What’s Wrong with Evangelicalism?
(Part Two)
Just to remind you, this essay began because I read
two books: D.G. Hart’s From Billy Graham
to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism
(2011) and the 2018 collection of essays edited by Fuller Seminary’s Mark
Labberton, Still Evangelical? (And, yes, I know I still haven’t answered the
question heading this post. I will. If you're just checking in, you might want to see the previous essay.)
Hart’s book started me thinking about the real world
of politics and how I, as an evangelical, fit into it. He frankly says evangelicals
like me will find the fit uncomfortable whether we try to dress as liberals or
as a conservatives. In each instance there is something we will have to give
up. (Hart implies political conservatism demands fewer far-reaching
sacrifices.) The second book reminded me of the deep hurt and anger some of my
fellow-evangelicals felt that Wednesday morning in November 2016 when the
unimaginable happened and the man whose candidacy was a joke had the last
laugh.
Each book insists American evangelicalism must be
tweaked. Hart’s call for change,
including the challenge to focus on the Federalist Papers for evangelical
political theory rather than the New Testament, was delivered dispassionately.
The contributors to SE? (whom I’ll
call the essayists from this point on) were not dispassionate; most were fuming. On a closer look, Lisa Sharon Harper,
Soon-Chan Rah, and Shane Claiborne seem the angriest; Karen S. Prior and Jim
Daly seem more disappointed than angry with the 81%. The essayists’ collective
message: evangelicals must stop being so reactionary, so xenophobic, so racist,
so homophobic. Some of the essayists seem to be saying, stop being so white, so
male (so American?). But they may not have meant it that way.
The essayists are described as “insiders” within the
evangelical community but, of course, Hart is also an insider, though like his
hero J. Gresham Machen he might eschew labels.
While reading SE?
one sometimes hears echoes of the victim mentality gripping millennials. Some
essayists portray men and women of color as willing to abandon the label
“evangelical” because of white, male evangelicals, like those who voted for
Donald Trump. A few of the essayists are also incensed by evangelicalism’s
historic critique of homosexuality, suggesting instead that members of the
LGBTQ community ought to be viewed as fellow-evangelicals, without reservation.
While I certainly agree such men and women should be treated with a Christlike
love that never forgets they bear the image of God and that they no more than I
need God’s grace, I feel the Biblical mandates on human sexuality must be
viewed seriously and adequately explained rather than being ignored.
Some of the essayists’ arguments seem simplistic and
short-sighted. An essay on evangelical attitudes toward immigrants suggests the
undocumented should be tolerated because it’s so hard to become a US citizen.
Guess what? It is hard. But it’s also hard and costly to become a British
citizen, a Canadian citizen, or a Mexican citizen. You can look it up.
Years ago I went on a partnership mission trip to New
South Wales, joining hundreds of other Texas pastors and church members who
would be ministering for a week in local Baptist churches. We pastors were told
by state convention representatives that upon entering the country we
must not tell immigration officials we were coming to preach; the Australian
government did not want us threatening the jobs of Australian pastors. Most
nations feel self-protective. Most nations ask potential citizens to jump a few
hurdles.
None of this exonerates the US for any immigration
policies that are fundamentally racist but neither does it mean the nation
stands alone in maintaining tough policies. Perhaps the only reason it seems
that way is the fury Donald Trump inspires when he talks about immigration—and
walls. (Okay, when he talks about anything.)
Yet,
if the essayists were influenced by extra-biblical ideology, so was D. G. Hart.
As Union University’s Hunter Baker
observes, Hart’s perspective is largely shaped by his commitment to a tenet “which resists change and
extols localism and custom.” (https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/on-the-matter-of-authentic-conservatism-and-political-faith/.
Accessed 8 December 2018) In other words, he is a conservative in the classic
mode. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. Conservatism, to echo D. Elton
Trueblood, reflects the belief that some things are worth conserving.
And neither is there anything wrong with being a political
liberal. My old friend Win Corduan, from Taylor University, once opined:
“evangelical theology is the only reasonable foundation for liberal politics.” Maybe
most of the essayists have answered affirmatively to the “Still Evangelical?”
question because they know this. I hope so.
