Lessons in Christianese 1.2: Getting Saved
Module 1: Part 2
GETTING SAVED
Following on from our last class which introduced the whole concept of Getting Saved, I’ll introduce a few more elements of evangelical subculture and then we’ll wrap up this module with a final quiz and certificate of completion.
In the first part of Getting Saved, we looked at some common statements of faith, essential vocabulary, three elements of evangelical subculture, and three popular albums released by Christian artists.
In this second and final section, we will examine three primary source texts, one music video artifact, and one movie trailer.
As always, feel free to leave any questions in the comments section!
PRIMARY SOURCE TEXTS
FICTION: THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE (1950)
I got the entire Narnia series for Christmas when I was 11, and it’s still one of the best presents I’ve ever received. I’ve always been a big fan of fantasy, so I still love the whole series. (Even though some elements of it haven’t aged all that well.)
The series is set in another world, and Narnia is just one of several countries there, albeit a pivotal one. Basically, the huge talking lion, Aslan, is Jesus Christ in this other fantasy world. He doesn’t represent Jesus; this isn’t an allegory or a metaphor. Aslan is Jesus in this other world. They’re the same person. Human in our world; lion in their world. This is heavily implied during a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of the later books in the series.
Aslan shows up in all seven books of the series, but it’s in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that his character and story follow very closely to that of Jesus. Aslan gives himself up to the White Witch to be killed instead of Edmund, the traitor to both the land of Narnia and his own brother and sisters. But since Aslan is actually guiltless, he resurrects and conquers the White Witch who is clearly a stand-in for Satan.
At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise — a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate.
“What’s that?” said Lucy, clutching Susan’s arm.
“I — I feel afraid to turn around,” said Susan; “something awful is happening.”
“They’re doing something worse to Him,” said Lucy. “Come on!” And she turned, pulling Susan round with her.
The rising of the sun had made everything look so different — all colors and shadows were changed that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the two girls, rushing back to the Table.
“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy; “they might have left the body alone.”
“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.
“Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.
“Not now,” said Aslan.
“You’re not — not a — ?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost.
Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.
“Do I look it?” he said.
“Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!” cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
ch. 15: Deeper Magic From Before the Dawn of Time
The obvious Christian parallels have made this fantasy series acceptable to most evangelicals whereas others, like Harry Potter, are routinely demonized. Some of the more wacko fundies (i.e. Greg Locke) still hold book burnings from time to time and toss in a few Harry Potter novels, cheering maniacally as they go up in flames.
I worked in the on-campus bookstore at my Methodist university, and the first week of classes in September were always interesting. A lot of kids who had been homeschooled enrolled in this school, and their parents would often come for orientation week to help them settle into college life. For a lot of students, it was their first time ever away from home. Some of the uber-conservative parents would come to the bookshop to buy their kids’ textbooks, but then they would see all of the New York Times Bestseller displays. The bookstore itself was run by Barnes & Noble, so there were plenty of normal books for sale in there too.
Depending on what had been published recently, there might be one or two Harry Potter novels, some liberal politicians’ memoirs, or books about climate change on prominent display. Many of these parents would get absolutely irate about it.
“You shouldn’t have these books in a Christian bookstore!” (It was not a Christian bookstore.) The most obnoxious was when the parents would actually turn the covers around on all of the books they didn’t like. (It was always the parents and almost never their kids.) We even got frequent complaints about the novel Middlesex. It was on the bestseller list at the time and parents got bent out of shape simply over the title. The title!
But the most intense and frequent vitriol was reserved for Harry Potter. We got complaints at least once a week. But Narnia? Lord of the Rings? No issue. Those were fantasy yes, but they were written by Christians. It was magic fuelled by … God? I don’t know what the thought processes (if any) might have been. But it all came down to Narnia and Middle-earth = good. Hogwarts = bad.
DEVOTIONAL: IF GOD LOVES ME, WHY CAN’T I GET MY LOCKER OPEN? (1983)
This particular devotional book seems to have gone through several updates and reprints, but the version I had was published way back in 1983. And you can definitely tell by the cover art! (This is the actual published version I had.)
Before getting super involved in my church’s youth group when I was 12, I didn’t really do quiet times or devotionals. Only for a week or two each summer at church camps in elementary school, but that was it. I was introduced to the concept of devotionals just before 7th grade when I attended two Christian summer camps back to back and then got baptized in the lake at one of them. I was what, at the time, was called “on fire for God.” (Cringe.)
