Yesterday I received a modest wee cheque, royalties for a book I wrote 27 years ago! It was a study called Evangelical Spirituality. From the Wesleys to John Stott. At the time it was an early attempt to resist the assumptions of the growing literature on spirituality that Evangelicals didn't have much of a spiritual tradition worth mentioning. "Evangelical spirituality consists of early rising, prayer and Bible reading." said the brief article in the then recently published SCM Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. That was true as far as it went, but didn't go far or deeply enough. So I wrote the book to give lived examples of a spiritual tradition that includes amongst its achievements activism in social justice, evangelistic missions at home and abroad, growing opposition to the slave trade, and a theology of spiritual experience that was dynamic, transformative and radical in its demands and promises.
It was written as an insider, one who has tried to live out my Christian life with ecumenical openness and willingness to learn from other tributaries of the Christian tradition; but as one who was himself Evangelical. The four defining characteristics as argued by David Bebbington remain deeply embedded in my own experience as a Christian: conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism. Much of the fifty years I have been an evangelical Christian I have been content to remain so defined, though I have often been critical and uncomfortable and at times embarrassed with some of the ways some forms of evangelicalism have come to express themselves.
Like many, many other evangelicals, I have had to rethink, deeply and disconcertingly, whether the term is now too compromised by its American versions to be a useful broad based descriptor of who I am in Christ. The evangelical right in the United States has created a major identity crisis, and caused fault lines and drawn red lines that may never be overcome. The politicisation of American evangelicalism and the religious Right has resulted in culture wars, internal dissension as evangelicals of right and left have chosen sides, and overt conflicted stances on key issues. One writer describes the past two decades as a time when political ideology and fundamentalist theology were put in a blender; two separate ingredients produced a new cocktail of political power, religious conviction, emotional and rational commitments, agendas driven by cultural fears and hopes, producing a religiously energised political activism.
Many evangelicals in the United States, and indeed in global Evangelicalism, view with growing alarm, the public alignment, convenient alliance, and some would even say uncritical allegiance, of the majority of white evangelicals with the White House. The word 'white' is pre-loaded in America with enormous social burdens. That is why it becomes disturbing to the point of alarm, that a reported 81% of white evangelicals voted for the present President. The Trump presidency and administration, and the continuing and strengthening support for its policies by leading white evangelicals, has become deeply problematic for other evangelicals who do not share the political commitments of the religious and political Right.
Hence this book. Eleven essays in which evangelicals work through the implications of the current situation for their own evangelical commitments. They reflect the diversity of both American culture and evangelical expression; men and women, white and people of colour, African American, Asian American, Mexican, Latino, pastors, professors and leaders in Evangelical institutions. They wrestle with the question of "who is defining the evangelical and social vision? Is it the Gospel or is it the culture?" Those are deal-breaking questions depending on the answer. Here are two quotations, one from the Introduction by Mark Labberton, and one by Shane Claiborne, probably the most widely known of the contributors.
"[The term] Evangelical has value only if it names our commitment to seek and demonstrate the heart and mind of God in Jesus Christ, who is the evangel.
To be evangelical is to respond to God's call into deeper faith and greater humility.
It also leads us to repudiate and resist all forces of racism and misogyny, and all other attitudes and actions, overt and implied, that subvert the dignity of people, who are made in the image of God. Any evangelicalism that doesn't allow the evangel to redefine, reorder and renew power in the light of Jesus Christ is lost and worth abandoning."
“With the cross of Christ as the theological centrepiece and model of evangelical faith, people inside and outside the church expect evidence of the pursuit of moral purity and/or the humility of self-sacrifice. Both of these now seem buried in the rhetoric of populist and partisan political power…the evangel itself seems to have been marginalised.”
From Still Evangelical. Insiders Reconsider Political, Social and Theological Meaning. Ed. Mark Labberton, Page 17, 8.
"We can maintain oour orthodoxy (right thinking) while reclaiming our orthopraxis (right living). Doctrinal statements are important things, but they are hard things to love. God didn;t just give us words on paper; the Word became flesh. And now we are to put flesh on our faith. In the end Christianity spreads best not by force but by fascination. And the last few decades of evangelicalism have become less and less fascinating. We've had much to say with our mouths but often very little to show from our lives. People can;t hear what we say because our hypocrisies are too loud." Page 165.
I am increasingly uneasy about the way the word 'evangelical' has become a totalising synonym for the American white evangelical right in its use by the media and the resulting perceptions of a global public. No nuance, no recognition of the global diversity of a movement at least three centuries old and with roots going back into Christian antiquity. So is the term useful or a hindrance, accurate or misleading, fatally hijacked or capable of recovered integrity? I don't know. But I appreciate the conscientious wrestling and shared uneasiness in the majoirty of these essays. It is worth reading if only because it gives voice to other evangelicals and their misgivings about whether they can still be called, or want to call themselves, still Evangelicals. Most of them do. I'm not so sure.
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