Exclusive, Inclusive, and Pluralist

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In addressing the question of the exclusivity of Christianity, I have always been drawn to the writings of Lesslie Newbigin, one the most influential ecumenical and missionary theologians of the twentieth century. His many years of work as a missionary in India coupled with his extensive engagement with the global church enabled him to articulate a missionary theology that is deeply attentive to the interactions between the gospel, culture, mission, and religion. He suggests that Christian faith may be viewed as exclusive, inclusive, and pluralist. It is exclusive in the sense of affirming the unique nature of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, but not in the sense of denying the possibility of salvation to those outside of the Christian faith. It is inclusive in the sense of refusing to limit the saving grace of God to Christians, but not in the sense of viewing other religions as salvific. It is pluralist in the sense of acknowledging the gracious work of God in the lives of all human beings, but not in the sense of denying the unique and decisive nature of what God has done in Jesus Christ.

From the perspective of Newbigin, the exclusivity of the Christian faith does not rest on the idea that only Christians will receive the benefits of salvation, but rather on the confession of the unique nature of Jesus Christ. The focal point of the diverse witness of Christian history is Jesus Christ, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). This commitment to Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life affirms that it is he who shows us who God is and how God acts in the world, and the unique nature and character of the divine mission. All roads do not lead to God. The way of Jesus is not simply about the inwardly focused or otherworldly spirituality so common in our culture, or the social activism that is often viewed as its alternative. Rather, it is the way of humility and self-denial for the sake of others as a faithful witness to the love of God. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him (1 John 4:7-9).” The way of love is the way of life.

This focus on the unique character of Jesus also leads to the affirmation that ultimate truth is not finally to be found in abstract notions or theories, but rather in the person of Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God and the living embodiment of truth. In this way Jesus is categorically different from all other prophets, witnesses, and messengers from God. He is presented as the all-encompassing truth of God, a truth that is personal, active, relational, and gracious. This affirmation that Jesus is the truth is a stark challenge to the abstract ideas of truth we commonly hold. As noted above, in Jesus we discover that truth is not merely intellectual or even moral, but personal and relational.

But notice, none of these aspects of the unique nature of Jesus leads to the conclusion that only Christians are the recipients of the blessings of God made known in Jesus. Further, they may actually point away from the notion that one must be an adherent of a particular religion in order to participate in and experience the way, the truth, and the life. It is not the practice of a particular religious tradition that leads to salvation. It is Jesus who brings salvation to the world, not religion. It is the very exclusivity of the Christian confession concerning the unique nature of Jesus that leads to an inclusiveness that refuses to limit the saving grace of God only to Christians. The genuine significance of the church in the economy of God does not in any way imply that the church has been fully entrusted with authority or given control over the dispensation of grace in the world. These belong to God and God alone.

The witness of the Christian community to the revelation of God in the world has produced a pluralist community. While we often speak glibly of the Christian tradition, even a cursory glance at the history of the church should make us aware that at the end of the day we can speak only of the multiplicity of Christian traditions that make up what we refer to as the Christian tradition. Think of the different traditions that make up Christianity: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Wesleyan, Mennonite, Baptist, and Pentecostal among others. Considerable plurality marks each of these traditions. Diversity from within has always characterized Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church. Protestantism knew plurality in the first generation of the Reformation.

The list of contested questions and proposed answers goes on and on. In addition, most of the standard accounts of Christian history have been focused on the concerns of the Western church, with little emphasis on the history of Christianity as a world movement. Expanding the focus of Christian history leads to a widening of diversity and plurality both in the past and the present. Faithful Christians in different contexts and settings ask questions that have not been formed by the experience of the Western church. They consider the Bible, theology, and the church with philosophical and worldview assumptions that are different from those of Greco-Roman, Franco-Germanic, and Anglo-American settings. Indeed, many of the conversations and controversies that have shaped the Western church are of little significance in other parts of the world. The plurality and diversity of the church is an inescapable reality.

Thinking about the pluralist character of Christianity might well assist the church in addressing the pressing concerns raised by religious pluralism. Indeed, we may wonder whether we can effectively address the reality of religious pluralism from a Christian perspective if we have not adequately thought through the realities of pluralism in the church. Perhaps the plurality of the Christian community is suggestive of the benefits of interreligious dialogue as a means of better understanding the way, the truth, and the life made known in Jesus.

 

Living Witness and Extending Welcome

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I not only grew up knowing that evangelism was the primary task of Christians, I was a poster child for this idea. My most vivid memory of this emphasis in my own church context (other than going to the mall during conferences to share my faith with complete strangers) was signing up for the I Found It campaign in 1976. As a young teen, I remember the anxiety of talking to people on the phone about Jesus (again, people I didn’t know). I also remember praying with one woman as she responded to my invitation to receive Jesus.

Fast-forward a few decades. This week I finished teaching an elective course on Luke. In chapter 24, the risen Jesus speaks to his disciples. “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:46-48, NIV). The image of Jesus’ followers as witnesses is introduced here and picked up in thematic ways in Acts.

The juxtaposition of these different ways of understanding evangelism is a powerful one for me. The first seemed to me more like the offering of a commodity. It was even framed this way linguistically: I Found IT. And it was a commodity that I was taught to understand was something I had that others lacked. In other words, there was an exclusive sense of ownership of the truth. We (a very small group) had the truth, had Jesus; everyone else didn’t. So we shared our faith to convert others to the faith—to what already belonged to us. I realize this may be somewhat a caricature, but it pretty closely reflects what I understood about evangelism in my youth.

Luke’s call to be witnesses to Jesus strikes me as a helpful corrective to what I’ve described as an ownership mentality about faith in Christ. A witness points to truth or reality as they have seen it and experienced it (similar to John’s refrain, “Come and see”). Jesus’ words from Luke exhort disciples to witness to the story of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection that brings God’s forgiveness and restoration to Israel and to the nations. I doubt Luke imagines the gospel—or Jesus, for that matter—as a commodity to be owned and offered as Christians “do evangelism.” Witness is not a task on our to-do list but a way of life flowing from the experience of Jesus as Messiah and Lord. 

