Towards a Better Denialism

Abstract

This article uses two case studies to promote the idea that British evangelicalism is sometimes marked by the denial of inconvenient facts. First, it takes a critical look at the apologetic impulse to explain away the problems that Scripture sometimes presents and to deny their affective dimensions. Second, it considers some of the abuse scandals of recent years and the way in which the evangelical church has tended to respond by covering them up and silencing the voices of accusers. This response appears to be motivated by the fear of quenching what appear to be successful ministries or of tarnishing the reputation of the church. The common theme that these examples share is that they are motivated by the instinct to present the gospel in the best possible light, but this appears to stem from an unarticulated functional atheism that does not truly trust God’s people to the Spirit. As a remedy, two linked practices are proposed, drawing on the work of Eugene Peterson and Cheryl Bridges-Johns. These are Sabbath-keeping as a means of rediscovering the primacy of God’s presence and work; and the re-enchantment of Scripture by means of a Pentecost imaginary, which offers the possibility for the transrational.

1. Introduction

This article will investigate the question: why do evangelical churches and organisations sometimes say, “there is no problem here”, when there clearly is?

1.1. Positionality

I write from within British evangelicalism. My academic field of research is at the intersection of the Bible and violence, and this work falls into two categories. The first is the interpretation of biblical violence, which is a continuing and thorny issue for many Christians in the global north1 in the twenty-first century, especially with regard to the violence that the text claims to be commanded by God. The second area is in the weaponisation of Scripture for the purposes of promoting or endorsing violence, which is a phenomenon no less frequent today than it ever has been. My work in this second area has led me into the study of the entailments of Scripture with contexts such as (domestic or ecclesial) abuse, right-wing extremism and Christian nationalism, and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In the course of my work in these twin fields, I have noticed in some evangelical churches and among some evangelical Christians and organisations a habitual attitude, which I here term “denialism”. By this term, I mean something broader and more mainstream than the extreme (if no longer marginal) world of conspiracism and the like; I use it to refer to the deliberate choice to deny certain apparent realities which are perceived to be inconvenient or uncomfortable.

I have served as a minister in two Baptist churches in England and now work as a theological educator, taking a share of responsibility in my College’s task of forming the next generation of Baptist ministers. For these reasons, although the question arises from my academic research, the concerns I raise in this article reflect my deep pastoral concern for the evangelical church in Britain.

1.2. Methodology

In this article, I will begin by offering two case studies that exemplify the sort of “denialism” I am seeking to investigate. These case studies relate to the twin areas of my own research outlined above: the interpretation of biblical violence and the church’s response to abuse allegations. The first emerges from my own experience of speaking about biblical violence in a range of churches (some evangelical, some not) during a lecture tour. The ensuing conversations revealed an apologetic trend which both anecdotal evidence and theological logic would position principally within evangelicalism. The second case study draws on a published investigation of one of the recent church abuse scandals, this one sitting squarely within British evangelicalism.

Neither of the situations I describe is unique to the British context. The nature of the research I conduct, and the international compass of the study centre I direct, positions me well to see how the phenomena I identify are replicated beyond the British Isles. Alternatively, perhaps more accurately, they might be considered to be replicating observable trends elsewhere, particularly in the United States of America.

The influence of American evangelicalism on British evangelicalism can scarcely be overstated, even though differences remain. Many of us grew up with the voices of Don Carson and John Piper playing over our car stereos, and it is still true today that a great deal of the Christian literature consumed by British evangelicals comes from the USA. The Gospel Coalition, enormously influential in British evangelical circles, began life in the USA and continues to be led from there. I have lost count of how many of my students enthusiastically listen to or watch everything that The Bible Project (based in Portland, OR) puts out (which I warmly commend). For these reasons, both case studies will be linked with related phenomena in the USA. With regard to the apologetics of biblical violence, reference will be made to the work of an American apologist, whose work is very influential in the UK. With regard to the abuse report, links will be drawn with a similar report emerging from the Southern Baptist Convention.

What makes a reality inconvenient or uncomfortable? A key characteristic that most evangelicals share is the desire to present Christ to the world, in both word and deed. Taking seriously the words of Jesus, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16), many evangelicals will seek to present an attractive face to the world in order to present the gospel in the best possible light. A worship chorus written by Dave Bryant in 1978 contains the line “Make me like a precious stone… light of Jesus shining through”, and although that particular song may no longer fall within the current repertoire of our worship bands, the idea it is communicating has shaped the imagination of many within our churches. Realities can therefore become inconvenient when they appear to present a challenge to this impulse.

