This article was to appear in re:generation quarterly’s Fall 2003 issue–an issue that was never published due to that magazine’s sudden demise after more than ten years in print. In many ways, this article and online publication are indebted to RQ. Around 2002, the New Pantagruel’s founding editors first encountered each other in RQ’s online discussion forum. There, in the crucible of many arguments, the basic ideas and aesthetics behind tNP developed, and the collaboration that produced this article took root. With the cooperation and support of other people–many of whom had been connected with RQ in some way–the New Pantagruel came into existence in August 2003 and put out its first issue in January 2004. :: Eds.
On the night of September 10, 2001, Doug MacMillan’s best friend, Todd Beamer, had just returned from a European vacation with Lisa, his wife of seven years, and their children. MacMillan stopped by the Beamer house that evening to welcome the travelers home. After a friendly visit, and realizing that Todd was flying out early the next morning on a business trip to San Francisco, MacMillan left before it got too late. Backing down the Beamer drive, he was surprised to see Todd trotting down to his car. “He stopped me,” MacMillan recounts, “and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, ‘I’ll talk to you later buddy.’”
Of course, MacMillan never saw his friend again.
The rest of Todd Beamer’s story—how he and his fellow passengers on Flight 93 rushed the cockpit over the rolling hills of central Pennsylvania and brought the plane down—is, by now, an American legend. It remains a remarkable account: ordinary folks going about the business of America, making things work for themselves and their families, rising up to spontaneously oppose a sudden evil in their midst and perhaps saving thousands of lives; Todd Beamer reciting the Lord’s Prayer with a phone operator and then entering into battle with the now famous words, “Okay, let’s roll.”
The mix of religion, can-do optimism, self-sacrifice, and incredible success met the immediate need of a nation still reeling from shock, needing to relate somehow to a sense of decent resistance which the government, at that early stage, was unable to provide. “Let’s Roll!” was taken up as a rallying cry by the press. Lisa Beamer, a poised and articulate widow, quickly became a media darling. Appearances multiplied, from Larry King to Oprah to the network morning shows back to Larry King to Christian radio to the network news magazines and back to Larry King again. Though the exact number of such appearances is unclear, some published accounts put the figure near 200. President Bush seized on “Let’s Roll!” as a fitting phrase to sum up the sentiments he hoped to instill in the American people with his State of the Union address in January of 2002, and Lisa Beamer was his special guest, taking it all in from her spot next to the first lady.
In the long-term, Todd Beamer and Flight 93 have remained potent symbols through which Americans relate to and understand the watershed events of September 11, 2001. But more than a uniquely American story, those closest to Todd have actively sought to shape his story as a uniquely Christian one. Over and over in the aftermath of September 11, both Lisa Beamer and Doug MacMillan used the public attention given to Todd Beamer’s story to articulate a specifically Evangelical confession: that Todd was able to do what he did because, as MacMillan put it, “whatever he was involved in he gave it 100% because … he knew what he was called to do, he knew he was called to honor, first and foremost his faith in Christ, and he did that.” According to MacMillan, for Todd, honoring his faith in Christ meant honoring first his family, and then those around him. Imbuing Beamer and MacMillan’s efforts was the sense that their opportunity to witness on the public stage was the “reason” for Todd’s presence on Flight 93 to begin with.
The lesson repeatedly cast by those close to Todd Beamer is that life is short and should be spent working to serve others rather than pursuing worldly ends. In the past few decades, American Evangelicals have been increasingly energized and creative as they have risen to this very challenge. But as Evangelicals are slowly discovering, active engagement in the world is fraught with dangers, difficulties, and ethical quandaries, as the efforts of Doug MacMillan and Lisa Beamer poignantly illustrate.
As early as September 18th, 2001, just a week after Todd’s death, MacMillan put forward the idea for the Todd Beamer Foundation, a charitable institution dedicated to honoring Todd’s memory and teaching his values. From the beginning, promotion of the Beamer Foundation was accomplished without a great deal of central planning. With national attention being paid to Lisa Beamer by the press and prominent politicians the Foundation achieved, virtually overnight, the kind of “branding” companies spend years trying to attain.
An outpouring of financial generosity quickly found its way to Lisa Beamer’s front door. Money in envelopes marked only “Lisa Beamer, New Jersey” was being delivered to her by the Post Office. MacMillan decided to quit his job as a medical products salesman and take over the Foundation full time. MacMillan admits the change required a pay cut, however, he did not want to disclose to us the salaries of the Beamer Foundation’s executive employees apart from saying they were in the “low 60s to low 100s.” He added that being in New Jersey, “you have to pay commensurate with what the market is offering.” Others in their circle of friends made similar commitments.