This difference of emphasis seems a fruitful way forward for evangelicals as we embark on interreligious dialogue. And I believe interreligious dialogue is essential in a world that is increasingly pluralistic. There is no upside to hiding in our churches and refusing to engage other faiths. Dialogue across faiths is essential for moving away from stereotyping and typecasting on either or both sides. Yet this is a minimalist (though initially important) reason for engaging in interreligious dialogue. Beyond this, we might engage people of other faiths in conversation for mutual understanding. They have something to offer us in terms of perspective on the good, the holy, and even the divine. We can affirm this truth especially since we don’t own Jesus. Rather, Jesus claims his ownership (Lordship) of us. And, yes, we engage people of other faiths in conversation with the hopes of introducing them to the Jesus we’ve come to know as Messiah and Lord.

If we are going to engage the Other, especially the religious Other, there are some practical considerations to attend to. First, we would do well to consider the power dynamics of conversations across difference, including those across religious lines. We can get at some of these power differentials by asking the questions, Who’s at the center and who’s at the margins? Or, Who gets to set the parameters of the conversation?

One of my frustrations as a teacher of the New Testament is the assumption by some American evangelicals that they—or even Christians more broadly—are a religious minority in our country. And my frustration particularly gets hooked when this rhetorical stance is drawn from the New Testament itself. We do a disservice to the text when we ignore the context of difference between ourselves and the first Christians. The early Christians were numerically and socially a minority in the first-century Greco-Roman world. They truly had little or no power in the face of the Roman political and military systems, especially as their identity as part of Judaism began to be questioned (and so they were no longer under its protection as a religion of antiquity vis-à-vis Rome).

The situation of Christians in the United States in the twenty-first century is quite different from this one. By fairly conservative estimates, about 30% of Americans consider themselves evangelicals and “about 8 in 10 Americans at least nominally adhere to a Christian faith of one sort or another” (Gallup site, 2005; Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, 2012). Until we as Christians (and evangelicals) admit to the power we have, politically and socially, I believe we will be poor conversation partners with people of other religious faiths. We will take a minority stance (possibly even a victim stance) that will ring inauthentic to cultural realities and inhibit trust for the dialogue (see Schlosser).

A second practical consideration arises from one of the questions for this month’s discussion: What should the ground-rules of interreligious dialogue be? My gut reaction to this question is to wonder about the wisdom of “setting rules” for conversation. I mean, what if before my daughters could have a conversation with me they were required to follow certain rules? I imagine this would rather quickly close down rather than open up conversation. Now I don’t want to be naïve about the difficulties of engaging significant differences that exist between, for example, Christians and Buddhists, Muslims and atheists. Yet I would suggest it might be most helpful to simply enter the conversation. And, if by ground rules we mean that we’ll need to set up careful parameters so we maintain power differentials, then no, let’s not set up ground rules (see Sandage and Brown for a caution against ground rules for interdisciplinary conversations that do just that).

But if by ground rules we mean that there are certain dispositions that will help interreligious dialogue begin and proceed effectively (especially because they attend to power differentials), then ground rules are apt. And I would commend the following dispositions for the conversation: respect, curiosity, conviction, and humility. Generally, we’ll be better conversation partners if we’ve cultivated the competence of differentiation of self, by which we are able to share our own perspectives and convictions while paying attention to our anxieties that get hooked as we experience those who are quite different from us.

I am intrigued to imagine what it would it look like for evangelicals to be gracious participants in interreligious dialogue… curious, not fearful, trusting in Christ and loving others well (1 John 4:18). What might it mean to hold as equally important the values of witness and welcome?

 

Works Cited:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/20242/Another-Look-Evangelicals-America-Today.aspx

http://www.wheaton.edu/ISAE/Defining-Evangelicalism/How-Many-Are-There

Sandage, Steven J. and Jeannine K. Brown. “Monarchy or Democracy in Relation Integration? A Reply to Porter.” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 29 (2010) 20-26.

Schlosser, Lewis Z. “Christian Privilege: Breaking a Sacred Taboo.” Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development 31 (2003) 44-51.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christian Witness in a Pluralistic World: Renewing Christian Faith

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There is no doubt that Christian faith is exclusively in Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, NRSV), and the apostles also declared, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jews might anticipate a messianic deliverer who will reunite the people of God with Yahweh, but they do not hold, as Christians do, that Jesus is that Messiah. Muslims respect Jesus as a prophet but both subordinate his message to that of Muhammad’s and do not understand his claim, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30), in a similar manner as Christians. In other words, Christians make unique and exclusive claims about Jesus as savior and revealer of the Father.

But Christians are not the only ones with unique and exclusive claims. In fact, all religious traditions, by virtue of the fact that they are what they are and not something else, have such claims. Some might even follow up on such claims with concomitant actions in ways that put Christians to shame. The apostle James agrees that, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (2:17).

Apologetically, then, I think actions speak louder than words. While on occasions thoughtful members of other faiths convert to Christ because of the rhetorical persuasiveness, intellectual coherence, and aesthetic attractiveness of the Christian message, these are exceptions that still, in time, ought to be followed by conversions of the heart. At this level, people come to Christ not because he is reducible to a set of ideas but because as the living “reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb. 1:3a), Jesus and his followers touch hearts, heal bodies, and transform lives and communities. Christian mission in a pluralistic world is most effective when clear proclamation of the message of the gospel – of Jesus as savior, healer, sanctifier, and coming king – is preceded and supported by works of love, mercy, peace, and justice.

Trinitarian mission in this holistic sense cannot be merely exclusivistic. Sometimes communal transformation invites Christians to work alongside people of other or no faith in order to effect change. There is no need to compromise on what we believe and confess in these cases, but there may be many good reasons to collaborate with others in order to bring about common good. Sometimes, we may even need to choose not to engage in certain actions, otherwise appropriate and even normative, if that might distract from or stumble the “weak” – as St. Paul, for instance, suggested not eating meat offered to idols in some contexts which might be fine in other contexts – and thereby undermine the witness to Christ needed for the moment. There are many levels at which Christians can and should address the plight of the unfortunate (orphans, widows, the impoverished, and people with disabilities, among others), and some levels of engagement summon, if not require, interfaith cooperation. Christians bear witness to the living Christ on these occasions by serving those in need; in fact, it may well also be that all so engaged minister to Christ himself. Effective missional witness in a pluralistic world, hence, involves addressing human heads (the cognitive dimension) and human hearts and hands (the embodied and social domains).

