Employing the Accommodationist Triad in the Culture Wars

https://www.vcyamerica.org/crosstalk/2021/03/03/american-heritage-girls/

This is yet another example of the Accommodationist Triad (see below) at work within Evangelicalism. Posing as cultural conservatives and traditionalists, they assume one-time liberal (now Right-wing) arguments in order to score their political victories. And yet the assumptions they have embraced represent a fatal compromise of the very conservative values they claim to uphold. Their arguments are ultimately self-defeating. It's a case of fighting off an acute poison by the utilisation of a long term cancer.

The guest assumes the basic arguments of feminism along with the employment of pro-feminist arguments contra the proposed Equality Act. This has become a typical line in Right-wing circles. Title IX legislation which represents feminist principles applied to school sports was decried back in the day and Christians (generally speaking) were culturally conservative and therefore were less than keen to encourage their daughters to enter the realm of competitive sports. I can attest personally that it's hard for people to even grasp today but there are still a few of us that hold to the old view – the view that was still common enough in the 1970's, that it's unbecoming for Christian girls to wear athletic outfits, act like boys, get all sweaty and act in the bestial manner requisite in many competitive sports. More than once I've had fellow homeschool parents look at me with bewilderment when I indicate that not only did my daughters (and even sons for that matter) not participate in school sports, but we had no interest in them – even if the school district was amenable to granting us access.

Christian femininity is not commensurate with the girl's sports and for that matter Christian character and ethics are hardly compatible with sports in general. Those that think Paul was advocating sports in his epistolary illustrations have misunderstood his point as I'm sure they have the parables of Christ as well.

In the past I've written about the Christian high school I attended for a couple of years and the problems and incongruities with their sports ethic. Even as an unbeliever I struggled with playing football or embracing their ethos regarding it. To be effective I had to want to hurt the other person and yet they had this silly notion that somehow it was all okay and even God-glorifying, because after you knocked them down you would help them up – and of course ostentatiously pray before and after matches.

I've never been impressed with the scouting movement and its quasi-militarist fusion of character and patriotism. In this case the feminist ethos is once again at work – teaching Christian girls to be leaders even though this is contrary to the Biblical model for the Church and home and it is certainly a rejection of the domestic sphere the New Testament calls Christian women to inhabit. Like so many 'conservatives' these Right-wing folks reject much that is traditional and conservative and instead embrace an ethic that is little more than mammonism and its outworkings. And as expected there is more than a little hint of dominionist thought at work.

Likewise we see the employment of psychological argumentation which was at one time almost universally rejected in conservative Christian circles and yet has now been in embraced – even with zeal. Here it is being employed in a disingenuous fashion to score political points against the Democratic calls for lockdowns, masks, and the like – basic medical protocols that the vast majority of the world have accepted in an attempt to curtail and eradicate the pandemic.

In terms of the 'psychological damage' being done to children forced to stay home or do their schooling online, it's a conversation I've had many times in recent days, but I guess there's a generational shift at work. For my part I would have been thrilled not to have to go to school and just about everyone I talk to (middle-aged or older) feels the same way. But apparently it's different with today's kids.

I've been more than a little shocked and put off by the way Evangelicals keep appealing to 'mental health' with regard to children staying home and frankly in many instances I think the appeal is more about scoring a political point than it is anything genuine. As indicated in a previous piece I consider it disgraceful that the local Evangelical (I do not say Christian) radio station ran special programmes to help Christian parents deal with the trauma of the 'lockdown' and having to deal with their spouses and kids being home all day for days on end.

What should be a natural scenario (and for Christian families a happy one) has become a crisis. It's a sad commentary on the degenerate state of the Evangelical family and to what degree it has become acculturated.

For my part I can testify that CrossTalk is a terrible show – little more than Right-wing propaganda in most cases. The show which posits itself as being something of a stalwart vis-à-vis the disintegrating Evangelical scene is in the end just as corrupt and degenerate – just often in different ways. The show is frequently a platform for Bircher-type narratives and theories and in recent years it has become an aggressive mouthpiece for Trumpism.

In this case, in terms of the Accommodationist Triad's embrace of feminism and psychology and all they assume and produce – the show is pretty much mainstream. And that's one of the great deceits about their movement. Merely Right-wing they're not actually conservatives, and as far as being Biblical, while they have certain points right, they're deadly wrong on so many others that the end result is little more than confusion and false religion. They have missed the forest through the trees and one can safely say they have misread the Bible on a massive scale.

See also:

http://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2021/02/mammon-and-accommodationist-triad-of.html

https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2015/12/observing-two-december-deaths-and.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2020/01/vcy-crosstalk-chaos.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2020/12/lutzers-trumpite-christianity-and-its.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-heritage-howse-of-cards.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-lesser-magistrate-heresy.html