disrupting the tranquility of the evangelical ideology. Each instance could be studied for how these irruptions are traced back to the evangelical ideology of the inerrant Scripture available to the individual in relationship to God.

One must obviously take caution at simply drawing theological conclusions from cultural caricatures of evangelicals. Instead, what we must look for is irruptions of evangelical cultural figures upon the media spotlight that illustrate the overidentification and jouissance that is already present in the evangelical culture. We choose events which highlight what is already happening within the everyday politic of evangelicalism. Yet because these events happen upon the American media screen for all to see, there is the effect that the lack at the core of evangelicalism as a politic is indeed bubbling to the surface. And so examining one of these episodes helps illumine what is happening elsewhere in evangelicalism as a politic. We begin to understand the many ruptures manifesting themselves in much smaller ways amidst evangelical culture. We begin to understand just what these ruptures mean, how they are tearing at the once (seemingly) seamless fabric of evangelical belief and practice, and what might be emerging from these ruptures in terms of new movements faithful to the Truth of these events.

I contend one such episode, particularly apropos for understanding evangelicalism’s ideological breakdown concerning its belief and practice of Scripture, is president George W Bush’s leading of the United States into the Iraq War. Here there were a string of episodes that “overidentified” president Bush with the evangelical belief in the individual’s accessibility to God’s inerrant Word through the Bible. Two incidents in particular highlight this overidentification, In October 2005, a BBC News Documentary quoted a senior Palestinian leader saying that pres. George W Bush relayed to him that “God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.”[49] The BBC refused to retract this information when requested by the white house. These words “Bush said God told him to invade Iraq” became sensationalist conversation not only in the US but also around the world. These words are (embarrassingly?) recognized by all evangelicals. Yet this time they are not just the words of an overly pious evangelical churchgoer sitting in the pew, they are the words of an evangelical president leading a Nation State into War. These words, magnified for the full glare of all evangelicals (and non-evangelicals as well), expose the irrationality of one who has taken the evangelical belief in the inerrant Bible too far. It reveals too closely the void behind our doctrine and practice of Scripture as evangelicals.

In a similar vein is Bob Woodward’s account of president Bush’s “talk with his father” in his book Plan of Attack. In his book, Woodward asked president Bush, whether he had talked with his father, the former president, about invading Iraq (and Afghanistan). Pres. Bush replied, “He’s the wrong father to go to … there’s a higher father that I appeal to.” This verbal exchange was reported on the television news program “60 Minutes,” numerous radio shows and worldwide news media.[50] It was heightened so that few could avoid its excess. Once again however, these words are familiar and recognizable to most evangelicals. Coming from the president however, on the eve of going into war, they become hideous. They evoke the question from all onlookers, including evangelicals, is he taking the evangelical practice of Scripture and Truth way too seriously? Does he really believe he can know the word of God directly with this much surety to lead an entire nation into war?

Pres. George Bush is irrefutably a symbol of American evangelicalism to American culture. Yet he is also a symbol of evangelicalism to evangelicals. No president has ever been so vocal on his own evangelical commitments. No president has ever been so visibly supported and elected by evangelicals.[51] No president has ever so publicly displayed his commitment to evangelical belief and practice. [52] His well-publicized habits of daily prayer and Bible study identify him with the evangelical ideology of the inerrant Bible perspicuous to the individual through the Holy Spirit. [53] In the 2004 presidential campaign, his evangelicalism was put on full display for all to see in the book entitled The Faith of George Bush. He was depicted as praying with British Prime Minster Tony Blair and declaring “God told him to run for president.[54] In all these ways, George Bush became an unavoidable eyesore on the ideological framework of evangelicalism for all to see. In him, the full implication of the evangelical fantasy about the perfect book and knowing truth without error was exposed.

In October 2004 journalist Ron Suskind wrote a famous article entitled “Without a Doubt” that was published in the The New York Times Magazine in 2004.[55] He narrated how Bush is ever befuddling members of the Senate and Congress over Bush’s lack of willingness to discuss rationale behind policy decisions. In a similar vein, in 2003, Jeffrey Tucker, an editorialist with the conservative libertarian think tank the Mises Institute, ironically wrote a article entitled “Bush the Infallible.””[56] Finally in 2007 Robert Draper, a pro evangelical Bush supporter, wrote a book on Bush entitled Dead Certain, The Presidency of George W Bush, where he describes George Bush as “the Decider.” [57] All of these media portrayals reflect back upon evangelicals a picture of an eerily arrogant certainty that surrounds George Bush’s leadership. Is it a certainty that is attached to the evangelical and his/her beliefs and practices of Scripture?

I contend one way to read the political/cultural significance of this portrait of pres. George Bush, is to see his “God told me ….” pronouncements surrounding the Iraq War as a vivid irruption of the Real for evangelicals. It is true that president Bush could be dismissed as a fanatic who has nothing to do with his evangelicalism. Except that this kind of irruption is all too familiar within the culture of evangelicals. It is the belief and practice of a people caught up in the gaze of the sublime object of the inerrant perspicuous Bible. When this is heightened for all to see, in the figure of George Bush leading the United States to war, it becomes uncomfortable if not grossly intolerable for most evangelicals.[58] This is too close to the Real. It bespeaks a doctrine of Scripture that comes dangerously close to producing a kind of certainty and arrogance that leads to violence if this ideology is carried out as if we truly believed it.

The irruption of president Bush’s certainty into culture is equally disruptive for evangelicalism. It reveals an inherent antagonism at the core of our evangelical belief and practice of Scripture. The inerrant Scripture as ideological object comforts us all to believe “we know the truth” but at the same time distances us from taking that to seriously. We have the inerrant Bible, but we still must depend upon the exegetical preacher every Sunday to teach us what it really means, even if there is only one correct meaning. And yet cynically, we know that the pastors themselves preach out of mixed motivations and indeed we fail to remember what the exegetical preacher said from one Sunday to the next. Nonetheless, the regular hearing of expository preaching reinforces habitually that we do believe in it, even though we fail to actually be effected by it in any material way.[59] We therefore can act like we believe we can know God better and His will for our life via these practices. But rarely do we act with such Bush-like excessive certainty. Yet every once in a while when someone in our local church says “God told me ….” we all stand there knowing this must be tolerated yet not taken too seriously. George Bush in effect breaks the hold of this ideology by daring to live as if we each individually can know God’s will via private personal study of the inerrant Bible and prayer. He takes the evangelical belief and practice of Scripture too seriously and challenges all evangelicals to take note of what the full impact of such a doctrine of Scripture implies. After the full view of the evangelical ideology of Scripture in pres. Bush’s execution of the Iraq War, we find ourselves asking, in the words of Zizekian irony, which is worse: knowing God’s truth or acting like it?

With George Bush then, the distance between the subject of ideology and the Real of the inerrant Scriptures available to all individuals has been removed. This man really believes that through reading Scripture and prayer (with Tony Blair?) that indeed he can know the will of God, individually and directly. The inherent violence in George Bush’s speech and actions is therefore terrifying for those who do not choose to ignore the spectral gaze of someone who actually believes the Bible is inerrant and that he can know directly what is the will of God. In this way, George Bush and the war in Iraq is a symptom of over-identification at work within the evangelical belief and practice of the inerrant Scripture.

What does pres. Bush and the Iraq war mean for evangelicalism as an ideology? I contend that for many evangelicals pres. Bush and the Iraq War acts as an exclamation point to numerous similar outbursts in their own experience within the field of evangelicalism. The aforementioned Dobson - Pat Robertson incidents accumulate. For everyday evangelicals, these incidents serve to heighten the incidents of over-identification that already happen regulary in evangelical church life. Amidst all of this, president Bush becomes the point at which the Real can no longer be ignored. The lack behind the evangelical ideology of Scripture can no longer be ignored. It is devoid of community. It separates us from one another in the body of Christ and from those not yet under His Lordship. It feeds impulses of violence and the mentality of George Bush’s address to congress September 13, 2001 where he said: “if you are not with us, you are against us.”[60] It contradicts the gospel which it purports to defend. The ideology of evangelicalism ruptures at the point of its belief and practice of Scripture. For these reasons we evangelicals should examine our belief and especially our practice of Scripture if we wish to understand our future as a viable politic in N America.

In 2003 president Bush took the extraordinary measure of donning a US Navy Core flight suit and personally flying a jet onto the U. S. S. Lincoln Aircraft Carrier off the shores of California. In full view of network news cameras, he emerged from the Navy jet in a show of bravado hard to exaggerate. He proceeded to the deck to the cheers of hundreds of marines. He then ascended to a platform where a large banner hung behind him with the words “Mission Accomplished”. This stunned the American media and indeed many political pundits. From the deck, with full press coverage, he declared victory in Iraq and a ceasing of major combat missions operations in Iraq. Yet over the next few weeks, the white house denied having anything to do with raising that banner. They claimed it was the work of the US Navy sailors on board at the time. They later had to recant.