In the spring of 2002, Tyndale House Publishers announced plans to publish Lisa’s memoirs—a book titled, not surprisingly, Let’s Roll! The book was written “with” Ken Abraham, an apocalyptic fiction writer, celebrity biographer and ghost/co-writer of such books as Jim Bakker’s Prosperity and the Coming Apocalypse. Tyndale’s first run of Let’s Roll was a million copies.
Now, with a fully conceived operating program, the money generated by the memory and final words of Todd Beamer supports Heroic Choices, a “free program anchored by a high-impact retreat, one-on-one long-term mentoring and asset-based training for children and their families.” MacMillan expects that with a variety of celebrity and corporate fund raising efforts, the Foundation’s endowment will quickly reach the stated goal of 100 million dollars. The Foundation’s program “aims to help build resiliency in traumatized children through fun activities and experiences.” Having identified “40 assets kids need to succeed,” the Foundation has contracted with external evaluators to measure the program’s progress towards its stated goal: “50% of children who averaged less than 18 assets will have at least 30 measurable assets” after going through the Heroic Choices program.
With such apparent divine favor and the immediate gifts of a large institutional structure, massive publicity, and overflowing capital accounts, it seemed that MacMillan and the Beamer Foundation had been given a unique opportunity for Christian ministry. Indeed, there was a feeling that to decline the opportunity would deprive Todd’s death of a measure of its meaning. But with the overnight flowering of benefits that came with burgeoning success by commercial standards came also its trappings. The Beamer Foundation was now a player in the high-stakes world of big-time charity. With salaries to pay, public appearances to make, a steady stream of giving to maintain, and charitable work to do besides, MacMillan recognized early on that he was running a commercial operation, and if the Foundation couldn’t compete, it would go under.
Seizing on the potential value of the “Let’s Roll!” moniker, the Beamer Foundation filed a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for sole rights to the phrase—rights which were eventually granted. Further, the Foundation began instructing anyone else using the phrase without the consent of the Foundation to cease and desist. “Others were using [the phrase] for pure profit,” MacMillan explained. “They just want it to sell merchandise.” The Foundation, on the other hand, felt that if money was to be made, a portion ought to come back to the charity, and the rest should be had by “those companies and people who are behind what we are doing and want us to succeed.”
The decision raised eyebrows in many quarters. Reason Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Nick Gillespie, noted that the Beamer Foundation “has done more than just sell its own ‘Let’s roll!’ paraphernalia as a fund raising tool. It’s pursued a series of odd licensing choices that strain the credulity of even the least cynical observers.” Gillespie was wryly unconvinced by MacMillan’s statement that his decision to license the phrase for use at a Wal*Mart shareholders’ meeting was “an inspirational use of ‘Let’s Roll,’” and a real “call to action.”
Even more critical was Steve Perry, writing in The Rake, a Twin Cities monthly, in April 2002. “The media’s incessant flogging of [Todd] Beamer’s story, and [Lisa’s] eager collaboration in it, amount to a grotesque comment on the very idea of grief and loss. They take catastrophic personal tragedy and cheapen it by making it feel like a publicity stunt—a set of gestures repeatedly enacted for the cameras.”
In August, when Florida State University football coach Bobby Bowden appropriated “Let’s Roll!” for his team’s 2002 slogan, there was a considerable amount of criticism in the media. Bowden was not helped by his ineloquent attribution of “Let’s Roll!” to “That guy, on that plane.” In Bowden’s estimate, Todd Beamer showed a spirit applicable to a football team that “got bad last year.” “And then, of course,” coach Bowden added, he wanted to “honor the people who died on that plane.” But when MacMillan announced that the Foundation was “honored” that coach Bowden chose “Let’s Roll!” “as a way to motivate and inspire … athletes,” the critics were silenced. As Keith Olbermann put it in Salon, “Just keep mumbling, ‘If it isn’t tasteless for them, then it isn’t tasteless for me.’”
But MacMillan bristles at criticism. In fact, he views his prior corporate training as intended in preparation for this very moment. “Instead of selling a physical product, I am selling an emotional product,” MacMillan told the Columbia News Service, “it is the same business principles that you apply to both entities.” He views his decisions simply as those of a good CEO. “We’re not acting any differently than any other organization. In order to help children we must raise funds, and align with organizations that want us to succeed.” Warming to his own defense, MacMillan goes on: “Todd died in pursuit of capitalism, you know. We need to understand that we are in a capitalistic structure. That is what makes this country so great. The only way we can raise the support we need is to offer the corporations that do the leg work a chance to make money. This is the best way to do it in these circumstances, and it is driven by the demand that the public has.”