When I got home late that summer, I ransacked the bookshelves looking for any devotional books my sisters might have left lying around when they went to college. This was the only one I was able to unearth. There’s just one entry that I vaguely remember. It was this weird narration/thought experiment about taking Jesus to school with you. He would just kind of follow you around the hallways jam-packed with yelling kids and sit there silently during your English classes and chemistry labs. Bizarre. I don’t know what the thought experiment was meant to make you think.
I still like the idea of spending a bit of alone time doing some kind of spiritual reading, personal development, reflection, or meditation, but I have definitely moved on to some more sophisticated types of reading material.
APOLOGETICS: PRECIOUS MOMENTS STORIES FROM THE BIBLE (1976)
This is one of the first Bibles I ever read. Actually, I remember just flipping through the pages to look at the pictures because I couldn’t even read yet. The book didn’t include any of the actual biblical text; it was all paraphrased for children. A storybook really. Which was pretty common for children’s Bibles in the 1980s and 1990s. All of the drawings included Bible characters depicted as Precious Moments dolls, so they were all extremely White and very Western-looking. If you don’t know what Precious Moments are, they were these little ceramic knick-knacks that were super popular in evangelical/Bible Belt/Midwestern/conservative circles in the last quarter of the 20th century. Lots of curly blonde hair, puppy-dog eyes, and criminal overuse of pastels.
Obviously I don’t have this book anymore, so I went looking around the Internet for some screenshots of the interior. Amazingly, I came across the perfect passage to illustrate my next point:
While the guests and Abraham ate this tasty food, the messengers told him something quite surprising. They said, “Abraham, your wife is going to have a baby boy.”
Sarah stood just inside the tent. She happened to hear what the men had said. Before she could think, she laughed and thought, “Me? Have a baby? Can’t be! I’m too old!”
You may be surprised to learn that Sarah loved God. But Satan kept working in her heart. He tried to get Sarah to think that God couldn’t do hard jobs like giving a baby to an older lady. Satan’s plan worked. Sarah laughed. She thought that God surely couldn’t do this!
Precious Moments: Stories from the Bible (p. 143)
It’s been a minute since I last read the original Genesis text, so I had to go back and double-check something. And I was right.
Most of that paraphrasing is fine. Sarah does overhear the men talking to her husband. She does laugh at the impossibility of having a baby in her old age. But there is ZERO mention of Satan in the Genesis account. (You can double-check for yourself in Genesis 18.)
Christianity often fills in the blanks of the Old Testament with its own theology. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is never identified as Satan or the devil. That’s a later Christian addition. There isn’t really a devil character in the Old Testament, and the only possible contender is the Accuser character in the book of Job. (And that’s debatable.) What Christians would recognize as a clear devil character doesn’t show up until the New Testament.
But even if you, as a Christian, think that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was really Satan or the devil or whatever, that character IS NOT PRESENT in the Sarah and Abraham story of the original text. It was slipped into the Precious Moments version.
It has been a few decades since I last read this version, but the blatant reworking of Bible stories and even basic Christian theology is kind of shocking. And this book is for children. Very small children. These paragraphs imply both that Satan was a major force in this story and that they could have such a detailed, direct plan of attack on a single person. For the first point, the character played absolutely no part in the original text. For the second point, generally it is understood in most Christian theology that only God works on a person’s heart.
I read this book frequently as a kid. Looking back, I wonder how much I was affected by this kind of faulty, fear-based theology before deconstructing. The message is definitely “don’t trust yourself because you could be influenced by Satan and not even know it.” Whoever edited this book changed the dynamics of the story to fit their pre-determined theology rather than the other way around.
MUSIC VIDEO
WHO’S IN THE HOUSE by CARMAN (1993)
If you have never heard of Carman before, have I got a treat for you! There is really no equivalent to Carman in the non-Christian music world that I can think of. The closest would probably be Weird Al Yankovic, but he’s actually creative and entertaining in a good way. And he doesn’t preach at you.
