Preaching to Convert: Evangelical Outreach and Performance Activism in a Secular Age

John Fletcher’s compelling work introduces evangelical outreach practices to the study of performance activism. He contends that liberal performance activists can improve their own practices based on some of the innovations, commitment patterns, and ideological nuances of evangelicalism. Published as part of the University of Michigan’s distinguished theatre and performance list, Preaching to Convert is directly targeted to theatre and performance studies scholars—a generally leftist-progressive group for whom his central thesis is, he admits, a hard sell. Clearly, from his self-positioning as a “liberal, gay, ex-Southern Baptist United Methodist” theatre historian, Fletcher has ideological, political, and spiritual concerns with the subject he is addressing (5). He therefore presents his analysis through a technique of “critical generosity,” which he borrows from David Román. This methodology is a means of balancing deep empathy for a subject with incisive criticism of the same. Fletcher is critically generous as he writes in the first person to illustrate with charity some evangelical practices, for instance, when he talks about his participation as a church pianist in his discussion of the impact of music on seeker-centered churches. He is also critically generous when he advocates for an alternate point of view—which he does most clearly in his chapter on sexual orientation change effort (SOCE) ministries. The book is lengthy for an academic work, with eight chapters framed by an introduction and conclusion. The chapters themselves are paired up. The first two, following the introduction, set the stage by introducing the two threads he intends on bringing into dialogue throughout the book: performance activism and secular age evangelicalism. He starts with performance activism in chapter one, which is clearly both his bailiwick and his passion. Beginning here, he puts performance activism on notice as the starting point of his study. In chapter two, he introduces evangelicalism in America with the same detail, which segues into his detailed and expansive analysis of a variety of evangelical outreach practices. The next two chapters cover aspects of personal outreach practiced by evangelicals hoping to save nonbelievers from damnation. Fletcher looks at a range of activisms from door-to-door preaching (chapter three), to apologetics (chapter four), to Preaching to Convert: Evangelical Outreach and Performance Activism in a Secular Age


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conclude it is possible to mass-produce outreach without watering down a message. In order to help readers unfamiliar with the evangelical practices he discusses, Fletcher reviews the widest variety of techniques from the specificity of an insider's knowledge. He then makes connections externally to popular culture and critical frameworks that relate them to his primary readership of scholars.
Throughout the book, Fletcher works masterfully through an eclectic range of academics, writers, and practitioners who elucidate and complicate his arguments. For example, in his next chapter on Hell and Judgment Houses, he moves from Pierre Bordieu to evangelical authors Bruce Shelly and Marshall Shelly via David Román and Tim Miller. He then explains his subject with significant primary research from Hell House producer Keenan Roberts, before contextualizing it with theoretical interventions from Jill Dolan (172)(173)(174)(175). This chapter signals a turn to large scale, theatrical outreach programs typified by Hell Houses (chapter five) and the Creation Museum (chapter six). His work in chapter five returns him to some of his earliest work and ideas that he has been treating for nearly a decade (see, for example, "Tasteless as Hell: Community Performance, Distinction, and Countertaste in Hell House," in Theatre Survey 48.2, November 2007, 313-330).
There is now a larger body of work on this subject than there was when he started writing about Hell Houses; he recognizes the new scholarship and engages with it throughout the chapter. Fletcher suggests that the extraordinary efforts of activism in Hell and Judgment Houses are examples of community-based outreach that preach to the converted, a frequently pejorative term that Fletcher reclaims here as one of the strengths of the Houses. His discussion of the Creation Museum in the next chapter expands the notion of preaching to the converted. He concludes that the museum is trying less to combat existing scientific notions as it is redefining science itself. The museum's definition of science allows believers to see the young earth/creationism movement as representative of a godly worldview different than the worldview of secular research.
The final two chapters take evangelical outreach programs from explicit performance practices (missionary work, Hell Houses, the Creation Museum) to the performatives of lived experience. In chapter seven, "Staging Church, Marketing the Divine," Fletcher examines megachurches as vehicles for careful marketing of the evangelical message to those who do not already share it. Participation in worship services is therefore a complicated balance between efficacy and orthodoxy, preaching and discipleship, which Fletcher suggests could inspire progressive left activism for people who are not already on the same page.
The last chapter, "Change Is Possible" is something of a departure from the sites of inquiry Fletcher has considered up to this point. Fletcher's examination of Exodus, a SOCE ministry, has as its thesis a reevaluation of the portraits of ex-gays rather than the means by which the evangelizing efforts of SOCE provide insight into activist performance. Linked to the previous chapter as another example of lived performatives, Fletcher himself seems to recognize the stretch of including this topic as he spends extensive time contextualizing/justifying its position in the larger work. As a primer on the evangelical outlook of homosexuality and a history of the SOCE ministry, the chapter is invaluable. As a means of furthering his exploration of evangelical outreach and performance activism, it is less effective. As a capstone to the work in this book, he

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does make the SOCE ministries relevant as he suggests they effectively model ways of inviting non-believers into conversation in nuanced and important ways.
In his conclusion, Fletcher reiterates that he is not just writing a book to broaden the scope of the field or to provide alternative analyses of subjects already under consideration. He does both of these things, of course. Evangelical performance is a tiny but growing site of inquiry. The University of Michigan published Jill Stevenson's work, Evangelical Performance in Twenty-first Century America, less than a year before Fletcher's book (see the review of this book also in this journal issue). His work on evangelicalism also appears in Lance Gharavi's Religion, Theatre, and Performance: Acts of Faith. Fletcher's work is opening up the field to new sites of inquiry in fascinating and exacting ways.
More important than the work he is doing as a scholar, however, Fletcher is doing the work of an activist. He intends his book not just to be informative, but transformative. He reminds his readers throughout that he is attempting to rework the currently accepted ideas about what activist performance is. His vision for utilizing evangelical strategies to infuse American social activist performance with new life seems possible because he has utilized them in his book. He gently guides readers through basic evangelical strategies: he builds a relationship of trust with readers, reveals the limits of their worldview, questions their own practice, and then invites them to change. I was impacted by his methods, although his preaching was so expressive and subtle it was not until the second reading that I realized what he had done. I do believe that his expansive vision of good faith dialogue between evangelical and progressive left activists requires further theorization towards application: for example, how exactly does one "tolerate" while disagreeing "strongly, loudly, and boldly," or preach to convert when one's message is, by any measure, entirely at odds with the audience's most fundamental belief systems (314)? But I also believe that if anyone could find a way to lead a charge for this particular advocacy, it is John Fletcher. He can count me, at least, as a convert.