MacMillan has made it clear that the Beamer Foundation is very sensitive to the possibility of financial mismanagement or impropriety. In order to hedge against those possibilities, the Foundation has taken active steps to prevent them. These steps include having a diverse board of directors, including people from outside the business and financial world, and being transparent with their financial records. MacMillan was open and eager to share the Foundation’s 2001 financial documents with us, which revealed nothing irresponsible or questionable. Each year, beginning with the Foundation’s first full year of operation, MacMillan plans to have an independent audit performed, and will make that report available to the public.
MacMillan’s desire for the Foundation to be very open and public reflects his personal openness to self-reflection and self-disclosure. As the CEO of a nationally recognized organization, which he sees as having an opportunity “to become a cutting-edge 21st Century non-profit,” MacMillan’s life has changed radically. “The difference now is obvious,” MacMillan told the Tester, a military newspaper at the Naval Air Station in Patuxent, MD. “I’ve taken a different career path and a job that is much more fulfilling and much more focused. I go through periods of euphoria.” Yet coming into the limelight as a result of tragedy is clearly a difficult issue for MacMillan because of the mixed emotions it raises. In an address to the Naval Officers’ Ball, MacMillan talked about how the enjoyment he has often experienced is tinged with sadness. “[T]he one friend I would love to share it with most is Todd, and I don’t have that relationship anymore.”
MacMillan finds comfort in the fact that whatever he experiences, it can’t match what Todd must be experiencing. Thinking of what it would be like to talk to Todd and tell him he just talked with Bobby Bowden on the phone, MacMillan imagines Todd would say, “Doug, I’m walking streets of gold.” If MacMillan were to say, “I just got to speak to the Red Sox and the Yankees,” he imagines Todd would say, “Yeah, but I’m up here sitting at the feet of Christ.” What about an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show? Todd would say, “Doug I just touched Christ’s face.”
For a long time, questions about propriety have produced morally charged controversies within the Evangelical community. How should Christians relate to popular culture through commercial and mass media venues? How, really, ought Christians to deal with the Red Sox and Oprah if they truly believe they will one day touch the face of Christ? For its perceived failure to thoughtfully answer these and other questions, prominent Evangelical writers from Charles Colson to John Wilson, editor of Books and Culture, have criticized the culture of pop Evangelical retail. Within the CBA, the international trade association of Christian retailers and product suppliers, classical works and dead authors are eschewed in favor of “chicken soup for the soul,” according to former re:generation quarterly editor Andy Crouch.
“The prominently displayed books by youthful, good-looking authors offer little morsels of relevant cheer, the literary equivalent of bite-size Oreos,” writes Crouch in Christianity Today. Making similar observations about the 2002 CBA convention, Os Guinness remarked, “Who speaks for evangelicals? No one. It’s just chaos.” “In many ways it’s held together by this,” Guinness said, gesturing at the convention floor, which his interviewer, Stephen Bates, described as “the Jesus Market,” in The Weekly Standard.
Whatever their intentions, MacMillan and the Beamer Foundation have become part of the chaotic Jesus Market. If they did not know it before September 11, since that time the multi-billion dollar Evangelical media and culture industry has discovered that tragic, professionally-processed faith-stories are a renewable resource. Ben Taylor, writing for Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink website, observed that “Each time America is hit with tragedy, key people seem to step up to remind us of the comfort found in turning to God.” Of course, when they “step up,” a massive commercial structure is ready to amplify the message, with processing, packaging, advertising and possibly lateral merchandising development: CDs, Bible-study guides, and other paraphernalia. The biblical phrase about being called “for such a time as this” is recited so often that it strains all credulity.
But even though it was the biggest media sensation since Left Behind, Evangelical culture-critics have been conspicuously silent regarding the Beamer phenomenon. One might think that this silence is due to a widespread opinion in the Evangelical community that there is nothing to merit criticism. After all, the Beamer Foundation is working for a good cause. Good intentions and good ends justify the means, even if this entails “not acting any differently than any other [commercial] organization” in a capitalist structure. To engage the world, the Christian must play a transformative role within the world’s structures, re-directing otherwise neutral institutions closer to, and back towards, their normatively “good” state. Right?
