The New Evangelicals: A Conversation with Tim Whitaker

Tim Whitaker thinks a lot. He and I have that in common. 

In October 2020, he was sitting in a rocking chair on his front porch, thinking. He and his partner had a newborn, and it was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

His church, like most churches at the time, was exercising caution by not meeting in person. As a drummer in the church worship band, this gave him more time to think. 

Around that time, Sean Feucht, the golden-haired worship pastor from Bethel Church in Redding, California, was holding unmasked worship gatherings across the country. Whitaker wasn’t as politically or theologically progressive then as he is now, but still, none of what Feucht was doing seemed right. 

I recently met Whitaker at a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., two blocks north of the White House. We discussed how overthinking is both our superpower and kryptonite, the danger of Mark Driscoll relative to other evangelical personalities, and those front-porch beginnings of The New Evangelicals (TNE). I have edited portions of our conversation for clarity. 

“It was not a new thing,” Whitaker said, reflecting on Feucht’s brazen disregard for public health. “Martin Luther had a quote during the bubonic plague critiquing that mindset. But it was very disorienting to be watching someone in the worship space, singing the songs I had sung, preaching this message of ‘faith over fear.’” 

Between that and other things that were going on within evangelicalism, Whitaker thought to himself, “I’m tired of this. We need something new. We need a new evangelical movement, and that’s where I got the name. It was birthed out of the idea of pushing what existed into a better direction.”

The result of all that thinking is The New Evangelicals, Whitaker’s project to create a community of people who have, according to the TNE website, “been run over by the bus of the evangelical church.”  TNE produces a podcast, but Whitaker’s most visible work is the content he creates for social media. His Instagram and TikTok accounts have around 100,000 followers apiece. 

Many of those who make up the TNE community spent much of their lives in what Whitaker calls “the basement of Christianity–evangelical fundamentalism.” It is a metaphor he returns to often. 

He employed it when I told him the story from years ago about an acquaintance, around fifteen years older than me, who informed me that the emerging beliefs I was embracing were nothing new. (Whitaker is around fifteen years younger than me.) 

“There’s this big house that has always been here,” he says. “When you are in the basement, though, they tell you this is all there is. Catholics aren’t real Christians. Progressives aren’t real Christians. And who are these ‘Orthodox’ people anyway? It’s just this.”

As he and his community venture out from the basement to discover other rooms, “There can be this tendency for us to stand in these spaces [like inclusive and justice-oriented Christianity] and think they are new.” He adds, “But there is also the tendency for us to move from one fundamentalism to another and think, ‘This is the only room now.’” 

On his podcast, he often invites representatives from other “rooms” of the Christian house to introduce their traditions and theology to the TNE audience.

Much of Whitaker’s content focuses on holding leaders who try to keep followers in the “basement” accountable for their abusive behavior. I broached this subject with him by bringing up an incident involving Mark Driscoll a few days before we met. We discussed Rick Pidcock’s excellent piece in Baptist News Global, which described and analyzed the controversy. 

I wondered out loud about the dilemma of constantly commenting on the actions of personalities like Driscoll and Donald Trump. On the one hand, it perpetuates their followers’ belief that the world is against them, driving them deeper into the “basement.” On the other hand, not shining a light on abusive behavior and teachings is irresponsible. 

Whitaker navigates that tension by remembering who he is speaking for. 

“The question is, who are we trying to represent?” he said. “I know I’m not going to change Josh Howerton’s mind when I say Mark Driscoll is not qualified to be a pastor, which 40 of his [Driscoll’s] own elders said. When we say ‘advocate for accountability,’ what we are trying to do is help our audience feel seen, because so many of them were burned by this whole thing.” 

He added, “What we are trying to say is, ‘No, we’re not going to be silent.’ In a lot of ways, all we are doing is turning the gun back on them. They were the ones that gave us the tool [of using social media for accountability]. I fully understand that, in many ways, it is a continuation of the evangelical structure, but there is something about speaking truth to power.” 

I appreciated this point. However, where Whitaker and I diverge is the scale of harm someone like Driscoll can inflict compared to less bombastic pastors who hold identical theologies. Our conversation turned to a pastor Whitaker has come to know personally because of a social media interaction between them, and I know because of geographic proximity. 

We discussed differences between Driscoll and this other pastor, such as how Driscoll may call LGBTQ+ people “demonic” while the other would call their queer identity “sinful.” 

I contend that both theologies are equally harmful, and the latter may be more so because most LGBTQ+ folks know to stay away from Driscoll. However, with the other pastor, they may be lured into an unsafe community because of flowery but coded language about their identity.

Whitaker wasn’t convinced. 

“I definitely don’t want to say that because they sound nicer, it’s not as poisonous,” he said. “Same poison, for sure. However, for me, the difference is not only does Mark have a much bigger platform, and not only is he cozying up to far-right pundits like Charlie Kirk, but the way he talks about these [LGBTQ+] people, I think, is much more likely to lead people to violence.”

According to Whitaker, the other pastor’s approach “at least leads others to attempt to be loving.” 

Depending on the day and which side of the bed I wake up on, my jaded self sees Whitaker’s grace as either hopeful or naive. But it is expanding his audience and influence, even among those he disagrees with. Last weekend, he spoke at the “Exiles in Babylon” conference, hosted by personalities seeking a more thoughtful faith, but which mainly consists of folks who are not LGBTQ+ affirming. 

He regularly texts and speaks on the phone with many of those he calls to account on social media, and has even become friends with some of them. 

Our conversation returned to what we have most in common–overthinking, loyalty and a love-hate obsession with authority. 

When Whitaker first began questioning and taking a peek out of the basement of evangelical fundamentalism, the people around him were supportive. But once he questioned too much, he lost that faith community. 

“It was painful losing friends that I thought I’d be doing life together with forever. But it also gave me a little more understanding that not everyone operates the way I do, so I can have a little more grace.” 

Whitaker wants that community to know that he hasn’t lost his faith: “I think some people believe that deconstructing faith means losing your faith. But for many people, deconstruction helps them find their faith. They find a more robust, nuanced, deep Christian tradition that has room for the complexities and mysteries of life, because life is complicated.”