Yet I also think that given the goodness, truth, and beauty that is refracted through other cultural and religious traditions, Christians should be motivated to dialogue with those in other faiths not only missionally but also for our ongoing self-understanding. By dialogue, however, I don’t mean only those formal occasions involving representative intellectuals but those circumstances when we can be hosts and guests of those in other faiths in order to get to know them, share our lives with them, and learn from them. The point of dialogue is that there is a mutuality of interaction, relationship, and transformation, just as when Peter met Cornelius (Acts 10). I mention being hosts and guests since sometimes, Christians are reluctant to embrace the latter role. It is simpler, and safer, to be hosts of those in other faiths since hosts establish the ground rules for the meeting. However, Jesus Christ himself is the paradigmatic guest himself in his incarnation even as the Holy Spirit desires to be the guest in every human heart. Christian missionaries have also been exemplary guests, as they are sent ones who enter into the spaces and times of others. Guests bring with them gifts – the gospel – but are also open to the hospitality of others, as Paul himself received such from the Maltese barbarians (Acts 28:1-10).

And what do others have to offer besides physical nourishment? Do Christians really have anything to learn from others that they do not already know? The Day of Pentecost narrative suggests that God’s salvation history involves the redemption of many languages in order that the world might say, “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:11). Languages we know are culturally embedded, as are religious traditions. Hence, the capacity of languages to declare the glory of God suggests that the highest aspirations of cultural and religious traditions may also be redeemed for divine purposes. This is not to say that each and every word of every language is sanctified in some absolute sense, nor is it to naively sanction all cultural and religious realities. It is to say that there is no reason why authentic dialogical and conversational interaction with people of other faith should not be catalytic for Christian self-transformation. Might not our interaction with religious others teach us humility, open us up to graces all humans hold in common, prompt question our own traditions (which are sometimes also encrusted in many ways by cultural accretions such that their original purposes have become obscured), and help us recognize that despite all we think we know, often in the face of reality we must be mute and wait for divine revelation to know how to “live, and move, and have our being”? 

Christians should expect nothing less in faith. Not only do we now see through a mirror dimly (1 Cor. 13:12), but we worship and serve a living Christ who cannot be reduced to any set of propositions. In fact, only in the eschatological future will he be fully manifest: “when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). This is not to say that the future revelation of Christ will contradict what is known about him now from scripture and especially the dogmatic tradition, rightly understood. It is to say that there might be unexpected convergences that the eschaton will bring to light. 

Evangelicals like to say that theirs is not a religion but a relationship. They are also primed, when they go on mission trips, to testify about their own lives being changed by the experience. I see no reason why interacting with people of other faiths ought not also to transform their lives by deepening their understanding of and relationship with the living Christ. Especially when led by the Spirit of Christ, Christian witness in a pluralistic world will surely bring about conversions to Christ; but it might also bring about Christian transformation, indeed revitalization and renewal.

 

Jesus Throws Everything Off Balance

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For some evangelicals, a great disappointment of heaven will be the shocking discovery that God has not read John Rawls.  Although it does not require strict equality of outcome, Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness presupposes that just ground rules are rooted in the free, rational self-interest of mutually contracting parties.  

So Rawlsian soteriology would work like this.  Before the foundation of the world, when me, God, and everyone else were establishing the rules of the “salvific contract,” we would agree to a set of principles that would fairly distribute eternal rewards and punishments, since, being behind Rawls’s imagined “veil of ignorance,” none of us (God included) ought to know exactly how things would turn out (e.g., in which religious tradition I might find myself).   

Of course, from a Christian perspective, the difficulty with Rawlsian soteriology is that salvation isn’t a matter of social contract.  Nevertheless, I cannot shake the sense that discomfort with the exclusivity of Christianity is more deeply shaped by applications of late-twentieth century, philosophical accounts of justice to Divine agency than by the witness of Scripture and the Christian tradition.  

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor calls attention to the exclusivity of the Gospel through the actions and words of a murderous nihilist called “the Misfit.”  In the story’s climactic scene, the Misfit speaks frankly to his next victim – a self-centered grandmother whose half-hearted attachment to Christianity is rooted in its perceived socio-economic utility.  The Misfit: “Jesus thrown everything off balance.  If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can – by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.”

Quite provocatively, the Misfit articulates the sense in which Jesus came not “to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34).  Jesus Christ is the decisive and divisive One in human history precisely because there is no safe place, no middle ground.  As the Misfit understands, every human being must either “throw away everything and follow” Jesus Christ or run the other way.  There’s no other alternative, no neutral space.  In Rawlsian terms, there is no “original position” imagined or otherwise.  

Despite his hopeful inclusivism, C.S. Lewis himself – occasionally regarded as the patron saint of evangelicalism – could not deny the binary nature of salvation history.  In The Last Battle, Emeth is “saved” by Aslan, not Tash.  In Lewis’s Great Divorce, the figure of George MacDonald cautions with eschatological sobriety: “There are only two kinds of people in the end those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done’.”  If Jesus Christ has indeed “thrown everything off  balance,” it is difficult to see how a persistent, deliberate refusal to love and follow Him can, in the end, result in anything other than being on the “wrong” side of the divide beyond the stable door.  

Obviously, this raises the crucial issue of specifying precisely what loving and following Christ amounts to and what it means to be on the “wrong” side in the end.  With respect to the former, many evangelicals have regrettably reduced belief to mere cognition.  This has two unfortunate consequences.  First, if salvation is primarily a function of explicit intellectual apprehension and self-conscious affirmation of the requisite set of propositions, this renders the prospect of redemption unlikely, if not impossible, for a whole range of persons for whom Christ died (e.g., very young children, and the severely disabled).  Second, an over-emphasis on procuring justification by belief-as-transaction tends to minimize the centrality of faithful obedience (John 14:15).  Certainly, one cannot love and follow Christ while explicitly refusing to confess Him.  But perhaps, by grace through faith, one can begin to love and follow Christ without yet fully understanding that it is Christ whom one is loving and following.  Faith is, after all, God’s gift.  

