“In the Protestant West today,” writes theologian Ben Myers, “smiling has become a moral imperative. The smile is regarded as the objective externalisation of a well-ordered life. Sadness is moral failure.”
This is especially true of evangelicals. We save our best faces for Sunday morning; we hide terrible secrets and unspeakable suffering behind the veneer of a firm handshake and a “just fine.” Our brave smiles evince our faith in the cult of Christian happiness. “Evangelical churchliness,” writes Myers, “is the ritualisation of bare-toothed crassness.”
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