In a recent article in the Atlantic, Evangelical and Republican political analyst Michael Gerson laid out the history behind a conundrum: “One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics […] is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump.” The piece is excellent, and you should all go read it. Mr. Gerson’s motivation for writing this article was to attempt to save the word “evangelical” because “some words, like strategic castles, are worth defending, and evangelical is among them.”
In this post, I would like to offer why I disagree with that sentiment. This is far from a rebuttal of Mr. Gerson, but rather additional context and history, albeit history that is less well organized than Gerson’s, surrounding my view of words more generally. I also want to expound on some points Gerson approaches, but doesn’t elucidate, regarding evangelicals today. This will be a much less cohesive/organized post than many, but this is just where my brain is right now.
Evangelicals’ Strange Bedfellows
If Donald Trump is good at one thing, it’s pandering to people who feel left behind or repressed. Trump’s abrasive rhetoric of blaming others endeared him most notably to white men with lower levels of education in rural areas. In other words: the people who feel left behind or ignored by the rest of the country. Likewise, he appealed to manufacturing workers who want to blame hispanics for taking their jobs, rather than acknowledging that their jobs are obsolete. And so too Evangelicals, who feel oppressed by a dissolute culture that views them as old fashioned hypocrites. For that last group, it’s worth quoting Gerson at length:
Fundamentalism embraced traditional religious views, but it did not propose a return to an older evangelicalism. Instead it responded to modernity in ways that cut it off from its own past. In reacting against higher criticism, it became simplistic and overliteral in its reading of scripture. In reacting against evolution, it became anti-scientific in its general orientation. In reacting against the Social Gospel, it came to regard the whole concept of social justice as a dangerous liberal idea. This last point constituted what some scholars have called the “Great Reversal,” which took place from about 1900 to 1930. “All progressive social concern,” Marsden writes, “whether political or private, became suspect among revivalist evangelicals and was relegated to a very minor role.”
After falling from their position as the leaders of the Abolitionists to sidelined for the civil rights movement, the Evangelical Church became more and more passe as a cultural force. But far from obsolete, there’s still a strong “good old days” fallacy amongst people who still call themselves Evangelicals–yearning for the days when America was more moral; back when the Church had more influence on civic life. This fallacy made them prime targets for Trump’s manipulation.
Anyone who thinks most Bible-thumping politicians like Roy Moore are Evangelicals by belief structure–that is, he believes in a saviour who wants to form a personal relationship with him to transform his life–is probably kidding herself, but Moore is one of many in a long line of politicians who have learned how to say the right things about hot-button issues to rally the evangelical vote. How else can you explain how white Evangelicals are more similarly distributed to NRA conservatives than the general population with regard to gun control? Don’t get me wrong: Evangelicals are decisively more open to, and in some cases in favor of, more gun regulation than the NRA, but less so than one might expect the “pro-life ethos” would demand. (Christianity Today did a good summary of Pew Research outlining these statistics). And this is because politics have made strange bedfellows between groups with different aims coming from the same motivation: both the NRA and Evangelicals don’t like government intrusion on their rights, but are perfectly fine having the government intrude on others’ rights on their behalf. They found common ground in this regard, and made a political alliance.
The US doesn’t have a parliamentary system formed on party alliances, so we just have single issue voters coalescing into a political party with a full platform where no one in the party cares about more than a couple of the issues in that platform. Thus we have today’s Republican party, which blends economic conservatives, social conservatives, and xenophobic nationalists into a weird, incongruous amalgamation.
Political and Social Repression of Evangelicals and Microaggressions
This strange Republican coalition not surprisingly–nay, inevitably–leads to a fair bit of of criticism of Evangelicals. As a result of their political alliances, Evangelicals have internalized–and to some degree spiritualized–the political priorities of their allies like the NRA and fiscal conservatives. This results in a fair bit of hypocrisy on the part of the Religious Right: rather than championing social justice–a very prevalent theme in the Bible, particularly the minor prophets–Evangelicals are seen as a repressive force, lumped in with crazies like Westboro Baptist “Church” (I use scarequotes because I believe them to be more of a cult than a Church). Some of this criticism deserved, like Evangelicals’ undue emphasis on anti-LGBTQ policies–homosexuality may be Biblically questionable, but the fact that all people are made in the Image of God is not. Some of it is undeserved, or at least exaggerated, like the criticism that all Christians are illogical and anti-scientific–for example, in the introduction to his book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins equated religion with severe mental illness by saying he and his psychologist friends had talked about classifying a belief in God or miracles as a “Religious Delusion” or “Relusion” (though to be fair to psychologists, this definition of “Religious Delusion” is only held by a small minority of psychologists).
And some of the “oppression” itself is hypocritically misperceived.
Ironically, this leads to a similar phenomenon as perceived microaggressions that most religious right conservatives bristle at. Evangelicals are often quick to point out oppressions that I would call fake microaggressions or overreactions. Microaggressions are “the casual degradation of any marginalized group” (thank-you Wikipedia) and they are real, largely in the form of assuming and acting upon racial stereotypes. However, many hyper-liberals have taken the term way too far. For example, it’s not (or at least shouldn’t be) a microaggression for a white person to ask a black person about his/her hair. If us white folks aren’t allowed to earnestly ask about literally surface level differences between races, then how can we expect/hope to have a deeper discussion about the types of systemic racism African Americans face? I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but I think any African American who has interpreted “can I feel your hair?” as a microaggression is probably overreacting (though I say “probably,” because it’s not inconceivable that the context was such that this was a microaggression, I just find that possible context improbable) Some microaggressions are real, but many are either people being overly sensitive or people just being jerks with no larger narrative… because all people are sometimes jerks.
