The major controversy that surrounds the book is that it contradicts the narrative of identity politics presently dominant in this country. We are told that racial injustice is only a problem with minority groups who are non-white.  White men are, by definition, oppressors.  That is the standard presupposition of identity politics.  Because the book portrays many white people who came from poor and uneducated backgrounds, the book betrays the current narrative of social justice. The book indirectly tells us that whites can be the victims of so-called inequality too.
[Editor’s Note: This book (and movie) review of the Hillbilly Elegy first ran on The Aquila Report on December 29, 2020. Since its author, J.D. Vance, has been chosen as the Republican candidate for Vice-President, we thought it would be timely to post it again.]
Among upper middle-class white suburbanites, at least in their circles, the book Hillbilly Elegy has become a must-read.  As a result, some of them may view it as the standard for understanding the Appalachian culture.  During its early release the popularity among its readers was reinforced by its rise to the top of the New York Times best-sellers list.
While the book may have minimal interest among many Christians, its narrative and especially the modern public reaction to the caricature of poor white Americans in Appalachia should arouse interest in those who seek to apply the Christian faith to the culture in which we live. It is especially important in our days of critical race theory and identity politics. I will discuss this more below.
Recently, it has been made into a Netflix movie directed by Ron Howard.  It is rated R for the language; however, it is void of the typical Netflix nudity and on-screen sexual immorality. The movie review geeks of “Rotten Tomatoes” gave it a 26% favorable rating while it garnered an 86% favorability rating among the average public audience.
If you are offended by hearing bad language, then this is not the movie for you.  However, if you are able to handle the language while seeking to understand the cultural nuances in the movie, then it may be worth reading the book or watching the movie.
The movie traces the life of J.D. Vance as he was raised in an industrial city in Ohio.  His family had its origins in the hill country of Appalachia (Kentucky), and as many industrial workers did back in the latter part of the 20th century, they had to move out of the hill country to find jobs.  Many of them lived in Ohio during the week and drove home (hundreds of miles) every weekend.  Some purchased homes in Ohio.  J.D.’s mother was a drug addict, and his strong-willed, cussing grandmother (Glenn Close) was the stability factor in his family.  In spite of his difficulties of being raised in a highly dysfunctional family, Mr. Vance eventually went off to Yale and became a successful lawyer.  This is partially his autobiography.
The book derives its title from the stereotypical name of “hillbilly” given to those who were raised in Appalachia.  It is also called an elegy (a lament about the past).  Mr. Vance’s life was very hard and he had to endure much stress and embarrassment in regard to his family. He certainly has an interesting and heart-warming story to tell.
There are several take-aways from the book.  First, in my view, it is really not so much a book or movie about Appalachia and its culture, but more about the consequences of sin in any culture. One could take the same story-line and transfer it to any geographic part of the country and there would not be much difference.  However, curiosity about Appalachian culture gives the book an inviting and magnetic drawing power for outsiders (and insiders, too).
Being raised in Appalachia myself (about 40 years before Mr. Vance), I could identify with some of the tidbits in the movie (like pronouncing the word syrup as “surp,” and not knowing which eating utensils to use at a fancy dinner).  I can attest that there was grave poverty among both whites and blacks in the mountains, especially in the coal fields.  I know of both black and white men walking the railroad tracks looking for lumps of coal that may have fallen off the coal trains.  Coal provided heat for the family in the winter time.  This was before the welfare system and EBT food-stamps.  There were no free-loaders, only survivors. In the early 20th century, miners were often treated like slaves by the mine-owners.  Some of them worse than slaves.
Secondly, it is obvious that in Mr. Vance’s immediate family, there was little influence of the Christian faith.  It seems that no one ever goes to church, except for weddings and funerals. Such Christianity may be more harmful and dangerous than an outright denial of the Christian faith.  Nominal Christianity is deceitful and a harmful curse.  It gives a false assurance of being a Christian with little evidence of the new birth.
