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| Kate Shellnutt, Christianity Today, Oct. 14, 2020 |
What do they believe?
I have always considered myself an evangelical. The word is rooted in evangel: good news.
I’ve always believed the Christian faith is good news to the poor, the stranger, the broken, always prayed my life would be a demonstration of that good news: God loves us, redeems us, intervenes on our behalf. As we abide in him, and his word abides in us, we become like Jesus, living lives of sacrificial love.
That vision does not seem to be shared by most who now self-identify as evangelical.
Historically, evangelicalism threads through periods where the Holy Spirit broke down entrenched religious structures with new life, new love. Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational: all sprang up from evangelical movements. Evangelicals across the centuries were known as people determined to live what they believed, turning their experience of Christ’s love into good work and joyful witness.
Houghton College, the Christian liberal arts college I attended in the 1970s, stood squarely in the evangelical tradition. We were taught all truth is God’s truth and all gifts are to be used in the service of the world. Fellow students went on to be missionary doctors, urban pastors, public defenders.
Theologian and church historian Donald Dayton attended there in the early sixties. His father, Wilbur, was president during much of my time there. Discovering an Evangelical Heritage, Donald Dayton’s first book, documented the social activist out-working of evangelical movements. I’m certain he spoke at one of our required chapels, reminding us of the radical obedience of ancestors in the faith — abolitionist, leaders in the women’s suffrage movement, civil rights activists. To him, a hallmark of evangelicalism was “applied holiness”: faith that invited scripture and Holy Spirit to shape both work and worship.
That meaning seems long gone as the word evangelical, at least here in the US, has lost any recognizable relation to the integration of faith, learning and work that was the bedrock of historic evangelicalism.
That meaning seems long gone as the word evangelical, at least here in the US, has lost any recognizable relation to the integration of faith, learning and work that was the bedrock of historic evangelicalism.
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| This election, Evangelicals have more faith in Donald Trump, Kate Shellnutt Christianity Today, Sept. 18, 2020 |
In the late 1970s my husband Whitney and I joined friends in early meetings of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) just as the Moral Majority was taking shape. While the ESA attempted a prophetic stance outside the avenues of political power, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority cemented a pragmatic alliance with political conservatism. The word “evangelical” became synonymous with an agenda that in many cases has no resemblance to the teachings of Jesus, all held hostage by the repeated promise to end abortion and stave off gay marriage.
By 1991, Donald Dayton recommended a “moratorium” on the word he had once celebrated, describing the term “evangelical” as “theologically incoherent, sociologically confusing, and ecumenically harmful.”
In 2004, Ron Sider co-chaired an attempt by the National Association of Evangelicals to reclaim a stance more in line with evangelical history, publishing a document called For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.
The introduction announced:
Truth that brings life leads to flourishing and results in ongoing hope that guides our day-to-day approach to civic engagement. We also engage with a gracious and winsome spirit. We should not echo the rage and disrespect that typifies much of today’s political debates. Indeed, as the combative nature of 21st-century public discourse threatens meaningful efforts for the common good, the tone of our engagement will be as strategic as our involvement. Evangelicals of all political persuasions and backgrounds must demonstrate that differing opinions can be handled without demonizing, misrepresenting or shaming.Therefore, in challenging and in equipping evangelical Christians to be involved in policy making and discourse, the National Association of Evangelicals emphasizes that our involvement should model the servant call of our faith and the care and concern for the other. In so doing, we may find our political efforts not only strengthen the social fabric of our nation but also rebuild the plausibility of the Christian faith in the minds and hearts of our culture.
Our goal in civic engagement is to bless our neighbors by making good laws. Because we have been called to do justice to our neighbors, we foster a free press, participate in open debate, vote and hold public office. When Christians do justice, it speaks loudly about God. And it can show those who are not believers how the Christian vision can contribute to the common good and help alleviate the ills of society.
It was a valiant effort to safeguard a valuable heritage but ultimately unsuccessful. Books have been written, with many more to come, about the way the word and tradition have been hijacked.
In 2017 Global Baptist News shared religion professor Miguel de la Torre’s scathing assessment, The Death of Christianity in the U.S.:
Christianity has died in the hands of Evangelicals. Evangelicalism ceased being a religious faith tradition following Jesus’ teachings concerning justice for the betterment of humanity when it made a Faustian bargain for the sake of political influence. The beauty of the gospel message - of love, of peace and of fraternity - has been murdered by the ambitions of Trumpish flimflammers who have sold their souls for expediency.
Jerusha Duford, granddaughter of the late Billy Graham, has been more gentle in her assessment, but with a similar conclusion:
My faith and my church have become a laughing stock, and any attempt by its members to defend the actions of Trump at this time sound hollow and insincere.This week, she joined a new group, “Not Our Faith PAC,” a non-partisan group of Christians speaking out against Donald Trump, one of many such groups that have formed in recent months. In a press conference announcing the group, she said:
his attempts to hijack our faith for votes, and evangelical leaders’ silence on his actions and behavior, has presented a picture of what our faith looks like that is so erroneous that it has done significant damage to the way people view Jesus.Evangelicals for Social Action, after forty years of making the case for an evangelical witness of good new for the poor, last month concluded, as Donald Dayton did decades ago: it’s time for a moratorium on the word “evangelical”. The organization has changed its name to Christians for Social Action.
Today the word “evangelical” in the popular mind has largely political connotations. For significant numbers of people, it signifies a right-wing political movement irrevocably committed to Donald Trump. Many young people raised in evangelical churches are turning away in disgust–abandoning evangelical churches and even sometimes the Christian faith itself. And the larger society thinks of evangelicals not as people committed to Jesus Christ and the biblical gospel but as pro-Trump political activists. . . .
Because of a shameful history of white evangelical racism, the black church has long refused to use the term evangelical for itself even though its theology and piety are very close to what the word evangelical used to mean.Christianity is not dead. And the good news of Christ will continue to be shared around the globe by people whose lives have been changed. As for me, I'll continue to read scripture, pray often, worship and love my neighbor as faithfully as I can.
But for now, I’m stepping back from the word evangelical.
And joining others who say “Not Our Faith” to the demands of Donald Trump.