In this article, I will use the two case studies to demonstrate how these faithful impulses sometimes combine with more problematic instincts to create a culture where it is hard for people to name their doubts, their struggles or their ongoing harms. I will seek to demonstrate that such denialism is predicated on an unarticulated weak theology of the presence and ongoing activity of the Spirit of God. I will then, more positively, explore how this “functional atheism” might be reversed by attending to practices that re-enchant our worldview and return to us the shock and awe of God’s presence.

2. Two Case Studies

2.1. Denying the Complexity of Scripture

“I wasn’t getting an answer that I could build anything on”.

(Chastain and Whitmore 2024)

2.1.1. Description

In 2018, I was the nominated presenter of the “Whitley Lecture”, an endowed lecture within the Baptist Union of Great Britain, where an emerging Baptist scholar gives a lecture tour to present their work to the Baptist Colleges and the churches. The (rather wordy) title I chose was “Dead and Buried? Attending to the voices of the victim in the Old Testament and today: towards an ethical reading of the Old Testament texts of violence”. In the lecture I named, although I did not attempt to resolve, the problem that Old Testament violence poses to the Christian Church. “There are some serious outstanding theological questions about many of the Old Testament texts of violence, particularly those where God appears to command violent action” (Paynter 2018, p. 40). What I did attempt to address, at least by naming it, is the ethical danger that these texts might present to church congregations, if they are ignored or irresponsibly interpreted.

In every venue where I spoke, people from the congregations wanted to engage with me afterwards about this. Their responses and observations fell into three broad categories. There was a sizeable contingent (I will call group A) who were puzzled by my desire to tackle these texts. The solution, they told me in various ways, was to expunge them from Scripture altogether or to marginalise them as simply a construct of human power and ideology. This group, almost by definition, lies outside evangelicalism and will play no further part in the analysis offered below.

The other two types of response came from those in more conservative traditions, where such an approach would not be considered a faithful option. A tidily balanced counter-perspective to group A was offered by those who also told me that they did not understand the reason for my concern. For these (group C), the text was clear—God had commanded these actions, so no agonising was needed.

A third category (group B) was situated between these two perspectives. These were people whose church teaching viewed the texts of violence with the insouciance of group C, but who had themselves found this approach troubling. A typical comment from people in this group was along the lines of this question I was asked, reported from memory. “Am I allowed to say that I find these stories troublesome? Is it alright to think that? Don’t I have to just accept them?”

I am not suggesting that these three groups encompass the full range of perspectives within the British Church; it reflects those who chose to attend my lecture and then to queue up to speak to me afterwards. However, I would suggest that people who fall into groups B and C are likely to be within churches, demonstrating the sort of denialism that I am referring to.

Group A	Group B	Group C
“Just take these texts out of Scripture”	“Am I allowed to say that I find these stories troublesome? Is it alright to think that? Don’t I have to just accept them?”	“God said it, that makes it alright, end of story”.

2.1.2. The Role of Apologetics

Denial of the challenges presented by Scripture seems to me, based on this and other empirical evidence, to be quite common within British evangelical churches. This is notwithstanding the subtle and nuanced responses offered by some British evangelical apologists, such as Gareth Black’s video “Are there Two Different Gods in the Old and New Testament?” on the Scottish apologetics website Solas (Black 2021). Nonetheless, there are some highly influential apologists who are willing to portray the violence of the Bible as unproblematic.

In a video interview conducted by the (British) atheist YouTuber Alex O’Connor, the American apologist and moral philosopher William Lane Craig was asked about divine instructions to kill children, such as the instruction that in regard to certain cities Israel was not to spare anything that breathed (Deut. 10:16). Craig began his reply by making reference to Divine Command Theory, which is a logic-based argument that such a slaughter need not be incompatible with the goodness of God (see, for example, Copan and Flannagan 2014, pp. 141–70). However, rather than expressing any sense that this answer might be partial or unsatisfactory, or demonstrating any lingering discomfort with the idea that God might command the killing of small children, Craig evinced complete contentment with his answer and with the idea of divine infanticide. “It was actually a tremendous blessing to these children for them to be killed and go to Heaven and be with God” (O’Connor and Craig 2024).

Although Craig is an American scholar, it would be a mistake to imagine that such insouciance is a characteristic confined to evangelical churches on the western side of the Atlantic. Craig is a highly-respected apologist, and influential in the UK; so much so that the British apologetics website Speak Life2 felt obliged to move rapidly to put out a video in response to, and partial rebuttal of, Craig’s claim (Scrivener and Paynter 2024).

