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\u201d\u201dVeritas Riff\u201d\u201dinvolves getting staid Christian scholars to do improvisational comedy.<\/p>\n
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\u201d\u201dprecisely 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.<\/p>\n
If the organizers have conspiracy in mind, theirs is an unlikely one. The applicants\u201d\u201dyoung and midcareer Christian scholars\u201d\u201dwere 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.<\/p>\n