Critic Cal

Unusually for a Christian book, William P. Young's  The Shack   (Now A Major Motion Picture ) caused quite a stir in the wider publishing world. For those unfamiliar, it is a story about a man in the wake of life-wrecking tragedy, who finds himself the invited guest of the triune God in a shape-shifting cabin in the middle of a forest. All sorts of healing and self-understanding and provocative conversational exchanges ensue, as you might imagine. The book was unexpectedly popular (topping the New York Times Best Seller list for fiction between 2008 and 2010) and predictably controversial. Among the several charges laid against it by 'concerned evangelicals' was the 'idolatrous' depiction of the first and third Persons of the Trinity – as an African-American woman, in the case of God the Father, and as an Asian woman, in the case of God the Holy Spirit. Now, actually, old habits die hard and I am still 'concerned evangelical' enough to be rather uncom

I want you to understand that, if I seem to have rather a lot to say about the current US administration, it's because, as a white evangelical Christian – albeit one with a different set of cultural baggage and without a vote – I consider myself implicated. It's my theology that has elevated Trump. It's scriptures that I revere as holy that are being used to justify the policies and behaviour of him and his associates. Songs I sing on a Sunday morning are being sung six or so hours later by Christian sisters and brother who voted for him and are openly celebrating his advancement of their cause. Books and articles and YouTube clips that do the rounds in my social networks have their origins in the minds of Christian elites whose allegiance as events unfold have proven frighteningly unswerving. There is no detaching myself. And, to be honest, the apparent detachment of other evangelicals rather disturbs than inspires me. Especially as I have a hunch that this detachment