In my view, the impulse of apologists such as Craig to represent their answers as complete and wholly satisfactory combines with the instinct of some evangelical church leaders to offer clear and unambiguous teaching to their congregations. In a culture where Scripture is held in high regard, and where Jesus’ Great Commandment is taken seriously, this can result in a tendency to deny the challenges which Scripture represents by providing “easy”—and often unsatisfactory—solutions. In an attempt to resolve a difficult problem (in this case, the goodness of a God who commands infanticide), thought leaders in evangelical churches may choose to deny certain inconvenient things—such as the clash that the text appears to have with the ethic seen in the person of Jesus Christ—rather than admit the problem.

2.1.3. Alienating the Wrestlers

In 1981, James Fowler published his well-known theory about the stages of human faith development. While it has been criticised for paying insufficient attention to God’s role in the process (e.g., Hughes 1997), Fowler’s theory remains influential on account of its perceptive analysis of the human side of the equation. By his account, individuals pass through a number of stages in their journey of faith development. Stage Five, which Fowler terms “Conjunctive Faith”, tends to take place in middle age, though not all individuals will move from the previous stage to this. The characteristic of Conjunctive Faith is an acceptance or realisation that “truth is more multidimensional and organically interdependent than most theories or accounts of truth can grasp” (Fowler 1981, p. 186). This is akin to making the discovery that light can be understood as both a wave and a particle, or “discovering that the rational solution or ‘explanation’ of a problem that seemed so elegant is but a painted canvas covering an intricate, endlessly intriguing cavern of surprising depth” (Fowler 1981, p. 184).

Churches that deny the complex and sometimes paradoxical nature of Scripture and Christian belief, through a desire to offer self-contained and tidy answers, may be in danger of failing those who are moving into this stage of faith development. Dissatisfaction with what has formerly been accepted without question may be mistaken for a loss of confidence in, or commitment to, Jesus Christ, causing leaders to double down rather than engage openly with honest questions. This may result in disillusionment, contributing to the alarming rate of exodus from church (Fazzino 2014). For instance, the former evangelical and now agnostic Brandon Whitmore describes how his journey away from faith was partly precipitated by the easy answers that his church leaders attempted to provide when he struggled with the Old Testament destruction of the Amalekites, and with the contemporary problem of suffering (Chastain and Whitmore 2024).

2.1.4. Reflecting Divine Nuance and Grief

This denialism might be characterised as a refusal to acknowledge either nuance or discomfort. To return to the YouTube video of William Lane Craig’s interview with Alex Connor, Lane’s confidence and affect are the presenting issues. Divine Command Theory, while by no means satisfying everyone, is an internally coherent theodicy. But is it watertight? Does it not present a tension to those who have seen the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ? And surely it is emotionally dishonest to pretend that it makes the slaughter of children feel good.

The Old Testament itself contains resources to help us understand this better. A comparison might be drawn with Job’s friends, who present a theology to Job that is perfectly consistent with the prosperity-piety tradition that the Old Testament contains (compare their argument with, for example, Genesis 12:1–3 or Deuteronomy 28). However, this is not the only theology of poverty and prosperity that the Old Testament describes. For Job’s friends, however, there is room for neither doubt nor empathy. Job is crushed under the steamroller of their certainty.

Compare this with the Old Testament prophetic tradition, which is by no means afraid to offer bold denunciation and declaration of judgement. However, at least at times, this is offered not with glee, but with tears. Isaiah 15–16 is a case in point. The prophet, whose message is God’s own, declares the imminent destruction of the prideful pagan nation of Moab, but with tears rather than delight.

We have heard of the pride of Moab

—how proud he is!—

of his arrogance, his pride, and his insolence;

his boasts are false…

Therefore I weep with the weeping of Jazer

for the vines of Sibmah;

I drench you with my tears,

O Heshbon and Elealeh;

for the shout over your fruit harvest

and your grain harvest has ceased.

(Isa 16:6–9)

Like Hosea and Jeremiah, the prophet here embodies the grief that God himself experiences over the judgement he enacts. “The hand which metes out judgment is not separated from the spirit which grieves over the necessity and effects of such judgment. So the God who has stilled the shouts of joy is also the God who weeps for and with those who now cry” (Oswalt 1986, p. 346). If nuance and discomfort are divine characteristics, then it behoves us to reflect that in our own practice.

We will now turn to the second case study.

2.2. Denying Harms in Our Own Contexts

“When an organisation is seen as successful, people do not look carefully enough about what the price may be for such success”.

