The Destruction of the Evangelical Witness

I wouldn't call myself an Evangelical these days... at least not in the conventional sense of that term but that movement plays a significant role in my background.  There was a long time when I would have identified myself as such.  My tradition - the Baptist movement - and my denomination - The American Baptist churches, USA - both include significant proportions of folk who would call themselves "evangelical."  I know the theology and have good friends who are evangelicals.  While it is a branch of the Christian Church that I no longer call home, I do have deep appreciation for the best parts of that movement and often tell my church and my more liberal friends that I and we have much to learn from our evangelical brothers and sisters.

All that said, I am very worried that the evangelical church is in serious danger of destroying its witness and damaging the Church perhaps permanently.  At the very least, they are convincing a lot of unchurched folk that they do not really believe what they say they believe and that they are more concerned about cultural influence and power than about following Jesus.  How so?  By endorsing Donald Trump and clothing it their faith.

I have no right to judge Donald Trump's faith or lack thereof, but if, as many evangelicals are saying, he has recently had a conversion experience, then somebody out to be helping him figure out what following Jesus looks like.  All of these big name evangelical preachers like Jerry Falwell Jr. ought to be sitting him down and telling him that a follower of Jesus ought not be making fun of differently abled folk, ought not to be lying almost as often as he opens his mouth, ought to think more carefully before denigrating women and/or treating them as sex objects, should not be inciting his followers to violence... the list goes on and on.  Of course, there is the problem of his past which seems to fly in the face of every value these evangelical leaders claim to hold... bad enough in itself, but he hasn't said a single word that shows any repentance from any of it.  Indeed, he said that he does not need any forgiveness.  These folk should be coaching him at the least or calling him out.  For years they questioned Barack Obama's faith and are doing the same to Hillary Clinton when both of them were/are good members of local congregations and speak squarely from the Christian tradition.  It is true that both Obama and Clinton are pro-choice... but as more than one person has argued, they both present policies that are more effective at lowering the rate of abortion than any recent Republican candidate.  See here and here.

Instead of calling him out, some very visable prominent evangelicals have doubled down arguing that voting Trump is the only moral option, that his behavior regarding the Khan family was appropriate, and even comparisons between Trump and Ronald Reagan (as close as conservatives have to a saint).  It is true that many evangelical leaders have spoken out in opposition to these leaders, it is these who have gotten the most press and the polls seem to indicate that white evangelicals are among the most faithful supporters of Donald Trump.

So... to my evangelical friends, distance yourself from Trump and from those evangelical leaders who are supporting him or at least call him on his behavior or forever be resigned to the fact that you have abandoned your values and sullied the cause of Christ.

Multiple Religions

I mentioned Rachel Held Evan's blog the other day... yesterday she posted an interview with a friend of hers who is an Orthodox Jew. It is a fascinating read... Often the questions were formulated like "What do Jews think about..." and answered, "Jews think..." or "the majority of Jews think..." I commented that the answers may have been representative of Orthodox Jews but readers needed to be aware that answers from Conservative and Reformed Jews, let alone secular Jews, might be radically different. The woman who was interviewed responded, "The vast majority of Orthodox Judaism consider Reform and Conservative to be a different religion."

My first reaction was WHOA!!! and all of the hairs n the back of my neck went up. How many times I've been written off as not really being a Christian because I don't agree that TULIP is an adequate or accurate condensation of the Christian faith or disagree with what someone else feels is required in a statement of faith. Then I thought about the answer... clearly it is accurate. The way that many Reformed Jews and Conservative Jews understand their faith is so radically different from what this woman described that they may easily be seen as separate religions. That got me thinking about an experience I had a few years ago and think I shared here but couldn't find so here it is again.

I was flying someplace by myself and ended up seated next to a young woman. It was the time when the Episcopal Church was fighting about Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, to the position of Bishop. Whatever I was reading led her to ask me what I thought of ordaining an openly gay, non-celibate man as a Bishop. I told her I thought his orientation was irrelevant to the question and we had an interesting discussion. It turned out she was an Orthodox Presbyterian. To put the highlights in a nutshell, she told me that her brother is gay, God created her brother that way, and that God would condemn him to hell for being gay. The potter can create a pot for whatever use the potter chooses... Obviously, I was aghast at her theological construct. We talked for a bit and she observed, "we worship two very different Gods." She was correct. She might have also observed that we practice two different religions... even though both are called or, at least, call themselves "Christianity."

I've raised the question of definitions before. I still don't have any good answers but the questions still remain. Who is the real Jew, Christian, Baptist, Muslim, American, whatever? Who gets to define the term? And, perhaps, most important of all, when terms are used with such radically different definitions, how do we ensure that we are understood or understand?

Truth

I regularly read Rachel Held Evans blog and follow her on twitter. The other day she called a prominent pastor on the carpet for behavior that was anything but Christlike. I think she was right on target with her criticism but that isn't what really caught my attention. In her critique, she cited a couple of sources outside of the conservative Christian media. She was criticized for citing unbelievers and the message was that anything said by an unbeliever was by definition untrue and unworthy of consideration, especially if it was criticizing someone in the Church. It is a fairly typical argument in parts of the evangelical community.

Truth is truth is truth is truth, regardless of where it comes from. 2 + 2 doesn't cease to equal 4 because a serial killer tells us it is so. And 2 + 2 doesn't equal 5 just because a prominent preacher from a large and influential church tells us it does. I couldn't help but think of the story in Numbers 22:22-35 of Balaam and his donkey. Truth comes from unexpected places. The donkey saves Balaam's life and sees the "truth" of the situation. Now, I am not implying that the secular sources cited in the blogpost are equivalent to Balaam's donkey. Not in any way whatsoever. I am saying that if we ignore the truth that comes to us from a wide variety of sources, we do so at our own risk. In the case of the blogpost, to ignore the truth in the sources cited is just... stupid.