Scams & Secularity

Kanye, cortisol, and a framework for understanding postmodern gullibility.

Ok, dear reader, I admit this meme is a bit, well, blunt.

(Though I suppose memes aren’t known for their nuance, are they?)

But here’s a story that will help set up this post…

Back in 2019—around the time he began his “Sunday Service” events—Kanye West released “Jesus is King,” an album that prominent Christian thinkers rushed to embrace.

National Review, for example—a magazine I subscribed to for many years—put an "icon" of Kanye on its cover under the tantalizing headline "Defender of the Faith?"

And that November 2019 issue wasn’t the only time the magazine gushed over Kanye. A month earlier, another of their commentators described him as “just the figure to bring a needed message that our society should reconsider what it deems praiseworthy.”

But it wasn’t just mainstream American Christians who jumped on the Kanye bandwagon. Orthodox Christians—predictably quick to imitate the culture while pretended to be untouched by it—also celebrated Kanye in hyperbolic terms. Some prominent influencers even praised the album as the restoration of sacred art.¹

But some had doubts about the Christian renaissance Kanye was supposedly helping to usher in…

Who could have seen it coming?

My buddy Christian and I, on the other hand, panned the album. On "Pop Culture Coffee Hour" we called it artistically disappointing and superficially "Christian" (if not an outright scam to sell, among other things, overpriced merch).²

“How did all that turn out,” you may ask?

Well dear reader, as the image above may suggest, the last few years have borne out our skepticism. Because Kanye West, who in 2018 famously claimed that 400 years of slavery was a choice and in 2022 praised Hitler on a program well-known for its extremist sympathies, continues to post about his love for Hitler.

He’s publicly identified as a Nazi. And not only did he recently sell some swastika merch (pictured above), last month Kanye dropped a new single praising Hitler.³

Plus—to add a rancid cherry on top of an already morally problematic sundae, to say the least—at this year’s Grammy’s Kanye staged a weird stunt where his wife stripped naked on the red carpet.

So why did so many prominent, influential figures (including Christians) completely miss the mark in their assessment of Kanye?⁴

Again, this is the guy that wise Christian commentators claimed is “just the figure to bring a needed message that our society should reconsider what it deems praiseworthy.”

This is the guy who was supposed to usher in a new age of enchanted art.

Let’s be blunt: the fawning reviews of "Jesus is King" (and the attendant praise of Kanye, past and present) have all been staggeringly mistaken.

Kanye hasn’t ushered in a new era of sacred music. At best, he’s shown us the danger of being a public figure who struggles with serious mental health issues.⁵

At worst, he’s shown us how easy it is to scam contemporary Christians into supporting nonsense that poses as Christian—a grift that, to both my buddy Christian and me (and plenty of non-Christians), was blindingly obvious.⁶

As a terminally online people, we are immersed in a steady stream of media that is flooding our minds and overwhelming our hearts: everything from legitimate art and honest journalism to outright propaganda and fake news.

Yet we Christians in particular—perhaps especially we Orthodox Christians—-lack the capacity to tell truth from lies, to judge between the scammer and the sincere. Our exposure to media is dizzyingly high while our ability to understand and critique that media is dangerously low.

(This isn’t to poke at Kanye West or any cultural commentators in particular, but to use a particularly egregious example as a springboard to exploring the broader question of how we engage with and interpret the world.⁷)

Our ability to understand the culture seems dangerously deficient and, as a people, we're paying the price…

Credit Tenor.

Since our brains are collectively melting, I thought it might help to explore why contemporary Christians are so susceptible to scams in this Secular3 age.

Dear reader, I think it all boils down to three key points:

1. contemporary, Secular3 Christianity approaches the world from a posture of fear and defensiveness;

2. we are attached to earthly kingdoms rather than the Lord’s Kingdom, which end up the things we actually defend; and

3. this feeling of being “under attack” floods our brains with cortisol and diminishes our cognitive faculties, compromising our ability to see reason.

Add it all up, and the Secular3 Christian is particularly susceptible to both clownish scammers and the pseudo-intellectuals who enable them.

(Both Kanye and the people who made icons of him, in other words.)

Anyway, for those who might be new to the drum I’ve been beating for years, we’ll start an analysis of the three key points above with with a bit of review of Secular3 Christianity…

The 3 Bs of Secular3: The Roots of Fear & Defensiveness

A core idea that runs through every post on this Substack is Charles Taylor’s thesis about our “Secular Age.” One of the first posts I wrote on this Substack lays it all out. And if you haven’t read it yet, dear reader, or haven’t read it in a while, I’d give it a quick look before continuing this piece.

(Seriously, read it now if you haven’t.)

With this summary under our belts, I want pull out three key ideas that will help us understand our particular susceptibility, as contemporary Christians, to scams.

(As an added bonus, I’ve been able to use alliteration as a handy mnemonic. You’re welcome, dear reader.)