Still, in a recent blog, Hart wonders why
evangelicalism’s critics still want to be called “evangelicals.” He wrote:
Lots of
people who fault evangelicalism for its racism, nationalism, misogyny, and
general meanness still want to be evangelical.
It is a
phenomenon that rivals the current discussions among Roman Catholics and the
sex scandal of whether or when to leave. At least for Roman Catholics, leaving the church has all sorts of
historical significance. Rome represents a tradition, allegedly, that goes back
to Peter and Jesus in Matthew 16. Do progressive evangelicals possibly risk
anything on that order of magnitude? If you leave evangelicalism you refuse a
version of Protestantism that goes back to George Whitefield?
What could
ever be the problem with that? Whitefield was a straight white man who owned slaves, after all. (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/protestprotest/2018/11/is-evangelical-the-only-kind-of-protestant/.
Accessed 8 December 1018.)
Maybe Hart intended that as irony. Maybe the label
doesn’t mean a lot to him. Maybe he would happily collect their nametags as the
liberal evangelicals leave the tent to become something else, label pending. Maybe
he hopes critics will seriously consider why they are still willing to be known
as “evangelicals.” I’m glad they do—even if they just want to avoid
disappointing their grandparents, even if they don’t admit it in front of their
grandparents.
But wait. I haven’t answer the question, “What’s Wrong
with Evangelicalism?”
Maybe you’ve guessed.
Evangelicals are what’s wrong with evangelicalism.
Evangelicals who forget how to talk civilly with each
other about their differences.
Evangelicals who believe they always own the moral
high ground.
Evangelicals who tie the future of the Kingdom to a
political candidate, party, or ideology.
My heart often resonated with the essayists, my head,
with Hart. (No pun intended, honest.) I tend to believe allowing the heart to continually
overrule the head is more dangerous than allowing the head to rule in most
cases. But, of course, if Christian love (agapé)
always seeks the best for another, the head must always be involved. How else
will we understand what is the best for another. And clear-headed love
recognizes both the politically-conservative and the politically-liberal
evangelical face certain temptations.
Each faces the temptation to demonize opponents,
indeed the tendency to see anyone who has a different opinion as an “opponent”
ought to be troublesome.
Each faces the temptation to succumb to fear, to
forget no human institution can thwart God’s will, no ruler’s rise to power
surprises God.
Each faces the temptation to join hands with sketchy
individuals who claim to share their vision. Radio hosts and Hollywood royals
have every right to endorse a candidate, but evangelicals must be cautious
about seeming to endorse the endorsers.
The politically-conservative evangelical is, perhaps, especially
susceptible to the temptation to cherish the status quo or, at least, to be
content with needed change coming at glacier speed.
The politically-liberal evangelical is, perhaps, especially
susceptible to the temptation to believe the government can accomplish more
than is humanly possible or, at least, to believe that better laws make better
people rather than hoping better people will make better laws. (At least some of our evangelical forebears
believed real change comes from changed people.)
Ultimately, each may, in their own way, face the temptation
to allow their priorities to be skewed.
Thabiti M. Anyabwile, a historian of the
African-American Christian tradition, writes about a disturbing trend in
African-American theology.
… the
emergence of high estimations of man’s moral ability leads many to
overemphasize political and social freedom. If man no longer needs rescuing
from the effects of sin and the wrath of God to come, and if he is capable of
ushering in a temporal utopia of sort, then the logical focus of his energies
become societal inequities and social structures. Salvation becomes a matter of
reconstructing an inefficient but salvageable society. Great hope is placed in
the great society. Churches move more aggressively toward becoming the ‘one
stop centers for al physical and social needs of their communities…. Many seem
to forget or overlook the Lord’s incisive question, ‘What does it profit a man
to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ Gaining the whole world seems
more and more like the sole quest of man once anthropological amnesia obscures
the church’s memory of man’s depravity.
(T. M. Anyabwile, The Decline of
African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity, IVP,
2007, pp. 134-135.)
