My life as a subculture geek
Twenty years ago this month, I was an enthusiastically odd kid with an Atari 800XL computer and a daisy-wheel printer. I decided that I wanted to publish a magazine. It’s strange looking back on that decision, as it ended up becoming a major chunk of my life for almost seven years. It’s how I decided I wanted to be involved in Christian media, how I got linked in to conservative politics, and how I ended up getting my first real tastes of freelance writing and graphic design. It’s how I ended up co-hosting the 700 Club once, too…
I was home-schooled through junior and senior high school, and came of age in the years when Culture War rhetoric was really ramping up. At the same time, the merchandising of Christianity was taking off. God’s Gym T-shirts and target-marketed bibles and the infamous “Testamints” breath mints were in their formative years. I talked a lot about wanting to share Christianity with other kids “in a way that’s fun, not boring.” I was pretty young at the time, and I was convinced that the problem with Christianity and kids was about presentation: stuffy people talking down to kids, and all that.
Last month, I dug up my zine’s old archives (a cardboard box packed with carefully stapled 8 1/2 x 11 issues) and started flipping through them. After a bit of tinkering, I scanned them in and converted them to PDFs. Most of the material is what you’d expect from a ten year old writing articles about why leaves change color. Some of the stuff, though — especially in later years — is an interesting look back at the things I was really passionate about in my early teens.
I reviewed books, finagled my way into interviews with local politicians and lobbyists for conservative and pro-life organizations, and i took potshots at liberals. I wrote a lot of impassioned treatises about Christians “not checking their brains at the door,” a phrase that came from one of Josh McDowell’s apologetics books for teens. In a lot of ways, the vigorous and active approach to apologetics that I thought would convince others of the truth of the Gospel is what ended up shaking my own faith. It’s funny how that stuff works out…
What’s most interesting in retrospect is that I saw the rise of the ‘Conservative Christian Machine’ as we now know it. I remember listening and talking to others about The Media and The Public School System and Political Correctness and other demons. In the early 90s, I posted about the launch of TownHall.org, a web site for conservatives. Today, the site is the nerve center of a parallel news syndication channel that sees Fox News as just a bit too liberal.
I don’t think that I lost the ideals that I held when I was writing those things, waving the flags, and cheering causes that now make me cringe. I just came to the conclusion that, underneath it all, those Hot Button Issues had very little to do with the actual stuff of faith. And questioning those things? Well… that just raised more questions. Some of them, I’m still asking today.
Hi Jeff,
I was sitting next to you for the Toronto Drupal meetup on Thursday night. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you about this blog but there was too much else (Drupal) to talk about.
I can identify with you in many ways. I was brought up the son of a Baptist pastor in England. I have a particular passion against the Christian “money machine”. It was Jesus who said “Freely you received, freely give.” (Matt 8:10) That sounds almost like he was GPL’ing the Kingdom. (Maybe that’s why I like open source.)
However, where I differ from you is that after I did a Ph.D. in computer science I decided I wanted to pursue my “questions” and did a 3-year masters in theology and wound up running a theological seminary. After another ten years I had to leave the job because some of my questions led me to answers that the institution didn’t like.
I would call myself an orthodox Christian, but I would probably agree with around 95% of the stuff on this site. Interesting reading—thanks!
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Submitted by Andrew Fountain (not verified) on Mon, 10/15/2007 - 03:13.Hey! I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you — it was my first Drupal meetup and the number of people there was really a pleasant surprise.
I like the bit about GPL and the concept of “The Kingdom of God” — I’ve been thinking over the past year or so that the philosophy of the company I work for has been really refreshing and life-giving for some of the same reasons. We put a really high emphasis on educating clients so they don’t need us, contributing back, “training our future competitors” and other things like that. It’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t necessarily make sense from a pure monetary standpoint but strangely ends up paying off…
Thanks for swinging by, I’d love to chat with you more about your thoughts on this stuff. Hopefully I’ll see you around more!
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Submitted by Eaton on Fri, 10/19/2007 - 15:37.“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth“
( Nietzsche ).
Would not the developmental course of Mankind follow the same patterned matrix characteristics as that of a progenies relationship to its progenitor and primogenitor? Therefore just like the myth of Santa Claus, as that being, a temporal belief dispelled by the natural course of intellectual development. Then too, couldn’t man’s belief in an overseeing governance of justice, forgiveness and provider of hope and direction, also be a designed myth provided by convention as man’s moral compass and a wellspring of fellowship and goodwill?
Was God around for the caveman, or did he conveniently appear as mankind’s intellectual awareness of his own fragile mortality also came into being? Could not the invention of an all powerful myth, be a manifestation of man’s desire for something solid to anchor and hold onto against an unrelenting oscillating tide of universal change, and isn’t this why God appeared differently, but with the same message, simultaneously in differing cultures.
Then too, couldn’t the feared “Armageddon” represent an intellectual awakening and the end of a people’s need for religious leaders like CUFI founder John Hagee, who themselves prosper off the growing public fears and the misery of the innocent.
Because of a connate sense of belonging, when asked, individuals will always describe their political as well as religious secular affiliations (personas) as pertaining to their broader mindset of humanity and not necessarily referencing their individual allegiance to a monastic and/or perfunctory restrictions and responsibilities.
Therefore, referring to America’s religious community as being in and of itself, an indication of a growing American predominance, is disingenuous. When the fact is America’s overall religious devotion is in decline and thereby demonstrating the overall purpose of inculcating religious doctrines was to create an instinctual human sense of morality.
This is also, evidence that Darwin’s natural selection also pertains to and encompasses the advancement of a collective ameliorated knowledge versus the individual’s archaic and antiquated solipsistic beliefs. Holism, where the “whole” has a greater value (reality) then the sum of it’s comprising parts.
Come on people get real, God is in the process and not sitting on high orchestrating and adjudicating every aspect of life. Sooner or later your going to have to realize that; God, Santa Claus, The Lone Ranger and Nietzsche’s Superman etc… are all one in the same and represent just figments (placebo) of our imagination, and as such, just facets along the road of evolutionary development.
“I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief”
(Kant).
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Submitted by ray burchard (not verified) on Tue, 10/23/2007 - 08:08.Post new comment