So without further ado here are, for our current purposes, the 3 Bs of Secular3 that will help us understand the first key point in our analysis (that we approach the world with a posture of fear and defensiveness):

1. We in this Age of Authenticity bear the burden of determining meaning for ourselves on our own terms.

2. This burden is an inward- rather than outward-directed pursuit. We navigate this Secular3 age, not as porous beings who may be affected by the divine, but as buffered selves that are impervious to outside forces.

3. Many of us—especially people of faith—believe that we’re still in a Secular2 rather than Secular 3 era (seriously, check out the summary I posted above if you’re not following me). And a key characteristic of Secular2 is the “subtraction story” which leads people of faith to believe we are in the midst of a battle to defend the sacred from secularity’s continued encroachment.

So there you have it, dear reader: we (i) bear the burden of determining meaning for ourselves, (ii) which we do as buffered selves insulated from a wider, shared reality, all while (iii) engaging in a battle to defend sacredness from the aggressive encroachment of secularity.

A key insight in Taylor’s analysis is that, even when we believe the same dogma that Christians believed in previous ages, we believe in a very different way.

We believe as Secular3 Christians who have internalized a flat, disenchanted worldview. We believe as self-directed, autonomous actors desperately trying to make meaning for ourselves on our own terms, as we choose.

Credit Tenor.

And the rubber really hits the road when we consider the 3rd B we outlined above. Because, when we approach this battle as Secular3 Christians, we’re not actually fighting to defend the Kingdom, which leads us to our second key point…

Belonging in a Secular Age: The Root of our Misjudged Kingdoms

"We are Christians, and strangers on earth. Let none of us be frightened; our native land is not in this world." (Saint Augustine of Hippo)

Christians through the centuries have reflected on the sense of displacement that comes with following Christ. Classically, this has been a consequence of Christians seeing themselves as subjects of no king but Christ; as citizens of no country but His Kingdom.⁸

The fruit of this posture was most obviously seen by the willingness of Christians to accept martyrdom—not begrudgingly, but joyfully. After all, why bow before Caesar and his idols when Christ is our true King? Why mourn the Empire marking us for death when we’ve been gifted eternal life in the Lord’s Kingdom?

Navigating Creation with eyes truly open to the reality of divine presence, these Christians walked the earth with open hands and open hearts. They gave rather than hoarded, and were prepared to lose everything for the Pearl of Great Price.

They would have laughed to hear existence framed as a battle—particularly the losing battle described by the subtraction story—because they saw the Lord at work: by virtue of their belonging to the Lord of Lords and Most High God, they were on the winning side.⁹

They knew that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof: that every meal they shared with the poor was a sign of the King’s reign.

That every hand they clasped in brotherhood and prayer was a sign of the King’s reign.

And that’s why they didn’t fear death.

Photo by Elimende Inagella on Unsplash

Yet, over time, the loyalty of Christians began to shift from the Kingdom to other, lesser kingdoms which, in their own way, embody the temptations of property, power, and prestige that we’ve explored before.

And this transfer of allegiance is a necessary prerequisite for the subtraction story to make sense. After all, dear reader, if God is truly present in all places and filling all things then it is impossible for secularity to be “advancing” because secularity, as we understand it today, simply doesn’t exist.

Because there is neither a place nor a time from which the Lord is absent.

There is neither a place nor a time where the Lord doesn’t reign.

But other, lesser kingdoms can wane and diminish: Rome may fall to the Germanic tribes, Constantinople may fall to the Ottomans, and Moscow may fall to the Communists, for example.

At the time, Christians saw these geopolitical milestones as apocalyptic. But the world did not end because these were simply the end of human kingdoms—the transfer of property, power, and prestige to a new ruling class (whose own reign was finite in the long run).

Perhaps this photo, which I took in a parish making some much-needed infrastructure repairs, can help communicate my point.

A visual representation of some types of contemporary “Christianity.”

As I looked up at the dome, the image of a “Christ-shaped hole” in the iconography struck me as a perfect illustration of the way we confuse lesser kingdoms for the Lord’s Kingdom.

The image of Christ is gone, yet an outline remains. If you squint a bit, a lesser kingdom (whether Rome, Constantinople, or Moscow or a host of ideologies currently en vogue) can look like the Kingdom—just like, if you squint, you can still see Jesus in the void above even though He’s not really there.

And so the squinting Christian, who is supposed to be a sojourner in this world—a “stranger on earth” as Saint Augustine said—becomes very at home with this or that group, empire, or movement. When you combine the narrative of the Secular2 subtraction story with the very real weakness and fallibility of these lesser kingdoms, that can lead to a lot of stress.

And stress isn’t very good for the body, which leads us to our third key point…

Cortisol and the Roots of our Brain Rot

You may be familiar with cortisol, the hormone your body releases when you experience stress. When you view the world through the lens of the subtraction story, stress is an emotion you’re likely to experience pretty regularly.