Similarly, when alleged Evangelicals on Fox News decry “the War on Christmas” as somehow part of a wider conspiracy to discriminate against Christians, I call BS: Fake Microaggression. The phenomenon of using the phrase “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” makes for an easy, almost cheapshot, example of perceived-but-fake microaggression, but there are plenty of other fake and real microaggressions leveled at Evangelicals: assuming they hate homosexuals (possibly a real microaggression, more likely a justified question), assuming they’re no fun (real microaggression), sexually provocative ads because “sex sells” (fake microaggression), not requiring Creationism be taught in science class (fake microagression), accusing them of misogyny (possibly a justified question, probably a microaggression), atheists existing (fake microaggression), blaming most wars throughout post-Roman history on Religion (false, but also a real microaggression).
Vicious Cycle
These microaggressions–some as a result of hypocrisy, some real, and some fake–then breed a victim complex. Sometimes, this perceived victimization is justified theologically: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated [Jesus Christ] first” (John 15:18). Being mocked for religious beliefs gets interpreted as being mocked for Christ’s sake, which is a sort of badge of honor, vindicating the underlying behavior. This may very well be true in some cases, but like “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:19), I believe this passage is used to justify behavior that Jesus himself would not endorse, like being a sanctimonious jerk who belittles non-Christians.
There certainly is a time and place for Christians to be counter-cultural and criticize the Zeitgeist, even when it makes them unpopular. The Evangelical-led Abolitionist movement comes to mind as a shining example of doing this correctly. But there is also a time for Christians to take criticisms seriously, and re-evaluate whether they are behaving in a Christ-like manner. Overliteral interpretations of the Bible and regarding it as a literal science textbook are a cause for criticism that should make Evangelicals give pause (note: there are theologically and scientifically reasonable arguments for Creationism, but I don’t believe most Creationists know or understand these arguments). From its inception, Christianity was counter-cultural by giving rights and dignity to Jews and Gentiles, Men and Women, Slave and Free (Galatians 3:28), which was a completely novel concept in the 1st century. In the 21st century, after more than a millennium of Judeo-Christian influence, it should be a given that the Christian response to cultural trends and norms should be very different than that of the first Christians. Forgetting that fact justifies avoiding introspection and self-evaluation. Neglecting those things tends to encourage the darker parts of human nature to grow in their influence, and makes people unreflective sanctimonious versions of what they could be, and those versions of ourselves usually really are worth hating, and that’s not persecution.
Bringing this Back to Words
The above is a description of the type of person and worldview that the word “Evangelical” has come to describe for me. I recognize that the word has deep theological roots that go far beyond social constructions and connotations, but words change over time. The word “Liberal” has deep roots in the philosophical and political economy writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. In Europe, the word “Liberal” still largely refers to what Americans would call “Libertarian,” but in the United States, “Liberal” is more closely associated with the ideas of John Maynard Keynes than the ideas of Mill. As someone whose political views were heavily influenced by Mill and the intellectual tradition of Liberalism, this is a loss.
But it is also a sunk cost. The social lexicon is emergent, and it’s extremely difficult for any one individual, particularly one without a very loud social microphone, to change the definition of a word–at least one that has evolved organically. It’s true that people like Sarah Palin have redefined phrases like “End of Life Planning” in the social lexicon, but that phrase had a very specific definition in a fairly limited, technical context. Liberal and Evangelical are words whose meaning has evolved in a much broader context, so they aren’t as easy to reclaim. I wish that society’s dictionary would respect historical precedents and precision of language, but alas it does not.
Let the Old Name Die, and the Idea Reborn
Bringing things to a close, I wish I could call myself a Liberal, because my political views are very closely aligned to those of the Classical Liberals. But doing so would lead to all sorts of confusion, because I vehemently disagree with the Keynesian ideas and policy recommendations that form the basis of many “Liberal” ideas in modern America. Similarly, theologically, many of my beliefs are similar to those of 19th century Evangelicals like R. A. Torrey (albeit with a notable millennial bent). But most modern Evangelicals don’t know how Torrey was, much less read his writings. Words like Evangelical, Republican, Liberal, and even Democratic (capital or lowercase D?)–and many others that I won’t bring up for fear of distraction or tangent–all have rich histories, but they also have presents that deviate from those histories. Perhaps it’s time for a “rebirth” of the movement by its old name, and this period of time will be labeled something like “The Scandal Years” in future history textbooks and Wikipedia articles about these words.
Or perhaps it’s time to let the best parts of the movements and worldviews that these words once represented be revitalized under a new name.
Let the old name die, and the central idea live on, without the baggage the words have acquired over the years. Gerson isn’t necessarily wrong that some words are worth defending, but I would argue that a good general knows when a strategic castle is lost, and it’s futile and counterproductive to try to save them: reinforce the next castle; find the next word.
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