If we divorce this episode from the rest of the episodes surrounding George Bush and his leadership into the war in Iraq, then this surely is just an arbitrary episode of excessive hubris. But if we see this episode as an extension of the drive behind what led him to execute the war in Iraq” God told me to …” then perhaps there are things here we should not ignore. The excess of the flyer jacket and the claim to fly the plane, the hurry to proclaim victory and then the white house embarrassment over the brashness of it all, can really only be explained as an episode of jouissance – a sick enjoyment attached to some object of ideology.

The question is, does this kind of jouissance evidenced in Bush’s 2003 U. S. S. Lincoln appearance, lie behind our evangelical doctrine and practice of Scripture. It is an excessive enjoyment over being right and someone else being wrong. It is an excessive “perverse” enjoyment derived from others arguing against my position or course of action. Pres Bush’s excessive rush to “be right,” to declare “Mission Accomplished” reveals a jouissance that reveals the drive for control, to be right while others are wrong. Does this same jouissance lie at the base of the inerrant Bible, the perfect book of evangelicalism? Zizek outlines how ideology covers up a basic antagonism at the core, yet it cannot totalize it. Could the inerrancy of the Scriptures contain the core contradiction by which all evangelicals are attracted to it, that we deeply want to know the Truth for ourselves, we want to be in control, but we know we cannot be God. In fact to know the truth is to be either in the position of God or possession of God neither of which is possible. The antagonism therefore often works itself out in the contradiction that the moment we assert that we are in fact God, the Scriptures can no longer be trusted. We the "possessor of the inerrant text" become violent imposters in the seat of divine authority. The question is does the ideological object of the “inerrant Bible” smooth over these internal antagonisms that drive the psychology of our social existence together?

If so the consistent ebullient outbursts of exclusionary arrogance upon the fabric of the evangelical sociality are understandable. They reveal the antagonism that lies deep at the core of evangelical belief and practice of Scripture. The great pride of the evangelical church member when he/she affirms that “at our church we preach the Word” is at once both laudable but somehow overly confident. There’s a jouissance there that breeds arrogance and exclusionary violence. It suggests that the “inerrant Bible” clouds a hidden drive to say “we have the truth” while somehow illegitimately maintaining our status as creature in relation to the transcendent God. These continual irruptions of the Real threaten the viability of evangelicalism as a social entity in America. They reveal an antagonism at the core of evangelicalism that is inconsistent with the gospel. They bid evangelicals evaluate the way we speak and practice Scripture if we seek to embody faithfully a robust politic of the gospel in N America.

Where does all this ‘ideological’ reflection leave us as evangelicals? To many, Zizekian theory seems to go nowhere.[61] Zizek’s earlier works (which this essay primarily draws upon) strive to illumine and expose how ideology works. They rarely prescribe a course forward. It might seem therefore that this kind of analysis might reveal to us the holes/inner contradictions of evangelical theology and practice but offers little help in going forward. As a result our Zizekian analysis, some might complain, feels more like performing psychoanalysis on evangelicalism versus directly advocating any constructive political proposals.

Having said this however, I maintain that Zizekian analysis can contribute to the construction of a more robust political theology and practice. It provokes us to reflect upon the adequacy of evangelical doctrine/practice in terms of its viability as a politic in society. It has exposed the master-signifiers that operate to distance the evangelical subject from the actual engagement of the political reality of God’s Mission. We can now propose ways of speaking and practicing Scripture that overcome this distance. It has exposed antagonisms and drives that operate at the core of the evangelical belief and practice. These antagonisms conflict and even undermine the gospel evangelicals claim to follow. We can now propose ways of speaking and practicing Scripture that resist or resolve these root antagonisms (assuming the irruptions have broken the hold these objects/fantasies have upon us). Through Zizek, we in essence have tested the viability of our belief and practice as way of life, as a viable politic in the world. Even if we do not subscribe to the ontological assumptions of Zizek’s political theory, we now have a picture of the lacks that drive evangelicalism as a system. We have come face to face with our fantasies from which we can progress (less deluded?) towards a more faithful political evangelical theology and practice.

Instead of giving in then to Zizek’s cynicism, we can respond to what has been exposed in a manner that is mindful of how theology and practice work in the ideological formation of a politic. Now mindful of the inner contradictions and distancing ways that make for an inept evangelical political ideology, we can work to bring the theological and political together avoiding the pitfalls that thwart a viable politics. This impulse, that brings together the political and the theological, lies at the very center of a missional “incarnational” theology. Such a missional theology seeks to describe belief and promote a practice that embodies the gospel as a politics of witness in the world. Zizekian ideological analysis can support such a theology by promoting an awareness of the forces that undercut a political entity so that a faithful response can emerge. I will offer a limited proposal in this regard to evangelicalism’s belief/practice of Scripture at the very end of this paper.

In addition to this constructive contribution to a missional theology, there is a second avenue that ideological analysis offers in furthering evangelicalism as a politic. I contend that “ideological” analysis of the Zizekian sort can provide the basis for interpreting new emerging movements from within evangelicalism as faithful/not faithful to “the Real” as exposed from within evangelicalism. After an analysis like the one above, the evangelical ideological edifice is exposed for all its ruptures. These ruptures are real and birthing discontent among evangelicals - especially the sons and daughters of evangelicals in the last ten years.[62] This discontent is birthing large new political expressions of the gospel including the emerging church, missional church, neo monastic movements and the various liturgical renewal movements sweeping younger evangelicals. The above analysis of evangelicalism via Zizek enables us to examine the relationship between these movements and evangelicalism as emanating from these very ruptures. Zizek and his cohort Alain Badiou offer us ways to understand and see connections between the political upheaval of evangelicalism and the birth of these new movements.

It is at this point that I take my cues more from Alain Badiou’s political theories than Zizek. Badiou, a political philosopher that Zizek much appreciates if not always agrees with, purports a political ontology of lack with some common elements to Zizek’s work. He offers however a way to see movements being birthed from these ruptures in the fabric of ideology in ways that Zizek does not.[63] For Badiou (as with Zizek), truth is immanent within the symbolic orders of political constituencies. Badiou calls these symbolic constellations “situations” of knowledge, established orders of knowledge with norms, processes, standards and ways of achieving knowledge.[64] As with all political ontologists of lack, the official order of knowledge cannot contain all the Truth. There are inconsistencies and lies within it. “Truth” for Badiou then “is always that which makes a hole in knowledge.”[65] Here, within the situation, irruptions occur that can become a site for an Event where truth can happen. In these irruptions, what is excluded is brought to the surface. What was hidden is revealed. What was driving the ideology is exposed. And out of this emptiness (void) revealed something happens which the situation cannot give an account for. A truth procedure can be set in motion. A new people can be birthed faithful to the Real that has been revealed in the Event.

Badiou’s political theory then begs the question: can the new movements being spawned from within the ruptures (void) of evangelicalism be understood in these revolutionary terms? Central to Badiou’s idea of “Event” is that a new people can emerge from the situation, which he calls the “subject.” The Real being revealed in the rupture, creates a site for an event where this new subject emerges in faithfulness to the event thereby producing “truth.” This subject in fact becomes defined by its “fidelity” to the Event.[66] This subject can be a new people or maybe a political movement that emerges from the site of the rupture. Badiou says that this subject intervenes in the situation on behalf of the Truth. Taking some liberties with Badiou’s theory, we can ask whether some of the new movements coalescing on the margins of evangelicalism can be understood as new subjectivities birthed from the irruptions seen in evangelicalism in the last twenty years. In so doing, we can detail the ways either the emerging church or the other movements indeed are responding to the void exposed by the irruptions we have detailed above? We can illumine the ways some of these movements are in fact inevitable political responses - more faithful to a true(er) politic of the gospel than the current state of evangelicalism as is?[67] We can see what elements of these movements are in fact necessary if evangelicalism is to birth something politically robust, faithful to the Truth emerging out of its own ruptures?

It is precisely in this manner that I believe much of the so-called emerging church can be interpreted in relation to evangelicalism and its ruptures concerning it belief and practice of Truth/Scripture (I also think the missional church, neo-monasticism and liturgical recovery movements can be understood in this way via lacks in other parts of evangelical belief and practice). It can be seen as indeed a movement towards a more robust (although defective) political theology and practice for evangelicalism. For the sake of brevity in this paper, I make the following observations on interpreting the emerging church in this way.