Contrary to the portrayal of this family, I can attest that there were many dedicated Christians in those hills and valleys.  The Bible had a major impact on the people and its culture.  It permeated the life and morals of the people as a whole.  Marriage between a man and a woman was held in high esteem.  Adultery was scandalous. At least, that was the Appalachia I knew.
Thirdly, as I noted above, the major controversy that surrounds the book is that it contradicts the narrative of identity politics presently dominant in this country. We are told that racial injustice is only a problem with minority groups who are non-white.  White men are, by definition, oppressors.  That is the standard presupposition of identity politics.  Because the book portrays many white people who came from poor and uneducated backgrounds, the book betrays the current narrative of social justice. The book indirectly tells us that whites can be the victims of so-called inequality too.
The idea of a white family being poor and being treated as the outcast in society is not acceptable among the modern purveyors of critical race theory, thus the low rating by “Rotten Tomatoes.”  A coal miner who was treated like an animal in days past does not fit their narrative. White children raised in poverty who made their way out of their circumstances without government aid or help do not fit their narrative either.
The people in Appalachia that I knew would rather die than take a hand-out from some government welfare system or from some redistribution-of-wealth scheme.  They were proud men whose work defined who they were.  They wanted to be independent, and any hand-outs were associated with degradation and shame.  This was part of their Christian culture.
Again, the book is much more than a story about Appalachian culture.  The book and the movie do not pass the evil white man smell-test of modern cultural warriors.  It does not fit their narrative and it challenges their presuppositions.  Therefore, it is a threat to them.
Christians today need to be aware of the philosophies of the world.  Reading books like Hillbilly Elegy can be profitable, not only in seeing how hard life was in days past even for white people, but also in recognizing how our cultural elites react to narratives that do not fit their political hegemony.
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Friday, July 14, 2023
Pursuing faithful political order and rule, using the power of the state to do good, as has been recognized by Christians throughout the ages, is a good and noble vocation. But Christian political action is also not presumptuous. It is realistic about what can be accomplished in this fallen, evil age, an age in which God has not promised ultimate victory, even as it is optimistic because it entrusts itself to a God who in his infinite wisdom sovereignly rules human history.

Man was made to order and rule over the world that God made. Although there is a unique (and theologically important) sense in which this was true of Adam, it is inherent in the image of God and continues to be the case even after the Fall.
Nonetheless, Adam’s fall into sin has radically changed everything. Although the vocation remains (order and rule), it can no longer be carried out in the same way as would have been the case had Adam not sinned. What, then, has the Fall done?
A classic principle of Christian theology, one that has been invoked often with regard to Christian political action, is this: grace does not destroy but restores nature. This means that certain aspects of how God made the world do not cease to be operative simply because sin has twisted and deformed those institutions. This would include things like the goodness of marriage and childbearing, as well as the goodness of labor and work. With regard to political order it means that although the Fall has created difficulties with regard to the human vocation of ordering and ruling the world, it has not destroyed the possibility of doing so. Governance is not—even in light of the Fall—a sub-Christian concern, or contrary to human virtue. Man still maintains the capability and responsibility to order and rule the world.
Sin, however, has made this much more difficult. There is now an enmity between those who belong to Satan and those who belong to God (Gen 3:15). This enmity will manifest itself in the world until the coming of Christ when he will return and put every enemy under his feet (1 Cor 15:24–25). The entire created order, political rule included, has been “subjected to futility” and exists in a state of “bondage to corruption” (Rom 8:20–21). Fallen mankind “became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom 1:21). “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom 1:22–23). Sin has infected everything, the ability to rule well, even the ability to think properly about ruling well.
Had Adam not sinned, faithfully ordering and ruling the world as he was meant to do would not only have been possible, it would have been a joy. With the entrance of sin into the world, the vocation remains, though twisted and distorted by the Fall. Order must now overcome disorder, rule must include governance, but also punishment, and so on.
This does not mean that political order and rule is worthless, nor that much good cannot be done through it, but it does mean that there should be a Christian “eschatological reserve” wherein we recognize that the good we can do this side of Christ’s return is limited. Our political philosophizing must reflect these limitations.