(Scolding and Fullbrook 2024, p. 7)

2.2.1. Description

In 2023, following a series of allegations made against Soul Survivor’s leader, Revd Canon3 Mike Pilavachi, the Church of England’s National Safeguarding Team and the Diocese of St Albans conducted an internal investigation into the matter. On 6th September that year the Church of England issued a press release stating that the investigation had substantiated the concerns raised. The statement identified that some of Pilavachi’s behaviour, over a period of four decades, had been spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically abusive (Church of England 2023).

A representative example of Pilavachi’s behaviour can be found in the testimony of the now-successful Christian singer and songwriter Matt Redman. In a video he and his wife released in April 2024, he describes some of his interactions with Pilavachi, who was his youth worker when Redman was in his early teens.

He started to counsel me about my sexual abuse, which looking back I don’t feel awesome about, because he wasn’t a trained counsellor—he’d actually been an accountant just a few years before. And, you know, I was telling him the deepest darkest things, and he was asking me for the details of what happened. The real problematic thing to me about that is he would often wrestle me afterwards. Wrestling was definitely his thing. I know a lot of people who were physically wrestled by Mike, and honestly it was quite often in a hidden room in the church, or it would be around his house away from everyone. And looking back I don’t feel great about that. It didn’t feel good at the time—I didn’t really like physical touch that much because of what happened to me… sometimes it could go on for 20 min. It was like full-on wrestling, but obviously this is a youth leader, this is an adult, this is hidden away from everyone. Looking back, I really don’t feel good about it, and especially as sometimes it happened straight after we’ve been talking about the details of the sexual abuse that I’d suffered.

(Redman and Redman 2024)

The abuse was not considered to require criminal prosecution, but nonetheless was significant enough to trigger an external enquiry, which was led by the barrister Fiona Scolding and her colleague Ben Fullbrook.4 They summarise the abuse and its long-term consequences as follows:

[H]iding in plain sight, was someone who manipulated and controlled others, bullied and sought to abuse his power over those whom he worked alongside in the church and those who came to learn alongside him. That abuse of power has caused deep psychological harm to many with whom he worked closely over 30 years.

(Scolding and Fullbrook 2024)

For our purposes, the key phrase here is “hiding in plain sight”. Within Soul Survivor and the Church of England more widely, Pilavachi’s behaviour appears to have been ignored or condoned for many years—in what might be termed a form of “denialism”. In their video Beth and Matt Redman describe this as the “that’s just Mike” phenomenon.

Beth: We approached a senior leader from a church in London. It was a very emotional conversation… this person—you know, not dismissively or unkindly, just matter of factly—said “That’s just Mike. Nothing will be done”.

Matt: You know, what would always come back if you spoke to someone in authority would be this phrase, “that’s just Mike”.

(Redman and Redman 2024)

This is part of an observable pattern of churches and denominations disregarding abusive practices and silencing those who make allegations of abuse, which has become increasingly evident over the last couple of decades. Such silencing is a recurring theme in the testimonies of survivors of domestic abuse taking place within church contexts.

There was a culture of silence, a culture of submission. There was no context to resist or complain.

(Survivor testimony elicited in interview with the author, published in Paynter 2020, p. 139)

After 14 years of abuse, I was told by my Priest “It’s a storm in a teacup”.

(Survivor testimony, published in Aune and Barnes 2018, p. 51)

2.2.2. The Drive for Success

The stories provided above are just two examples of a tragic pattern that has been recurring with horrifying frequency in the last few years, both in the UK and beyond. Abuse scandals within churches, denominations, and para-church organisations are by no means confined to evangelical groups, but nor are evangelical churches exempt from the issue. A study performed in Cumbria identified a systemic disregard for the issue of domestic abuse. In response to the question of whether domestic abuse was ever mentioned in sermons, 57.1% of respondents could not ever recall it being discussed, with a further 28.3% saying it was mentioned only rarely (Aune and Barnes 2018, p. 26).5

When abuse scandals are investigated, structural issues such as incompetence, indifference, self-interest, or cultures of toxicity are commonly implicated (Paynter 2025). In their report on the Pilavachi affair, Scolding and Fullbrook identify a number of factors that contributed to the silencing of those whom he was harming.

These include (but are not limited to) the notion of spiritual celebrity and the anointed leader, the blurring of boundaries within the Soul Survivor organisations, inadequate performance management and oversight from the trustees and the Church of England, and a failure to take action when matters became known.

(Scolding and Fullbrook 2024, p. 7)

Tellingly, Scolding and Fullbrook conclude that the culture of the organisation, and of the Church of England within which it sits, was so dazzled by Soul Survivor’s “success” that they became blind to its practices. This is borne out by the testimony of Matt Redman, in his further description of the “that’s just Mike” phenomenon.