B. The Emerging Church as a Response to the Irruption of The Real in Evangelicalism

The emerging church is a movement on the fringes of evangelicalism. There are elements in this movement, as represented by its major figures, that can be recognized as reactions to the lacks described above in evangelicalism’s belief and practice of Scripture.

The emerging church is a movement made up mostly of disenchanted younger evangelicals at its beginning. Although more recently, its appeal has been more prominent among mainline protestants, it remains largely evangelical. Its earliest beginnings took shape through the work of Brian McLaren, Tomy Jone and Doug Pagitt and the organization The Emergent Village. In its first several years, 1998-2005, it coalesced around the writings of Brian McLaren and turned him into a publishing sensation. The beginnings of the movement can be traced to Brian McLaren’s incredibly successful book “A New Kind of Christian.[68] In this book McLaren cleverly told a story of a doubting evangelical-fundamentalist engaging the world of pluralism. It took argument with his evangelical upbringing exposing its moral judgmentalism, its separating and dividing exclusivism and its privatized individualistic gospel “for me” that lays passive towards the social ills of the poor. These themes have continued in Brian McLaren’s writing to this day. Though his appeal has been switching more to mainline protestants in the recent years, Brian McLaren’s ability to coalesce a movement of young readers around him can be seen as the birthing of this new subjectivity called “the emerging church” in N America.

In addition to McLaren, two other figures became prominent through the founding of Emergent Village: a.) Tony Jones - the one chosen to act as Director of the Emergent Village organization in its two primary tasks of publishing books and promoting conversations through conferences and local “cohorts,” and b.) Doug Pagitt - founder of an emerging church in Minneapolis, who published several books and oversees an Emergent line of books with a few publishing companies. Since the founding of Emergent Village, emerging church has branched out and become much wider than Emergent Village in both theology, emphasis and ecclesiology. [69]

In the emerging church movement, as represented by Emergent Village and these figures, we can see signs of a theological political movement forming in reaction to the lacks revealed in the irruptions described above. In this movement, one can find for instance emerging leaders reacting against an evangelicalism that seeks at all costs to get doctrine right yet remain passive towards the living out of the gospel in social way. This is not just a social justice activism for Christians. Many emerging church leaders seek to lead viable communities of love and generosity in the world. The titles of emergent books as well as popular blogs will substantiate this.[70] Likewise, in this movement, one can find emerging leaders reacting against the arrogance, judgmentalism and exclusionary violence inherent in evangelicalism. Observers regularly comment on these aspects of emerging churches.[71] These are two of the “political” weaknesses (centered around lacks) of evangelicalism that are exposed in the ideological analysis executed above. The emerging church then can be understood as, in Badiou-like terms, a subjectivity responding in fidelity to the event of the Real that has been revealed in the ruptures of evangelicalism of the past twenty-five years.

These two tendencies within the emerging church are illustrated within the emerging church by two of the ideological themes around which the emerging church people have coalesced: their peculiar revival of the Kingdom of God and the social gospel as central to their theology, and their attachment to deconstructive theology.

Brian McLaren, more than anyone in the emerging church movement, has argued for the Kingdom of God as the defining metaphor for the gospel for the emerging church. His most definitive statement of this is his book The Secret Message of Jesus [72]where McLaren basically outlines why he had to bracket everything he learned in his conservative Plymouth Brethren evangelical upbringing. He claims he had to bracket the personal salvation he learned through faith in Christ’s substitutionary work in order to read Jesus anew. In the place of this evangelicalism he advocates a gospel of the Kingdom of God of Jesus Christ complete with its overarching vision for politics, economics foreign policy, war and personal empowerment. In so doing, Brian McLaren calls for all Christians to get involved and live as if these public issues are matters of God’s work of salvation just as much as the traditional evangelical emphasis on personal salvation.

What is astounding to anyone who has studied theology for twenty years or more is that McLaren’s writings are significantly no different than Jim Wallis’ writings of the 1970’s or Walter Rauschenbush’s and the protestant mainline churches of the 30’s and 40’s. He raises issues in theology that have literally been there for all to see since the NT Theology of George Ladd at Fuller Theological Seminary in the 70’s and the Heilgeschichte theology of post WW2 Germany. Why then McLaren’s sudden huge popularity around these themes? It can only be that the political conditions of the evangelical “situation” have changed. The ruptures that have exposed the void as described in this paper, and the revealed antagonisms that accompany them, have wreaked such havoc upon the evangelical ideological edifice that the younger evangelicals, especially the ones have grown up in evangelicalism, have become literally ‘unglued’ and the message of McLaren and “the Kingdom” offer a counter intervention to the exclusionary individualistic gospel which distances the evangelical subject from actually engaging in the life of Christ. Therefore the Kingdom and the way of following Jesus becomes a lightening rod for all young evangelicals at the end of evangelicalism, as the evangelical ideology becomes unraveled. Surely McLaren brings some new subtleties and some excellent writing to the themes here. McLaren is not just a repeat of Walter Rauschenbush. In addition, the work of NT Wright has added an element that supersedes his failed predecessors of the Historical Quest for Jesus and the Jesus Seminar. Nonetheless, the receptivity to McLaren et. al. and the ensuing coalescing around this gentle but reclusive figure can be understood as a new “subjectivity” made possible by the ruptures of the ideological fabric of evangelicalism as described above. In this sense, the emerging church is a new subjectivity that has arisen in fidelity to the event of evangelicalism’s rupture around Scripture, Truth, and the accompanying revealings of the inadequacy of the evangelical quilting point of “the perfect book.”

b. The Attraction to Deconstructive Theology A second less prominent but no less visible coalescence in the emerging church has been around deconstructive theology. From the earliest of Emergent conferences, leaders like Doug Pagit were exercising “deconstruction” in its more popular forms. Brian McLaren was giving subtle homage to it in his earliest books including A New Kind of Christian and The Last Word and the Word After That where he was often accused by evangelicals of carrying out a deconstructive theology on the doctrine of hell.[73] Much more prominent however was the featuring of the high profile deconstructive theologians John Caputo, Richard Kearney at The Emergent Theological Conversation 2007. In addition, the presentation by Tony Jones at 2007 The Wheaton Theology Conference attacked creedal orthodoxy based on some basic “Caputo-like” assertions drawn from deconstructive theology. Most notable of all has been the fascination generated in the emerging church by the writings of Peter Rollins, a young Irish expressly deconstructive theologian. His How (Not) To Speak of God was widely endorsed by all the Emergent Village figureheads.[74] His follow-up book The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief follows the first book in a similar vein. [75]

What is the appeal here? I contend that deconstructive theology for emerging church folk is a disavowal of the antagonisms revealed at the core of evangelicalism surrounding its belief and practice of Scripture. It rejects the drive towards security and excessive certainty that drives evangelicals as detailed in the above ideological analysis. It rejects the violence inherent in the exclusionary jouissance as revealed by evangelical figures on the cultural scene. In contradistinction to evangelicalism, deconstructive theology and politics appears open and hospitable. Deconstructive thought refuses to close off, resolve and thereby define permanently what a sentence, creed, or text might mean. The coincidence of meaning and being is no longer assumed even at “the origin” of the text itself. The meaning never finally arrives. The truth is always “yet to come.” This radical openness and hospitality derived thereof provides a source of comfort and a place to work from for those disillusioned with the evangelical arrogance. The emerging church movement would fit this description.

Deconstructive thought is compelling in the way it calls for keeping things open to the new, the other and the future which is to come. Deconstructive thought also pays homage to the violence done in Western metaphysics and speech. It rejects the excessive certainty of the Western metaphysics. It pushes for interpretation of texts as part of an ongoing process. Interpretation requires conversation and an ongoing community. Emergent leaders are drawn to this as a politic. Over against the evangelical practices that dispense the truth via expository preaching and inductive Bible study, the Emergent Church leaders promote dialogical preaching and “conversations.”[76] In these simple ways, the emergent attachment to deconstructive thought is a response to the political vacuity revealed in the evangelical belief and practice of Scripture. In this way, the emerging church fascination with deconstructive theology can be seen as a new “subjectivity” that has arisen in fidelity to the event of evangelicalism’s rupture around Scripture, Truth, and its accompanying jouissance of exclusionary violence.

c. Is This Faithfulness? Of course the mere existence of these movements does not make them faithful or true to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The above analysis of the emerging church begs the question, is any of the emerging church theology sufficiently robust to truly fill the void as exposed in the ruptures in 21^st century evangelicalism? Is any of the emerging church an improvement over the politically impotent evangelical theology and practice they are reacting to? In many ways the emerging church can be interpreted as a Badiou-like “subject birthed in fidelity to the event” exposed by the ruptures of the evangelical edifice. Yet this does not answer the question whether this movement is a Truth event, a true revolution.

