“Between the idea /And the reality,” reads Omri Elisha’s epigraph for his new anthropological study of evangelical compassion, “Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.” — T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. Omri, a Revealer contributing editor, spent 15 months conducting fieldwork with an evangelical church in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was especially interested in their faith-based initiatives, and what he calls the “theological paradox of compassion and accountability,” and what the evangelicals he worked with call “compassion fatigue.” The result is “Moral Ambitions of Grace” in the journal Cultural Anthropology.

Writes Omri: “White conservative evangelicals in the suburbs of Knoxville are aware that putting theology into practice is never easy, and they know that the challenges of practical theology can be especially troublesome when it comes to the ways in which suburban churchgoers interact with cultural strangers affected by conditions of poverty, distress, and marginalization (e.g., urban poor blacks, the homeless, ethnic minorities). And yet, when they do engage in social outreach, their sensitivity to the dynamics of social power often diminishes in the face of stronger cultural prejudices and religious aspirations. Their prejudices may be expressed as suspicion toward charity recipients, and their aspirations include the desire to embody “active and sacrificial compassion,” a romanticized ideal of Christian charity based on a belief in the possibility of creating profound interpersonal bonds that transcend social boundaries and status hierarchies. As a result, evangelicals often overlook the degree to which the implementation of compassion and accountability reproduces conditions of “deep-lying incommensurability” (Simmel 1950:392) between those who have the power to give and those who are burdened with the obligation to reciprocate, either through return gestures or some other moral premium.

Omri’s writing for an academic audience, but the article is worth the work for the rest of us, too, a deep exploration of the dilemmas beyond the debates over faith-based initiatives as both policy and personal practice. Read “Moral Ambitions of Grace.”