Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about personal evangelism, which is Christianese for the person-to-person recruitment that’s conducted by evangelical laypeople. The flocks don’t really like to do it, though, and their leaders are getting increasingly upset about their disobedience. A recent post on Christianity Today really brought that fact home for me. It highlighted the real reason why evangelical leaders push as hard as they do for their flocks to conduct evangelism in the first place. Today, let me show you evangelical leaders’ warped take on the riddle of steel.
(Giovanni, CC-SA.) The photographer couldn’t remember what this painting was called, but it reminded me very much of Conan.
The Riddle of Steel.
When I read Ben Jack’s post, it reminded me suddenly and sharply of an iconic scene from the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian.
In this scene, Thulsa Doom (the leader of a snake-worshiping, cannibalistic cult) has captured Conan. After Conan endures a solid beating from some beef-necked lackeys, Doom decides it’s time to talk to his prisoner. And very quickly, they alight upon a topic of interest to both of them: the riddle of steel.
(SFW but there’s some after-the-fact violence displayed.)
Conan learns this riddle as a young boy from his father, who tells him:
Conan’s Father: The secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan. You must learn its discipline. For no one – no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts. [points to the sword in his hand] This, you can trust.
Right after this conversation, Thulsa Doom and his band of merry marauders ride into the little village, murder both of Conan’s parents along with most of the villagers, then take the village children (including Conan) as slaves. Ever since then, he’s spent his life pondering this riddle. In fact, he thinks that if he dies without learning the answer to it, he won’t go to his religion’s heaven. As he puts it:
Conan: If I die, I have to go before [Crom], and he will ask me, “What is the riddle of steel?” If I don’t know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me.
So this riddle of steel thing is very important to Conan.
And Conan’s worst enemy, the murderer of his parents and destroyer of his village, has figured out the answer before he could — and hands it to him on a blood-soaked silver platter.
Learning the Answer to the Riddle of Steel.
See, Thulsa Doom once earnestly sought the answer to the riddle of steel, just as his prisoner has.
For years, he cosplayed as a bloodthirsty warlord. In fact, during that phase he assaulted Conan’s home. He thought waging battle would teach him the answer to the riddle. But it never did. The answer eluded him.
No, it was not steel but authoritarianism that won Thulsa Doom true strength.
That authoritarianism made him a powerful cult leader. It’s won him countless thralls, far more than he ever could have won or captured as a mere warlord schlepping around from village to village. He’s powerful enough now to make the mightiest of kings hesitate to bother him.
And he knows now what he couldn’t figure out in his mayhem-causing younger days.
The best sword ever made is useless in the hand of an untrained, undisciplined warrior. There are serious limits to what “steel” can accomplish. But very few limits exist for those wielding authoritarian power. Steel alone won’t be able to compel ultimate obedience from followers, either, while authoritarian power ensures that followers will go to any lengths to please their master.
Indeed, Doom’s thralls are quite happy to die at his command. One of them dies in the above clipped scene for no reason at all beyond her master’s desire to see someone jump from the thralls’ adoration-ledge above his courtyard. He just happened to choose this thrall to make the jump, that’s all. It’s a meaningless death, and she accepts it with joy. Doom sends her to her death to make a potent point to Conan:
Thulsa Doom: What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart! I gave you this!
For these two men, real strength flows from personal power over others, not from things that anyone could own and trade and make and destroy.
The Riddle of Steel, Answered.
Well, that’s how evangelicals view power.
They’re authoritarians to the core. They speak only the language of power. And they interpret absolutely everything according to how it’ll affect their existing power-base. Even the lowliest among them thinks always in terms of gaining more power, keeping whatever they’ve cobbled together for themselves, defending it against all takers, and taking it from anyone who is too weak to defend their own.
Evangelicals learn these dreadful lessons early in life. They represent, all told, an indoctrination that far transcends the labels of religious belief. Once they master the language of power, authoritarians have a great deal of trouble even imagining life working in any other way. They can’t even conceive of egalitarianism as a model for any group or relationship.
So much for a light burden and easy yoke, eh? Or for them being all about that self-sacrificing agape love, or even for them worshiping a Prince of Peace and Lord of Love at all. No, in this group it’s everyone for themselves. Those who go any other route just mark themselves as victims whose power will be stripped away in short order.
(This is why anybody who volunteers in an evangelical group will probably get swamped with demands in short order, while almost the entire congregation refuses to volunteer at all. When those overworked volunteers finally burn out and quit, they will usually get not one word of thanks from their churches or church leaders for their years of service.)
Evangelical leaders also know that power unused will become power taken away. In their world, if every single bit of one’s power is not flexed regularly then it won’t last for long.
What Disobedience Means.
When their flocks refuse to obey orders, evangelical leaders get really antsy.
They know exactly what disobedience means:
The flocks are obeying some other source. They have placed someone or something else above their Dear Leader’s commands.