One of Zizek’s complaints with Badiou is that he does not provide the sufficient wherewithal to determine the demarcation between a true Event and a false semblance.[77] Zizek argues over against Badiou that we should only follow (trust) an ideology that has dealt with “its fantasies.”[78] Badiou argues that a revolution must be universalizale in order to be True. Taking these hints from Zizek and Badiou, the above ideological analysis indeed forces evangelicalism to face “its fantasies,” yet this alone is not sufficient to further the construction of a politically robust theology. Indeed the emerging church may be faithful to the Real as revealed in the ruptures of evangelicalism as an ideology, it may represent the facing up to evangelicalism’s “fantasies,” but this in and of itself does not alone make for a more politically robust and yet faithful theology and practice. The emerging church may represent an intervention that seeks to overcome the vacuities revealed in the evangelical politic. They should be looked at, examined and seen as potential, if partial, advancements to the gospel politic we seek to be faithful to and embody as a people. The theology of the emerging church however must be tested as to whether it can provide for a more politically robust evangelical theology (a theology capable of sustaining a politic/way of life as gospel before the world). And it must be tested for the way it keeps faithfulness with the church, the Scriptures and Christian Orthodoxy.

VI. Towards a Politically Robust Evangelical Theology and Practice: Concluding Comments

It is at this point that we have gone as far as we can with either Zizek or Badiou. What is left to do now is to draw upon broader sources within Christian theology in order to both respond to these inherent weaknesses revealed in evangelical theology as an ideology and evaluate the emerging church for its contribution to a more robust (evangelical?) political belief and practice. Zizek helps evangelicals to face our fantasies: the inner contradictions and distancing ways that make for an inept evangelical political ideology. What is left now is to seek a more faithful theology and practice that overcomes the lacks and resolves the antagonisms. This requires the leaving behind some of the political ontological premises of Zizek.[79] It means following Badiou in some respect believing that a subjectivity can emerge more faithful to the Truth.

What avenues might we travel in pursuit of this more politically robust (post) evangelical theology and practice? Space does not allow for me to provide a full explication here. Instead, for now, I suggest some avenues that offer some promise as well as overcome some deficiencies in emerging theology as presently construed.

As has been outlined above, evangelicalism must overcome the “distancing” inherent in its belief and practice of the “inerrant Bible.” The ideological object of “the perfect book” functions to distance evangelicals from a living engagement into the Story of God and His Mission in Christ Jesus as revealed in Scriptures. This requires not just a restating of terms for an evangelical doctrinal statement. This requires a different practice of engaging Scripture as well. Evangelicalism must be able to redescribe Scripture as a living document revealing the ongoing Mission of God of which it is part. In this regard, we can already look to the theological proposals of Kevin VanHoozer, Sam Wells, Hans Frei and Hans Urs von Balthasar together with Christopher Wright for what they can offer towards a more engaged Missional view of Scripture.[80] All of these proposals manage to avoid the problems of Brian McLaren when he extracts the concept of the Kingdom of God from the concrete politics of a people of God at work in the world. In my opinion, McLaren re-enacts the political void of evangelicalism with a neo-protestant liberal version of the Kingdom. The above theologians however all provide ways of articulating the authority of Scripture without separating it from the ongoing Drama of God in history, the church or the Kingdom of God as a manifest destiny of the world.

In relation to the evangelical practice of Scripture, evangelicals must look towards a more communal practice of the interpretation of Scripture. If indeed Scripture is the Story of God’s Mission in the world through a people as centered under the Lordship of Christ, we must develop practices of interpreting Scripture and discerning the Spirit communally. This will in essence remove the distance we find at work in evangelical practice of Scripture between the individual and the Mission of God at work in a people. We can already look to people like Stephen Fowl and his proposals on communal processes of engaging Scripture in the church.[81] We can look to preachers like John Wright for practices of preaching that are narrative in nature and liturgically birthed within the ongoing worship of the church.[82] Here in Fowl and Wright lie counter-practices of Scripture where the church is encouraged to read Scripture together and hear the reading of the Word within the context of liturgical response and the Eucharist (as opposed to expository preaching). In each instance, the distancing function of “the perfect book” is overcome by an active communal engagement into interpreting it and living into it.

Secondly, as outlined above, evangelicalism must also overcome the arrogant, coercive and exclusionary impulse at work in evangelicalism’s theology and practice of Scripture. The irruptions upon the sociality of evangelicalism reveal a contradictory logic at work in the evangelical theology and practice of Scripture. This logic must be broken in favor of a more hospitable and open belief and practice of Scripture. In this regard we can look to Stanley Hauerwas and John H. Yoder for help. Both Hauerwas and Yoder uncover the Constantinian impulses in many of our evangelical efforts to defend Scripture.[83] In addition, we can look to John Howard Yoder’s proposals for open communities of witness that sustain a vision for Scripture as embodied in open dialogue and hospitality all the while sustaining the Lordship of Christ.[84] For all of these figures (as well as Milbank), epistemology must not be allowed to trump truth as derived from our relationship with God. The church’s existence as God’s people in relation to Him must maintain ontological priority over any epistemological strategy. Otherwise fear and violence become entwined in our lives as God’s people. These proposals offer substantive resources for a politically engaged theology and practice versus the deconstructive theologies that attract emerging church leaders.[85] These figures offer practices of reading Scripture in humility and courage, of dialogue with other faiths, and communal hospitality that serve to promote Scriptural integrity and witness. They counter both the exclusionary engagements and the passive tolerance that is most fostered within present day evangelical belief and practice of Scripture.

In the end, I am convinced that the future for evangelicalism lies in a.) taking seriously the emerging church, missional church, neo-monastic and liturgical recovery movements seriously as avenues to pursue in forging a more robust political theology and practice of the church. In the process however, the initial theological gestures of these various movements must be followed by the production of a more serious theology and practice either by leaders from within or evangelicals leaving their churches to join in. In the end, a birth of a new faithfulness will come into being leaving behind current evangelicalism for a more robust socio-political entity.[86]

A book project by David Fitch B R Lindner Prof. of Evangelical Theology Northern Seminary, Lombard Il

INTRODUCTION: On why the sociality of evangelicals in America is in need of psychoanalysis – The relevance of Slavoj Zizek for evangelical theology.

I. THE END OF EVANGELICALISM? We have been told that we have arrived at the end of metaphysics, modernity or even history. We have supposedly entered into post-modernity, post Enlightenment and post-Christendom. Are we indeed at the end of evangelicalism as well? There are those who answer this question via an analysis of evangelicalism’s theological inadequacies or its sociological realities. There are those who answer it via a proposal to a return to a more orthodox Protestantism or a more pure evangelicalism. In contrast, I propose we respond by examining evangelicalism as a socio-political ideology undergoing a political crisis (over this last decade of “the rise and fall of evangelicalism”). Borrowing on the work of political/cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek, let us analyze American evangelicalism for its viability as a political ideology capable of sustaining a people amidst the new post- Christendom worlds. This kind of analysis will do more than advance the theological adequacy of evangelicalism. It will show the way towards a more robust political theology and practice for the cultural challenges that lie ahead for evangelicalism in N. America.

II. DEFINING EVANGELICALISM Before we can begin, we must first define the social entity that is evangelicalism and defend that it even exists. Following the work of Mark Noll and David Bebbington, I define evangelicalism as a theological/ sociological coalescence around the belief and practice of 1.) a high view of the Bible, 2.) an evangelistic activist engagement with culture and 3.) a strong belief in a personal conversion experience. After defending Noll/Bebbington’s definition of evangelicalism in America, I will argue that this evangelicalism, as defined by these three areas of belief and practice, still exists (though shrinking) as a vital church in America. Yet it exists in a perilous state begging for a self-assessment not just of its theology but its political viability as a social presence in society. In what follows, I will conduct a Zizekian kind of ideological critique upon the three areas of evangelical belief and practice highlighted above as the means to assess evangelicalism’s political viability as a church in N, America.

III. TRAVERSING EVANGELICALISM AS A POLITICAL IDEOLOGY: ZIZEK’S BASIC CONCEPTS This chapter describes the working assumptions and tools of analysis adopted from Zizek as a mode of analysis for evangelicalism as an ideology. Evangelicalism can be interpreted as an ideology which binds people together under an allegiance to certain elusive yet compelling theological master signifiers. This chapter builds a foundation for such an interpretation. It starts with the idea of a “political ontology of lack” and Zizek’s own version of this (often labeled as “ideological cynicism”). It then moves to Zizek’s notions of “empty signifier,” “overidentification” and “jouissance.” We will use these notions to “traverse” evangelicals main beliefs and practices in relation to a.) the Scriptures, b.) the Church and its relation to Society, c.) Salvation: the three main “Mark Noll-defined” impulses of historic evangelicalism. We will traverse evangelicalism as a culture over the last decade: the decade of “the rise and fall of evangelicalism.” In so doing we perform an ideological psychoanalysis of sorts on evangelicalism as a social entity. The chapter defends the usefulness of such an approach to evangelicalism in helping us see the way evangelicalism’s basic beliefs and practices function to undercut a robust political presence in the world as the gospel.

