Unchurched: Tickling Evangelical Ears for 25+ Years | Roll to Disbelieve: Reaching Outside the Bubble – Patheos

Hi and welcome back! Today, we return to Lee Strobels 1993 bookInside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary. In this book, Lee Strobel seeks to show evangelicals what people outside their insular bubble are like so they can better sell them membership in evangelical churches. Today, I want to show you the context of Unchurcheds earliest years what Christians then were like, and why they continue to read and love this book today.

(Previous Lee Strobel listicle posts: This Books Endorsements Reveal A Story;The Many Lies Lee Strobel Tells About Unchurched Harry and Mary;A Portrait of the Captain as a Young Hell-Bound Pagan (1-4);Indoctrinating Evangelicals More (5-8);Seeker-Sensitive Churches Ahoy (9-12);Martyrbation Ahoy (13-15);The Original Listicle and Comments.)

Lee Strobel is a stone-cold authoritarian. However, hes one who managed to scrabble himself to a position of relative power within his tribe. Thus, evangelical flocks look to him for information about their out-groups and to teach them how to sell their product (active membership in their groups) to these strange, alien, unknowable, unguessable, inscrutable Others.

And in 1993, yall, they werereallyOthers.

Something to remember about 1993 is that very few evangelicals probably actually knew anyunchurchedpeople going by the classic definition of people whove checked completely out of church culture or never joined it. At most, theyd likely have known people who missed church sometimes (or even often), or actively attended otherchurches. Obviously, evangelicals considered that latter groupthe wrong flavor of Christian. But those arent reallyunchurched people.

When I was evangelical myself, I sure didnt know any unchurched people until entering college at a state-funded university. Most of my friends attended various evangelical indoctrination-station colleges, so they wouldnt even have had that benefit. As well, the consumer internet wasnt anywhere near what it is now. Even as a very early adopter, I myself was barely online in the modern sense.

So in 1993, it was alotharder to find people who vocally rejected evangelicals product.

So in 1993, Lee Strobels book might actually have had a use if it hadnt been written by a schmoozer looking to pander to his eager audience.

Just as a start to explaining why its useless, his claims of having totally-been-an-atheist-yall were a lot harder to bust back then. After all, nobody outside the bubble would likely ever hear those claims, and nobody inside it had any idea that whatever Strobels version of atheism was, it sure doesnt look remotely like actual atheism from actual atheists. But his made-up fake testimony fed into what he teaches about unchurched people, and its definitely something he leans on hard to help his ideas sound more credible.

Second, evangelicals might as well be as isolated and alienated from their outgroup today as they were in the 1990s, or for that matter the Victorian era.

Nothing ever changes in their world. It cant.

As you can see from the above advertisement on his official Instagram, the huckster shilling this book still insists to this day that his work is valid and helpful. And the flocks always believe their hucksters. And really, gosh, yall, why would a Christian leader lie about anything so important?

Nowadays, evangelicals couldaskus what were like. Were not hard to find, and from all appearances we talk quite readily about our experiences and reasoningwhen its safe to do so. Weve filled entire websites multiple! with clearly-stated reasons for rejecting evangelicals product. Heres just one such site, and its got thousands of posts in it.

But evangelicals avoidinvestigating what we have to say about ourselves.

For one, their tribal leaders are busy slamming extimonies and deconstruction stories into the dirt, spinning them through the evangelical hatred machine, and trying their hardest to negate everything their newly-revealed enemies say.

Plus, theyre sure wed lie to their faces. After all, they do it all the time with Jesus own blessing apparently, and so they assume everyone else also lies constantly.

Perhaps worst of all, we heathens never, ever properly follow along with all the sales scripts their apologists have fed them over the past century or so.

(That was a problem for me in the 1990s. I didnt read apologetics books, but we got fed various scripts to use insoulwinning. These scripts used the same techniques, though, and they gave the same results.)

The sheer, misplaced trust that evangelicals consistently place in their apologists always blows my mind, even now. If they ever realized how much of the apologetics industry is pure cash-grabbing lies specifically engineered to divest them of their hard-earned cash and time and to keep them embedded in Christianity a little while longer, I mean like really realized it and saw that industry at last for what it is

I wonder what theyd do?

