A few weeks ago, Mark DeVine and I attended the annual banquet for The American Spectator, held in the (trigger warning) Trump International Hotel (formerly the Old Post Office) in DC. Mark was a colleague at MBTS in the late 1990s, and since our days there, he’s been a teacher for the IMB in Thailand and a prof at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham. We’d both written a number of articles for the publication, which comes out daily at spectator.org and occasionally in print. (I began in 2006, with, now, a total of 17 pieces; Mark came on in 2020 and already has 9 articles. You can check these 26 items out at here and here).

If you scan down through them, you’ll see that we’re not keen on “woke” thinking and acting, and that’s congenial to the publisher. Alas, it’s not so congenial to much of the Christian press and Evangelical leadership, many of whom buy into the narrative and think that woke postures are Christlike. And then there are the uncommitted who think that “winsome bridge-building” to the woke-inclined is justifiably and optimally missional. Perhaps they dread vilification and dismissal by the “social justice” crowd or are simply dazzled by the media narratives, rife with carefully engineered optics and slanderous pronouncements. Some hope to maintain peace with elements of their constituencies, or to enjoy inroads to other constituencies. Others stand “above it all,” dismissive of cultural “trifles”  beneath our Great Commission concern, allergic to anything “divisive,” as if we weren’t already divided between deplorables and deplorers within the family of faith (with the deploring flowing both ways, whether, for example, toward Trump voters or Never-Trumpers); and as if we could become healthily undivided absent the aid of clear thinking and plain speaking.

As Mark and I made our way on into the hall, we met Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, one of the evening’s speakers. We were talking with him when the event photographer nudged us toward the logo backdrop for a shot, which you see here. As chairman of the Republican Governors Association (with 27 of them), Ducey has pushed back against the Biden regime on a number of fronts, observing, for example that our president is “more concerned with masks than math for our kids” and with “controlling education more than border security.” 

Joining him on the program were four receiving a journalism award—David Daleiden (who exposed Planned Parenthood’s traffic in aborted baby parts); James O’Keefe (who saw his Twitter account cancelled when he publicized CNN’s derelict/phony coverage of Black Lives Matter); Abigail Shrier (who revealed Planned Parenthood’s provision of cross-sex hormones for gender transition), and Christopher Rufo (who’s covered the extensive and baleful influence of CRT in our schools). 

There were a lot of interesting people to meet. I got to thank Jeffrey Lord for his political commentary. Mark got a picture with Ben Stein. And around the tables at dinner, we conversed with a range of genial folks. At mine, I found myself with two conservative rabbis and their wives, a Japanese diplomat, and YAF’s first executive director. And, of course, it was a pleasure to meet or re-meet American Spectator leadership and staff—on this evening, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, Melissa Mackenzie, and Ellie Gardey.

So yes, we Evangelicals were hanging with the Guv’nor (who is Catholic) as well as with rabbis. And who knows what other religious or irreligious persuasions were in play. But, as Ben Franklin is reputed to have said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must hang together or surely we shall hang separately.” No, American Spectator is not an arm of the church, but it does let those of us who place our faith in Christ pitch in observations, even quoting the Bible. In doing so, we’re co-belligerents with those seeking to counter the obfuscations and machinations of our nation’s cultural wrecking crew. And, in this, we enjoy the respect of “non-woke” non-Christians such as the Abigail Shrier, one of the evening’s journalism honorees, who once tweeted, “I’m not a Christian, but it seems to me that bona fide American greatness required Christianity. It lent capitalism higher purpose & concern for national interest, inspired defense of our freedoms, constrained our selfishness, & put people w different politics in the same pews.”

More than once Mark and I have been asked, in effect, by Nervous Nellies and Appalled Aldens, “What do you think you’re doing writing inflammatory stuff for those guys? Knock it off!” Well, I hope I’m not being pretentious to suggest that we’re doing our best to honor Jeremiah’s directive from God to the exiles in Babylon—to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” If you think acquiescence to wokeness is the formula for “peace and prosperity,” then we beg to differ and don’t mind saying so.