IV. THE EVANGELICAL FANTASY OF “THE INERRANT BIBLE” - EVANGELICALISM’S BELIEF AND PRACTICE OF SCRIPTURE This chapter examines the evangelical doctrine of inerrancy “according to the original autographs” and derivatives of these ideas in the formation of evangelicals as a social politic. Specifically we will examine the way the “inerrant Bible” functions as an ideological object/fantasy that holds people together in a social politic, yet it means very little in practice. We will show how the “perfect book” serves to distance the subjects of evangelicals from the actual political involvement in Scripture as the drama of God’s Mission in the world.

V. IRRUPTIONS OF ARROGANCE AND VIOLENCE ON THE EVANGELICAL IDEOLOGICAL EDIFICE: THE STRANGE EPISODE OF GEORGE BUSH AND THE IRAQ WAR Playing off the “inerrant Bible” as an ideological object/fantasy, this chapter looks at the irruptions of arrogance and coercion by evangelicals in American media over the past decade. We look at excessive episodes from within the evangelical culture that over-identify with the “inerrant book” such as the King James Bible Only Baptists, obsessive Bible Prophecy conferences and pronouncements of Pat Robertson’s judgment against New Orleans. We ask what relationship there is between these irruptions on the surface of evangelical culture and our evangelical ideology of Scripture. Particularly we will survey the evangelical symbol par excellence in N. America over the last decade: pres. George Bush. We will display how some of his public actions surrounding the invasion of Iraq take on the character of unintentional excessive overidentification for evangelicalism. We will show how the “Bible-believing” evangelical figure pf pres. George Bush reveals a jouissance all too common among evangelicals tied to certain ideological conceptions of Truth and Scripture. We will show how the episode of pres. Bush’s Iraq War reveals the antagonism being hidden by the evangelical fantasy of the “inerrant book.” In the process, pres. Bush can be interpreted as an exclamation point to the many similar irruptions of the Real upon the social plane of evangelicalism. These irruptions of the Real are recognized by everyday evangelicals (especially younger ones for certain reasons). They serve to expose the Real and disrupt the evangelical edifice of “the perfect book” thus undermining its legitimacy among evangelicals (as well as outsider onlookers) making for a weaker political presence in the world.

VI. THE EVANGELICAL FANTASY OF “THE CHRISTIAN NATION” – EVANGELICALISM’S BELIEF AND PRACTICE OF THE CHURCH (AND ITS RELATION TO SOCIETY) This chapter examines the notion of “the Christian Nation” in the formation of evangelicals as a social politic, not only for evangelicals of the so-called Christian Right but for the progressive evangelicals (Sojourners etc.) as well. We will examine the way “the Christian Nation” functions as an ideological object/fantasy within the evangelical belief and practice of the church and its relation to society. This notion of “the Christian Nation” is by nature very elusive. In Zizekian terms, no evangelical really knows what it might look like, yet it continues to distract us from being a Christian politic ourselves. As such, the ideological object “the Christian Nation” functions to distance the subjects of evangelicalism from the actual social political engagement of the justice of God as the church, a people of justice in the world. As a result, “the Christian Nation” holds the subjects of evangelicalism in its gaze while in turn pacifying them toward unjust social systems in the world to the point of becoming complicit with them.

VII. IRRUPTIONS OF DISPASSION ON THE EVANGELICAL IDEOLOGICAL EDIFICE: THE STRANGE EPISODES OF EBBERS AND LAY Playing off the “Christian Nation” as an ideological object/fantasy, this chapter looks at the increasing irruptions of dispassionate justice among prominent evangelical figures on the social plane of evangelicalism of the last decade. At first, it may seem paradoxical to assert that dispassion can irrupt upon a social ideology. The “ideological cynicism” of Zizek however enables us to see how ideological objects like “the Christian Nation” can enable evangelical “subjects” to act like/believe that they are just and compassionate meanwhile being complicit with ongoing systems of injustice. It takes an irruption of the Real to reveal the hollowness of our evangelical justice. An irruption is required to expose the contradiction that lies at the core of evangelicalism’s view of the church that lies hidden by the fantasy of “the Christian Nation.” This chapter will look at several examples of such irruptions like the large mega church pastors who live opulent lifestyles yet preach justice all the while they are under investigation by the government authorities for their misuse of tax-exempt priviledge. The chapter’s main focus however is on the evangelical figures of Ken Lay and Charles Ebbers and their massive corporate malfeasance of the early 2000’s as examples par excellence of an irruption of the Real in this regard. Played before the stage of American media in early 2000’s, these two benevolent evangelical Sunday School teachers unintentionally acted out the social antagonism that lies at the core of the way evangelicalism practices church. The fact that this antagonism is hidden by the evangelical “fantasy” of “The Christian Nation” allows evangelical subjects to remain secure and safe capitalists while at the same time claiming Christian justice.

VIII. THE EVANGELICAL FANTASY OF “THE DECISION FOR CHRIST” – EVANGELICALISM’S BELIEF AND PRACTICE OF SALVATION This chapter examines the powerful ideological place that “the decision for Christ” has in the formation of evangelicals as a social politic. Specifically we will examine how this notion, playing off the central doctrine of the substitutionary atonement, functions to interpelate subjects into the evangelical ideological edifice. Yet, what actually happens in the salvation of “a people” remains elusive. In this way “the decision” behaves as a classic Zizekian “empty-signifier” in the evangelical ideological system. In fact, “the decision for Christ” seems to enable the subject to self-define as a Christian, while continuing to live comfortably within the commitments to American consumerism, hedonism and materialism. “The decision for Christ” means little for the on-going living of the salvation of God in Christ (the classic Catholic criticism of evangelicalism). In reality then, this ideological object serves to distance the subjects of evangelicalism from the actual living out of the vital Christian discipleship.

IX. IRRUPTIONS OF DUPLICITY ON THE EVANGELICAL IDEOLOGICAL EDIFICE: THE STRANGE EPISODE OF JESSICA SIMPSON This chapter looks at the increasing irruptions of moral duplicity by evangelicals upon the landscape of American culture and media. After reviewing some of the cultural episodes of moral duplicity among evangelicals in the past decade (such as Ted Haggard - former NAE President), we examine the cultural figure of Jessica Simpson and her long canceled MTV Reality show The Newlyweds. By looking back at her media-recorded script, we hope to show how Jessica, the self proclaimed “virgin,” daughter of an evangelical youth pastor, illustrates the familiar irruption of moral duplicity that in essence overidentifies with this object of evangelical soteriology: that salvation is primarily located in one’s “decision.” Her actions, carried out in full view of a national TV audience, reveal the inner contradictions and jouissance that lie at the core of the evangelical fantasy of “the decision for Christ.” Though unintentional on her part, Jessica Simpson is an irruption of the Real for all evangelicals to see. Again, I claim that Simpson, along with all of the other irruptions of the Real described in this book, brings evangelicals face to face with the absurdities within the evangelical belief and practice of salvation. Her cultural profile is an irruption that disrupts the evangelical edifice, undermining its legitimacy among younger evangelicals (as well as outsider onlookers). It reveals that which weakens evangelicalism’s viability as a political entity in the world.

X. DISCERNING A NEW FAITHFULNESS “EMERGING” FROM THE RUPTURES I contend that the last decade of “the rise and fall of evangelicalism” reveals an evangelicalism that is unraveling. Zizek helps us see why. Yet after Zizek, we may be tempted to say there is nothing that can be done. Zizek is certainly criticized for only offering negative political analysis that in turn offers little constructive help for forging a way forward out of the political dilemmas he draws attention to. Nonetheless, I believe there is plenty to respond to in a Zizekian ideological (cynical) analysis of evangelicalism. For instance, I contend that Zizek gives us the wherewithal to understand movements emerging from the fringes of evangelicalism (emerging church, missional church etc.) and interpret them theologically as responses to the Real as revealed in the ruptures of evangelical ideology. This in turn helps us as evangelicals to learn from these movements and work with them in the task of forging of a more politically robust theology and practice. In this chapter I rely more on Badiou (another “political ontologist of lack”) than Zizek to argue that amidst these ruptures we can interpret many movements emerging from the margins of evangelicalism as “subjects in fidelity to the event” of truth. We can in other words, understand the emerging church, missional church, neo monastic and liturgical recovery movements as decisive interventions into the lacks revealed by evangelicalism in “these last days.”