It’s hard to choose a single most cringe Carman music video because there are just so many of them. But this one might be it. Mostly because youth group pastors would so frequently start out a sermon with, “Who’s in the house!?” and then wait for the assembled kids to respond with a (usually) noncommittal, “JC.” If the setting was instead a junior high lock-in and large amounts of sugar were provided, then said kids might be quite a bit more energetic in their responses.
But as a 7th grader in 1995, I thought this song and music video were both the height of cool. I usually tell people that my first concert was Coldplay, but that’s not actually true. It was a Carman concert with my junior high youth group about a decade before that. However, that would involve me explaining the entire concept of Carman, and I don’t generally like dealing with that level of residual embarrassment.
TRAILER
JESUS CAMP (2006)
This might have been the first documentary about toxic Christianity that I ever watched. Jesus Camp was released in theatres in September 2006, so I was already more than two years deep into deconstruction when I headed out to catch a showing. I think I even ended up seeing it twice in the cinema, as well as several times on DVD and streaming.
What I remember most about this film is that there was zero narration. It isn’t like a David Attenborough nature documentary or a Michael Moore political treatise. There is absolutely no voiceover from the director telling you how you should be feeling about the footage you’re watching. No one is directing the viewer’s experience, at least not with words. The scenes and situations are all presented as is with only the occasional text giving some basic objective information like names, dates, and locations. All of the conclusions you reach for yourself, more or less.
While Jesus Camp is sort of a snapshot in time of American evangelical culture in the wake of 9/11 and the George W. Bush years, it’s also a decent depiction of the entire overall movement. From the present in 2024, we can look back and note the seeds of Christian nationalism, Trumpism, fascism, and Project 2025 being planted in the culture of American society at the time. In addition to what had already been there since the days of Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority. The cancer was already there, but now it was beginning to metastasize.
The first heavy deconstruction I went through was intense, and it’s perhaps because of that that I never felt triggered by the language or situations depicted in Jesus Camp. My evangelical background was also not as extreme as that of the kids in the film. If the Christian subculture and summer camp shown in Jesus Camp were maybe an 8 out of 10 on the extremity scale, then most of the Christian summer camps and youth groups I attended were probably somewhere between 3 and 5. Still not great, but it could definitely be worse. I didn’t grow up anywhere near the Bible Belt, so automatically it’s just going to be a milder version of evangelical madness. But if you’re closer to the beginning of your deconstruction or were in a more extreme type of evangelicalism/fundamentalism that I was, just brace yourself before you start this thoroughly uncomfortable documentary film.
QUIZ
Don’t be nervous. If you’ve read both sections of Module 1, then this quiz shouldn’t be too difficult. Just do your best!
Questions 1-7 have your basic multiple choice options. Choose the best of the four answers. Award yourself one point for each correct response.
Question 8 is a little more complex. This is a pretty standard version of the Sinner’s Prayer, but there are twelve words missing. Fill in each blank with the best option from your word bank. Award yourself one point for each correct answer.
That’s a total of 19 points, and to make it even, I’ll award you all a bonus point just for reading.
You can check the correct answers at the very end of this article.
FINAL SCORES:
20/20 | 100% | A+ | pass
19/20 | 95% | A | pass
18/20 | 90% | A- | pass
17/20 | 85% | B | pass
16/20 | 80% | B- | pass
15/20 | 75% | C | pass
14/20 | 70% | C- | pass (but read a little closer next time)
13/20 | 65% | D | pass (but read a little closer next time)
12/20 | 60% | D- | fail (try again!)
11/20 | 55% | F | fail (try again!)
10/20 | 50% | F | fail (try again!)
If you have passed, congratulations! You can take a screenshot of your certificate of completion below!
If you have not passed, don’t worry! You can try again!
WRAPPING UP
Thank you for participating in this first part of Christianese! It can be daunting to learn a foreign language, so great work!
Next up is Module 2 where we will cover elements of evangelical language and subculture dealing with Lifestyle Choices. Whereas you should now have reached level A1 (beginner), the second course should get you to level A2 (elementary).
It’s been a pleasure learning Christianese with all of you. I hope to see you all soon in Christianese Module 2!
Final Quiz Answer Key
1. C
2. D
3. B
4. A
5. D
6. B
7. C
8. a. lord
8. b. sinner
8. c. forgiveness
8. d. believe
8. e. sins
8. f. dead
8. g. turn
8. h. invite
8. i. heart
8. j. trust
8. k. savior
8. l. name