Over on Amazon, 70% of respondents bestowed 5 stars upon this book. Another 21% gave it 4 stars. The very few people rating it lower generally simply disagreed with Strobels doctrinal stances. None disagreed with his presentation of unchurched people generally.

Over on GoodReads, I see similar high praise. The few critics of the book noted that it felt dated, but I only saw one reviewer who noted that Strobels version of atheism doesnt look remotely like actual atheism.

A great many reviewers on both sites felt that Strobels own self-described conversion lent him more authority and credence in describing unchurched people. Because he describes himself as totally-once-an-atheist-you-guize, they trust him to accurately relay what atheism involves.

Every time I saw Christians gush with praise for the book, giving all this credit to Strobel for totally teaching them about the mindset of atheists, I died a little more inside.

They have no idea just how wrong he is. And they dont want to know, either.

However, I did find one review that made me laugh. Mostly, this person objected to Strobels crassly-commercialized view of church culture:

Strobel doesnt seem like so much an out-and-out con man as much as he seems like a shallow-minded, ambitious pragmatist.

And hey.

Hey.

Be reasonable here.

He could beboth.

As I skim through the beginning of Strobels book, it becomes readily apparent that he doesnt think anybody comes to atheism or disaffiliates from church for any reason hed consider valid. Nor does he want his readers to think theres any valid reason to reject their product.

Instead, in Strobel-Land unchurched people find themselves too busy for religion, or theyve had bad experiences that poisoned [their] attitude about Christianity. He accepts no other reasons for rejection.

Evangelicals have a consistent habit of expecting the rest of us to set ourselves on fire so they can keep warm. This approach works only in an atmosphere of Christian dominance. However, that dominance has eroded beyond repair. Maybe thats why so many Christians still eat up Lee Strobel books with a spoon.They yearn to feel dominant still, to be given permission to judge others and unilaterally decide to fix them.

Consistently in his book, Strobel spins stories about misunderstandings, lack of discernment, pique over mistreatment, and selfishness(as evangelicals weaponize the word) in unchurched people. In doing so, he teaches his readers techniques geared almost entirely toward ensuring their own retention. However, I can tell you right now that whatever his action plan involves, it doesnt work to persuade others.

Evangelicals dont care. Strobel tells them all the lies they ache to hear, and hes made huge bank with his pandering.

For years, evangelicals have loved what Lee Strobel tells them about their potential marks.

They love thinking that people dont reject them for valid reasons. In fact, Lee Strobel teaches them to judge those reasons and decide if theyre valid (pro-tip: those reasons never will be).

They love thinking that they can love people and yet treat them as human fix-it projects and more than that, like projects that they can adopt without permission and consent. Lee Strobel teaches them that their projects wont resent that at all.

Most of all, Lee Strobel teaches his readers evangelism tactics that he calls an action plan. He promises these gullible flocks that they can use his action plan to evangelize people who have either rejected their product or have spent a lifetime without it and thus dont need it.

As I said, I know already that whatever his plan is,it does not do what its seller claims it can do. If it did, Lee Strobels religion wouldnt be in terminal decline.

In fact, I bet it resembled in many ways how my own church taught us to evangelize in 1993. So thats where were setting sail for tomorrow, friends.

NEXT UP: Lets check out Lee Strobels action plan and compare it to Yr. Loyal &tc Captains experience as a Pentecostal in 1993. See you there!

Come join us onFacebook,Tumblr,Pinterest,Twitter, and our forum atrolltodisbelieve.com! (AlsoInstagram, where I mostly post cat pictures. About 99% of my insta consists of Bother being adorable.)

Also please check outour Graceful Atheist podcast interview!

Ifyou like what you see, I gratefully welcome your support. Please consider becoming one of my monthly patrons viaPatreon with Roll to Disbelievefor as little as $1/month! MyPayPal is captain_cassidy@yahoo.com(thats an underscore in there) for one-time tips. You can also support this blog throughmy Amazon Affiliate linkand, of course, by liking and sharing my posts on social media! This blog exists because of readers support, and I appreciate every single bit of it.

BTW: a future Lee Strobel post will involve his firm claim that some of his very best friends are atheists and apparently they are totes cool with him considering them his DIY projects for life.

Go here to read the rest:
Unchurched: Tickling Evangelical Ears for 25+ Years | Roll to Disbelieve: Reaching Outside the Bubble - Patheos