XI. TOWARDS A POLITICALLY ROBUST EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE Of course, chapter X. begs the question, is any of this “emerging” “missional” theology sufficiently robust to truly fill the void exposed by the ruptures in evangelicalism that this book has been talking about? One of Zizek’s complaints with Badiou is that he does not provide the sufficient wherewithal to determine the demarcation between a true Event and a false semblance. Zizek argues that we can only truly follow (trust) an ideology that has dealt with “its fantasies.” Taking this hint from Zizek (although not following him any further than that), I propose some promising theological avenues for evangelicalism to take in facing up to its problems. I make several gestures towards a more politically productive evangelical theology (a theology capable of sustaining a politic/way of life as gospel before the world) that keeps faithfulness with the Scriptures, the Church of Jesus Christ and historic Christian Orthodoxy. Unlike Zizek, I do not advocate starting with a clean slate. Yet with Badiou, I urge evangelicalism, its seminaries, denominations and para-church institutions to take seriously the emerging church, missional church, neo monastic and liturgical recovery movements as political interventions into evangelicalism’s lacks which can be learned from. I hope to follow this project with a “Missional theology” that follows through on some of these avenues. In the end, I suggest, if evangelicalism follows this course, there will be a birth of a new faithfulness that comes into being that leaves behind the evangelicalism of today for a more robust socio-politic engaging N America as Christ’s church, the embodied Mission of God in the world.

[1] Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W W Norton, 2008)

[2] David Kinnaman UnChristian (Grand Rapids: Baker Books 2007).

[3] See for instance Christian Wicker The Fall of the Evangelical Nation (SanFrancisco: HarperOne, 2008) as well as LifeWay research, an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention reported similar statistics to Kinnaman’s report in UnChristian. See www.lifeway.com 1/9/08.

[4] Jim Wallis, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2008).

[5] David F. Wells, The Courage to be Protestant (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2008)

[6] David Tomlinson, The Post-Evangelical (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003).

[7] Mark Noll describes these characteristics an unwavering commitment to (cruciform) Biblical authority, an aggressive adaptive engagment with surrounding culture, an emphasis on a conversion experience and the atoning work ocf Christ on the cross as central to the evangelical faith and identity in American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001) ch. 1. He is following David Bebbington who argues a similar case describing the priorities of the evangelical movement of the 19th century as Biblicism, activism, crucicentrism and conversionism in The Dominance of Evangelicalism (Downers Grove IL: IVP Press, 2005) ch. 1. I am following both of these scholars except I am conflating the conversion experience with the centrality of Christ’s atoning death into one core attribute.

[8] This is not to deny the diversity of and different degrees of all these beliefs among evangelicals. And there is certainly more to be said on whom evangelicals are. Nonetheless, for our purposes here, I contend there is a large sociological grouping of evangelicals who join together in affirming a majority of the above-described beliefs. And if you take the main institutions and key figures of evangelicalism, they all adhere to these basic beliefs. Together, these identifying beliefs mark a large body of people in N. America labeled as evangelicals.

[9] All of the above draws on Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London:Verso, 1989), p.6.

[10] For an excellent introduction to this concept of ontology of lack see Lars Tonder and Lasse Thomassen, “Introduction: rethinking radical democracy between abundance and lack,” in Lars Tonder and Lasse Thomassen (eds.) Radical Democracy: Politics between abundance and lack (New York: Manchester University Press, 2005).

[11] It is in essence Zizek’s “Sublime Object of Ideology,” the title of Zizek’s seminal work which catapulted him onto the international scene as a political theorist. The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989)

[12] Another well-known Zizekian example of this is the way the Jew has functioned in anti-semitic Germany (Western Europe). See Sublime Object, 48ff.

[13] For instance, I find compelling Milbank’s critique that Zizek is ultimately a ‘mystical nihilist.’ According to Milbank, his dialectical materialism in the end repeats the same reductive and nihilist errors of prior Marxist materialisms because, in the end, Zizek provides no “ontological basis” for a progress that can lead to a stable political practice. John Milbank, “Materialism and Transcendence,” in Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Zizek (eds.) Theology and the Political (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005) 421-423. Having said this, I still find compelling Zizek’s schema for understanding how a given politic works. I assert we can make good use of these understandings to then build a politically more robust theology.

[14] Neither do I want to adopt Zizek’s understanding of truth and political ontology en toto. Nonetheless, Zizek and Badiou do reject the postmodern elusiveness towards the question of truth. In some respects they represent a return to the question of Truth for philosophy after Continental postmodernism. Nonetheless, this is not a return to modern or pre-modern metaphysics. Instead they play off “the Real” as a grounding for Truth. It is something that occurs, that happens politically out of social “situations” (Badiou) that can provide the basis for truth.

[15] As found first and foremost in his The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989) 28-30. This paper draws primarily on Zizek’s first phase of his intellectual development, primarily his writings of 1989 to 1999.

[16] Here Zizek is quoting Peter Sloterdijk, Kritik der Zynishen Vernunft (Frankfurt 1983) trans. Critique of Cynical Reason. See Sublime Object p. 29.

[17] Zizek, Sublime Object, 36 see also 30-33.

[18] In other words, I may not understand “freedom” in the same way as my neighbor or the millions of other Americans who believe in it yet this nebulous quality allows us all to be united together in American democracy as if we all believe in the same thing, even though we all believe different things.

[19] Slavoy Zizek, Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters (London: Verso, 1996) 142.

[20] It does appear in Zizek’s Sublime Object 147. However, I wish to fill the term out in a way that diverges from any direct way in which Zizek uses the phrase there.

[21] I am drawing here on Slavoy Zizek’s descriptions of “act” in his Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (London: Verso, 2002).

[22] Or as Badiou labels such a move internal to the history of a revolutionary politics of Truth, “in fidelity to the event.’

[23] They did offer a hint of their excessiveness, by occasionally slipping in speaking German, which to every Sovenian meant facism.

[24] Zizek gives another example in a lecture I heard on YouTube where he tells of being a member of a dissident group in Slovenia, publishing a newpaper the day after a rigged Soviet election, with the headline reading something like “Surprise Landslide Victory for Communist Party!” The headline is an example of conformity in that the elections are supposed to not be rigged, yet it is a gesture because everybody knows (but is not allowed to say) that the elections are rigged: the headline reveals the absurd real behind the ideology of the elections. I have not been able to find the reference for this.

[25] Slavoj Zizek, On Belief (London:Routledge, 2001) p.8.

[26] German art curator Inke Arns explains this well stating “According to Slavoj Zizek and Peter Sloterdijk, overtly criticizing the ideology of a system misses the point, because today every ideological discourse is marked by cynicism. This means that every ideological discourse has internalized, and already anticipated, its own critique. Ideology does not “believe” in its own declarations anymore; it assumed a cynical distance towards its own moral premises. Consequently it became impossible to adequately encounter cynicism as a universal and diffuse phenomenon through the traditional means of critique of ideology (e.g. through enlightened engagment). Vis a vis cynical ideology, according to Zizek, the means of irony becomes something that lays into the hands of power. The public declarations and values of an ideology are ‘cynical’; they are actually not to be taken seriously. But as soon as ‘adequate distance’ no longer is kept, when an ‘over-identificaton’ with ideology takes place, the so-called ruling ideology has a problem.” Mobile States | Shifting Borders | Moving Entities: The Slovenian Artists’ Collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), www.nskstate.com. From the blogpost http://medinatweimar.org/2008/06/17/over-identification-with-the-hidden-reverse-of-ideology.

[27] I am drawing here on Slavoj Zizek’s words in his “Why are Laibach and NSK not Facists? M’ARS-Casapis Moderne Galerije V/3.4 (1993) p. 4

[28] Zizek Sublime Object 124-125.

[29] “Perverse” in the sense that the defying of the “law” through this enjoyment is what makes possible the very existence of the “law” in the first place.

[30] Another way of looking at Zizek’s jouissance is to liken it to pain experienced by the individual when he/she misses a goal or fails to satisfy a desire. We all know that feeling when we fail to attain to a personal goal or even win a pick-up game with someone who we never fail to beat at basketball. We become more attached to the meanings inherent in that personal goal, or more invested in beating that opponent.. When one fails to satisfy a desire, this desire becomes the source for more jouissnace. A fantasy is constructed in each case which supports and sustains this jouissance, “if I only could do this…”, “if I only experienced this … .” There is an ideological object that materializes that becomes the focus of the jouissance. This is the ideological process Zizek points to in his concept of jouissance. Slavoj Zizek, Ticklish Subject (New York: Verso, 1999) 296-297. See also Slavoj Zizek, Plague of the Fantasies (New York: Verso, 1997) 32-33

[31] See George Marsden, Fundamentalism and the American Culture (Oxford: Oxford Universit Press, 1980) ch. 13,14. George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1991) 36-39.

