Justin R. Phillips - Know Your Place: Helping White, Southern Evangelicals Cope with the End of The(ir) World

Helping White, Southern Evangelicals Cope with the End of The(ir) World

Justin R. Phillips

Foreword by David P. Gushee

I am David Gushee, whom Justin Phillips describes in this book as a promising, late-thirties southpaw reliever as of 1999 . I wish to begin by saying that I remain a promising southpaw reliever, still wearing # and still looking for work in professional baseball as I have since 1984 .

But enough about that. To the work at hand.

We live in an apocalyptic time.

I do not just mean that we live in a time in which fires consume the West Coast, protests wrack our cities, gun-toting paramilitaries go looking for trouble, and the US president threatens (as I write) not to honor the results of the 2020 presidential election.

I mean to retrieve the Greek term transliterated apokalypsis , which is where we get the word apocalyptic. That term means unveiling. This is helpful to know. It means something like this: to say that the book of Revelation is an apocalyptic work is to say not just thats theres lots of blood and chaos, but that the book purports to unveil the spiritual realities behind the blood and chaos.

Many of usthat is, the white, southern, (ex-?) evangelicals that Justin Phillips describes and addresses in this bookhave experienced recent years as an unveiling of the toxic elements in our little subculture. For decades we sat fairly easily with our whiteness, southernness, and evangelicalism. Usually also with our maleness and straightness, for that matter. But now we are discovering that all is not well; indeed, all is not at all well.

It is not the case that we lacked resources to get to this unveiling before, say, 2016 . Justin Phillips, David Gushee, and many others of us had access to plenty of church leaders, theologians, historians, and regular folk who long ago were saying that white southern evangelicalism was, in one of Justins most striking phrases here, a decaying body housing a legion of demonic spirits. But it seems to have taken the election of Donald Trump and the slobbering deference (another priceless phrase in this book) of many white southern evangelicals to this man to unveil the sickness in a way that we could not miss and that we now find urgent to understand and repent.

I am so glad that the clever student I first met over two decades ago has now come out with this book, which I can only describe as #fire. Writing from ruby-red east Tennessee, with a background in blood-red west Tennessee, Justin Phillips tells the truth about whiteness, southernness, and evangelicalism as it exists in this region.

Justin is an affectionate observer, not a scold. He is a great storyteller. He can write about music, sports, Christian schools, church, or theology with equal skill. There are times that if you know this region you will laugh out loud, embarrassing yourself before whomever you happen to be around. The book oozes home-folks familiarity and great warmth. Justin loves this region and this people.

But make no mistake, this is a plea for repentance. Justin Phillips has seen enough to know that repentance is needed. He makes clear that if we want to be followers of Jesus, we are going to need to unfollow much of the way of life white Christian folk have built here over many centuries.

I understand that this book began as more of a bridge-building exercise. It was a hey, white Christian teenagers like many I have taught here, I wonder if you might be able to consider this non-Fox News perspective on some things you think you are sure about. That might have been a helpful book, but I dont think it is this book. Nor do I think it is what is most needed in this time. Instead, Justin Phillips makes his own contribution to the unveiling of hard truth in this apocalyptic time. And I am glad.

David P. Gushee

Atlanta, Georgia

September , 2020