This is a copy & paste job from the weekly Wall Street Journal article called HOUSES OF WORSHIP also known as Houses of Breathtaking Stupidity.
‘Evangelical’ Isn’t a Dirty Word. Justified revulsion over politics is no reason to renounce a religious identity.
Many evangelical Christians today face an identity crisis. They regularly see their leaders on cable television clumsily defending politicians who have flouted traditional sexual norms. Droves of their fellow congregants supported Donald Trump for president and Roy Moore for Senate. Is modern evangelicalism morally bankrupt? While it’s too soon to know how widespread the trend is, many are beginning to renounce the “evangelical” label.
“The term feels irreversibly tainted,” evangelical writer Jen Hatmaker told the Washington Post in December. “And those of us who don’t align with the currently understood description are distancing ourselves to protect our consciences.” Other prominent evangelicals—progressive and conservative—have made similar comments.
I believe this is a terrible mistake. Evangelicals’ support for candidates of questionable character is often exaggerated. It also ignores important context: Many voters strongly preferred other candidates but felt forced to choose the lesser of two evils. Regardless, there are compelling apolitical reasons to keep the evangelical label.
“Evangelical” is derived from the Greek word euángelos, which means “bringing good news.” It comes straight from the Gospels, which identify Jesus as the “good news” that had been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. The word also has a lovely ring to it.
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Although there is no single definition of evangelicalism, the British historian David Bebbington has described its key features well. Evangelicals are mostly Protestants. They believe in the authority of the Bible and the cross. They emphasize the need for conversion, for believers to be “born again.” And they share a commitment to activism: evangelism, missions and social work. I suspect an unhappy former evangelical would read this description and recognize himself, as I do.
Evangelicals have a storied history in American public life. They figured prominently in the movement to end slavery, and institutions such as Wheaton College in Illinois were established on Abolitionist grounds. Jonathan Blanchard, who later became Wheaton’s first president, serving from 1860-82, insisted during a debate that opposition to slavery “blazes from every page of God’s Book which is a wall of fire around the rights of the poor.”
A century ago, the nation’s best-known evangelical was William Jennings Bryan, who ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, 1900 and 1908. Bryan was often ridiculed by the intellectual elites of his era, who especially picked on his opposition to the theory of evolution. “There was something peculiarly fitting in the fact that his last days were spent in a one-horse Tennessee village, beating off the flies and gnats,” H.L. Mencken wrote in a scathing obituary.
Bryan did contribute to a strain of anti-intellectualism that has not yet fully disappeared from American evangelicalism. But many of his positions, such as opposition to imperialism, tariffs and gambling, have aged well. The common theme of Bryan’s politics, which came straight from his evangelicalism, was that every person is made in the image of God and is therefore precious.
In the current era, evangelicals’ insistence that sexual intimacy is appropriate only in the context of marriage has often been greeted with derision similar to what Bryan faced. Yet in the light of the #MeToo movement, as rampant sexual misbehavior is revealed from Hollywood and Washington, the biblical view might soon start to seem a little less crazy.
I don’t mean to discount the concerns of my disgruntled fellow evangelicals. One of the more depressing political conversations I’ve had in the past year came after a chance meeting with a prominent constitutional law professor. He said he was surprised by recent voting patterns, because he had thought that evangelicals might be the one group in American society who would vote based on principle rather than expediency.
On the bright side, evangelicals are now an increasingly familiar presence in American intellectual life, having shed the anti-intellectualism of the early 20th century. Evangelicals also are much less anti-Catholic than in the past—so much so that even a few Catholics now call themselves evangelical. I believe that Christianity is self-correcting. And because evangelicalism is a faithful understanding of Christianity’s essence, I believe it is self-correcting, too.
Rarely have evangelicals been so divided and uncertain of the way forward. But the problem is with us, not with evangelicalism or the Christian principles it represents. The label and the history are important. For those who have recently renounced evangelicalism, I have a simple plea: Please reconsider.
Mr. Skeel is author of “True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World” (IVP Books, 2014).
Appeared in the February 2, 2018, print edition.