Perhaps that source is simply their own senses of compassion, of morality, of right and wrong, or maybe it’s someone else who exerts more influence over them than their official Christian leaders can manage anymore.
Authoritarian leaders cannot allow this situation to stand.
Whatever the source of the disobedience, it means that the flocks’ leaders no longer hold the power they once did. And once the flocks realize that disobedience is possible, they will — count on it — disobey more often and more egregiously as time goes on.
They’re authoritarians too, you see.
Dissolving Power.
The flocks are always on the lookout for some way to increase their own power-bases.
Even obedient authoritarian followers despise actually following orders — which is why their leaders issue them, really. Followers’ whole lives are spent figuring out how to malinger and wiggle out of orders. Their life goals always consist of clawing enough power to themselves that they can minimize the number of people able to command them, while maximizing the number of people they in turn can command.
So there’s always this constant power struggle going on between leaders and followers. Leaders usually win it, of course, since their power dynamics are so lopsided in their favor. But they’re always on the lookout for potential challenges to their rule. After all, challengers will always appear with regularity.
As for the flocks, if their leaders seem to lose enough power, they’ll get outraged and leave. They will not follow someone they perceive as losing. They’ll soon find a leader who beats his chest more loudly and belligerently, and glom onto him instead.
Hooray Team Jesus!
(And this is why evangelical leaders are freaking tf out over mask rules and church closures. They’ve acted like they’re far above the law for decades. They can’t possibly bend the knee now to what they call man’s laws. It’d destroy their tenuous hold over their flocks for sure.)
What Demands for Personal Evangelism Mean.
For a long time now, I’ve noted that evangelical leaders push for personal evangelism even though they’ve never provided their flocks with adequate sales training. What they do provide tends to align completely with their own beliefs about how non-belief works and how to defeat it, but these beliefs bear no resemblance to reality.
I marveled a while ago at how evangelical leaders even deliberately moved the goalposts on their desired results of evangelism. Indeed, they stopped caring about making actual sales. No, now they just want the flocks to obey their commands to sell!
That’s because the effort alone gives evangelical leaders exactly what they want: greater control over the flocks. As long as the flocks are trying to obey, even if they struggle to do it, even if they don’t like doing it (and especially then), it means that their leader still has control over them. His power-base is still secure.
So in a very real way, demands for personal evangelism function far more as a retention measure than a sales campaign.
And the flocks are increasingly not cooperating with these demands.
Drifting Out the Side Door.
Evangelicals don’t do much that their leaders demand, really.
Very few of them attend church every Sunday; now, someone who manages to attend a few church services a quarter can get labeled a regular attendee! Almost none of them tithe, and of those few almost none manage to hit the full 10% demanded by their leaders. In their personal lives, almost none of them follow their tribe’s myriad silly behavioral rules, much less the more serious ones that would make them into decent human beings.
In response, church leaders seem to have largely given up on pushing hard on any of those shows of disobedience.
Oh, they get mad about racism and divorce and all that from time to time. But overall, they’ve accepted the new normal of low church attendance, next-to-no tithing, and rampant disobedience among the flocks.
But they’re latching hard onto personal evangelism as a way to retain their own power-bases.
And I can see why.
The Riddle of Steel, Unraveling.
Personal evangelism is, in a very real way, the most basic demand made of an evangelical. Their agreement with the pressing need to conduct personal evangelism is part of what defines them as evangelicals in the first place. That’s what their label means. So it should be the very most basic demand any leader could make.
But it’s also a behavior that clearly separates evangelicals from their many tribal enemies.
When the flocks try to make sales, they alienate themselves from their tribe’s enemies and keep themselves firmly ensconced in the tribal bubble. To do it the way their leaders demand, the flocks must learn a lot of lies about those tribal enemies. When they get shot down, as they inevitably do, they can limp back to their tribe for support and admiration for having even tried.
Personal evangelism, more than anything else, forms a deep divide between the flocks and anybody who could accidentally expose them to reality. Thus, more than anything else ever could, repeated failures at personal evangelism tie their flocks to their leaders’ rule.
Authoritarian leaders measure their own power by the obedience of their followers. They issue orders for personal evangelism in the same way Thulsa Doom asked that thrall to leap from her ledge, and for the same reasons. They’ve deciphered the true nature of authoritarian power.
So yes, the flocks’ growing unwillingness to get out there and SELL SELL SELL WITHOUT MERCY must be making their Dear Leaders very upset indeed.
NEXT UP: Why the flocks aren’t willing to even try to make sales, and what this reluctance means for the future of Christianity itself. See you tomorrow!
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What’s so sadly tragically funny about evangelicals’ quest for personal power is that the love they claim to sell in their evangelism would, if it were real, utterly undo all of their power-grabs. Love destroys authoritarianism.
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