[32] B.B. Warfield (Philadelphia:Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1970)

[33] See for instance B.B.Warfield Selected Shorter Writings 2 vo. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing,1976) 2:583-84.

[34] A classic representative statement on expository preaching is John MacArthur’s ReDiscovering Expository Preaching (Grand Rapids: Thomas Nelson, 1992)

[35] See David K. Clark, To Know and Love God (Wheaton: Good News Publishers, 2003) p. 48 for a summary of the roots of inductive Bible study.

[36] Even though “infallible” was found often in these same doctrinal statements prior to the 1930’s, going back now to this term in doctrinal statements cannot divorce its new association with “inerrancy.”

[37] It is dangerous to describe any doctrine and practice within the Christian church as fantasy. I therefore re-emphasize that I am using the term technically as a description of the way ideology functions within the coalescing of a political movemnt, group or whole ala the philosophical works of Slavoy Zizek and Jacques Lacan.

[38] Many of course have accused evangelicals of a Biblicism, a Biblical positivism and/or Bibliolatry. In this case, the Bible achieves almost divine status among evangelicals so as to become the center of the Christian life replacing the living Christ Himself. Although this criticism may have had merits at several moments within evangelicalism’s history, this well-worn style of engagement with evangelical doctrine is not what I am interested in this paper. Most evangelicals are more careful along these lines any way. Instead what I am interested in is the peculiar way the notion of “the perfect book” lingers on in doctrine and practice within evangelicalism and holds ideological currency in the ways Zizek describes. I am interested in how inerrancy (along with several ideas germane to it) persists as a master signifier in the Symbolic Order that is evangelicalism in America.

[39] B.B. Warfield, “The Inerrancy of the Original Autographs,” in Mark Noll, The Princeton Theology 1812-1921 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983) 268-288. The fascinating machinations behind “the original autographs” phrase is debated in John Woodbridge’s “Biblical Authority: Toward an Evaluation of the Rogers and McKim proposal,” in Douglas Moo’s Biblical Authority and Conservative Perspectives (New York: Kregel Publications,1997) 59.

[40] On “the dissipation of the materiality of the fetish” in the fantasy see Zizek’s The Plague of Fanatasies (London: Verso, 1997) 102-103.

[41] For instance, Rick Warren, in his famous The Purpose Driven Church (Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 1995), says “”Personally, I consider the inerrancy of Scripture as a non negotiable belief, but the unchurched don’t even understand the term.”

[42] Zizek, Sublime Object 32.

[43] Zizek, Sublime Object 34.

[44] The Drama of Doctrine (Louisville: WJK Press, 2005) In light of Zizek, I wish to suggest that evangelicals must push further to fully embrace a doctrine of Scripture that is defined anew as “the Drama of God,” the Grand Narrative that we are a part of, the ongoing Mission of God. Of course Kevin Vanhoozer offers some help in this regard. Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 2006) is another source to follow in this regard. Other resources to follow for evangelicals are such figures as Hans Frei, George Lindbeck, Hans Von Balthasar, and Sam Wells on the ways Scripture and doctrine function as an ongoing narrative-drama-cultural linguistic to be participated in. This should in no way detract from articulating a high view if not higher view of Scripture as the ongoing alive revelation of God in the world through Jesus Christ.

[45] Zizek’s use of cultural references often appears haphazard with little or no formal theoretical justification. They sometimes function to illustrate the core contradictions that lie at the base of the ideology. Like Zizek, I propose selecting some cultural events tied to evangelical figures that are in fact the subjects of evangelical ideology. I then hope to use these cultural episodes to illustrate and reveal the antagonisms at the core of evangelical ideology.

[46] Space does not allow me here to detail these various irruptions on the plane of evangelicalm culture. I intend to go into this in detail in the larger project of which this essay is a part.

[47] Books for instance like Chris Hedges American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2006) and Mel White’s Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right (New York: Penguin, 2006).

[48] Two already mentioned examples are David Kinnaman’ UnChristian(Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007) and Christine Wicker, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation (New York:Harper & Row, 2008).

[49] See the BBC press release concerning the documentary entitled “Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs” on www.bbc,co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush/shtml. The title of the BBC press release is “God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers.”

[50] 60 Minutes April 18,2004. See www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/15/60minutes/main612067.shtml

[51] Bush captured the allegience of evangelicals in the 2000 presidential election. He did it again in 2004. In 2004 he carried the white evangelical vote over John Kerry by a margin of 78% to 21%. It was roughly the same in terms of percentages of evangelicals voting for Bush in the 2000 election. This led to at least the perception in the media that George W. Bush had been put into the presidency by the nation’s evangelicals. The late Jerry Falwell therefore pronounced that “the church won the 2004 election” at the Southern Baptist Convention pastor’s conference in June 2005. For Rev. Falwell, the church he was speaking about was most certainly the church of the evangelicals. Falwell’s words are reported by Rose French, “As Southern Baptists Gather in Nashville This Week, Rev. Jerry Falwell Applauds Religion’s Role in Politics,” Associated Press, June 29, 2005. This along with all the statistics I have quoted are reported in a scholarly piece by David P Gushee and Justin Phillips, “Moral Formation and the Evangelical Voter,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics Winter 2006 vo. 26., 23-24.

[52] His walk with Billy Graham, his personal conversion, his regular church attendance were all recorded regularly in news media. In addition his devotion to reading Scripture, personal inductive Bible study and prayer was widely and regularly reported. Regularly we heard George Bush reads Scripture first thing every morning and often has devotional times with the evangelical classic devotional My Utmost, for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. Most peculiar to Bush’s life as a Christian are the two years he spent studying the Bible in a National evangelical program of “inductive” Bible study called Community Bible Study. According to many sources, it was here that George Bush read and studied the Bible with a fervour never before exhibited in any other time in his life toward any course of study. All evangelicals would have recognized here a set of disciplines common to the culture of evangelicalism. In the minds of evangelicals, these disciplines mark him unqualifiedly as an evangelical, as one who carries the same allegiance to an inerrant Bible. This was all recounted in depth in articles such as Howard Fineman’s “Bush and God” Newsweek, March 10,2003; Much of this was documented in the 2004 Public Broadcasting Network’s Frontline program “The Jesus Factor.” In 2004 Stephen Mansfield’s The Faith of George W Bush (Charisma House, 2004) recounted many of these facts as a deliberate part of the campaign strategy to attract more evangelicals to his re-election.

[53] As recounted in the previous footnote, Bush’s commitment to the Community Bible Studies program is not only indicative of his commitment to the ideology of Biblical inerrancy, but it signaled to all evangelicals that he was part of this ideology as well. As previously discussed, inductive Bible study is a staple of evangelical life. This Community Bible Studies program was (and is) a program of Bible study that implies the inerrancy and verbal inspiration of Scripture. It gathers men and women into groups which study the Bible directly through answering “fill-in-the blank” questions in booklets. Here the participant inductively learns the various doctrines and beliefs and understandings of what the Bible is teaching through answering these questions. This was a significant part of Bush’s beginning formation in evangelical Christianity, yet it was also a signal that Bush in fact represents one firmly ensconced in the ideology of evangelical doctrine and practice of Scripture.

[54] Former Pentecostal pastor and journalist Stephen Mansfield wrote the book entitled The Faith of George Bush (New York: Charisma House, 20004) It was listed on the NY Times BestSeller list for many weeks. It was released deliberately to coincide with Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. Bush’s “personal testimony” of conversion was told again. The book reiterated his intense devotion to inductive Bible study as the basis for his relationship with God. It told the now famous story of how Bush and Tony Blair read Scripture and prayed together before long walks at Camp David. It coalesced an army of evangelicals behind Geroge Bush’s 2004 re-election. The book not only baptized Bush as “God’s man for the presidency,” but it came dangerously close to implying that George Bush (together with Blair) had prayed and read the Bible thereby leading to the decision to invade Iraq.

[55] Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.

[56] “Bush the Infallible,” by Jeffrey A Tucker. 2003 www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker.29.html . Here he described president Bush’s demeanor at a 2003 press conference with the following: “As the questions were being asked, he looked down at the table and around the room, not at the questioner. He impatiently drummed his fingers on the table, as if he knew in advance nothing could be asked that was really worth asking. His attitude was that if it needed to be known, he would have already said it. All inquiries were just an imposition to him, an insult to his own sense of certainty. His answers consisted of barking back the stated position, along with a reminder that the position had already been stated. There was no attempt to charm, no attempt to inform, no attempt to hide his disdain.”