Put simply and succinctly, Christian political action in a fallen world can be defined according to a simple maxim (to be expanded in subsequent articles): Do the good you can, where you are.1
The antithesis between the divine and satanic seeds will not be overcome in this age; the fullness of the kingdom of God will not be manifest until the last day. But God has revealed, both in his word, and in the various facets of the created order, what man’s vocation in the world is, and how that vocation should be carried out. That vocation includes ordering and ruling over the world and its people, in the unique tribes, tongues, and nations that God has established. Nothing about the Fall negates this vocation and responsibility.
While some Christians reject political power as too tainted by the Fall, there is also a temptation for Christians to reject the kind of limited and circumspect approach to politics I’ve begun outlining in this article. This temptation can take many forms, from utopianism to despair and defeatism regarding our present political condition. The latter can even be combined—as strange as it might seem—with hope in some form of nearly miraculous intervention that will usher in a sudden transformation of a given political order. In this way of thinking doing the limited good you can, where you are, just props up a tottering, evil regime. Better to let it all burn and hope an unexpected deliverer will arise to set things right.
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It’s not that we can’t ever generalize, lump people into groups, or argue from specific examples to broader themes, but if we mean to indict a whole group, we must show that the indictment is largely true of the whole group. Otherwise, we are just signaling to our in-group that we are against the correct out-group.

Of all the memorable statements uttered by Charles Spurgeon, this advice from Lectures to My Students has stuck in my head as much as anything the great preacher said or wrote:
The sensible minister will be particularly gentle in argument. He, above all men, should not make the mistake of fancying that there is force in temper, and power in speaking angrily….Try to avoid debating with people. State your opinion and let them state theirs. If you see that a stick is crooked, and you want people to see how crooked it is, lay a straight rod down beside it; that will be quite enough. But if you are drawn into controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words.
So many wise sentiments in these few sentences. We could talk about how “the Lord’s servant,” even as he rightly contends for the faith, “must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim. 2:24–25). We could talk about the folly of mistaking forcefulness for true spiritual power. We could talk about the wisdom of avoiding protracted debates, by stating your opinion and then moving on. All of that is pure gold.
But I want to focus on the last sentence in the paragraph above. I want to suggest two ways we can make our arguments harder, which in this case means better, more careful, and more persuasive.
First, we can make our arguments better by focusing on the what instead of the why.
Let’s suppose your church is divided over what kind of new flooring to get in the fellowship hall. One side wants to continue with carpet, but you are on the side that wants hardwood. You might argue that the hardwood costs less, or is easier to clean, or fits with the look and feel of the rest of the church. Those are what arguments. The other side might not agree with your reasons, but they are rational, objective arguments to consider.
But suppose you make the case for hardwood flooring in a different way. You insinuate that the only reason some people want carpet is because their grandparents own a carpet company, and they are hoping to get a financial windfall from the church’s decision. Or you suggest that the pro-carpet side has always tried to control the church, and this is about holding on to their power. Or you insist that non-Christians are repelled by carpet in the fellowship hall and that the pro-carpet side doesn’t care about reaching unbelievers with the gospel. These are all why arguments. In this second scenario, you are arguing that the other side is motivated by greed, by a love for power, and by an indifference toward evangelism.
We can see in this (hopefully) absurd example that why arguments can easily create more heat than light. This is not surprising because why arguments tend to be more personal, more ethically charged, and more difficult to prove. Of course, why arguments are not always wrong. Maybe the pro-carpet folks really are in cahoots with Big Carpet, maybe they really are a cabal of old-time powerbrokers, maybe they really are gospel-less infidels. Sometimes the why arguments are important arguments to make. But—and here’s the key—those things can’t just be asserted or insinuated. Arguments must be made. They can’t just be thrown out there because you’ve decided to connect the dots in one way, when those same dots could be connected in several other ways. If the pro-carpet ringleader has a grandparent in the carpet industry, he could be scheming for a kickback, or he could be trying to care for his aging grandparents, or it could be that he grew up familiar with all the benefits of carpet, or the connection could be a pure coincidence because the man hasn’t talked to his grandparents in years and they sell a different kind of carpet anyway.
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