Peter J. Hill, George F. Bennett Professor of Economics at Wheaton College thinks so. He remembers Lisa Beamer as a quiet, unassuming, hard-working student from her days at Wheaton and in Professor Hill’s classes. “Lisa could have turned down many or most of the requests for interviews,” notes Hill, “however, if one wants to take opportunities to testify to one’s faith, her actions seem quite appropriate.” Hill went on to say that he had no “problems with [the Foundation’s] participation in the capitalistic economy.” While admitting that the decision to trademark “Let’s Roll!” was “problematic,” Professor Hill remarked that, “not doing so would have meant numerous uses of the phrase for less than desirable means, and for purposes far from Todd’s goals. I find the alternatives less attractive.” In the final analysis, says Hill, MacMillan and Lisa Beamer “could have decided not to involve themselves at all with our modern, media driven, capitalistic culture, but that would have meant complete withdrawal from interactions about their faith.”
However, not everyone agrees—even within the family of conservative Protestants—but few feel safe saying so. Of the many we contacted for comment, few were willing to speak on the record. Privately, some conceded that due to a culture that emphasizes emotion over discernment, any critical statements could cause serious damage to themselves and their institutions. John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, has condemned this aspect of Evangelical culture as a “world of Extreme Niceness” in which the “commissars of evangelical correctness dictate what can be said and what can’t.” Wilson remarked that the situation was nearly “unbearable,” especially in “the way it is couched in references to Scripture.” Similarly, Eugene Veith worried in World Magazine that dissenting voices within Christian industries “legitimately fear a kind of excommunication,” if they speak out.
Still, some skepticism has been expressed. Syd Hielema, Assistant Professor of Theology at Dordt College, cautioned that the Beamer Foundation “reflects the character of a media event.” According to Hielema, the “mass” structures of media and marketing “generated ‘free advertising’ and an economic windfall. But these structures … contribute to the very traumatization of kids which the Foundation seeks to minister to.” Hielema thinks that resolving this tension is the biggest challenge facing the Foundation. It would be “naive” not to recognize the problem, he says, though he remains hopeful that the Beamer Foundation will be able to survive the challenge and mature into an effective ministry.
We could, at this point, merely add to the abundance of Christian hand-wringing over what counts as proper cultural engagement. However, such wrangling rarely gets past debating standards of propriety or “taste.” And the threat to authentic, socially engaged faith is much stronger and much more serious than might be supposed from a discussion over mere style. To us, the root of the problem, and the threat, lies in the fact that in a deeply liberal environment, the only important questions are questions of style. In fact, it is one of the primary functions of our open society to reduce the public sphere, as much as possible, to choices of taste and style. Very few people are willing to kill you because they don’t like the clothes you wear.
By providing a nexus between identity politics and niche marketing, liberal democracies give each “faction” what they appear to want in exchange for the tacit admission that what they want is, in public at least, only a “choice” or “style,” and not inherently better than whatever it is that other factions want. “‘Let’s roll,’” as Lisa Beamer/Ken Abraham explains in Let’s Roll “is not a slogan, a book or a song; it’s a lifestyle.” Who or what is included or excluded from that lifestyle? Success in the mainstream rests on leaving that question unanswered.
But while convincing someone that they are wrong is tacky (and possibly grounds for having one’s citizenship in the pluralistic state revoked), convincing people that without the right choices they are not “cool” or “with it” or “in style” is encouraged; in fact, required. Appealing to the widest possible market is the prime directive of advertising in a market society. It is also the stated goal of most Christian commercial entities which see broad appeal as a missiological as well as an entrepreneurial calling.
Of course, aiming for the widest audience is tantamount to trying to please everyone and offend no one. This is what keeps Stone Phillips’ plastic smile firmly intact when people like Lisa Beamer talk about the importance of their faith on Dateline NBC. As long as they don’t start out-and-out proselytizing—a word that embarrasses more and more Evangelicals—they’re fine. Just another viewpoint among many under one liberal pluralist state. As the iconoclastic Stanley Fish has written in First Things, a Christian may sit at “liberalism’s table, … but it will still be liberalism’s table … and the etiquette of the conversation will still be hers.”
Similarly, you can make an “Evangelical” or “Christian” labeled product, but it will just be another product in a market full of products. In a consumer economy, the product, like “the message,” in Marshall McLuhan’s famous saying, cannot transcend its medium–the structures that direct its construction, packaging, delivery and reception or consumption. In this view, Christian products in the form of books, clothes, music, etc., are ultimately nothing more than the artifacts of a niche market in the contemporary cultural scene, and like all the other artifacts, they bear the stamp Liberalism. Even when the niche market seems to be making exclusive claims or cohere around a relatively exclusive identity, this is just business as usual in the game of identity politics.
