Evangelicals. (Wiggling fingers) Oooooh.

Sorry about the title, Good Readers, but I seem to be always encountering people online who react to That Word in much the same way that a vampire would react to a garlic crucifix, or possibly me towards the Special Limited Edition of Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, provided that such a mythical thing existed (WHICH IT DOESN'T).

Umm.

Right. Moving along, Andrew Sullivan linked today to an interesting Boston Globe article by Alan Jacobs about evangelicals, fundamentalists and why Bush is one but not the other: Apocalyptic president?

AS THE PRESIDENTIAL election draws closer, some people are asking, in ominous tones, a question: What impact does President Bush's evangelical Christianity have on his administration's policies? As an evangelical, an interpreter of literary and cultural texts, and a long-time observer of the evangelical world, I have both a personal and a professional interest in this question. And I'm here to offer an answer: Probably not much.

Jacobs' basic argument, if I'm reading him correctly, is that the confusion lies in treating the tendencies of fundamentalist Christians and ascribing them to evangelicals in general - in other words, taking a subgroup's behavior as representative of the larger. This can be a problem, especially as fundamentalists tend towards a belief in the inevitable decay of secular society, which will result in the Second Coming and the rest of the more interesting parts of Revelations; they also tend to consciously limit themselves in their cultural and moral influences. Professor Jacobs goes on to say:

But the broader evangelical world to which the president belongs is a very different one. If you don't believe me, consider this: Bush belongs to the same denomination, the United Methodist Church, as Hillary Clinton. Though some congregations are more theologically conservative than others, the United Methodist Church is way too liberal for a true fundamentalist, and has been for a long time.

Two points, then, should emerge: First, there are differences between evangelicalism in general and the subset called fundamentalism; and second, those differences are hard to specify because they are matters of tendency and preference rather than doctrine or belief. Basically, all evangelicals (fundamentalist or not) believe that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins; that people need to repent of our sins and "accept Jesus as Lord and Savior"; that we must preach the Gospel to those who don't know or don't believe; and that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God. The hard part begins when we get down to asking what the Bible actually says.

For many fundamentalists, the way other evangelicals (such as myself) interpret the Bible makes us indistinguishable from liberals: when we say, for example, that the universe is more than 6,000 years old, or approve of the ordination of women, or a hundred other things. You know you're an evangelical if the fundamentalists think you're a liberal and the liberals think you're a fundamentalist.

I dislike cutting out sections of this particular article: there's a lot of good stuff in here, and although it's not entirely favorable to President Bush (frex, Jacobs explicitly calls Bush inconsistent and would probably call him a bad President, if asked), the central point - that a distressingly common criticism of the President is unfair to both him and the evangelical movement - is spot on. I grew up more or less in the fundamentalist / evangelical movement*, and while today I am neither, I retain a certain sympathy for the latter. They're generally shellacked from both sides of the religious wars - and hardly happy about it.

Not that I or they expect that sad state of affairs to change any time soon. A pity, really; the Republican Party would be a better organization if it weren't quite so confident of the evangelical vote.

Moe

*"More or less" because I and my family remained Roman Catholics throughout - which led us to the edge of the murky waters of the Catholic Charismatic movement, which is not the same as the Tridentine Catholic movement (they have their own hang-ups). I left fundamentalism and evangelicalism behind when I went to college... tell truthful, neither my family and I received any long-term harm from either (indeed, I have a much better knowledge of Scripture than the average Catholic, which has been useful), but there's some strange stuff going on out there on the edges. Which is why I'm just the slightest bit jaundiced whenever I hear about the Religious Right and their Insidiious Hold on the Bush Administration. I've seen the crazies, thanks; I know what they look like and how they act - and I know how to tell them apart from the regular Christians.

And, yes, John Ashcroft has a stick so far up his butt that you could use him as a flagpole, but he's not plotting a Christian theocracy, no matter how many people have accused him of it. Not that I expect to convince anybody unwilling to be convinced of that.

Comments

[bob mcmanus]

Ok. I buy it. Good and true post. But remain with a question.

How can a Christian not be evangelical?

[Moe Lane]

"How can a Christian not be evangelical?"

Now there's a question with fangs to it. Not your fault, of course. To weasel out of it, I'm going to say that a given Christian's answer would depend on one's feelings towards exclusive salvation, the nature of God and the proper method by which a person witnesses his or her faith.

(And how polite he or she feels like being, of course.)

Moe

[kenB]

And following up, I would point out that Christians of all stripes pick and choose what they want to believe from the Bible, and even among the subset of things that they believe, there are some things that they're happy to let other people put into practice. Heck, there are even people who call themselves Christian but don't believe in God -- there's one person in particular that I happen to know pretty darn well.

But it also depends on what you mean by "evangelical" -- these days it apparently connotes coercion, but the original idea was just about sharing the Good News and hoping/expecting that people would respond positively. There's also St. Francis' version of it: "Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words."

[Moe Lane]

Ah, St. Francis: my favorite Catholic pagan. I picked him for Confirmation, you know. :)

[Mithras]

So, Moe, the fact that the Bushies push policies like eliminating abortion, banning same sex relationships(1), promoting religion in government, and busting us porn-viewers - all of which seems religiously motivated - that is just coincidence?

(1)-Specifically, pushing sodomy laws and a constitutional amendment which will outlaw a good chunk of equal protection for gay and lesbian people.

[Moe Lane]

You should really get that jerking knee looked at, Mithras: any self-respecting fundamentalist would laugh in your face at the notion that the Bush administration had an abortion elimination policy, banning same-sex relationships and busting porn-viewers; no political party would ever even dare look like they're doing the first, your definition of the second doesn't match up with common usage and by all accounts Ashcroft's more interested in going after the purveyors of porn, which (as the comments section of a recent thread demonstrates) is a bit more problematical. I repeat: I know what the fundamentalists look like, and I know what the fundamentalist crazies look like. Ain't these guys, although the aforementioned Attorney General comes closest.

Sorry that this wasn't more polite, but then again, neither was your comment. :)

[EDG]

Mithras, there's a difference between a theocracy and a nation whose leaders use religion as a guideline for behavior in leadership.

(Interestingly - and apropos of little, I'm afraid - the commonly-accepted etymology for "religion" has the word coming from Latin religere, "to bind" - which has as another cognate "religate", which means not only "to bind together, as a community" but "to constrict" - as a set of beliefs or course of action.)

[James Casey]

I would agree with KenB's post - I think that the example one sets by one's approach to life, other people and God is evangelical.

Sorry, KenB, if this wasn't what you meant!

EDG - The word 'religion' comes from Latin's 'religio'; more than that cannot be said with certainty. 'ReligAre' is generally considered more likely than 'religEre' (the former having the definitions you ascribe, amongst others - since it's an augmented verb, it's open to a wide variety of translations), which is more to do with considering. Both verbs come from 'legere' which strictly means to pick up or gather.

[EDG]

James - you're absolutely correct; I meant "religare". Cicero takes "religio" from "religere", but many modern scholars - including my Classical Studies professors - prefer "religare". I was skipping over the confusion for the sake of brevity, which I see now may not have been the wisest course of action. :)