I’ve heard this phrase from so many people down through the years… “That’s just Mike”. It was almost like saying, “yeah but you’re going to get all this good stuff, he’s going to lead these meetings—great—he’s going to speak, he’s going to be funny, he’s so gifted and talented, he’s got this charismatic personality, and what you have to put up with for that is there’s going to be this mistreatment side”.

(Redman and Redman 2024)

A parallel example can be seen in the USA’s Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) abuse scandal. The investigation report published in 2022 revealed that the previous decades had seen allegations made against 703 alleged abusers within the denomination, allegations which had often not been taken seriously.

For almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention (“SBC”) Executive Committee (“EC”) to report child molesters and other abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff. They made phone calls, mailed letters, sent emails, appeared at SBC and EC meetings, held rallies, and contacted the press…only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some within the EC.

(Guidepost Solutions 2022, p. 3)

This failure to act was found to be driven by a concern for the reputation of the Convention and its churches, and appears to have been related both to a fear of legal liability, and also a theological conviction that reputational damage would impair the gospel effectiveness of the SBC. For example, the SBC’s Executive Committee’s counsel and later interim president, August Boto said in two emails:

We are collecting [the list of SBC ministers arrested for sexual abuse], and may even post them in some way, but we’d have to really examine the potential liabilities that would stem therefrom.

(Quoted in Guidepost Solutions 2022, p. 6)

This whole thing should be seen for what it is. It is a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism. It is not the gospel. It is not even a part of the gospel. It is a misdirection play.

(Quoted in Guidepost Solutions 2022, p. 6)

While there are many differences between the Pilavachi affair and the SBC scandal, they have at least two major factors in common: the institution was slow to act upon reports made, and at least one reason for that was a concern that the “success” of the institution should not be hampered.

3. What This Reveals About Our Operant Theology

‘One can’t believe impossible things’, [said Alice].

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice’, said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast’.

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.

“Make me like a precious stone… light of Jesus shining through”

From the worship song, Jesus, take me as I am, © Dave Bryant 1978.

We have considered two very different pastoral practices found within British evangelicalism, although they are evidently replicated beyond the United Kingdom context. What they have in common is the instinct to conceal or deny inconvenient facts that might unsettle believers or impair the reputation or mission of the church.

3.1. Believing Impossible Things

Believing impossible things is integral to most expressions of the Christian faith. It is certainly integral to evangelical Christianity, whichever precise definition of that term is used. As an absolute minimum, evangelicals believe that a man whom the Roman Empire had subjected to its well-honed judicial process of scourging and crucifixion was, three days later, breaking bread with his friends. This requires the setting aside, or at least the limited suspension, of widely held beliefs about the permanency of death, of personal experiences of bereavement, and of scientific evidence about cell degradation and decomposition. In short, it requires a form of what might broadly be termed denialism. Faith, as the writer of Hebrews (11:1) tells us, is a conviction about things not seen; or, one might explicate, a conviction about things that cannot be proven.

Denying the evidence of our eyes, or the logic of our minds, is a double-edged sword. While the willingness to set aside this rationalist epistemology in (at least) one regard is essential for evangelicals, it may, under some circumstances, predispose us to a wider and less helpful anti-rational perspective. There certainly seems to be evidence that fundamentalist evangelicals, at least in the USA, are susceptible to conspiracy theories; and one factor within the complex set of explanations for this is a willingness to deny what—to others—seems indubitable.

The conspiracy theories’ internal construction and scaffolding match Christianity’s belief-based systems and theoretical structures…The degree to which faith plays a role in Christianity and conspiracy theories is unmistakably related. The denial of reality, reason, and science are no strangers to those who based their “truths” on biblical scriptures through unwavering blind faith.

(Bloom and Rollings 2022, p. 4)

Nicholas Toseland has provided an ethnographic account of British conspiracism in the late 2010s. He notes that it is easier for those who are immersed within a “permeable” worldview to believe in things that might otherwise be considered implausible.

In the Satanic ritual panics of the 1990s, the rumours of ritual abuse that appear implausible to the secular-minded observer are entirely reasonable to an involved observer on-the-ground who derive a cosmology and demonology from a Judaeo-Christian-inspired cultural tradition.

(Toseland 2019, p. 163)

Not every Christian believer is a conspiracy theorist, happily, and conspiracisms are still exceptional in the British church scene. However, the case studies provided above suggest that under certain circumstances, evangelical Christians may be all too ready to deny the evidence of their eyes or the logic of their minds—to great detriment.