Though he is
speaking of the African-American church, much of what Anayabile says could
apply to some segments of contemporary evangelicalism. The focus of politically
minded evangelicals seem to be on the here and now to the neglect of more
pressing issues. It is even tempting to ask if the doctrinaire conservative evangelical
or passionate liberal evangelical would join the angels in rejoicing over a
soul being saved—if that miracle took place in the “wrong” church.
At this point, I admit I am more concerned about those
evangelicals who harbor in their hearts the anger and bitterness I sensed in
some of the essayists. Such anger, especially as it is directed toward those
who hold a different political stance, is no less “fundamentalist” in nature
than the rages of a J. Frank Norris. But, ultimately, I feel this concern
because they also seem to have embraced a perilous open-mindedness.
Now, I know open-mindedness is a virtue in our culture
but an older culture, one given to us by the great thinkers of evangelical
history, acknowledged boundaries. I’m not suggesting a return to a pugnacious
fundamentalism and certainly not to a “get-the-firewood-I smell-a-heretic”
approach to differences, but to the recognition there are parameters of belief
beyond which one cannot go and still be meaningfully described as an
evangelical or even as a Christian. In my experience, the closed-minded can
become more open-minded; seldom does the transition move the other way.
After I began writing this conclusion, I came across a
blog by Roger E. Olson, a professor of theology at Baylor’s Truett Seminary, on
the meaning of evangelical and who may define the term. Since Olson’s response
to the discussion was similar to my response to SE?, I will quote him at length.
[Note: That I agree with him does not imply he will agree with me.]
Most of the
panelists were relatively young and all were non-white (as “white” is usually
understood not as color but as dominant culture). Some were women. There was a
great deal of complaining that “evangelicalism” has been and is still largely
being defined by white men. That needs to change, we were told.
Sitting in
the audience of a scholarly society I once led felt very strange. The finger
was being pointed at me—as a culprit. Not directly; my name was never
mentioned. But I knew who they meant—evangelicals like me.
… I kept
waiting for some suggestion about the meaning of “evangelical Christianity,”
but the focus of the conversation seemed to be deconstructing the “power
structures” (composed almost exclusively of white men) that have excluded
“voices from the margins” from the conversations about the meaning of
evangelicalism.
At least one,
but I think two, of the speakers very specifically stated that LGBTQ people
need to be included in any conversation about the meaning of “evangelical.”
THAT would NEVER have been said in such a gathering of evangelicals—scholarly
or otherwise—in the 1980s (for example).
But at this
symposium it seemed (I may be wrong) that the speakers and many audience
members simply took for granted that NOW LGBTQ people MUST be included as equal
partners in the ongoing conversation about the meaning of “evangelicalism.”
After
listening to the panelists’ papers and the ensuing open discussion, I wondered
if 1) white, heterosexual men (like myself) have any place in this conversation
anymore (I think not), and 2) if “evangelical” is now losing all meaning. (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2018/11/who-is-an-evangelical-and-who-gets-to-decide/.
Accessed 10 December 1018. Emphasis in original.)
Of course, if I believed being a white, male,
heterosexual disqualified me from commenting on issues regarding being a
Christian in a complex world, I’d close this blog, sell my laptop, and stop
writing. Of course, I don’t believe that. Funny, if I refused to listen to a
person of color, I’d be a racist; if I refused to respect the opinion of a
woman, I’d be a sexist; if I suggested young Christians should keep quiet and
listen to their elders, I’d be an ageist. I don’t do any of those things. But
if people suggest white, male, heterosexuals have no place in the conversation;
they’re given book contracts and tenure. But I digress.
If an experienced analyst like Roger Olson has concern
over positions so similar to those expressed by the essayists, perhaps I can be
forgiven for my unease. However, my unease is not without remedy. It comes from
the essayists’ apparent willingness to hold on to “evangelical” as a
self-description.
If the essayists are content to still be evangelicals,
great. The tradition has an admirable heritage. I welcome them. I hope greying
evangelicals like me can learn from them. Maybe we can learn from each other.
