The Hillbilly Gospel

I’ve been interacting a bit with JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. I’m currently pastoring in hillbilly country. (One of our gas stations is actually called Hillbilly’s). And I’m not a foreigner. I grew up as a hillbilly in rural Northeast Missouri. Some might have been shocked reading about JD’s Mamaw and the way she talked of God. Not me. I see it every day. Let this one jar you a bit:

By Mamaw’s reckoning, God never left our side. He celebrated with us when times were good and comforted us when they weren’t. During one of our many trips to Kentucky, Mamaw was trying to merge onto the highway after a brief stop for gas. She didn’t pay attention to the signs, so we found ourselves headed the wrong way on a one-way exit ramp with angry motorists swerving out of our way. I was screaming in terror, but after a U-turn on a three-lane interstate, the only thing Mamaw said about the incident was, “We’re fine, goddammit. Don’t you know Jesus rides in the car with me?” (Vance, 86)

Here you’ve got a woman passionately saying the Lord’s name in vain, being a bit flippant and untheological in her declaration of the Lord’s protection, but at the exact same time having a deep faith that in the love and presence of God. Now wrap your mind around this one. When young JD asks Mamaw if God loved them he recounts how his grandmother was wounded by the question:

The question wounded Mamaw because the Christian faith stood at the center of our lives, especially hers. We never went to church, except on rare occasions in Kentucky or when Mom decided that what we needed in our lives was religion. Nevertheless, Mamaw’s was a deeply personal (albeit quirky) faith. She couldn’t say “organized religion” without contempt. She saw churches as breeding grounds for perverts and money changers…(Vance, 85)

How in the world can you say that the Christian faith stands at the center of your life but you never go to church? Let’s be honest, such a Christian faith isn’t the same Christian faith of the Bible. What Vance is talking about, and what we see of the faith of Mamaw, is the cultural Christianity of the Bible Belt. It’s the moralistic therapeutic deism of which Christian Smith says is the majority religion of Americans. This is the Bad Religion which caused Ross Douthat to call us a nation of heretics. Yet this is the faith of many Americans…especially amongst the hillbilly population.

My Context

Sharing the gospel here in Southwest Missouri, and especially inviting folks to church, is seldom met with resistance. Most of the people here have had some religious exposure and likely even claim some sort of faith in Jesus. Many of the people have probably even been baptized, prayed some sort of prayer of salvation, or had a type of religious experience. Though there is a growing number of folks who have little to no exposure to the gospel, for the most part people view the church and the message of the gospel as something they’ve already done and tried.

So here is what we have in the context that I minister. 65% of our students are on reduced or free lunches. I would venture another 10% could probably qualify but just didn’t fill out the paper work or had too much pride to accept a handout. Poverty is rampant in our little community. So are drugs. Meth is the drug of choice in this area. Broken families are more common than intact families.

And for many people the problem is “out there” and the solution is certainly not the gospel or the church. For them, church is the place you go when you have things figured out. It was something they tried years ago but it couldn’t answer their brokenness. Or perhaps their brokenness placed them in a spot where coming to church was no longer an option—maybe it was their own perception or maybe the church itself lost her way and shut the door on the broken and rebellious.

It’s as if we’ve got a ton of people dying of thirst and rejecting the water of life because they are assuming their already drinking it to their fill. But they’ve never tasted a drop, they’ve only seen others drink or worse yet have chugged a cheap imitation and called it the real thing.

The Solution

Part of me wants to pause for a moment and try to put together a brief history in an attempt to explain where I believe this problem came from. I’d like to say that with our changing culture the revivalistic, populist, and a somewhat anti-intellectual religion did battle in the 80’s and 90’s with a seeker-sensitive and attractional model of doing church. And that what happened is that it drew a crowd of hillbillies because pragmatism found a welcome home but it left the old guard ticked off and frustrated. When the vacuous nature of attractional church finally caught up with it what you’ve got left is a culture of empty, confused, and hurting folk who assumed they’ve “tried the Jesus-thing” but they never actually encountered the gospel which touches every sphere of life and not just the performance you enjoy on a Sunday morning.

I’d like to do that, but if I get something wrong in my history you could dismiss my overall point. The only answer to the hillbilly brokenness is the gospel. And it’s a gospel which isn’t afraid to get its hands dirty but also a gospel which is deeply theological. Cultural Christianity isn’t the answer because it’s part of the problem. A resurgence of Mayberry might address some of the brokenness but it will just nice people all the way into hell. And I’m convinced an attractional model might draw a crowd but it won’t make a dent in the actual everyday brokenness of life out here in hillbilly land.

The only answer is a thorough gospel. A gospel which not only tells people how to get out of hell but also a gospel which shapes your marriage, your parenting, your finances, and even what you do and do not put into your body. To preach a gospel-lite and assume these folks can’t handle theology is to leave them further damaged. I love what Mez McConnell says on this point:

Honestly, such attitudes strike me as paternalistic and condescending. Poor people are poor, but they are not stupid. They are just as capable of understanding the character and ways of God as anyone else. Paul didn’t write his letters to the faculty of a seminary. His readers were generally not wealthy, privileged, or well-educated. And the Israelites leaving Egypt didn’t have advanced degrees in theology, but God didn’t hesitate to tell them all kinds of in-depth and complicated things about himself. (Church in Hard Places, 65)

We cannot afford to waste our time trying to figure out how to grow a mega-church out in the country. We cannot play church. We must aim at nothing less than personal transformation of one soul at a time. We absolutely must show our people how the gospel applies to every sphere of life. This won’t come through programs or slick productions. This comes from men and women who have been changed by Jesus and who are willing to get their hands dirty in the hopes of helping one more beggar find the bread of life.

There is so much work to be done here. I would plea with young men coming out of seminary to not abandon the rural churches for the bright lights of the cities. The cities need people too. But there is some real ministry that happens out here in hillbilly land. Don’t use the rural church as a simply a stepping stone for that big city post. Come and be amazed at how Jesus works in the rural areas. You’ll be surprised at what Jesus can do. And you might even be shocked to know that you don’t have to only use Grudem’s Systematic Theology to argue with people online. Rural folks devour it just as well.

Preach the gospel, whether in city or out of city. And watch the Lord of glory work.

—

Photo source: here