Straw Man Jesus, Narnian Dwarfs, and Exvangelicalism

  "Well," said the Black Dwarf (whose name was Griffle), "I don't know how all you chaps feel, but I feel I've heard as much about Aslan as I want to for the rest of my life."
  "That's rights, that's right," growled the other Dwarfs. "It's all a plant, all a blooming plant."
  "What do you mean?" said Tirian. He had not been pale when he was fighting but he was pale now. He had thought this was going to be a beautiful moment, but it was turning out more like a bad dream.
  "You must think we're blooming soft in the head, that you must," said Griffle. "We've been taken in once and now you expect us to be taken in again the next minute. We've no more use for stories about Aslan, see! Look at him! AN old moke with long ears!"
  "By heaven you make me mad," said Tririan. "Which of us said that was Aslan? That is the Ape's imitation of the real Aslan. Can't you understand?"
  "And you've got a better imitation, I suppose!" said Griffle. "No thanks. We've been fooled once and we're not going to be fooled again."

A straw man argument is a logical fallacy in which someone substitutes their opponents actual argument with a much weaker version, then disproves the weaker version (the straw man) and claims to have disproved the overall position. The straw man fallacy is especially irritating because it tends to occur more as propaganda than in actual arguments between two people. Because people usually know what their own arguments are, it is very hard to successfully deploy a straw man argument in a private one-on-one discussion; it inevitably runs into "well, sure you have disproved that argument but that wasn't what I was saying". The really pernicious use of a straw man argument is when it is deployed while arguing to an audience--which is probably why it has become so common online. If you tear apart an argument your interlocutor was never making and then proceed to announce your victory over their position, you clearly will not have swayed them but you may succeed in convincing those who are following the debate that you have won. This is true whether you deployed the straw man argument intentionally--arguing in bad faith and hoping more to convince than to work towards truth--or unintentionally--sincerely (but mistakenly) believing that the argument you took down was the best your interlocutor has to offer. So that is a straw man: an easily undermined argument in favor of a conclusion for which far more robust arguments exist.

Given the obvious fact that Christianity is a far lager and more diverse phenomenon than is white American Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism, it always comes as something of a surprise to me when #Exvangelicals (the online community which has been built by and for Ex-Evangelicals 1) insist that their rejection of Fundamentalist (or sometimes conservative Evangelicalism) somehow disproves all of Christianity. As David Bentley Hart and others have pointed out, the vision of Christianity over which the New Atheists are forever trumpeting their victory, is very much a straw man version of Christianity. Even more, the god whom they claim to have disproved is very much a god of straw, in the context of Christianity, the Jesus they reject is a straw man Jesus.

All of this does not (and I want this to be clearly understood) mean that those who accept these arguments are operating in bad faith. On the contrary I lay the blame here not at the feet of the New Atheists but at the feet of the self-identified Christians who have built a religion around the worship of straw-God and straw-man-Jesus. I have found that post-evangelicals are frequently bemused but the fact that the virulent atheists and the virulent fundamentalists we end up at odds with online seem to agree with one another. I have had atheists yell at me for believing in the wrong version of Christianity and insisting on the sort of bizarrely literalist interpretations of religious texts which they would never apply to any other historical document. I cannot, in good faith, accuse the New Atheists of arguing in bad faith because the straw man God they delight in disproving is very much worshiped by a great number of fundamentalist and conservative white American Evangelical Christians 2.

I also need to stipulate that the straw-man-ness of the Christianity promulgated by these fundamentalists and conservative white American Evangelicals does not mean that their beliefs are insincere. To the contrary, I am convinced that the vast majority of them hold to their religion in good faith. But a sincerely held wrong belief is no less dangerous (and in some ways I hope to address, significantly more dangerous) than one maintained in bad faith. The really insidious effect of this fundamentalist religion of the straw-man-Jesus which I want to focus on for the remainder of this piece derives from the fact that this idolatry really believes itself to be Christian.

In The Last Battle one of the most tragic accounts (recounted above) is that of a band of Narnian Dwarfs. In the book the Dwarfs, together with quite a few fellow Narnians are taken in by an ape named Shift who convinces his simple yet generally good-hearted donkey friend Puzzle to wear a lion's skin and impersonate the Christ-figure Aslan 3. In their deceived condition the Dwarfs are horribly mistreated and eventually reduced to slave workers before they are eventually freed by the heroes in the name of the real Aslan. The tragedy of the dwarfs turns on their ultimate unwillingness to accept the real Aslan in the wake of their deception by the false. "The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs," they announce "we won't be taken in again."

You see the parallel. It would have been relatively straightforward for a 1st century woman to renounce a belief in Zeus only to accept, some time later, allegiance to Freya or Thor or. The latter shared no real identity with the former and thus acceptance of the latter would have been little impeded by rejection of the former. A man who has given up belief in unicorns is not thereby much defended against belief in elephants. But to have rejected a straw man version of Jesus, a half-Jesus who bears the name of the real Christ and some of his characteristics, is both a real move forward and a half step back specifically because it erects a barrier against all claimants to the title "Christ".

