Karen Swallow Prior’s Journey into The Evangelical Imagination

Over the last several years, Karen Swallow Prior has gained a devoted following among a certain portion of the evangelical Christian world, combining her love for English literature with a passion for the church. In some cases, this has meant engaging in what the artist Makoto Fujimura has dubbed “culture care,” as in her previous book, On Reading Well. She has encouraged Christians to pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful in the post-modern world, always with a healthy dose of wit and plentiful Flannery O’Connor references.

But for Prior, engaging in culture care has also meant addressing what is wrong in evangelical culture. She has therefore become a prominent voice calling for reform in her own Southern Baptist Convention and beyond. This has naturally earned her some enemies, and her recent departures from Liberty University and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary speak to the tensions that have resulted from questioning the evangelical power structure. However, this boldness has also earned her fans who refer to her as “The Notorious KSP,” wear t-shirts featuring her visage, and recite the tale of how she was literally hit by a bus and survived to joke about it.

Karen Swallow Prior clearly sees nothing especially glamorous about her endeavors. Her spirit is rooted in the earth upon which she lives, as her Instagram feed can attest, and her current notoriety has likely surprised her as much as anyone else.

But if she was hoping for a quiet life of contemplation post-academia, she is unlikely to get it with what she attempts now: a new book that calls for nothing less than a complete reform of the evangelical imagination. Not a dismissal of evangelicalism, nor a complete destruction, but a calling back to what it was originally meant to be.

This task, outlined in The Evangelical Imagination, is of interest even to Christians who do not consider themselves evangelicals, for as Prior argues, evangelical ideas have become so central to the general American mindset as to be hardly distinguishable at times. (Prior does not give her own definition of “evangelical,” but relies partly on the historian David Bebbington’s identification of a movement begun in 18th century England and focused on conversions, social activism, the authority of the biblical text, and the centrality of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.) Yet it is when the influence goes in the other direction—the broader culture influencing evangelicalism—that Prior sees most of the problem, and her warning has relevance for Christians of all stripes. As she writes in the book’s first chapter,

“It is not simply that Christianity and evangelicalism are infected by other ideologies and identities—it’s also that too often we don’t recognize their undue influence on our beliefs, narratives, images, traditions, and institutions.” [1]

A New Reformation?

Prior’s analysis of evangelical history is part of a recent string of books that have been released in the wake of a series of high-profile scandals and controversies within evangelicalism, including Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes du Mez, The Making of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr, Celebrities for Jesus by Katelyn Beaty, and Losing Our Religion by Russell Moore. Each of these works examines a certain aspect of what the authors see as the current evangelical crisis, but they do not necessarily agree on what constitutes evangelicalism, let alone what ails it. Some are hoping to simply reform the movement, while others see it as virtually unsalvageable.

Prior belongs to the former camp: the reformers. Having spent her entire life attending evangelical churches and teaching at evangelical institutions, she not only knows that of which she speaks, but she obviously loves it dearly. In The Evangelical Imagination, she reveals the good, the bad, and the ugly of the evangelical social imaginary, to use a term made famous by the philosopher Charles Taylor, whose work Prior draws on extensively. She groups her observations into ten categories: awakening, conversion, testimony, improvement, sentimentality, materiality, domesticity, empire, reformation, and rapture.

Familiar faces are seen here, from Billy Sunday to Billy Graham, and Prior is quick to refer to influential literary works such as Pilgrim’s Progress, Daniel Defoe, and The Late Great Planet Earth. (Yes, for modern day American evangelicals, the last of those has been equally influential). From Warner Sallmann’s Head of Christ to Jerry Falwell Sr.’s business ideals, Prior surveys the evangelical imagination in all its glory, or lack thereof.

“If evangelicalism is a house,” she writes, “then these unexamined assumptions are its floor joists, wall studs, beams, and rafters—holding everything together, but unseen, covered over by tile, paint, paper, and ceilings. What we don’t see, we don’t think about. Until something goes wrong and something needs replacement. Or restoration. Or reform.” [2]

Many of the trends Prior notes have been previously examined by academics like Mark Noll and Martin E. Marty: individualistic and consumer tendencies, anti-intellectualism, and an emphasis on personal emotions and experiences. These are favorite targets of more “high church” Christians, who see in evangelicalism something not so different from the “moralistic therapeutic deism” which Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton identified as the choice religion of American youth back in 2005. Prior sees much of evangelicalism’s imaginary trouble arising from the fact that it emphasizes quick and dramatic conversion experiences and a personally directed relationship with God over the kind of slow work of sanctification that occurs within the context of the local church.

“The evangelical movement was right to reject the assumption that genuine Christianity could exist without the authentic conversion experience. However, the accompanying rejection of ecclesiastical authority also brought with it a new assumption of individual authority. Over-reliance on the subjective authority of the individual can lead, not surprisingly, away from deep experiences of conversion to easy, shallow ones.” [3]

This is a good example of how Prior can point to a positive aspect of evangelical belief while also linking to its unintended negative consequences throughout history.

As the book goes on, the tension seems to rise. Her critique becomes more pointed and her chapter subtitles more colorful. In the penultimate chapters covering empire and reformation, she reaches what feels like the heart of the issue and calls for nothing less than a new reformation not unlike that of the sixteenth century.

“If the Reformation was over the Word as written (over who can and should read and interpret it), then this reckoning of evangelicalism concerns the Word as it has been incarnated. If the Reformation was over the truth revealed in Scripture, then this evangelical reckoning is over the way and the life revealed in Jesus—and how the church has failed to follow and embody it.” [4]

I have written previously about the concept of an apologetics of imagination for non-Christians. Prior suggests something similar for evangelical Christians themselves: a complete reappraisal of which of their ideas are truly in line with Scripture and historic Christian belief, and which have been borrowed from the Enlightenment, the Puritans, the Victorians, and modern consumer culture.

While they cannot always be aware of the subconscious ways these cultural trends have influenced them, Prior calls upon evangelicals to “immerse ourselves more deeply in the stories, images, and words that reflect what is good, true, and beautiful: yes, Scripture, but also the human applications of Scripture that express the fulness of its teaching. We must work to reform our imaginations by filling them with stories, images, and metaphors that are true…” [5] 

That seems like an ideal prescription, not only for Christians who call themselves evangelical, but for Christians of all types.