evangelical

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Define 'evangelical,' 2023: What is a 'reconstructionist,' low-church Protestant?

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Define 'evangelical,' 2023: What is a 'reconstructionist,' low-church Protestant?

Yes, here we go again.

Please consider the following an update on “Define ‘evangelical’,” “Define 'evangelical,' yet again,” “Define 'evangelical,' please,” “That same old question for 2016: What is an 'evangelical,' anyway?”, “Once again, journalists need to ponder this question: What is an 'evangelical'?” and lots of other GetReligion offerings on this topic over nearly 20 years.

Yes, this is tough work — but somebody has to do it.

In this case, former GetReligionista Mark Kellner sent me the following Duluth News Tribune story, while expressing “more than a little sympathy “ for the general-assignment reporter who got caught up in the whole “evangelical” self-definition puzzle. Here’s this complex, but vague, headline from the world of mainline Protestant decline:

New generation, denomination takes over Duluth church

Attendees of Westminster Presbyterian Church were dwindling over the years. They decided to gift their church to a younger crowd of Christians focused on inclusivity.

The clue that there are plot twists ahead? That would be the word “inclusivity.”

Think about it: More “inclusive” than a congregation in the liberal mainline Presbyterian Church (ISA)?

Hold that thought. Here is the overture:

DULUTH — It's not every day that an offer for a new church building lands in your lap.

But that's exactly what happened to Pastor Kris Sauter of Neighborhood Church in Cloquet. Sauter received a phone call from the Rev. Carolyn Mowchan, part-time pastor for Westminster Presbyterian Church in western Duluth.

"And I don't usually take cold calls," Sauter said. "But I happened to pick up this time and she was like, 'Hi Kris, I'm Carolyn. How would you like a free building?' And I was like ... 'Hi Carolyn, I'm Kris.' And that led to a really beautiful conversation and series of conversations about taking over the building."


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Thinking about that 'Define evangelical' thing, with Andrew Walker, Ryan Burge (and Mark Noll)

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Thinking about that 'Define evangelical' thing, with Andrew Walker, Ryan Burge (and Mark Noll)

If you search for “define evangelical” in the 18 years worth of material stored here at GetReligion you will find about four screens worth of information. Here’s what that looks like in a Google search.

Believe it or not, this was a hot topic before the advent of Orange Man Bad and the dreaded “81% of White evangelicals” mantra.

Debates about the meaning of the church-history term “evangelical” are so old that I once asked the Rev. Billy Graham for his take. Here’s some information about his answer, drawn from this “On Religion” column: “Define 'evangelical' – please.”

… You might assume that the world's most famous evangelist has an easy answer for this tricky political question: "What does the word 'evangelical' mean?" If you assumed this, you would be wrong. In fact, Graham once bounced that question right back at me.

"Actually, that's a question I'd like to ask somebody, too," he said, during a 1987 interview in his mountainside home office in Montreat, N.C. This oft-abused term has "become blurred. ... You go all the way from the extreme fundamentalists to the extreme liberals and, somewhere in between, there are the evangelicals."

Wait a minute, I said. If Billy Graham doesn't know what "evangelical" means, then who does? Graham agreed that this is a problem for journalists and historians. One man's "evangelical" is another's "fundamentalist."

That leads us to the topic of this quick, and rather rare, Monday “think piece” (I’m traveling right now and rather unplugged, so I wrote this several days ago).

Thus, at the top of this post you will see a video feature from The Gospel Coalition in which two academics — political scientist Ryan Burge ( a GetReligion contributor) and ethicist-apologist Andrew Walker — debate this topic: “Is ‘Evangelical’ a Political or Theological identity?” (Careful readers may have noticed that, a few lines earlier, I called it a “church-history term” and I’m sticking to that.)

I will let Burge and Walker speak for themselves.


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Define 'evangelical,' please. Alas, many Americans don't think that this is a religious term

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Define 'evangelical,' please. Alas, many Americans don't think that this is a religious term

Here’s a scary thought: Who wants to dress up as an evangelical for Halloween?