The meaning of hell remains a thorn in the evangelical flesh.  Yet, as distasteful as the biblical imagery may seem to modern sensibilities, the real possibility of eschatological conscious punishment is inseparable from the Gospel that evangelicals profess.   To deny this possibility trivializes the wickedness of a persistent, deliberate refusal to love and follow the One who is at the heart of reality.  If O’Connor’s Misfit is right, we must either surrender or run away.  Either way, Christ’s gravity at the heart of reality is, having been “lifted up” (John 12:32), drawing all things to the consuming fire that He is.  Purification or consumption seems inescapable.  

Does this make evangelism of paramount importance?  Absolutely – provided that the telling does not outstrip the following.  For the urgency created by the traditional doctrine of hell together with the exclusivity of the Christian religion is not the rush to saturation by verbosity.  It is rather the slow, laborious task of gardening – of sowing, tending, and keeping – discipleship by faithful disciples.  The harvest is truly plentiful, but the laborers are few. 

The Gospel’s Inclusive Reach

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One of the highlights of my now eight-year career teaching in a seminary has been participating in several public dialogues with “liberal” (their choice of term) theologians from a nearby, mainline seminary. These events were billed as “evangelical-liberal dialogues,” with the intention of pursuing a path beyond an all-too-common gridlock. The topic was salvation and the question of the exclusivity of Jesus.

These frank but friendly discussions illuminated for me some differences between how “evangelical theologians” and “liberal theologians” work through the question of salvation and how we wrestle, in differing ways, with the Christian tradition’s claims to the ultimacy of Christ in a pluralistic and increasingly post-Christian context.  They also gave me appreciation for some points of contact and areas of overlap between us, even hints at a way forward.

On the differences, my liberal counterparts suggested that the mere fact of the plurality of religious perspectives and experiences forces on us a normative conclusion: any claims to exclusivity are nullified by the sheer reality of religious pluralism. One theologian suggested that religious commitment is like marriage. In marriage, one choses to commit or remain committed to a spouse; this is a deeply subjective and particularized phenomenon; a marriage is a unique, personal, and meaningful (hopefully) phenomenon. Analogously, then, religions function to provide unique, personal, and meaningful relationships with the divine. For some of us, Jesus is Lord. But Jesus is not everyone’s Lord. There are other—perhaps even equally valid—options. On the soteriology spectrum, my dialogue partner represented the pluralist position. Particular religions are historical instantiations of humanity’s varied, contextual experiences of “God.”

I don’t know of any evangelical theologians, however progressive on the spectrum one might be, affirming pluralism in this stark form. Evangelical theologians are not generally open to the idea of the intepretation of religion as equally valid windows divine reality. Evangelical Christians generally insist that the trinitarian God is the God who has been made known–albeit in diverse, unfolding, contextual ways–throughout the history of revelation and redemption. For evangelical theologians, anyone who is “saved” (united to God and redeemed from sin) is saved through and because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The question—and one that evangelical theologians seem increasingly open to considering—is whether conscious awareness and knowledge of Jesus and the Christian gospel is necessary to be positively and redemptively related to the one true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (Jn 17:3).

Exclusivists insist that explicit, conscious, and cognitive (even if minimal) knowledge of Jesus Christ is necessary for a person to be saved. If anyone does not possess this cognitive knowledge, they die without hope and are presumably eternally lost. This life is our “one shot,” to cite the motor-city poet.  

There are very few—if any—thoroughgoing, absolutely consistent exclusivists. Honest exclusivists recognize the challenge of the hard cases; this results in the granting of exceptions to the rule. What about Old Testament saints—presumably none of who knew about Jesus Christ in their lifetimes? What about the “man or woman on the island” who never had a chance to hear the gospel? What about infants who die? What about the mentally incapacitated—or victims of brain trauma? What about schizophrenics who can’t tell the “voice” of Jesus from that of Satan? What about victims of abuse who learned the “gospel” from their abusers?  What gospel do they actually have? What Jesus—and what gospel–do they know?

These hard cases suggest that “accidental” features of history and of situations outside one’s choosing ought not be the determining factor of one’s eternal destiny. Perhaps more importantly, they suggest that the gospel cannot be reduced to propositional truths, or to cognitive information, which becomes mere currency in an economic transaction (understanding and acceptance of the “gospel” as the price which purchases the product called salvation). And Jesus himself seemed to believe the gospel was not primarily about accepting cognitive propositions (Luke 4:18-19; Matt. 25:31-46; John 5:31-40), but about God’s grace of salvation, involving relational knowledge, which results in transformed lives and societies. 

As I see it, to be an exlusivist with exceptions is essentially to be an inclusivist. It seems, then, that we’re all (evangelical Christians) inclusivists. The question is how many exceptions one grants? How “wide” is God’s mercy? How accessible is God’s grace? But furthermore, the question is what kind of “knowledge” is involved in salvation? Is it primarily a cognitive, intellectual and propositional kind, or an existential, relational, and experiential kind (I suspect the “knowledge” of God involves both—but it is not up to any of us to determine with certainty who “has” it and what limitations God imposes—is there a “statute of limitations” for repentance, faith and forgiveness? Is this life—this history—our one shot?  

The gospel is by nature inclusive, because it is an invitation to the world (Jn 3:16). The fundamental flaw of those who resisted Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom is that they treated it as an exclusive message. Certain people, they insisted, were left out of the good news. Only the “elect” were privileged to receive it. Lesslie Newbign’s articulation of election (The Open Secret) seems spot on: election signified responsibility to bring the message of the gospel to the world; thus, election was for the purpose of the expansion of the kingdom and of salvation—not for the privilege of protecting it for oneself.

Scripture asserts that God desires that all be saved and come to knowledge of the truth; God’s patience is evidence of that (1 Tim 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9). If Scripture interprets Scripture, how can we not take this very seriously and let it penetrate our thinking and let it shape our theologies, our hope for humanity and creation? While it need not press us into a dogmatic, theological universalism (indeed: it could be the case that, for all of eternity, God will not get what God wants), it surely speaks to God’s intention for the gospel’s inclusive, expansive reach. Should we impose limits on that inclusivity or resist that expansiveness?

