Search for "evangelical left"

The Critiques of Evangelical Writers Opposing Christian Nationalism Fail to Recognize Evangelicalism’s Troubling History

By David Hollinger

…line churches were no longer able to successfully recruit members from the evangelical churches, as they’d long done, because evangelicals had become less marginal, thanks to effective institution-building and Republican Party support. You could be counted as respectable without moving up from the Nazarenes or the Assembly of God to the Presbyterians or the Methodists, as was previously the norm. You no longer had to be mainline to be mainstream….

Biblical Inerrancy’s Long History as an Evangelical Activist for White Patriarchy

By Stephen Young

…e’s been an unfolding brouhaha between “Complementarian” and “Egalitarian” evangelicals. Complementarian is the self-designation of evangelicals who deny women the right to be ministers and hold other positions of authority—especially over men. They eschew the more accurate terminology of sexism, misogyny, and (sometimes) patriarchy, holding that God ordained separate hierarchical roles in church and the home for men over women but created men and…

‘New Evangelical’-Progressive Alliance? Not So Fast

By Sarah Posner

…he Republican Party. Pally’s essay is framed around the thesis that these evangelicals have “left the right.” But left it for what? What she describes is really another vision of conservatism: church-based charity in lieu of a government safety net; exemptions from government regulation for religious groups; federal funding of religious activities; and persistent sexual puritanism. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they’ve left the radical right…

#ItsNotUs: Being Evangelical Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

By Timothy Gloege

…common, ill-defined, features of Protestantism or Western Christianity for evangelical particularities. Evangelicals love it because they can do theology—make theological claims—under the guise of analysis. Why, then, do so many scholars of evangelicalism keep using it? Perhaps it’s because many are evangelical themselves. Or perhaps they don’t realize what they’re doing. Whatever the cause, the definition needs to be retired. Historians have star…

Is There Hope for a Truly Progressive Evangelicalism? An Interview with Deborah Jian Lee

By Eric C. Miller

…al and political boundaries disqualified me from the faith. When I finally left evangelicalism, I felt extreme liberation and extreme loss, and I was left with these burning questions. How did everything fall apart? Why did my Christian friends celebrate me when I conformed to their values but reject me once I started asserting my whole identity and my belief in a radically inclusive gospel? Was I the only one who experienced this? How did conserv…

Time to Face Facts: White Evangelicalism Has Always Been Right Wing

By Neil J. Young

…right. As the historians David Swartz and Brantley Gasaway have shown, an evangelical left has existed since the mid-twentieth century, though it has never been more than a sliver of the larger conservative evangelical movement. The title of Swartz’s book, Moral Minority, speaks to the diminutive size of progressive evangelicalism, if not also its marginalization. Despite Mouw’s efforts to broaden and diversify the image of his faith beyond conse…

The ‘Fake Christian’ Deflection and Contrarian Concern Trolling: How Not to Write about Evangelical Authoritarianism

By Chrissy Stroop

…Hinch penned a contribution to the perennial (and perennially false) “the evangelical youth will be making evangelicalism normal any day now” subgenre. I grew up with Guideposts in the home, as I’m sure many evangelicals and exvangelicals (whose voices Hinch entirely ignores) did. It’s a magazine for believers who are in love with believing, and that’s what Hinch seems to have in spades—that great (obnoxious) American faith in faith itself. Yet n…

The Roots of White Evangelicalism’s Crisis Are in White Evangelical Churches, Not Republican Politics

By Jesse Curtis

…Sam” was a wealthy white man. Rather than listen to the warnings of Black evangelicals, white evangelicals set themselves up as the authoritative voice of God. Confident in their ownership of the gospel and their theological rectitude, white evangelicals felt emboldened to expand their influence by any means necessary. The fruit wasn’t long in coming. The movement’s relentless quest for church growth favored pragmatic and charismatic leaders rath…

An Evangelical (Millennial) on the Canterbury Trail

By John Schmalzbauer

…memoir, she confesses her doubts, acknowledging, “I may not worship in an evangelical church anymore or even embrace evangelical theology.” Though plenty of Episcopalians self-identify as evangelical (it’s not clear if Evans does), most denominational classification schemes locate the Episcopal Church within mainline Protestantism. While she may or may not endorse the doctrinal distinctives of evangelicalism articulated by social scientist Lyman…

Not Peace, But Division? Evangelical Vaccine Refusers Divide Families

By Chrissy Stroop

…ly dividing families as well, adversely affecting not only more reasonable evangelicals, but also ex-evangelicals and others who have evangelical relatives. Through a discussion thread I started on Twitter earlier this week, I’ve heard from people whose plans for weddings and funerals have been thrown off, people who (sadly but sensibly) won’t let their unvaccinated relatives see their children, and many others who are frustrated to varying degree…