A couple of years ago, I did a book analysis series on Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book, Jesus and John Wayne. Here is a link to Part 1–you can navigate from there. Long story short, I didn’t like it…at all. Now, I’m no longer an Evangelical (I joined the Orthodox Church in 2006), but I grew up in Evangelicalism and I spent a good 16 years of my teaching career in Evangelical high schools. And although I have long said that a major problem within Evangelicalism is that they often mistake the Gospel and the Kingdom of God with the GOP party platform, I’ve always made it clear that it wasn’t that the GOP party platform was necessarily evil. It wasn’t any specific political stances that corrupted Evangelicalism, but that it was the failure to see the distinction between the Kingdom of God and modern politics.
I tend to see myself as more conservative in my politics. I’m certainly not a liberal or a progressive. That being said, I know Christians who are more conservative than me and Christians who are more liberal than me, and I don’t think they’ve “corrupted the Christian faith” based on their political stances. Why? Because they don’t define the Christian faith along partisan political lines. Or to put it another way, their Christian faith informs and influences their political stances, but their political stances don’t define their Christian faith.
It’s a fine line that Christians living within the modern age must walk. In theory, those who are responsible for our country’s politics and social stances are ultimately the voters. We’re not living in a dictatorship or monarchy, where one single person makes all our decisions for us. Given our Constitutional Republic, we actually have a responsibility to engage in political and social discussions and try to argue for what we think is best for the country. Therefore, a Christian should engage with the surrounding culture and should be politically literate and astute so that he/she can properly assess the state of our society and therefore find ways to speak and live out the Gospel within our society.
That being said, it is easy to become seduced by political power, political agendas, and corrupt political actors. And indeed, Evangelicals have often let themselves be seduced and corrupted. But let’s not fool ourselves, so has almost everyone. Or, if not seduced and corrupted, at least significantly muddied, because whenever you engage in politics or social issues, it will inevitably degenerate into mudslinging, and you’re going to get dirty.
Back to Kobes Du Mez and Jesus and John Wayne. The reason why I didn’t like it wasn’t because a lot of her specific examples weren’t true. When it came right down to it, I felt her argument wasn’t, “Evangelicals have corrupted the faith by mistaking the Gospel for a political agenda.” Rather, it was, “Evangelicals have corrupted the faith by being conservative and not embracing the Democrat party and liberal issues.” I felt that what she was doing was pretty much the exact same thing the Moral Majority in the 1980s did by defining “true Christianity” with a certain partisan political agenda. Or more precisely by judging other Christians of “corrupting Christianity” according to the standards of a particular political party. If Jerry Falwell asked how a Christian could vote Democrat, Kobes Du Mez basically saying the Christians can’t be Republicans.
Well, in the course of writing that book analysis series, a friend of my recommended another book by Constantine R. Campbell entitled, Jesus v. Evangelicals: A Biblical Critique of a Wayward Movement. I read it earlier this year, and although I thought it was a much better and more thoughtful critique of modern Evangelicalism, it still made me wince from time to time, saying in my head, “Well, yes, that is technically true, but….” And although I was originally planning to do a full book analysis of the book, I put it on the shelf. I just didn’t have the energy to get into all that again.
Over the past couple weeks, though, I’ve gotten into a couple of conversations with two of my closest friends over the past 25 years on this very topic. So, I went back to my bookshelf to look for Campbell’s book. In the process, I found an old book from the 80s by none other than Francis Schaeffer: The Great Evangelical Disaster. I remember reading it in high school and being very inspired and worked up by it when I went through what I call my “little militant Christian activist” phase in the second half of my junior year. For the past 30+ years, though, I just hung onto the book, and it occupied a small corner on one of my bookshelves. As I leafed through it, a thought occurred to me—and I’m going to try to develop that thought over the next few posts. I’m not going to write a detailed book analysis series of either Schaeffer’s or Campbell’s book, but I am going try to tease out and clarify my own thoughts on modern Evangelicalism so that, hopefully after I finish these posts, I’ll be able to put this issue to rest—at least in my own head.
