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| Logo for the Hallow app. Image source. |
Apparently there's a prayer app called "Hallow." Amanda Marcotte writes about it here: An atheist's unnerving descent into Hallow, the prayer app beloved by MAGA celebrities. I want to highlight this part of her article, because it's very insightful:
Most of this material doesn't seem political, but it does encourage a form of small-minded narcissism, with the relentless focus on the self. The Jesus of the Hallow app isn't much concerned about social justice or caring for the downtrodden, but about being your good buddy who strokes your hair after a bad day at work. The "demonic" forces the believer is called upon to resist aren't grave evils like human rights abuses. Satan seems more interested in frustrating you with traffic than, say, installing a fascist leader in the White House to destroy democracy. It doesn't seem political, but the project of lulling users into not caring about anything outside their immediate self-interest suits the goals of the MAGA movement. And it's probably more persuasive to ordinary people than overt right-wing propaganda. This isn't the Christianity of the liberal Christians I know, who volunteer, donate money, and care very much about electing better leaders. This is a "don't worry your pretty head about all that stuff" kind of Christianity.
Wow. This is really a spot-on description of the evangelicalism I was raised in. ("Hallow" was made by Catholics, actually. But this description feels familiar to me, as an ex-evangelical.)
The way this article describes the Hallow app- about how it offers encouragement for little mundane issues like disagreements with one's coworkers, etc- how it's just about you and your own little world and God's place in it- all of this feels very normal and expected, to me. It's honestly a bit jarring how Marcotte seems to have expected a Christian prayer app to be about "social justice or caring for the downtrodden." Yeah sure, in my experience evangelicals kinda care about those things, but they are way far down the list- the most important thing is your own heart, your own attitude towards God, your own personal devotion to God, your habits around praying and reading the bible.
"don't worry your pretty head about all that stuff" is absolutely right. I really have heard evangelicals say the real-world results of our attempts to do good don't matter. The only thing that matters is that God sees that your heart is in the right place. Seriously. Evangelicals really say that the whole world belongs to God, and if God wants a thing to happen, it's going to happen- nothing we can do to change that- so the only thing we really have control over is our own attitude, and that's what God will judge us for.
Evangelicals *do* take action to help the world. Sure, yes, they do. There are evangelical charities. Plenty of churches have food pantries to help local people in need. But as I said, it's way far down the list. That's not what comes to mind, when evangelicals consider questions like "what does it mean to be a Christian?" or "what does God want us to do?" The answers to those are, read the bible more, pray more, work on your personal relationship with God.
I find I am 0% surprised that when conservative Christians made a "prayer app," it ended up being about nothing more than the little world inside your own head. The little God who closely tracks your feelings as indicators of how devoted you are, but does nothing about human rights abuses in the world.
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See also, this post from the Slacktivist: Toddlers on a treadmill: Why evangelicals can’t even take baby steps toward justice
Related:
On believing that "prayer works"