3.2. Success as a Proxy Goal

The second factor that the two case studies shared was the desire for “success”—variously referring to missional effectiveness, the continuity of the organisation, or confidence of faith among members of the congregation. I speculated that evangelical church leaders who suppress the challenge presented by certain biblical texts do so out of a desire to protect their congregations from destabilising doubt. Reports on the Pilavachi affair highlighted the priority given to his perceived missional effectiveness, and a similar phenomenon is seen in the SBC’s over-riding concern not to allow its reputation to be tarnished.

The pursuit of “success”, or excellence, is not antithetical to the Christian faith, of course. The apostle Paul speaks of becoming all things to all people, “so that I might by any means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22), of excelling in everything (2 Cor. 8:7), and “having all sufficiency in all things at all times” (2 Cor. 9:8).6 But the measure of success the apostle has in mind stands in stark contrast to success as measured by the metrics of the world. Nowhere is this more clear than in the Corinthian correspondence, where he contrasts himself with the “super-apostles” of his day by listing his failures (2 Cor 11:21–30), and in his letter to the church at Philippi, where he describes all of his credentials as “rubbish” (Phil 3:4–11).

Young people who are apparently captivated by the Christian faith; lack of expressed doubt in a congregation; the longevity of a denomination—these may all be valuable goals. But they are not ultimate goals; they are proxies. An apparently lively national youth movement may indicate a deep and enduring move of the Spirit, but only time and the eschaton will prove that (provisionally and definitively, respectively). A congregation that expresses no doubts may reflect a group of disciples who are solid and mature in their faith, but may alternatively conceal a cognitive dissonance they are experiencing between their knowledge of the character of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and what they read in the text of Joshua.

I have elsewhere argued that we (by which I mean Christians in general) stand in constant danger of substituting our proxy goals for the true and good goals of the Kingdom of God (Paynter 2023, pp. 241–42). It seems impossible not to employ proxy goals in order to evaluate our effectiveness, and even—perhaps—our faithfulness. While the much-slated counting of “bums on seats” (or, as a Canadian student more elegantly put it, of “noses and nickels”) is a poor measure of missional effectiveness, they are not wholly disconnected. We cannot see how our labours are evaluated in the heavenly realm, so we must perform a heuristic estimation from what we can see. But these proxies are only ever, at best, penultimate. And when they become their own goal, we have crossed a dangerous line into utilitarianism.

3.3. Functional Atheism

It would be ironic for a practice that perhaps has its roots in a refusal to surrender to mere rationalism to come full circle and embrace that rationalism, but this is what I will now argue may have happened in the case studies we have considered. The privileging of institutional reputation, of lack of expressed doubt, or of visible success may betray an unarticulated functional atheism that lies at the heart of our practices.

The term “functional atheism” was popularised by Parker Palmer, who writes,

This is the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with me. It is a belief held even among people whose theology affirms a higher power than the human self, people who do not understand themselves as atheists but whose behavior belies their belief!… Functional atheism is the unexamined conviction within us that if anything decent is going to happen here, I am the one who needs to make it happen.

(Palmer 1998, p. 14)

As Parker suggests, functional atheism may manifest itself as an irresistible need to “fiddle”, to take matters into our own hands. At the level of the individual leader, it may lead to workaholism and burn-out. There can be few pastoral leaders who have not experienced the temptation to work through a planned day off because of a belief that they are indispensable. It may lead to manipulative behaviour. Writing from within the Baptist tradition, I acknowledge the temptation to give the church member’s meeting a little shove in the right direction, rather than allow the process of discerning the mind of Christ to run its course. And it may lead to pastoral harm by denying inconvenient realities in order to manipulate things on God’s behalf.

If I am diagnosing this correctly, the issue may lie in a lack of conviction that the Spirit is truly at work. Using Helen Cameron’s terminology, the operant theology of the group does not conform to its espoused theology (Cameron 2010, p. 54).

In our consideration of the first case study, we identified that the motivation appears to be the desire to present the gospel as reasonable and to build up the faith of others. This emerges from both missional and pastoral imperatives. However, might the over-emphasis upon these factors reflect an unarticulated lack of confidence in the work of the Spirit to convict, convert, and build up faith? As for the patriarch Jacob (Gen 25:29–34 and ch. 27, cf. 23:25), perhaps here too there is the temptation to give things a little shove to ensure that God’s purposes are fulfilled. A similar dynamic may be at work in the second set of case studies in which the desire to present the church in the best possible light, or to permit the unfettered work of those perceived as missionally successful, seems to eclipse other concerns.