A Look Back at Schaeffer’s The Great Evangelical Disaster
As I look back at my childhood, the Assemblies of God church in which I grew up, as well as Wheaton Christian high school, it seems there was always a recurring theme: Something is wrong with Evangelicalism. And perhaps no other book (at least in my little Evangelical subculture) more adequately crystalized that idea than Francis Schaeffer’s 1984 book, The Great Evangelical Disaster. If we were doing a tag-team, we could connect it with another 1984 book by his son Franky Schaeffer, Bad News for Modern Man. What I want to do now, though, is give a concise overview as to what The Great Evangelical Disaster was about. So, let’s go…
Schaeffer’s fundamental critique of modern America (at least from 1920-1980) is that our society had strayed from the biblical consensus upon which it was founded and had striven to achieve absolute freedom and personal autonomy without any constraints. This, Schaeffer argued, was at the heart of the Enlightenment worldview and secular humanism. Given that situation, the “great Evangelical disaster,” according to Schaeffer, was that Evangelical churches had compromised on biblical authority and had accommodated on vital societal issues that were flat out sinful and wrong. Therefore, Schaeffer lamented that “Bible-believing Christians no longer represent the prevailing legal and moral outlook of our society, and no longer have the major influence in shaping this” (48). It was time that Evangelical Christians again spoke the truth and lovingly confronted the wrongs in our society.
So, what specifically is wrong with our society, at least as of 1984? Schaeffer pointed the finger primarily at moral relativism and theological liberalism. In a nutshell, theological liberalism compromised on the authority of Scripture, and that in turn led to moral relativism and accommodation. Now, the main societal issue Schaeffer emphasized above all others was the issue of abortion. He argued that Christians should always declare that human life is sacred and therefore should always be opposed to abortion. As he wrote, “If we are not willing to take a stand even for human life, is there anything for which we will stand?” (109).
Interestingly enough, Schaeffer also briefly touched upon other issues that are still highly controversial today. He mentioned the “liberal” argument that the real cause of evil is a “maldistribution of wealth,” the “secularization and Marxist influence in the academic world,” the push for gay marriage, and “extreme feminism” that sought, not just equality, but to eradicate any kind of distinction whatsoever between men and women.
For the purpose of this short blog series, it doesn’t matter what side of those issues you come down on. I just find it interesting that the societal issues that Schaeffer was raising are still the same societal issues that people are raging about today. In any case, to be clear, Schaeffer said little to nothing about the Republican or Democrat parties. His focus was on saying that the “great Evangelical disaster” was that Evangelicals weren’t taking a stand and speaking out on a variety of social and moral issues.
That brings up an interesting point that often gets lost these days. Like I said at the beginning of this post, Christians in America—it doesn’t matter what denomination or branch—by virtue of being Americans, have an obligation to have a say in how the government is run and what should be the laws of the land. That is how a constitutional republic works. If you have a certain conviction about any given issue and think you are right, then why wouldn’t you take part in the public forum, argue for your view, and try to convince others of your view? There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We all should care about our society and how our government is being run. In that respect, as I leafed through Schaeffer’s book again, I didn’t think there was anything necessarily wrong with telling Evangelicals that, as Christians in America, they should speak up for what they feel is right and moral.
The problem within Evangelicalism (and many other groups and people) is the way that tends to play out often has a corrupting influence on the faith. Walking that fine line between being a Christian and being an engaged American who has a say in how politics in America is run—that’s a tough thing. I mean, how can you walk a straight line when you’re drunk…with political power?
But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. All I wanted to establish in this post is to remind us of what Schaeffer said in his book about what was wrong with Evangelicalism and to note that many of the social issues he raised in that book are still the same issues people—both Left and Right, both Evangelical and Progressive—are going to war over today.
Why is that? Why are Evangelicals (or ex-Evangelicals) always saying that Evangelicalism is a “disaster,” or a “corruption of the Christian faith,” or a “wayward movement” based the rubric of controversial societal and political issues? Why is THAT always the measuring rod?
It’s worth noting that this is an issue peculiar to *American* Evangelicalism. Evangelicals in other parts of the world aren’t wedded to a particular political party or political ideology. Here in the UK, for example, Evangelicals who feel called to active engagement with politics can be found fairly evenly spread across all of the mainstream parties (with the exception of Northern Ireland, where the province’s unique party structure is split between parties representing the Catholic community and those representing the Protestant one, with only a few parties which are cross-community).
And no, political engagement does not inevitably lead to a descent into mudslinging. Non-party campaigns are more effective when they focus on the issues than when they focus on the people.Yes, there are some issues where it is inevitable that people will throw mud at you, but you can choose not to respond in kind (the obvious American example would be Martin Luther King). In a strict two-party system like you have in the US mudslinging between parties is inevitable, but not every politician participates. In countries where there are genuine multi-party systems it isn’t inevitable, since most politicians know that at some point they might have to work with the party they’re currently tempted to throw mud at.
Yes, I am primarily talking about American Evangelicalism.
This post reminds me of Tony Camoplo’s 1995 book *Is Jesus a a Republican or a Democrat?* That book helped me begin to see that I had been equating conservative Republicanism with Christianity.
Pax.
Lee.