Look at it this way. There is Country Club Barbie, and Secretary Barbie, and Doctor Barbie, and Lawyer Barbie. There is also Black Barbie, Asian Barbie, and Hispanic Barbie. So why not Evangelical Barbie? Everyone gets to have their kind of Barbie and think it is the best. This pride is not just indulged, it is encouraged, because it is the bait required to exact the price liberal democracy requires. Exclusivist claims and preferences for one thing over all other things are neutered once packaged. You can proclaim the superiority of Evangelical Barbie all you want, but at the end of the day, people have choices, and Neopagan Barbie is moving off the shelves pretty fast. The mistake Christians often make in this deeply liberal environment is to exchange critical engagement with the world’s structures for a spot at liberalism’s table, preferably a spot in the limelight. Now it’s Evangelical Barbie ahead by a nose—clearly God’s work. Vox populi, vox dei.
Evangelical Christians are certainly not the only identity groups making this exchange. Andrew Sullivan and the British Leftist newspaper, The Guardian, made their own post 9/11 fuss over Mark Bingham, a gay man who rushed the cabin of Flight 93 with Todd Beamer. Finally, a gay media icon that doesn’t represent an effeminate gay lifestyle!
Maybe in her description of “Let’s Roll” as a lifestyle, Mrs. Beamer meant that her husband had a unique belief that makes exclusive claims about ultimate truths and the ultimate destiny of all human beings. In many of her public engagements, this idea seems to be present. But ultimately, this is not what “Let’s Roll” means to the wider culture. It’s certainly not what “Let’s Roll” means in Wal*Mart shareholders’ meetings or in the Florida State football team’s huddles. And at the end of the day, it is not what “Let’s Roll” means for the Beamer Foundation.
Pointing out that Todd did not assume the hijackers of Flight 93 were middle-eastern, MacMillan says this was due to Todd’s faith, which models love rather than hate. In this, MacMillan is only one of a chorus of Christian and Muslim leaders who, after September 11, have rushed to the defense of all “true” religion as tolerant and anti-hate, thus demonstrating their eagerness to re-signup as good citizens of the liberal state.
In keeping with this, the Beamer Foundation’s Heroic Choices program aims to help children value things like schooling, a good work ethic, and tolerance. MacMillan hopes that the resilience and courage the program will foster in children will help them say no to smoking and drugs. This is all unobjectionable as far as it goes, because Heroic Choices has been rendered a safe commodity in a deeply liberal environment. What about a child who has questions about homosexuality—possibly her own or that of others? What does the “Let’s Roll” lifestyle say about that? Is the “faith” behind it an exclusive kind that makes very imposing claims, or is it more of a one-size fits all affair? Again, these are questions more and more Evangelicals don’t want to face in public, and they are increasingly ill-equipped to conceive a coherent answer.
But what are the alternatives? Is the choice as stark as Professor Hill represents it to be: either withdraw from the culture or be willing to accept, on some level, the rules of liberalism? Stanley Fish gives another possibility. “The religious person should not seek an accommodation with liberalism; he should seek to rout it from the field, to extirpate it, root and branch.” Trimming liberalism’s overgrown hedge certainly seems desirable, but destroying it root and branch? There are plenty of reasons for the Christian, just like everyone else, to be thankful for liberal democracies. Fundamentalisms of every stripe—secular, nationalist, Islamic, and Christian—have shown themselves to be even less desirable than liberalism. What then?
Consider, again, the Beamer Foundation. Professor Hielema’s caution, that the Foundation’s outward success is enabled by structures that are, in the end, hostile towards what should be the Foundation’s goal, should serve as a prod to consider these questions more deeply. The “mass” methods being used by the foundation (communications, business/management structure, and marketing) are far removed from and even hostile toward the incarnational, “personalist” spirit of Christ in the Gospels. Evangelicals need to reconsider the meaning of the incarnation: it is word made flesh, not word made product, or word made style. Far better for a few kids to be impacted by a quiet, unknown “foundation” (or better yet, neighborhood) in which adults walk and talk with them, passing on a real faith, than for many kids to run a ropes course and then have their “assets” professionally evaluated by a media and consumer driven twenty-first-century cutting-edge non-profit corporation.
The latter seeks an accommodation with the free-wheeling openness of liberalism and enjoys its riches. The former is more sacrificial, and is able to speak a quiet rebuke to the excess of enlightenment society without either withdrawing from public life or resorting to revolution. Negotiating the tension between liberalism and true faith is the great challenge facing the American church today. And it must be negotiated through the church—not merely by the church—as the very body of Christ present on the Earth, laying down its life for the sake of the world.
Copyright 2004-2005 :: The New Pantagruel 1.1.