I first found out about Ben Cremer a few years ago when some mutuals on Facebook started sharing his posts. Then, as now, he was (following in the footsteps of the likes of John Pavlovitz) growing his platform by posting woke “Christian” takes on everything from abortion to BLM. As it turns out, that is a pretty solid method of gaining clout and today he has 12k followers on Facebook and another 22k on Twitter. At this point he’s said so many ridiculous things that I can scarcely keep track, and I would rebut all of them if I had time, but you have to start somewhere. So here is “somewhere.”
Be forewarned, I’m going to be extremely critical of the things that Ben has said on his social media, but that said, I don’t know this man. I only know the version of himself that he puts forward. So the Ben who manages a food pantry to feed the homeless people in his town has my full support, but the Ben who posts stuff on FB and Twitter and I have some problems. Let’s get into them.
Cremer benefits from the fact that his rhetoric slots smoothly into the social imaginary of the age. Nothing being said here is fresh or in any way original. Ben simply regurgitates extremely well-worn talking points that have been prepped by any number of pseudo-socialist ideologies inside and outside the Church. First of all, NO ONE’s Christianity does these things. Show me a Christian who uncritically admires the wealthy and I’ll show you somebody abusing the label (if such people even exist; I have never met one). Ben here is conflating having admiration for wealthy people (no matter for what reason) with having admiration for their achievements (other than simply being rich) and for the virtues that they have cultivated.
But Ben is only using this statement about the rich to discredit what he calls “inherent suspicion” at the kinds of monetary decisions that poor people often make. Let me explain this slowly: you can be aware of the known phenomena of poor people spending their money in ineffective and self-defeating or self-destructive ways without it being an “inherent suspicion.” Cremer is using this specific set of words in order to make a very rational skepticism seem like a prejudice. It is not.
The question being asked without being asked here is whether or not poor people own the consequences of their actions. In other words: do they have agency? Agency is the most basic component for any kind of discussion on morality, and without it, any talk about policy isn’t just confused; it’s, like, literally fake. You can’t advocate for some policy over another if you can’t confirm that people have the ability and therefore the responsibility for choosing good things over bad things. And you can’t acknowledge this without acknowledging that even people who are poor own some responsibility for decisions that they make which keep them poor. And you can’t remove this from poor people without robbing them of their humanity because it is our ability to make meaningful moral choices that is one of the defining qualities which makes us human.
If this seems heartless to you, ask yourself why. Ask yourself why you think it is morally defensible to infantilize (at best) or dehumanize the poor. Ask yourself why so many of the “solutions” that people like Cremer advocate for poverty are expansions of the welfare state, with the attendant centralization of state power, and the simultaneously reduction in the ability of poor people to make meaningful decisions about their lives.
As CS Lewis once said,
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
You see, the problem with Ben Cremer is that he represents a kind of moral reduction of Christianity—Christianity watered down to a kind of vibe, what some have called “ecumenical niceness.” Ecumenical niceness usually fixates on various kinds of “harm” and how they can and should be removed from the world.
Ben talks frequently about “harm” and the “harm” that evangelical Christianity causes. “Harms” such as reassurances that God is with us in our suffering, is in control, and “won’t give us more than we can handle.”
The thread continues…
Now, before I go any further, I want to say that as a Christian and someone who suffered from depression and anxiety for DECADES, it is true that to the extent that I experience depression, anxiety, or fear, I am revealing a lack of faith in God and His plan.
Admitting this is not difficult for me because my chief concern in my faith is not assuring myself that I am a good Christian. In fact, I know I’m not a good Christian because I am innately sinful and every step I take towards the divine is a step away from my nature. But for Ben, the suggestion that his behavior reveals that he’s not a saint and has further to go in his faith is a “hurtful shame” that no one deserves.
We actually have a word for this kind of attitude: narcissism. And the fact that we live in a culture of narcissism is what makes this thing work.
Living in a culture of narcissism also makes ecumenical niceness pretty easy. Very few people today are going to have a problem with you affirming them unconditionally and bending over backwards to assure them that they are “valid.” Ultimately, this leads to the absurd conclusion that the only people who aren’t “valid” are the ones who argue that there needs to be some standard for “validity” and—wwwwwow, I just realized how far I’ve digressed from the original topic—
but do you see how difficult it is to talk about Ben Cremer? It’s not that he’s got a couple of things wrong about Christianity, it’s that his ENTIRE WORLDVIEW is backwards and philosophically incompatible with Christianity; so every time he talks about Christianity, he is projecting it through this other moral system and mutilating it in the process. And talking about Christianity is basically all that Cremer does on his socials. That moral system, Cremer’s actual worldview which forms the lens through which he interprets Christianity has a very long intellectual pedigree and it has been elaborated on at length by Carl Trueman in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. But honestly, I need to end this thing. This was supposed to be a quickie.
Update: In the light of Ben’s more recent comments regarding the Olympics Opening Ceremony, I’m updating this blog post with a link to that newer post in which I use Ben’s commentary to discuss his political function and how it relates to Christians. Those interested may find said post here.
The Barking Years 
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