Sticker Cluster
December 12, 2020
I came across this car in a downtown parking lot in Henderson, Kentucky, up on the Ohio River across from Evansville, Indiana. It pretty well announces that it’s not “warmly evangelical,” a perspective and lifestyle the driver associates with Asheville, North Carolina. But that’s not the only spiritual stance once encounters in that hilly region. Within 20 miles of Asheville is the Southern Baptist’s Ridgecrest Conference Center, the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove, and the site of Billy Graham’s long-standing home in Montreat.
As for the sticker cluster, I’ve notice that these conglomerations are almost always a “liberal” or “progressive” package deal. While you may see a couple or three edgy conservative ID’s on a vehicle, the sort of wretched excess you see on this car is, in my experience, the darling of “liberated” folks who celebrate their deliverance from Judeo-Christian scruples, even to the point of nastiness. Of course, they have their own religion, and yes, you often find overlap with the interests of some Christians, but there is no doubt that the driver of this car is proudly indifferent to faithful expository preaching. Indeed, a “Heathen” sticker is there to remove all doubt. Talk about a snapshot of the soul.
BTW, the word ‘heathen’ derives from old English word for “wasteland”—the “heath”—out where the “hicks” lived. It was later connected with religion when the Early Church was making headway in the cities, but the gospel hadn’t yet impacted the rustics in the boondocks, folks still mired in their animism, ancestor worship, or whatever. The same goes for ‘pagan,” which derives from the Latin word for “country folk.” While the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” was growing dramatically in Rome and Ephesus, the outback residents hadn’t yet gotten the memo.
Alas, this driver has gotten the gospel memo and tossed it aside.