Except, exactly what would that look like?

Would it involve wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat? Does the term still have any religious and/or theological meaning left?

Those questions came to mind as I perused some of the week’s big religion stories — both news reports and major analytical takes. Here are five such headlines that caught my attention:

(1) Why ‘evangelical’ is becoming another word for Republican: “Instead of theological affinity for Jesus Christ, millions of Americans are being drawn to the evangelical label because of its association with the G.O.P.,” Ryan Burge, a frequent contributor to ReligionUnplugged.com, writes in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

(2) In a post-Donald Trump world, these pastors are ditching the evangelical label for something new: “They looked to each other to ask, What could it look like to organize as ‘post-evangelicals?’” religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey reports for the Washington Post. “They had at least one thing in common: They were all on some journey of deconstruction, the process of reexamining their long-held beliefs, and they wanted to participate in reconstruction and the building up of something new.”

(3) The evangelical divide: “Political and social issues are splintering American Christians. Can the Church find unity?” asks part one of a three-part series by World magazine senior reporter Sophia Lee.

(4) The evangelical church is breaking apart: “As a person of the Christian faith who has spent most of my adult life attending evangelical churches, I wanted to understand the splintering of churches, communities, and relationships,” contributing writer Peter Wehner explains in The Atlantic. “I reached out to dozens of pastors, theologians, academics, and historians, as well as a seminary president and people involved in campus ministry. All voiced concern.”


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Plug-in: What's in a name? More evidence that Americans live in a post-denominational age

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When it comes to religious groups, what’s in a name?

In 2018, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began a push to get rid of the term “Mormon.” (A quick side note: Continued news media use of that identifier is “significantly correlated” with negative sentiment in the article, argues a new study, coauthored by Brigham Young University journalism professor Joel Campbell and Public Square Magazine’s Christopher D. Cunningham.)

Now, the Southern Baptist Convention — the nation’s largest Protestant denomination — seems to be recasting itself, as first reported by Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

Bailey’s story this week noted:

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention are increasingly dropping the “Southern” part of their Baptist name, calling it a potentially painful reminder of the convention’s historic role in support of slavery.

The 50,000 Baptist churches in the convention are autonomous and can still choose to refer to themselves as “Southern Baptist” or “SBC.” But in his first interview on the topic, convention president J.D. Greear said momentum has been building to adopt the name “Great Commission Baptists,” both because of the racial reckoning underway in the United States and because many have long seen the “Southern Baptist” name as too regional for a global group of believers.

“Our Lord Jesus was not a White Southerner but a brown-skinned Middle Eastern refugee,” said Greear, who this summer used the phrase “Black lives matter” in a presidential address and announced that he would retire a historic gavel named for an enslaver. “Every week we gather to worship a savior who died for the whole world, not one part of it. What we call ourselves should make that clear.”

For more insight on the possible change, see Religion News Service national correspondent Adelle M. Banks’ follow-up report.

Speaking of names, Greear serves as pastor of The Summit Church, a Durham, North Carolina, megachurch whose website contains scarce references to its Baptist affiliation.

Other examples of prominent Southern Baptist churches that don’t necessarily market themselves that way include Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Southern California and Ed Young Jr.’s Fellowship Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.


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Journalists exploring U.S. evangelicals’ political impact also need to look overseas

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Journalists exploring U.S. evangelicals’ political impact also need to look overseas

The Religion Guy has previously complained that the media fixation on socio-political agitation by U.S. evangelical Protestants tends to overlook “mainline” and African-American Protestants, Catholics and Jews, whose congregations over-all may actually be more politicized.

Also neglected is evangelicals’ important political impact on like-minded churches overseas --  and vice versa.

Background on a half-century of activism comes from Melani McAlister, a U.S. foreign policy specialist at The George Washington University who belongs on your sources list. Her “The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals” is great for background or a story theme and the release in August, allowing  relaxed summertime reading. Reporters seeking galleys can contact Oxford University Press: emily.tobin@oup.com or 212-726-6057. 