What seems indisputable from the perspective of evangelical Christianity is the centrality of the gospel as good news and of the uniqueness of Christ as the revelation of God in history. The exclusivity of Christ—in the sense of Christ’s irrefutable and irreducible uniqueness—actually highlights the gospel’s inclusive intentions. It is through the particularity of this individual person as the “icon” of God (Heb. 1:3) that God’s message of grace is disseminated to the world and that God’s project of reconciliation is funded. In my view, to emphasize claims to exclusivity as a boundary marker clearly delineating the kingdom, and then determining, on that basis, those who “belong,” is to miss the point of the gospel. Rather, evangelical Christians should let our conviction about Christ’s centrality as the revelation of God motivate us to share, live, and witness to the message of God’s reconciliation with humanity and promised redemption of the cosmos by extending Christ’s presence in the world—by being the “peace” of Christ in a violent world. We should reserve judgment regarding the eternal fate of any and every person completely and entirely up to God. Finally, we ought not be trying to convert people to evangelical Christianity. Rather, we ought to render witness by our lives, our love, our joy, and yes, by our words too, to Christ and the Spirit. In the spirit of John the Baptist, let us decrease, so that he might increase.  

In the end, the line that might separate evangelical Christians from “liberal” Christians is an insistence that the God we proclaim is truly the Lord, creator and potentially the redeemer of all. However, we might also recognize that conviction is not the same as epistemological certainty. The claims of Christianity are eschatologically verified. This should provide us both with the confidence to say we “believe” and the humility to insert a parenthesis: but we could be wrong. The balance of conviction and humility would create an evangelical Christianity that is capable of living peaceable with our neighbors as this pluralistic society pulses forward. 

 

The Narrow Way: Gracing the Whole World

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The most exclusive claims about Jesus as the only way and teachings about Hell come from Jesus’ own teachings as recorded by all four Gospels. So if we are to take Jesus and the four Gospels seriously, we must reckon with these as his claims, not those of a later generation of church leaders. Paul’s, Peter’s, James’, and John’s epistles and Revelation reinforce these claims. If we take Scripture seriously as received from the Apostles and the Church fathers, we cannot and should not ignore these hard teachings of our Lord, nor should we abdicate to the “critical scholarship” from Jefferson to Bultmann to Bishop Spong that would create an enlightened Jesus that conforms to the image and likeness of modern man.

Nor is this exclusivity an Evangelical, much less a North American Evangelical conviction. It was the dominant belief of the early Church, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Communions that emerged from the early church, and most if not all of the Protestant denominations until the advent of 19th Century critical scholarship that, following the method of modern science, excludes all explanations by divine intervention, thus reaches the fore-drawn conclusion that claims of miracles including resurrection from the dead have to be understood as primitive ways of explaining extraordinary natural phenomena or downright falsehoods .

So if Evangelicals hold along with most of the broader Christian traditions the exclusive claims of Jesus, how does such a view shape our understanding of and relationships with those of other religions and of no faith at all? If we take our lead from Jesus and the early disciples, the claims of Jesus on all of our lives should cause us to transcend the usual ways we classify, diminish and demean one another. Or as St. Paul wrote, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. We are all one in him.” In other words, the way the early church treated all those “others” was as fellow sinners created in the image of God and redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Evangelicals are called to share the good news in this spirit of grace and love, not self-righteousness and condescension. As Peter taught in 1 Peter “always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” In other words, defend your faith in Christ whenever the opportunities present themselves, but do not be defensive.

Now I confess that the history of the church and our personal lives have too often not lived up to the teaching or example of the Apostles. From the mutual antagonisms between the medieval Church and the then-young Muslim world, the inquisitions and treatment of Jews, the complicity with colonialism’s subjugation of aboriginal peoples, to the Salem witch trials, the Church has failed at times on a grand scale to live and preach the Gospel in the spirit of “gentleness and reverence.” When we have sinned against God and our neighbors in this way we act self-righteously, not Christ-righteously, as if we owned the Gospel and earned God’s grace. So we must join those who have been coerced and persecuted by the various christendoms over the centuries in renouncing such attitudes and actions while treating them as cautionary stories that remind us how easily we slide back into dehumanizing others by way of our ethnic, religious, economic, or gender biases.

Speaking from my own experience of inter-denominational and inter-faith dialogues as well as people of no religious faith, I have found people very open to my “witnessing” to them. By witnessing I do not mean attacking their beliefs, playing manipulative games with them, or forcing Christ down their throats. I mean what courts mean when the judge reminds the person being questioned by attorneys to stay with what they saw, heard, and experienced. I have engaged in public “debates” with Catholic priests and a Buddhist monk that were not arguments to entertain an audience but authentic conversations that helped each of us understand one another’s faith; they witnessed and I witnessed. I did not try to do the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives or presume that I cared more about them than God does.

One of my most memorable experiences of giving witness to my faith in Christ was serving on an inter-faith panel in “The Future of Religion” organized by The Festival of Ideas in Dallas, Texas a few years ago. The panel, moderated by New York Times religion writer Mark Oppenheimer, included Catholic scholars, a local imam, and me. Mark gave an initial presentation of the changes since World War II from a fairly homogenous religious landscape to an amazing diversity today. He said that there has not been a decline in a belief in God, but there has been a decline in denominational loyalties with many people calling themselves spiritual but not religious. We enjoyed a respectful and robust discussion, which included my being asked to explain Evangelicals to an audience that largely stereotyped us through the lens of TV evangelists and right-wing fundamentalists. Toward the end of the conversation, someone asked the panelist if they don’t resent Evangelicals witnessing to them about Christ. Mark, a Jew, quickly responded no, quite the opposite. He went on to explain that he has soe close friends who are Evangelical Christians who love Jesus and love him and want their two loves to come together. He added that he does not believe what they believe but considers it the highest form of love that they should want him to share in what gives their life meaning and purpose.

