Evangelicalism
I wasn’t raised religious, but in my early twenties I joined an evangelical church.
During my childhood, we celebrated Christmas at home. One year when I was in grade school, I received every present I asked for. A day or two later, all the ritual and celebration behind us, I recall feeling an overwhelming disappointment.
That was the earliest memory I have of dysthymia. It continued on into young adulthood. Then, I discovered religion.
The specific brand of religion was not uncommon in my culture. What captivated me was the sense of cosmic purpose embedded into Evangelical Christianity. All that was required of me was to publicly affirm an ideology and I was accepted into a fellowship.
More profound was the doctrine that all believers were agents of God, tasked with establishing God’s reign globally. Imagine the change in my perspective after emerging from a stint as a homeless, depressed pothead.
This sense of global Christianity inexorably transforming the misguided “world” system fascinated me. In fact, I graduated from a religious college with a concentration in “mission”. My wife and I gladly left behind our lives in the States to go serve others who had less affluence and opportunities than we had.
As it turned out, this globalist impulse to transform the world was not limited to Evangelicalism. Other popular ideologies of that era included Marxism, some forms of Islam, and, of course, Neoliberalism. I encountered all these ideologies during my years in Kenya.
As exciting as it seemed to participate in a movement aimed at global transformation, ideologies are based on ideals. Ideals are like desert mirages, exhausting those who chase them.
As I wrote Mzungu 1989, I reflected my gradual drift from an ideology that literally transformed my life.
Perhaps that's the function of ideology, to empower its adherents. As I encounter the competing visions for our contemporary era, I wonder whether the activists, allies, influencers, & philanthropists are in need of transformation rather than the world.