Saturday, January 19, 2008

The Rebelution: Godliness From Below

On the subject of the unintended political consequences of godliness, there is an interesting movement among Evangelical youth being led by 19 year old twins Alex and Brett Harris. They call it The Rebelution, "a teenage rebellion against the low expectations of an ungodly culture," and the call to their generation is, "Do Hard Things." In adition to the website and a conference tour, they have a book titled with the words of the call, Do Hard Things.

Their blog has posts on "The Myth of Adolescence," "The Importance of Character," The Rise of the Kidult" the freedom to be found in modesty, and "Modern Day Chivalry." And it's all cool.

Check out this 16 year old, Zachary Hunter, who is fighting modern day slavery through an effort called "Loose Change to Loose Chains," and who has written a book entitled Be The Change.

But despite the obvious social benefits of movements like this, they nonetheless scare the Chablis and brie out of secular liberals because they promote a culture of moral self-restraint, which secular liberals identify with tyranny, and they inevitably result in Republican political majorities which are unacceptable evils to be avoided at all costs. For an interesting booklength statement of that fear, see Lauren Sander's Righteous: Dispatches From The Evangelical Youth Movement (Penguin, 2007).

On Evangelical youth, see my previous posts, "America's Evangelical Future" and "America's Unstable Evangelicals."

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