[57] Robert Draper, Dead Certain: The Presidency of the George W Bush (New York: Free Press, 2007)

[58] George Bush in essence is an over-identification producing a brush with the Real too embarrassing for evangelicals to take. He has taken with all seriousness his daily Bible study and prayer, that indeed God speaks through the Scriptures truth as illumined by the Holy Spirit in prayer. There is no communal discernment or submission to a larger church body. This then leads to the most extreme version in all its horror for evangelicals to set their gaze: “God told me to invade Iraq.” I suggest that for many, this arrogance and indeed violence represents an all too common occurrence among evangelical church practice. This is an irruption therefore that represents more than this one event for most evangelicals participating in the ideology of evangelicalism.

[59] Zizek might even suggest that attending an expository preaching service for evangelicals might cynically be seen as a material practice of the evangelical ideology of inerrant Scriptures. The idea of inerrant verbally inspired Bible is materially embodied in the practice of listening to an expository sermon even if no one really can remember a word the preacher said from week to week. As opposed to belief giving birth to practices, the material practices of an ideology birth the belief in the ideology and sustain it as the dominant ideology See Sublime Object 36-40 where Zizek follows Althusser’s “Ideological State Apparratuses” in explaining this concept.

[60] In his address to joint congress on Sept 13,2001, pres Bush notably wanted to divide and separate when he said in his speech “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

[61] One of the criticism’s of Zizek’s political theory is that it in essence goes nowhere. In the typical style of a psychoanalyst, Zizek seeks to uncover the forces at work beneath the ideology of social systems. Yet he rarely (especially in his early work) makes positive proposals for what a better political system might look like. This frustrates many and so Zizek often is dismissed as a mere cultural provocator rather than a constructive political theorist. He vascilates in his recommendations and his provocations towards liberalism and democracy (although his later work disavows any friendliness towards liberal democracy as a better socio-politial system). He does not espouse a political program. Instead Zizek operates on the negative, espousing strategies that undercut the predominant systems which can hopefully lead to a happening of sorts that leads to a better system. In his later works, he is more constructive and intentional about strategies of political intervention such as his provocative “act.” Yet even here, perhaps because of his helter skelter style of writing and presentation, we have few consistent constructive proposals for a better way beyond the capitalist impasses we are faced with in the modern West global.

[62] The fact that younger evangelicals are leaving the evangelical church in droves has been regularly documented. See just a few of these sources in the following: Colleen Carroll, The New Faithful (ChicagoLoyola Press, 2002), Francis Chan “Why are They Leaving?” Worship Leader (Sept 2008) 22-26. The New York Times reported that various evangelicals are asserting the figure that only 4% teenagers raised in evangelical churches leaving home for college ever return to evangelical church after college. This prompted the National Association of Evangelicals to pass a resolution in 2006 deploring “the epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church.” “Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers,” by Laurie Goodstein, New York Times Oct 16, 2006

[63] For Zizek, it seems that a decisive break is required from the existing ideology for there to be an opening for anything new. There must be a “negation of the negation.” For Badiou on the other hand, truth is immanent in the situation, and the revealed provides a site from which a truth procedure can begin emanating in a revolutionary change in the existing political order.

[64] Badiou sees truth as unfolding in four so-called “situations”: politics, art, interpersonal relationships and the machinations of science. In what follows, I am primarily drawing on Zizek’s reading of Badiou in his now famously debated and much applauded article on Badiou in The Ticklish Subject (London”Verso, 1999) entitled “The Politics of Truth or Alain Badiou as a Reader of st. Paul” 127-167 as well as Alain Badiou’s primary work St Paul, The Foundation of Universalism trans.Ray Brassier (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2003) as well as his Being and Event (London:Continuum, 2006).

[65] Being and Event p. 327.

[66] Zizek explains Badiou’s “event” using the French Revolution as an llustration. The French Revolution is composed of the irruption of popular violence where the Real is exposed in terms of the horrors and inequities of the ancien regime of France. A people emerge faithful to the insight. This new people birth the Truth in the naming of the event “The French Revolution.” These people, the followers of the Revolution, carry the Truth via their fidelity to the Event. Years later, these “revolutionaries” define the Truth of what was the ancien regime in powerful ways by their ongoing faithfulness and integrity to this Truth. Their very existence speaks to who Louis XVI was as well as to other figures of the ancien regime. In this way, Truth is made manifest in this new subjectivity birthed in fidelity to the Event. See Zizek, The Ticklish Subject 130. Read Badiou’s whole concept in his Being and Event 173-255.

[67] In Badiou-like fashion, I suggest we can we look at Evangelicalism as a “situation” for Truth where in essence the evangelical structure and its failure are the necessary pre-ambles to the birth of a new political form of Christianity in N America? As Zizek outlines, Badiou sees each situation as providing a set of norms, expectations, assumptions and procedures for this specific kind of knowledge. All elements in that situation are present, but not all of them are officially recognized or represented. This exclusion is what eventually erupts for a new site for truth, for a truth procedure to begin. Badiou describes the concept of “situation” for truth in part IV section 16 of Being and Event. See also Zizek’s lucid description of Badiou’s theory in The Ticklish Subject, 129.

[68] Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2001)

[69] A detailed history of the beginnings of Emergent Village and the church conversations and movements around it can be found in Tony Jones The New Christians:Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).

[70] Doug Pagitt, A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-filled, Open-Armed, Alieb and well Faith for the Left Out, Left Behind and Let Down in us All (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2008); Dan Kimball, They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007).

[71] Those who study this amorphous movement recognize the rejection of exclusionary “judgmental” tendencies in evangelicalism. See most recently Scot McKnight’s characterizations of emerging church in his account of Brian McLaren in “McLaren Emerging,” Christianity Today Sept 2008 58-67. He gives an overview of the movement in his article “Five Steams of Emerging” Christianity Today Feb 2007 where he describes “the prophetic stream” in these terms. See also, most recently Ian Mobsby, The Beginning of G-d (Oxford:YTC Press, 2008) 15-62. Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005) 89-153.

[72] Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007)

[73] Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), The Last Word and the Word After That (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).

[74] In his foreword to Rollins’ book, Brian McLaren called the book “one of the most important contributions to date for …” the emergent conversation. How (Not) to Speak of God p.ix.

[75] The Fidelity of Betrayal (Brewster MA: Paraclete Press, 2008).

[76] Doug Pagitt, Preaching Re-Imagined (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) . See Ian Mobsby The Becoming of G-D 113-132. The use of the word “conversation” is everywhere in the emerging church blogosphere. It is the word most used in describing the meetings that occur via the Emergent Village Cohorts.

[77] Zizek, Ticklish Subject 138

[78] My inference from Zizek’s writing on Badiou and Lacan in Ticklish Subject 162-165.

[79] Granted, this requires some additional reflection as to how one can both rely on the ideological analysis of Zizek to reveal the lacks in the evangelical ideological edifice and yet reject the ontological assumptions of that analysis when proposing a way forward. Here, if I had more time, I would point to Badiou as the means to reconfigure what exactly a true(er) politic might mean in light of Zizek.

[80] Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine (Louisville: WJK Press, 2005), Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven CONN: Yale University Press, 1974), Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Vol 1: Prolegomena (San Francisco: Ignatias Press, 1988), Christopher Wright, The Mission of God (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 2006).

[81] Stephen Fowl, Engaging Scripture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); Stephen Fowl and L Gregory Jones, Reading in Communion (Eugene OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998)

[82] John Wright Telling God’s Story (Downers Grove: Inter-Varisty Press, 2007)

[83] Through Hauerwas and Yoder we can see the Constantinian impulses “to rule the world” that lie behind evangelical belief and practice. See Stanley Hauerwas Unleashing the Scripture (Nashville; Abingdon Press, 1993), John Howard Yoder “The Disavowal of Constantine: An Alternative Perspective on Interfaith Dialogue.” Royal Priesthood (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1994).

[84] On this see John Howard Yoder, “Meaning After Babel: With Jeffrey Stout After Relativism.” Journal of Religious Ethics 24, no. 1 (Spring1996) 125-139 as referenced by Roman Coles, Beyond Gated Politics (Minneapolis:University of Minneapolis Press, 2005). For an excellent summary of Yoder’s positions see Coles Beyond Gated ch. 4. See also Stanley Hauerwas and Roman Coles, Radical Ordinary (Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2007) ch 1.

[85] Zizek famously critiques Derridian desconstructionism for its lack of political girth. He argues that such post-structuralism produces “… and endless quasi-poetical variation on the same theoretical assumption, a variation which does not produce anything new …a flabby poeticism …which does not affect the place from which we speak.” Sublime Object 155.