4. The Shock and Awe of God’s Presence

Nothing in the above argument should be interpreted as an appeal to close the gap between the rational and the life of faith by making the scandalous claims of the Christian faith more plausible. As discussed above, the Christian faith is predicated upon such a gap, and this is especially true for evangelicals who, axiomatically, do not seek to rationalise the supernatural claims of the resurrection (and other doctrines) by means of a Bultmannian demythologisation. My use of the language of denialism is not an appeal to embrace a more rationalist perspective (to be more “sensible”) but to lean more fully into the enchanted world of the gospel (to become more truly “spiritual”).

The calculus of the Kingdom of God is fundamentally irrational. It is about weakness rather than strength, patience rather than force, and appears like folly to the “wise”. It leaves the ninety-nine in pursuit of the one. None of this makes sense unless we believe in a God who is at work in illogical ways and unexpected places. In closing, I will suggest two practices that may help us to recover from our functional atheism.

The first is promoted by Eugene Peterson7 in his book Living the Resurrection. Here, as elsewhere, Peterson is mindful of the danger of internal and silent secularisation.

[T]he feelings, convictions and ideas that clustered around our becoming Christians become background to the center stage drama of our work with its strenuous demands, energizing stimuli, and rich satisfactions. Along the way, the primacy of God and his work gives way ever so slightly to the primacy of our work in God’s kingdom. We begin to think of ways to use God in what we’re doing. The shift is barely perceptible, for we continue to use the vocabulary of our new identity. We continue to believe the identical truths. We continue pursuing good goals. It usually takes a long time for the significance of the shift to show up. But when it does, it turns out that we have not so much been worshipping God as enlisting him as a trusted and valuable assistant.

(Peterson 2006, pp. 32–33)

What has been lost, Peterson argues, is resurrection wonder. “Without wonder, we approach spiritual formation as a self-help project. We employ techniques. We analyze gifts and potentialities. We set goals. We assess progress” (Peterson 2006, p. 30). In other words, we succumb to a functionally atheistic logic.

To counter this, Peterson commends the habit of Sabbath, to assist us in the task of spiritual formation and the recovery of resurrection wonder. Sabbath is a deeply counter-intuitive practice. For the subsistence farmers who were among the first to inhabit this way of being, it was a weekly act of faith. Every Friday, at dusk, tools were put down, no matter the condition of the crop, no matter the imminence of the harvest, and no matter what the activity of the pests. Sabbath was a weekly enacted reminder of the truth that all good things, ultimately, come from the hand of God himself. It was a formative practice that trained God’s people in the pedagogy of wonder. So it still can today. As Peterson puts it, “disengagement from responsibility allows us to see the primacy of God’s presence and work in all of life. In other words, we enter conditions in which we are capable of being surprised by what is other than us, other than what we do or don’t do” (Peterson 2006, p. 115).

Related to this is a second practice that I commend in response to our functional atheism. This is the recovery of what Cheryl Bridges Johns8 refers to as the enchantment of Scripture; its rediscovery as a “sacred, dangerous, mysterious, and presence-filled wonderland” (Johns 2023, p. 35)

We all deserve a Bible that beckons us to enter a wonderland where we encounter a living God who knows and loves us… We deserve a Bible filled with the shock and awe of God’s presence, to the degree that the glory offered by the empires of this world has no appeal. We deserve an enchanted text.

(Johns 2023, p. 29)

Johns proposes a spiritual re-engagement with Scripture in a way that does not disregard the benefits of close and attentive study, but which does not collapse biblical interpretation down to an academic exercise. She commends the recovery of what she terms a “Pentecost imaginary.” Critically, this “does not suspend reason; rather, it offers the possibility for the transrational” (Johns 2023, p. 110). This transrational revelation will always challenge our utilitarian logic, which crushes people in the grand ideological project.

In Pentecost, God is reaching out to lift humanity; in this space, knowledge is gift. As in the story of Babel, human reason alone has led to some tragic choices. The phrase “it makes sense” has been applied to all sorts of human atrocities… The reasoning of Pentecost has an eschatological flavour that brings the future to bear on the present.

(Johns 2023, p. 110)

So, what might it look like if such “shock and awe” were to be a habitual stance within evangelical churches and individuals? We will return to the two case studies and postulate some changes that might result.

