Not long ago, books with titles like “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism” warned that theologically conservative Protestants are bent on taking over the country. It may be more nefarious than critics had originally supposed. The evangelicals’ latest strategy””Veritas Riff””involves getting staid Christian scholars to do improvisational comedy.
Veritas Riff is the brainchild of four evangelical leaders in their 30s and early 40s who are highly connected in the Christian world but less well known outside””precisely the types, in other words, that conspiracy theorists might suspect as the ringleaders of a Christian cabal. Curtis Chang, the former pastor of a Silicon Valley church, runs a consulting firm that advises nonprofits and governmental entities; Andy Crouch is an editor of Christianity Today and author of the book “Culture Making”; D. Michael Lindsay teaches sociology at Rice University and is the author of “Faith in the Halls of Power”; and Dan Cho is the executive editor of Veritas Forum, which organizes popular conferences on faith and the life of ideas at universities around the country and sponsors Veritas Riff.
If the organizers have conspiracy in mind, theirs is an unlikely one. The applicants””young and midcareer Christian scholars””were asked a series of questions related to their expertise and their desire to become “Christian thought leaders” who “can speak in a culturally influential manner to a broad audience.” The 13 inaugural fellows include an astrophysicist at NASA; an art historian; a newly tenured professor in Harvard’s African and African American Studies department; a geonomic medicine resident; a historian; a law professor (me); and Michael Gerson, the Washington Post columnist and former Bush speechwriter.
Ugh.
The skills learned in Improvisational Comedy are pretty essential to parish ministry. It requires attention, discipline, a sense of teamwork, and a willingness to get out of one’s own head.
Don’t know how useful they are to scholars.