BLOG 7/18/19. THE DEMEANING OF THE DESIGNATION: EVANGELICAL

The current political scene becomes the more perplexing as a sizeable segment of the voting population are identifying themselves as: ‘conservative evangelicals’. We need to unpack that to see how demeaning it is (perhaps bastardizing?) of the significant roots of that term evangelical. It comes from a Greek word (sounds like euangellion) which means: ‘thrilling news’. The Christian church adopted it to describe the whole life, message, and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. It is referred to as “the gospel of the kingdom of God” and, hence, of the thrilling news that God had come into this world to inaugurate his new creation through the person and work of Jesus.

It is in this understanding that we have four eyewitnesses to Jesus life and ministry, known to us as the four New Testament gospels/evangels. This heralds the dawn of a whole new age. Jesus life and teachings, the record of his earthly career, teachings, the death and resurrection. The founding of his church—the community of his new humanity—is built upon these teachings. Jesus was unequivocal in his insistence that only those who kept his teachings could be considered his disciples. This is the heart of the evangel, and the legitimate basis of the designation of evangelical.

The current mystery is as to how a considerable segment of the electorate of this nation embraces a political platform, and candidates (including the president), whose policies stand in stark contrast to the primary command to love others as he loves us, to engage in humanitarian ministries to the oppressed, to the poor, to strangers, … to yield our bodies as instruments of justice, to be instruments of his peace, to love our enemies, to minister to the poor and homeless, … how can that segment even remotely embrace that evangel in a movement that stands in naked opposition to everything Jesus taught … and, hence, as a conservative evangelical to be even more insistent upon those teachings.

For-instance, how can a university that presents itself as an evangelical school, invite as a guest of honor, even the president of this country, who is totally immoral and without any seeming familiarity with the scriptures that define the teachings of Jesus, i.e., who stands in naked denial of those teachings, and represents a lifestyle that is condemned throughout scripture? Or how can the son of a significant Christian voice from a former generation, and yet who is the anti-thesis of his father’s teachings and example, set himself forward as a spokesperson for this conservative evangelical segment of our political scene?

Here was Jesus who embraced the example of the good Samaritan (Samaritans were hated by Jews), of the Roman centurion (an officer in an occupying army), of a Syro-Phoenician woman, … as examples of true faith. All of them were objects of prejudice by Jews. Even Jesus’ cross was picked up by a North African when Jesus stumbled on his was to Calvary. The life and teachings of Jesus are built upon the teachings of the Old Testament prophets with their insistence that the Lord requires of us lives of justice and humility. All of this Biblical ethic is totally at odds with the racism, the prejudice, the void of humanitarian compassion exhibited by most of the advocates of the conservative evangelicals.

No! true evangelicals have a radical social ethic, if you read the teachings of Jesus. Perhaps it is time for those embracing this ideology to go back and read The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lived in another time when the Christian church all too much sold its soul to an unrighteous national leader, … and paid a horrible price for doing so. To be a true evangelical is to be an incorrigible follower of the life and teachings of Jesus, … and that’s a long way from where our current conservative evangelical movement in this country seem to be.

Peace!