4.1. Beyond Rationalisation and Plausibility

With regard to the interpretation of biblical violence, a church that has cultivated a Pentecostal imaginary might be less concerned with explaining or rationalising all that they encounter as they read Scripture. Cheryl Bridges-Johns describes how, paradoxically, both the scientific moves of the Enlightenment, and the reactive fundamentalisation of Scriptural interpretation rely upon the same rationalist epistemology.

Conservatives such as Charles Hodge and B.B. Warfield believed that the Bible could be studied and scientifically proven to be valid. Out of this ethos, they developed the doctrine of Scripture known as inerrancy… God left us an accurate, scientific record. Being a perfect historical document, the text was proof of divine inspiration. Based on this assumption, the Bible, as factual, could be demonstrated to be true… As with its liberal counterpart, fundamentalist biblical studies became a disenchanted science. Within the fundamentalist version of the Bible, there now was no room for the supernatural or the mysterious.

(Johns 2023, p. 13)

Better, perhaps, to allow the Scripture to continue to puzzle, infuriate or bewitch us. A Scripture which has been stripped of all mystery is unlikely to surprise or challenge its readers. In the original lecture tour I described above, I commended the stance of wrestling with the text, and thereby with God himself.

It is no coincidence that the nation which constitutes God’s people in the Old Testament, in taking its name from its patriarch, uses not his childhood name Jacob but the name Israel. This, of course, is the name that he is given [by the Lord] at the ford of Jabbok after they have wrestled all night… It is not a coincidence, because this is what characterizes the people of God from then on—not meek submission to, but wrestling with God.

(Paynter 2018, pp. 11–12)

Such a refusal to collapse the Scriptures down to a set of predicates to be believed—or worse, proved—invites believers into a more open, dynamic, way of reading them. It allows the rawness and roughness of Scripture to butt against our native niceness. For instance, rather than shying away from the imprecatory psalms, such an openness invites believers who live in comfort and safety to recover their scandalised outcry for the sake of the many who do not. Rather than reducing the texts of sexual violence to a single (often male) interpretation, it offers them up to serve the rage of survivors of such harm. Rather than rationalising away the divinely mandated wars, it invites dialogue around many themes, such as violence done in the name of God, the risks of theocracy, and the nature of the cosmic battle. Such generative—and generous—conversations will whet curiosity, opening up imaginative possibilities rather than apprehensively locking Scriptural interpretation into the safe zone, and removing certain texts or perspectives from the conversation. Within the evangelical tradition, which places a high view upon the inspired nature of Scripture (and therefore places theoretical limits upon the multiplicity of meanings), such approaches are only possible if the belief that the Spirit of God is living and active today within both church and Scripture is both espoused and operant.

4.2. Beyond Concealment and Silencing

All the main denominations in Britain now have established safeguarding procedures and regional or national teams to train, advise, and respond. It is to be hoped that prolonged systematic abuse by powerful individuals can never again go unchallenged and be covered up. However, that hope has been entertained before, and stories continue to emerge, year upon year. So, what might the refusal of functional atheism add to the struggle?

A church or denomination that has been formed by the pedagogy of shock and awe will have a heightened awareness of the activity of the Spirit of God, not just by pursuing supernatural signs or seeking dramatic spiritual gifts, but by having a deep conviction that the work of church-forming and disciple-making is primarily the work of God. Church leaders who have been formed by the pedagogy of Sabbath wonder will be prepared to make the shift from employing the calculus of the market to trusting the invisible, irrational economics of the Kingdom of God, reducing the temptation to manipulate people or processes to optimise what can be seen or counted. An operant theology of the real presence of the same God who roared from Zion against abusers and oppressors (see Amos 1.2 and the whole of the book) will give churches and their leaders a sober appreciation of the risks they run by displeasing him by colluding with abusers.

4.3. In Conclusions

Cheryl Bridges Johns joins Eugene Peterson and other authors who call for a rediscovery of the transcendent in our spiritual practices and in our churches. Perhaps this has been most sublimely expressed by Annie Dillard.

Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

(Dillard 1982, pp. 58–59)

If we can recover this vision of a God who is living and dangerous, who does not submit to our agendas or follow our timelines, whose economics flies in the face of human accounting, perhaps then there is hope for our functional atheism. Perhaps we can learn to trust God in our doubts and perplexity, and not feel the need to smooth out all the roughness of Scripture. Perhaps we can learn to trust that God’s mission is not dependent upon the success of charismatic individuals or our slick and shiny church facades, and so make space for all to be heard, including those with inconvenient narratives to tell.

Ultimately, we British evangelicals need to recover a better form of denialism. After all, if we can believe one impossible thing (whether before or after breakfast), perhaps we can believe a few more.