Perhaps more than some of us who hold the name
evangelical, the essayists are committed to the fourth element of the
Bebbington quadrilateral: service. They yearn to make love active, to model
grace and mercy. The rest of us—white, male, heterosexual, whatever—can learn
from their example.
And they, like all of us who claim the name
evangelical, need to remain committed to biblicism. We must be sure our
doctrine and ethics rests firmly on the Word of God. We have to resist the
temptation to allow the culture to shape our stance on doctrinal, social, and
moral issues. If we take a moral position contrary to the historic view of the
church, we must be ready not only to defend our position but also to show how
the best minds of Christianity have misunderstood the issue for two
millennia.
They, like all of us who claim the name evangelical,
must maintain a sound understanding of the cross. To be truly crucicentric,
we must be ready to explain why Christ died—to atone for our sins—and why only
his death could accomplish that. We must join that most evangelical of
hymn-writers, Charles Wesley, as he sings:
See all your sins on Jesus
laid;
The Lamb of God was slain;
His soul was once an offering made
For every soul of man.
Harlots, and publicans, and
thieves,
In holy triumph join!
Saved is the sinner that believes,
From crimes as great as mine
Then, too, to be crucicenetric
we must have a Christology rooted in the Scripture and consistent with the best
Christian thinkers throughout history, especially as that thinking has found
its way into the principal creeds. In other words, it matters who died on that
cross. Again citing Wesley, we must “hail” Christ, the God-Man, as the
“incarnate deity” who lived among us as a genuine human. We must avoid “pop”
views of Jesus as a businessman par
excellent as was popular in late nineteenth century American, as a positive-thinking
psychologist as was popular in 1950s America; or as a proto-Marxist rebel,
which seems popular today. Efforts to make Jesus a representative of the
marginalized because he lived in a country under a foreign power, is
anachronistic. Jesus lived in a subjugated nation but it was a nation where
Jews were allowed to practice their traditional religion, where hard work
brought material reward, and where the milestones of life could be celebrated
with joy. More important, as we follow Christ’s
career in the gospels we see he never fomented rebellion, some of his followers
were part of the system, some of his followers were affluent businessmen (in
fact, Rodney Stark suggests Jesus’ family was likely more affluent than
extra-biblical tradition holds); some of his followers—women no less—had
discretionary funds they could donate to his work, and his stories reveal both
the rich and the poor can act with nobility or with treachery.
They, like all of us who claim the name evangelical,
must press the need for conversion. Years ago a prominent evangelical opined that the
then current emphasis on the sinfulness of men (males) and their need to be
born again, to be changed by God’s Spirit, sometimes caused women to believe
they were less sinful, less in need of change. Had he not been the pastor of
one of the largest churches in America and famed for his keen knowledge of
baby-boomers, we might have discounted his opinion as bosh. But he was making a
crucial point: we cannot exempt any from the need to repent and be born again,
no matter how victimized they may have been. The call to conversion is issued
to the powerful and the powerless, to the elite and to the marginalized. Jesus’
words to Nicodemus are important: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see
the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” We cannot allow our sympathy
for the marginalized of this world to cause us to neglect their need to be
changed by God’s Spirit, to be converted. If we do, we don’t really love them.
*****
I’m not sure I agree with Thomas Mann’s observation
that “everything is politics.” But it certainly seems impossible to ignore
politics.. You can’t drive far on any road without seeing some bumper sticker
proclaiming the driver’s political opinion. Just the other day I saw a small car with its
hatch door covered with stickers. One suggested the president is mentally ill,
another featured the president and Vladimir Putin in a homoerotic posture,
another suggested the president possesses no moral fiber; in the midst of all
these stickers was one in bold letters: “I AM NOT A REBUBLICAN.” Talk about
stating the obvious; those bumper stickers make “Lock Her Up” seem tame.
Politics creeps in everywhere. Even into our churches.
Politics has probably always been nasty but
somehow it seems nastier lately. If evangelicals talk politics—and I suspect
they will—being salt and light will involve moderating our speech when we talk
to those who see things differently.