There’s a reason contemporary American Christians use dire language like “war on Christmas” or “assault on Christianity;” when “secular” bogeymen are lurking behind every corner and constantly chipping away at the sacred, it’s impossible to sound an urgent enough alarm.

But that stress inevitably leads to the release of cortisol, and cortisol has been shown to affect cognition in a variety of ways (including problems with memory, critical thinking, impulse control, and focus).

It may be a bit glib to put it this way, but it seems that cortisol can help make us dumber.

Unfortunately, the kind of content that stimulates the release of cortisol is also the kind of content most likely to go viral online. Recall that, a few years ago, a Facebook whistleblower released information which showed that the platform helped boost “angry, polarizing, divisive content” because it gets the most engagement.

So, to summarize our three key points, as contemporary Christians we’re:

1. on edge and defensive because we feel like we’re in a Secular2 subtraction story;

2. defensive because our allegiance has shifted to earthly kingdoms rather than the Lord’s Kingdom; and

3. constantly bombarded by negative news which stimulates the release of cortisol and makes us dumber.

Is it any surprise that we’re so susceptible to scams?

I’ll say it one more time to help us commit the three key points to memory, dear reader, because we:

1. approach the world from a posture of fear and defensiveness;

2. are attached to earthly kingdoms rather than the Lord’s Kingdom; and

3. have flooded our brains with cortisol, compromising our ability to see reason.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

But all is not lost, dear reader. If we can agree that three above factors are making us more susceptible to scams, we can counteract each in turn. Specifically, we can:

1. reframe the way we relate to the wider culture;

2. repent of the ways we’ve identified with a lesser kingdom rather than the Lord’s Kingdom; and

3. reclaim our nous by unplugging from the internet.

It’s easier said than done, of course (and a lot of popular influencers would see their engagement rates drop dramatically if we actually followed through).

But a guy can dream, dear reader.

May the Lord grant us all eyes to see His victory, the conviction to share His victory with the poor and downtrodden, and the integrity to seek His Kingdom first and foremost.

(If we can do that, maybe we can do a better job of understanding talented yet afflicted artists rather than holding them up as prophets and the leading edge of a wave of re-enchantment.)

1. Many who framed Kanye as a pro-Christian crusader also supported his 2020 presidential run, which makes sense given the campaign’s use of intentional Christian language (culture of life, etc).

As we proceed, I think it’ll become clear that this was all part of a lamentable grift that duped too many well-meaning Christians.

2. Feel free to listen to episode 109 if you’re curious.

3. Kanye later took down the song and said he was “done with antisemitism” after backlash. It’s another data point that suggests, as we touch on later, that Kanye is deeply unwell rather than intentionally malicious.

4. And why does it matter, you might ask? Am I just beating up on Kanye and some online commentators?

Well, dear reader, if you’ve made it this far I suspect you can answer these questions yourself…

What I would say is that, as Christians, we’re called to make the invisible visible; to make the Kingdom of Heaven manifest. But how can we expect to be taken seriously if we lack the discernment to rightly assess matters that are staring us in the face?

And I think there’s an urgency to this question of why Christians are so susceptible to scams because, in the long run, our susceptibility will undercut our witness.

If we can’t discern the visible, how can we discern the invisible?

How can anyone take our preaching and witness seriously if we’re so easily duped?

5. Personally, I tend to think this is the best read of Kanye: that he’s unwell rather than malicious.

(I admit to a certain bias, though, as I very much enjoy his older work. There’s a chance I’m being generous to an artist I once very much admired.)

Whatever the root cause for his disturbing comments, I think we can all agree that Kanye shouldn’t have been given the mantle of Christendom to bear.

Again, it was a scam.

6. Not to be a downer, but the actual worst thing he may have done is show the world how many self-described Christians side with Nazis—or at least enable them.

And by the way, the analysis in this post can—I think—help us understand why so many contemporary Christians have become enamored with autocracy and crave a return to Catholic monarchs, Orthodox tzars, etc.

7. I wish Kanye were the only prominent figure with whom I could have started this post, but he’s not. I’ve previously noted how odd it is that Orthodox Christians take Jordan Peterson seriously as a Biblical exegete and guide on the road to re-enchantment.

My suspicions were confirmed when, in a recent “debate,” he refused to identify as a Christian.

This is another figure many of us got spectacularly wrong.

Again, it’s worth exploring why.

8. It’s a fine point, but it may be of interest to note that the slogan “Christ is King” is being coopted by online extremists and hate groups, while the slogan “No King but Christ” remains associated with Christian anarchists. The phrases sound similar but are associated with very different meanings!

9. It’s true, we do see references to “spiritual warfare” in the tradition. But we have to be careful to not interpret this concept as part of the Secular2 substation story. There’s much more to say, though unpacking that fully might be a post in itself!