Many Evangelicals today, tired of the right-wing, hateful, and often obnoxious image of our kind are simply trying to love our neighbors and our enemies, to take care of the homeless, the widows and orphans, and to care for the aliens among us without mentioning the reason we do so. Recently, Scot McKnight challenged a group of Gordon College students to distinguish between such ministry to the least among us and that done by a secular non-profit or NGO if Christ is never named. Do we end up, like Flannery O’Connor’s protagonist in Wise Blood, Hazel Motes, who declares, “Nobody with a good car needs to be justified by Jesus.”? Later Hazel founds “The Church without Christ.” In our fear that naming his name might offend some, which we are told by Christ and the Apostles it will, are we becoming ashamed of Him?

Christ is the narrow way and the only way and at the same time Christ is open to all and seeks all, not just those who are holy, ascetics, and respectable. I love the image of the stable in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle. That stable that once housed a false Aslan, a donkey covered with a lion’s fur, becomes a place of terror and death, as people are thrown in one by one to what they think is certain death. But instead, because Aslan is inside, that narrow door opens up to a transformed world in which the inside is infinitely bigger than the outside, welcoming and embracing people and creatures from all creation, including those who were once enemies. We need more such winsome and imaginative Evangelical witness.

I Found It … And You Didn’t

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In 1976, bumper stickers and billboards appeared across America that said simply “I Found It!” Organized by Campus Crusade (now known simply as CRU) and disseminated through local congregations, the idea was that strangers would ask what had been found and you’d answer “Jesus” as an opportunity to share testimony or four spiritual laws. According to CRU’s material, 85% of all Americans were exposed to the campaign.

The following year I took my first sociology of religion course, one that redirected my career in wonderful ways.  It was in that class that I learned that religious organizations operate on some definable sociological principles even as they maintain deep concerns about personal and social transformation. I have been blessed and cursed with that duality for over 35 years.

Today I look back at the “I Found It!” campaign with a different set of lenses that I used as a young adult in my Nazarene church in Indiana. When I look today, I see a dynamic that is central to understanding evangelicalism in America: the importance of separation between insiders and outsiders.

In To Change the World (2010), James Davison Hunter characterizes this stance as “Defensive Against” culture. He describes the strategy of the defensive approach to cultural engagement as twofold: “first to evangelize unbelievers, calling for the nation to repent and come back to the faith; second, to launch a direct and frontal attack against the enemies of the Christian faith and worldview (214-5).”  

In this essay, I’ll refer to the first part of the defensive strategy as evangelism and the second as militancy. And here is my thesis: the maintenance of the story of evangelism and militancy is more important to evangelicalism than actual results. And the corollary is this: for a variety of reasons, the separatist storyline will be harder to maintain in coming decades.

Let me begin with the evangelism story. The “I Found It!” campaign was important because it was a significant step to reach The Lost. The same is true of beach evangelism, itinerant evangelists on secular campuses, and asking strangers “If you were to die tonight…” I need to tread lightly here. I’m as excited as the next person when someone who knows nothing of faith comes to terms with the Gospel. But we have to ask the question about impact.

For years in churches, I’ve heard reference to Barna data that “85% of people come to faith through friends and family”. Sociologically, I’ve always thought it important to separate friends from family. How many of each? Isn’t the process of growing up in a religious family different than being “won” by a neighbor (to say nothing of a stranger).

It’s not an idle question. Around the same time the “I Found It!” campaign was going on, Ronald Wimberly and colleagues were conducting research on Billy Graham crusades (Wimberley, 1975).  Their results indicated that most conversions were really recommitments by church members and that the highly ritualized nature of a Graham altar call gave a friendly atmosphere for going forward. There were conversions of “the lost” but those were the distinct minority.

Another sociological study that shook my understanding of evangelism was Bibby and Brinkerhoff’s “circulation of the saints”. Looking at conservative congregations in Canada in the early 1970s, they found that conservative churches were growing, but were doing so for reasons that didn’t solely depend on evangelism. Rather, the growth in conservative churches was due to movement of other evangelicals into the congregation and sustaining levels of youth engagement above mainline levels. In a more recent overview of the thirty years of the research, presented at the Pacific Sociological Association, Bibby (2003) reported that 70% of new members came from other churches, 20% had been children of members, and 10% had been true converts. He does observe that this 10% isn’t problematic if the congregation is of sufficient size. But it demonstrates that evangelical concern about outreach may not be as central as one might think.

Stories are important. And occasional dramatic conversion accounts allow us to feel that our group is okay (because “we found it”). But those stories are no more the norm in evangelical culture than they are in missionary meetings (but those stories are more fabulous).

So what about Militancy? The connection between militancy and evangelical identity became evident when I moved to Oregon 18 years ago. I knew I was arriving in the Great Unchurched corner of America. But the evangelical churches there seemed to thrive on being oppressed.

There’s good sociological background for this as well. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, in A Theory of Religion (1996) applied rational choice theory to explain sect formation in market terms within the religious marketplace. Sect groups are innovative movements coming out of more established religious groupings. Because they claim a monopoly on truth, they can make high demands on their members. What Talcott Parsons called “boundary maintenance” is an essential part of keeping the group thriving. The “natural” progression is as follows: increased accommodation to society leads to better acceptance, which normalizes the organization, which then plants the seed for a new sectarian group to be pursuing the “real truth”.

Many of last month’s posts recognized the connection between contemporary evangelicalism and the modernist-fundamentalist controversies of the early 20th century. I have argued that a failure to make a clear methodological demarcation between fundamentalists and evangelicals is one source of lingering confusion about religious identity in America.

Putnam and Campbell’s American Grace (2010) documents the rise of evangelicalism up through the 1990s and its subsequent decline (as measured by percentage of the population). They attribute the decline to two factors: increasing religious diversity within the society and political overreach by evangelical leaders.

Put in the context of the rise of the religious “nones”, heightened awareness of other religions and secular groups around the globe, tweets from evangelical leaders that dominate the blogosphere for days on end, and the largely partisan political activism of some evangelical groups, it’s difficult to maintain the Stark-Bainbridge monopoly on truth. In a postmodern age, separatism is hard to pull off at least at a large scale.

What remains, then, is the story of militancy. More than actual engagement in changing the culture, there is posturing and a search for opportunities to find offense (War on Christmas?). Evangelicals are involved in a paradoxical search for cultural acceptance AND the sense that they are victimized by the broader culture. (Frank Schaeffer had this excellent post (2013) recently on the history of this victimization and why it’s problematic.) The former loses the monopoly while the later inflates the costs of belonging.