Of course the psychological phenomena here are well established. "Fool me once," the old saying goes, "shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." to have been mistreated, abused, and taken advantage of will inevitably tend to create barriers and guards in the hearts and minds of the victims. This is all very well insofar as it helps us to become more critical and more discerning. The wisdom of serpents is as hard to win as the innocence of doves can be to reclaim after all. But we humans fool ourselves in thinking that we are overly rational, and our emotional being is conditioned by betrayal to reject forcefully all that seems too similar to that which first betrayed us.

This, I suspect, is the very heart of what it means to be Anti-Christ. Not a being 180 degrees removed from the real and living person of Jesus of Nazareth, but a caricature just similar enough that allegiance to it ends in subjugation while rejection walls away the very Christ whom it aped to begin with. It was not Puzzle's difference from Aslan which betrayed the drwarfs but his similarity and his identification with the Real Lion. It is, similarly not the dissimilarities between white American Evangelicalism and allegiance to Christ which harms the #Exvangelicals, it is their proximity-in-distance. The old, philosophical term for this is harsh, and yet quite appropriate here: perversion. The gun toting, 'Merica loving, homophobic, pro-capitalist white Jesus is a foul straw man perversion and we are witnessing its current foul work in the unholy union of white American Evangelicalism and Trumps fascist vision of the United States, facilitated by his false court prophets. Rejection of this idol of straw is certainly a necessity and we would do well to offer support and friendship to those who manage it.

I want to return to the story of the Narnian dwarfs for one final bit of Lewisian insight. Griffle and his crew go on, in the story to work with, and against, both the ultimate heroes and villains of the book. Their deadly archery proves decisive in the titular last battle of the book as the employ it both against the talking horses rallying to aid the last true King of Narnia and against the servants and allies of Shift who are working to subjugate the last of the free Narnians. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs. I have found this same dynamic to be true in my interactions with many (certainly not all) atheist #Exvangelicals. Their rhetoric is turned against the straw-man religion of white American Evangelicalism (and Fundamentalism)  as it is against the work and claims of other Christians. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs after all. But I want to caution against certain tempting harsh reactions against this proud, if traumatized population. Or rather, I want to let C.S. Lewis do the cautioning for me.

At the end of all (Narnian) things, the world has ended and our heroes have moved into Aslan's country:

  "I hope Tash ate the Dwarfs too," said Eustace. "Little swine"
  "No, he didn't," said Lucy. "And don't be horrible. They're still here. In fact you can see them from here. And I've tried and tried to make friends with them but it's no use."
  "Friends with them! cried Eustace. "If you knew how those Dwarfs have been behaving!"
  "Oh stop it Eustace," said Lucy. Do come and see them. King Tirian, perhaps you could do something with them."
  "I have no great love for Dwarfs today," said Tirian. "Yet at your asking, Lady, I would do a greater thing than this." 

Our heroes find the dwarfs sitting in a tight circle and believing, despite the fact that they are in a lovely wide open field, that they are held prisoner in a stable. Tirian and the rest try their best but the Dwarfs remain in their circle defiantly insisting on their own misery and captivity. Eventually Aslan, the real Aslan, shows up and Lucy tries again.

  "Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you--will you--do something for these poor Dwarfs?"
  "Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again!"
  Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at! Never thought we'd come to this." But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses they all said:
  "Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs." 

  "You see," said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out." 

The story really is tragic but I think that one crucial element of it is terribly overlooked. The Dwarfs are not excluded; they are included in the new, real Narnia. True, what was done to them has made them--for the time being and maybe (let us hope and pray not) forever--unable to participate but they are not barred from flourishing. As Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain "The Gates of Hell are locked on the inside." Within the Narnia canon we never find out the final fate of the Dwarfs, Lewis leaves open both the possibility that they will remain forever locked in the stable-prison of their own minds, or that they may in time, wake up to reality and move joyfully "further up and further in" where the inside is always bigger than the outside and joy cascades upon joy. This great sin must be laid once more at the feet of the straw-man Jesus of white American Evangelicalism, that it has inflicted a wound, a trauma of the sort that cannot be healed until healing is sought.

1 For the sake of clarity, I will, in this article distinguish between #Exvangelicals and post-evangelical. for my purposes, #Exvangelicals are those who identify themselves primarily in opposition to Evangelicalism, while post-evangelicals are those who identify with where they have arrived. Of course real people lie along a spectrum between these two poles and the whole thing is far messier than my binary treatment would seem to imply. Nonetheless I think the distinction useful insofar as there is value in understanding the characteristics which shape polar ends of a gradation.
2 There may well be quite a few Jews and Muslims who believe in this straw-God as well but I am insufficiently versed in those traditions to make such an assertion with any degree of certainty. I am confident of the planks in my own tradition's eye that I would be remiss in finding specks in theirs.
3 If all of this is seeming far fetched or overly strange to you then please stop reading here, go read the full Chronicles of Narnia and come back. You will thank me.