The church is meant to be a choice, not an echo

Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, March 24, 2024

“Some people have a picture of Mother Teresa hanging up in their home. If you grow up in a Republican household of all daughters, you might see a picture of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly instead. But dad, this column won’t be about Schlafly, per say.

It’s that the title of her bestselling manifesto, A Choice Not an Echo, has been haunting me lately. That’s because I feel as if the American evangelical church is at a risk of becoming an echo, not a choice.

Recent reporting on the church’s political engagement reads as an echo of our sad, toxic, loud and divided culture, fighting for power and dominance. To be sure, there are times and places for fighting. I’ll mention some later in this column.

But for the earliest Christians, the church presented an entirely different choice. We shouldn’t be too quick to ignore their example.”