If my analysis is even partially tenable, and evangelicalism is only dependent upon telling stories as its source of identity, the coming decades would appear to be very difficult for evangelicals. In short, evangelicalism will need to discover new stories and methodologies that work in a pluralistic society and avoid the dualistic thinking that has been part of the movement throughout much of its history. 

Bibby, R. W. (2003). The Circulation of the Saints: One Final Look at How Conservative Churches Grow  Retrieved 5/30, 2013, from http://reginaldbibby.com/images/circofsaints03.pdf

Hunter, J. D. (2010). To change the world : the irony, tragedy, and possibility of Christianity in the late modern world. New York: Oxford University Press.

Putnam, R. D., & Campbell, D. E. (2010). American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Schaeffer, F. (2013). The Lie of Religious ‘Victimhood” at the Root of Culure War  Retrieved 5/30, 2013, from http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankschaeffer/2013/05/the-lie-of-religious-victimhood-at-the-root-of-culture-war/

Stark, R., & Bainbridge, W. (1996). A Theory of Religion. Brunswick NJ: Rugers University Press.

Wimberley, R. C. e. a. (1975). Conversion in a Billy Graham Crusade: Spontaneous Event or Ritual Performance? Sociological Quarterly, 18(2), 172-170.

 

 

Topic #2: Evangelicalism and the Exclusivity of Christianity

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Launch Date for the Conversation: June 1, 2013

Evangelism is a core focus of American evangelicalism. The importance of preaching the gospel, sharing the faith, and reaching out to the lost is indicative of a particular attitude toward non-Christians. This in turn leads to a particular perspective on the purpose of dialogue with adherents of other religions, whether as individuals or as groups. In light of this commitment to evangelism, some “leading questions” are:

  1. Is Christianity “exclusive”? What does that mean? Is Christianity the one true faith?
  2. Is there anything for evangelicals to learn from other faiths?
  3. Are all people who do not believe in Christ in this life consigned to eternal separation from God and everlasting torment? Is this a critical tenet of evangelical Christianity?
  4. Should all American evangelicals see evangelism as their primary task?
  5. In our increasingly globalized world, there is ever more contact between people holding different religions. Relationships between evangelical Christians and non-Christians involve more than religion, but encompass business, political, and broader personal interests. How does this affect the relationships between evangelical Christians and non-Christians?
  6. What is the role and goal of interreligious dialogue? How should such dialogue be fostered? What should its ground-rules be?
  7. Is it right for non-Christians to seek to convert Christians? How should evangelicals respond to efforts to convert them?
  8. Christians worship the God of Israel as revealed through Israel’s scriptures. Does this unique relationship with Judaism mean that dialogue with Jews should be conducted in distinct ways from its dialogue with adherents of other religions? 

 

Evangelical Orthodoxy and Catholicity

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The introductory reflection included a basic orientation around these three terms and that they comprise, especially in the 21st century, the main branches of Christianity. When I think of orthodox Christianity in terms of confession and community I think of something like Paul’s “declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Ac 20:27) and the guarding of wholesome doctrine that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we have it in the NT. Based upon the “deposit of faith” (the “once for all revealed” Jude 3), we come to discover that Christianity has become so immense and diverse geographically and ethnically that none of these three broad communities is insufficient to encompass it. Fortunately, scripture and the Patristic tradition in confession and theology have become the common property of the world; anyone can avail themselves to it and benefit salvificly thereby.

Catholicity is not the same thing as the Roman Church or even “Catholicism”, but is the human and geographical extent of the faith as embodied in those who possess the common outlines of doctrine with such family resemblances that they can be recognized according to a “generous orthodoxy” to be “of the same” if not identical. Indeed, although it has become well recognized that ecumenical efforts have little or no effect upon institutional unions among existing denominations, serious dialogue does often result in formal theological and ethical statements of mutual recognition and cooperation. Although offices and governing bodies of the historic Orthodox and Catholic communities were long in recognizing the Evangelical, they now occupy together many public spaces and cultural milieu throughout the world. There is nothing like the diversity of languages into which the Bible has been translated; much of the positive contribution to the qualitative improvements in scholarship in this area has been that of Evangelical scholars. Each translation represents multiple Christian communities both inside and outside of the denominational boundaries of the three, since many of the new churches were initiated or motivated by missionaries from parachurch organizations over the last century. The transcending of any official language of the Bible for the common purposes of the peoples of the world, also lends itself to a requirement of understanding the “broader church” as something that cannot be institutionally defined according to a single entity apart from which all else is schismatic or apostate. Both orthodoxy and catholicity are identifiable and applicable to one’s own Christian community because of the common property of their knowledge and practice through scripture, tradition and, as believed, the contemporaneous work of the Holy Spirit in the world: Christ’s “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.

At this point the reader is perhaps aware that I am not really conceding much of a distinction between the various confessions and churches of historic evangelical Protestantism and the world of American and now global “Evangelicalism”. This is because so much of the latter has penetrated the former. Throughout the world, even in Europe, what once might have been characterized as pietism, revivalist, missionary, Biblicism, even separatist, even fundamentalist Christian, is now overwhelmingly characteristic of what the person in the street experiences as Protestant Evangelical. Observers and practitioners are very aware that “fundamentalists” are a big part of the all the communities and who view themselves a more “conservative orthodox” than the worn-out pejorative label. If one of the characteristics of robust faith is the protection of identity and boundaries, conservative orthodoxy is an equal opportunity employer across the three broad communities. The title of this reflection, implies that there are ways that “Evangelical” is actually the primary Christian term, modified by orthodox and catholic – connoting the centrality of doctrine and the recognizable commonality amidst the dizzying diversity of the global Christian community.

A long time ago, I became fascinated with the phenomena of the translated scriptures, how they embodied local cultures and fostered new traditions in as many languages as translations could be accomplished. I also became enamored with the work of Lamin Saneh on this subject since he had done a great deal of research and reflection on how the phenomena manifest themselves; their implications for the Christian faith globally. Although mission is common to all three, the Evangelical has been conspicuously identified by the “modern missionary movement” out of which grew whole new theological understandings of what “ecumenical” means, along with constructive theologies of religions and even of human rights and the dignity of the human being. One cannot read about the impact of the likes of William Carey in India or Hudson Taylor in China without becoming immensely impressed about the Evangelical dimension within world Christianity. This will likely continue to be the case as identifiable evangelical Christianity continues to expand, diversify and cross-fertilize with the orthodox and catholic. 

