Eric Metaxas is both a fearless speaker and writer, and a very funny guy. In a conversation about John West’s new book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity: Why America’s Christian Leaders Are Failing — And What We Can Do About It, he randomly assures the audience, not once but twice, that John West is Dr. West’s actual name, “not a stage name.” Not a stage name?

Far more serious is the subject of the discussion, which you could summarize as the weaponizing of winsomeness. Every religious community has its problems — mine certainly does! — to be found in leadership that fails in one way or another. With some evangelical Christian leaders, being winsome can be taken so far that it leads to a surrender to secular imperatives. The surrender distorts basic principles. As an outsider, I had noticed that. But West has all the receipts, as everyone seems to be saying now — in other words all the details. He also knows what Christians can do to ameliorate the problem.

In what West calls Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, leaders such as Francis Collins, under the cover of his own performative winsomeness, have prioritized being liked and respected by the mainstream even at the cost of looking down on fellow Christians, and worse. Leaders like this, says Metaxas, and organizations like BioLogos, want a “cleaned up” version of their faith that won’t embarrass them in front of secular elites by, for example, asking uncomfortable questions about Darwinian evolution. 

Metaxas recalls having Collins on the Socrates in the City program where Collins made condescending comments about intelligent design. At the time, Metaxas didn’t know what to think about ID, but he’s since come to size up the relevant science much as we do. Watch: