Today people who do not like Christianity, actual Christianity, biblical Christianity, explain Christianity to actual Christians and in a condescending and patronizing way.  Like leftists invented and use the term “mansplaining,” this is Christianitysplaining.  From my perspective, which is a biblical one, that takes a grammatical-historical interpretation of scripture, these are unbelievers explaining to Christians their own corrupted version of Christianity.  There are two very public examples of this in recent days, but I believe these represent something happening as a culture.

Of the two examples, one came in a tweet from Democrat presidential candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (former mayor of South Bend, IN):

Today I join millions around the world in celebrating the arrival of divinity on earth, who came into this world not in riches but in poverty, not as a citizen but as a refugee.

No matter where or how we celebrate, merry Christmas.

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) December 25, 2019

Joseph and Mary were going to Bethlehem to pay taxes when Jesus was born.  They weren’t fleeing anyone.  Jesus grew up in Nazareth, where both his parents were from.  Buttigieg wraps himself in the mantle of Christianity to pick off other Christianitysplainers.

The next example, days before the Buttigieg tweet, was the editorial in Christianity Today, where the editor, Mark Galli, took a shot at evangelical Trump voters by informing them that “Trump Should Be Removed From Office.”  In his first sentence, he Christianitysplains:

In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity Today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith.

Apparently the call to the new Ukrainian president was a tipping point for Galli, and then also a sentence in the last paragraph:  “Some have criticized us for our reserve.”  I’m open to scriptural explanations.  Galli says that you’re not being Christian if you oppose impeachment.  This is akin, according to him, to brushing off the president’s immoral behavior.  A constitutional scholar, Galli is not (since the original writing of this post, Wayne Grudem has published an excellent rebuttal of the Galli editorial, worth a read).

Since those two, Buttigieg and Galli, Christianitysplained, a tidal wave of media followed with further Christianitysplaining.  The world knows the Christianity it wants and it expects Christians to live it.  It’s a kind of feeding frenzy because of what the world sees in the Southern Baptist Convention with its pandering to a new, woke generation of Conventioneers.  They smell blood in the water.


The Atlantic Christianitysplains with its article, “Leith Anderson and the Silent Majority,” attempting to shame who they think is an influential evangelical leader.   Several dozen articles pummeling evangelicals have followed.  I believe the leftist media rightly assess weakness in professing Christianity, especially among millennials.  This is the most telling culture change.  Very few millennials agree with the preceding generation.

Millennial evangelicals and now fundamentalists, which aren’t even mostly faithful to church, sympathize with all things relevant in the culture.  They’re friends with same sex married, who seem just like normal people to them — and who are we to question “love”?  They like the idea of admitting to white privilege, the feel of a pseudo-humility that pays personal dividends.  They’re cleared of racism.  They support egalitarian marriages after years of girl and boy friends.   They like suggestive, very emotive music in touch with their feelings, which they interpret as spiritual.  Their art is gritty, urban, modern or postmodern, and apocalyptic, what they think is authentic.  Most of them have trouble with their parents, several of which like Trump, which embarrasses them. Mothers of millennials often Christianitysplain to the fathers of millennials, hoping dad takes it easy on junior.  This is all very fertile ground for the seeds of a woke journalist.

Millennials and their fawning servant leaders have entered a kind of negotiated surrender.  Leaders should serve, no doubt, and Jesus served, but this isn’t what “servant leadership” is or at least has become.  I believe Douglas Wilson represents it correctly when he writes:

The emphasis placed on servant leadership in recent decades has produced a soft complementarianism, one which adopts egalitarian assumptions for most of human existence, but which tolerates a modified pretend hierarchy in the two places where our trained exegetes have not yet hammered out a plausible workaround for us. In this pretend hierarchy, the leaders are allowed to be leaders so long as they do exactly what they’re told.

Bnonn Tennant writes:

Servant leadership is a dirty little phrase that has slipped into evangelical culture like a silk pillow over the face. 

It tastes sweet in the mouth, like honey, because who doesn’t agree that men should imitate the Lord Jesus, who came not to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28)?  But it is bitter in the stomach, because it makes men subservient to those they are supposed to be leading.

These millennials Christianitysplain to their elders on a regular basis, telling them how it should be done, in addition to saying, you’ve got a flawed gospel.  What do you mean?  I want to know.  They Christianitysplain something about freedom.  It’s not really new.  It is antinomianism, that is very old and described in 2 Peter and Jude among other places, turning the grace of God into lascisviousness.

Christianitysplainers want to splain.  They know, they splain, and somehow their Christianity looks less like biblical Christianity and more like the spirit of the age.