Search for "evangelical left"

Dear Timothy Keller: The “Evangelical” Problem isn’t Pollsters

By Jessica Johnson

…e are questioning their self-identification with what Keller calls “big-E” Evangelicalism, as well as “little-e” evangelicalism, while others are not. The point is that this inner turmoil within white evangelicalism didn’t begin with Trump’s election and any confusion or circumspection concerning what “evangelical” means today has been long developing and not dictated by political campaigns but rather a crisis of theological leadership within whit…

Why #FreeBritney is an #Exvangelical Cause

By R.L. Stollar

…as a soldier for the Lord,” writes Smit. Spears’s story is something many evangelical and formerly evangelical women can relate to. Her story is, as youth pastor Kelly Edmiston points out, “paradigmatic for so many women who feel trapped by the controls of the society and church in which she inhabits.” Edmiston goes on: “Ever since we blamed Eve…for eating the forbidden fruit, we have been trying to control her; suspicious of her capacity to mana…

The New Religious Left: A Marketing Dream or Political Reality?

By Daniel Schultz

…to ask: whose Christianity? In the same way, when we speak of a religious left, it’s worth asking: whose religion? Whose leftism? Those questions require answers for the movement to be effective in its current form. The homogeneity of the Religious Right gives it a great structural advantage in forming consensus and acting upon it. They only have to reflect the views of a small slice of the American public. The religious left, diverse as it is, d…

Can the Religious Left be Effective Again? Short Answer: No

By Daniel Schultz

…e political ladder? Not so much. There are vital congregations filled with lefty activists, but they tend to be in lefty paradises like Madison or Berkeley or Boston. Outside those areas, they’re much fewer and farther between, and in total, they’re outnumbered by the partisan-neutral churches. That’s not nothing to the religious left! A neutral church is not a conservative church, and that helps. But in terms of political effect, it blunts the li…

Is There Anyone in the Press Who Can Recognize the Bad Faith in Evangelical Faith?

By John Stoehr

…rous to democracy despite all appearances to the contrary. We wouldn’t see evangelicals routinely escaping accountability. The bad faith of White evangelical faith A few days ago, National Public Radio aired a piece with this headline: “Evangelical voters grapple with Herschel Walker’s controversial image.” “Grapple” connotes soul-searching, but the interview subject, Timothy Head of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, didn’t seem as vexed by the choic…

What Fundamentalist Christian Fiction Can Teach Us About Our American Crisis

By Christopher Douglas

…within his American evangelical tradition, calling it “the scandal of the evangelical mind.” Evangelical fiction gives outsiders access to this scandal of the evangelical mind, illustrating its frequently simplistic and reactionary epistemology, ethics, and politics. The fiction helps us understand the evangelical apocalyptic worldview—and how it has helped bring the country to its current twinned epistemological and constitutional crises. These…

Is ‘Western Self-Hatred’ the Problem in the Gaza War Protest Movement?

By Shaul Magid

…the protest movement is “just another case of anti-Westernism”—i.e., “the Left is just Lefting”—threatens to erase complicity. The West has given humanity many great things, and many horrible things. And the critique of the West from within won’t go away because, as Adorno and Horkheimer argued toward the end of WWII, the Enlightenment, with its fixation on Reason, carries within it, its own demise. As we know, democracies have produced horrific…

White Evangelical Leaders Already Distancing Themselves from the “81-Percenters”

By Neil J. Young

…ion was marked instead by a clear and consistent distinction between white evangelicals and those evangelicals of other ethnicities. Over and over and over, news reports focused on the phenomenon of white evangelical support for Trump’s unlikely candidacy. Coverage of the election results mirrored this consistency, making absolutely clear—particularly in an election season marked by white ethno-nationalism—that it was white evangelical voters who…

After the Trump Tapes: Evangelical Authoritarianism Revisited

By Chrissy Stroop

…inee for president instead of the more typical (but no less authoritarian) evangelical choice, Ted Cruz, white evangelicals would on the whole support Trump, finding ample justifications through their Providentialist and apocalyptic approach to politics. Trump could be flawed like King David, or a modern-day Cyrus the Great, or a “baby Christian.” And so it’s gone. Pew data from July placed white evangelical Trump support at 78%. More recent PRRI…

The Wandering Evangelical

By Philip Majorins

…undred years ago. I mean, really, consider what we on the thinking side of evangelicalism are left to sort out. I may speak for myself, but anyone who has been on the inside of the movement for at least twenty years is confused. Really. And as both John Ortberg and Roger Olson have pointed out in recent blog posts, we as evangelicals have no council of elders to help us navigate as a large community. We have no place to go. Many, myself included,…