If the question of the broader church is one of identity and contribution of a fundamental sort to actual tradition, the evangelical dimension if demonstratively massive and dynamic. If the question of evangelicals and the broader church is one of separation and innovation, certainly each of the three has grievances along these lines against the other. One might say that the evangelical can hide behind the catholic or the orthodox, depending upon “who hit first” that led to the over millennium-long division between East and West (along with a number of lesser known but ancient, unhealed divisions). That the evangelical movement emerged just five centuries ago in no way mitigates the damage to Christianity unity incurred in the Great Schism of . As it turns out, even the moniker “protestant” is detectible in the other traditions – as the great Orthodox theologian, George Florovsky was want to apply to the pope of the schism as “the first Protestant”. All said, it is extremely difficult to imagine the various systems of church courts fashioning a model of unity that all would agree to, let alone actually implement. If, as with the first reflection, one considers Christian diversity as a good; something which is profoundly human and affirming of the creature, then the evangelical movement takes is place next to the other two. Of course at this stage, what the two ancient branches do to reconcile will certainly affect the more modern branch all within the vitally diverse patristic stream the continues in the present age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What does “evangelical” really mean?

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I have learned many things from my students over my three decades of teaching.  One of them came from a presentation in my Logic & Critical Thinking class by a student interested in library science.  She explained how dictionaries are created. I assumed, of course, that I knew this already: Words have meanings created by some smart guys in the past and dictionaries list those meanings.  And they list the words in alphabetical order to make them easy to find. Of course, only a wayward physicist like myself, lost in the jungles of linguistics, could fail to see the inadequacy of such a view. 

I learned that making dictionaries is far more subtle.  The process starts quite naturally by identifying words that need to go in the dictionary because people are using them. But the next step is identifying people who have mastered the language—English in this case—and then seeing how they use the words. Because language—especially spoken language—is organic, it evolves and one must be vigilant in determining how speakers who reflect the best current usage are actually using the words. In most cases, of course, present and past usages match each other: a tree is still a tree. But, as we know, a gay man is no longer the same thing has a “happy male,” and singing about “donning gay apparel” at Christmas is not as straightforward as it used to. We also seem to be witnessing some evolution in the meaning of the word “sick,” at least among young people. As near as I can tell, there are many things now that can be “sick” without being “ill.” And the term “guys” is becoming gender neutral in the plural among young people.

Because language is so organic, words often develop meanings that run on separate tracks in different communities. The word “theory,” for example, has an exalted status in science as the highest level of theoretical understanding, arrived at only after decades of careful observation as in “quantum theory” or the “theory of evolution.”   On Main Street, however, theory means “guess” as in “my theory is that Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction was no accident.”  Sometimes different academic disciplines use words in quite incompatible ways. We have something called “pair creation” in particle physics, which has no overlap with the doctrine of creation articulated by Christian theology.  Often when I have given science-and-religion talks I have been accosted by an irritated theologian informing me that I did not know what “creation” meant. 

I offer this linguistic detour as a prelude to my own comments about the meaning of “evangelical.” 

To be honest, I struggle with the label evangelical and have decided that I don’t like it any more, for several reasons. It seems to me that evangelicalism, as a label to distinguish one group of Christians from another has been moving closer to “fundamentalist.”  Increasingly I have found strong opposition to, say, evolution, from evangelicals, when that is supposed to be a fundamentalist issue. Evangelical no longer distinguishes Christians from fundamentalism, as it once did.  In this sense I believe that the theological center of gravity for evangelicalism has moved to the “right,” and I find few evangelicals willing to explain how they differ from fundamentalists. And, since I am being honest, I should acknowledge that I have also moved to the “left.”

More seriously however, the label “evangelical” has become both unhelpful and inaccurate for me as I have found myself in increasingly secular conversations. In the fall, to take one example, I was at Ohio State for an NPR program with Neal Conin and Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine. I cringed at being described as “evangelical” in front of that largely secular audience, because I knew what that word means to that group.  And here I return to the problem of the dictionary. 

The literate NPR crowd listens to Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews. They read Paul Krugman, Michael Shermer, and Nicholas Kristoff. They read Richard Dawkins with approval. These individuals are all literate thought leaders whose usage of words would be considered normative for developing dictionaries.   As a consequence, that audience is likely to associate “evangelical” with most of the following:

1)    Anti-science, including the embrace of creationism and intelligent design.

2)    Denial of global warming

3)    Voted for George Bush and hostile to Obama.

4)    Anti-gay marriage, and anti-gay in general. Probably believes you can “pray away the gay.”

5)    Anti-abortion.

6)    Hostile to universal healthcare.

7)    Hostile to restrictions on guns.

8)    Patriarchal.

9)    Anti-Muslim.

10)  Believe in divinely ordained American exceptionalism.

11)  Embracing “Left Behind” theology.

Many evangelicals would reject this list, and many would take offense, noting that theological considerations should have dominated. And they would note—rightly—that there are prominent evangelical exceptions—Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, David Myers. 

It seems to me, however, that the public face of evangelicalism has become increasingly more negative and I am, frankly, embarrassed by the label.  In the Simpsons parody “Left Below” an unraptured Buddhist laments his belief that all roads leads to heaven and another man asks “Why did I choose to be gay?” In a similar parody on Family Guy, everyone is raptured but Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who have this telling exchange:

Robertson: Damn it, Jerry. Why are we the only ones still here?

Falwell: I don’t know. We hated all the right things.

We can certainly have a discussion about the degree to which these portrayals are accurate, even as satire. But there can be no doubt that evangelicals cannot claim to be “known by their love” as Jesus had hoped.  My intuition is that a new dictionary that defined “evangelical” in terms of its most common usage in public discourse today would produce an unflattering definition that would alarm most of us.

As someone who takes words seriously—like most of us—I am uncomfortable with a label that carries as much negative baggage today as “evangelical.”