The scandal of the evangelical mind is that it remains perfectly content to traffic in cliché.

The same tropes, the same books even, get written over and over again (—“‘cause this one’s mine,” I hear Josh Ritter sing in “California”).

If C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, even (sadly) Flannery O’Connor and T.S. Eliot, were never trotted out again it would still be too soon.

The predictability, I suppose, has different effects. Some crave comfort (“yes, reassure me, tell me again”); but for so many others—the rest of the world?—eyes glaze over (“again? And...?”).

This becomes an *institutional* challenge: patrons who crave comfort will fund cliché. Such a philanthropy of nostalgia undercuts true creativity and innovation.