There’s perennial debate over how to define the term “evangelical.” For starters, they uphold  standard Christian doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus Christ, but McAlister finds three distinct emphases:

(1) An “authoritative” Bible as “central, foundational, believable -- and true.”

(2) Personal faith in Jesus’ death for one’s sin as “the only path to salvation.”

(3) Passion for “evangelizing the world.”

Please note: McAlister includes U.S. Protestant “people of color,” who are heavily evangelical in faith, though analysts usually treat them separately.

Looked at internationally, she says, “evangelical politics are not just about abortion and same-sex marriage but colonialism and neocolonialism, war and global poverty, religious freedom and Islam.”


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A church's long-dead founder and the KKK -- New York Times article raises a question of relevance

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How far back must journalists dig into the history of a given denomination or congregation, and how might a given founder, dead more than seven decades, be viewed in light of today's mores?

Do we really have to know everything about the earliest leaders of a denomination or movement? Just ask biographers of Martin Luther, the complicated ex-Catholic who sparked the Protestant Reformation but who also has been accused of virulent anti-Semitism.

Or how about Baptist or Presbyterian leaders in pre-Civil War America who supported, or tolerated, slavery? Shall we hold modern-day Lutherans, Baptists or Presbyterians responsible for the sins of their spiritual forefathers?

The New York Times raises the general issue in a rather lengthy profile of the Zarephath Christian Church in New Jersey's rural Somerset County.

We start out in conventional territory. This passage is long, but it's important to sense the tone of this piece right up front.

Hundreds of people each weekend drive up the hill to a newly built $12 million church surrounded by soccer fields in a New Jersey community named Zarephath. They worship by singing along with rock-ballad style prayer songs, following lyrics projected on three overhead screens. They sway and lift their arms high overhead, or say the words quietly with their eyes closed.
Drums, several guitars, keyboards and backup singers accompany the prayers. Spotlights shift from purple to blue to red as the mood builds.
“O come to the altar, the Father’s arms are open wide,” about 300 congregants sang during a recent Sunday service, in a sanctuary that resembles a warehouse-style concert hall, save for two small crosses near the stage. “Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.”


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Associated Press repeats mantra: Gosh those 'evangelicals' are standing by their man Trump

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Pardon me for a moment while I (just back from eclipse gazing here in New York City) ponder mortality, as in my own.

If I was hit by a bus tomorrow, there are two or three things that I have done in the world of journalism that I think would be worth future discussion. Yes, there's young Bono talking about faith and Africa, Mother Teresa talking about AIDS in Denver and Carl Sagan saying that he no longer considered himself an atheist or even an agnostic.

But I also hope -- in this age in which the word "evangelical" has been turned into a political label -- that a few people remember what happened when I asked the Rev. Billy Graham, back in the mid-1980s, to define that problematic word. Here's a flashback:

"Actually, that's a question I'd like to ask somebody, too," he said, during a 1987 interview in his mountainside home office in Montreat, N.C. This oft-abused term has "become blurred. ... You go all the way from the extreme fundamentalists to the extreme liberals and, somewhere in between, there are the evangelicals."
Wait a minute, I said. If Billy Graham doesn't know what "evangelical" means, then who does? Graham agreed that this is a problem for journalists and historians. One man's "evangelical" is another's "fundamentalist."

Graham said he defines "evangelical" in terms of doctrines, not politics or anything else. If a person believes all of the doctrines in the Apostles Creed, he said, their view of scripture is high enough to be called an evangelical. What about Pope John Paul II? Graham said the two men had discussed that. Yes, there is more to that story.

This brings me to, alas, Donald Trump, his house evangelicals and the Associated Press headline: "Trump’s evangelical advisers sticking with him amid fallout." The overture:

NEW YORK (AP) -- One of President Donald Trump’s most steadfast constituencies has been standing by him amid his defense of a white nationalist rally in Virginia, even as business leaders, artists and Republicans turn away.


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