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Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads

By Deborah Jian Lee

…ngelical church that we’re seeing play out practically now.” Though George left evangelicalism, he understands that some are called to stay “to push the envelope as far as you can.” He thinks of his friend who just started working for a non-LGBTQ-affirming church to help it on its journey toward becoming fully inclusive. He thinks of his friends at EastLake. “We need people on the inside to push things,” he says. But those who stay should see how…

Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads

By Deborah Jian Lee

…ngelical church that we’re seeing play out practically now.” Though George left evangelicalism, he understands that some are called to stay “to push the envelope as far as you can.” He thinks of his friend who just started working for a non-LGBTQ-affirming church to help it on its journey toward becoming fully inclusive. He thinks of his friends at EastLake. “We need people on the inside to push things,” he says. But those who stay should see how…

Dispatches from the Beltway: Beyond the Graying and Greening Religious Right

By Robert P. Jones

…ns. The Pew social conservatism index reveals some deep chasms between the evangelical left/center and right. On social issues, the differences are most pronounced on the issues of stem cell research, abortion, and the morning after pill. A majority of left/center evangelicals support stem-cell research, legalized abortion, and access to the morning after pill without a prescription. There is a remarkable 50-point gap between left/center and right…

Anti-Gay Evangelicalism is the Norm: A Less Rosy Take on the Evangelical “Tipping Point”

By Chrissy Stroop

…ing Campolo’s shift or by proclaiming Jim Wallis to be “the quintessential evangelical.” My experience of growing up evangelical was less of a “big tent,” more of what I like to refer to as “the quasi-ecumenism of Biblical literalism,” in which denominational affiliation didn’t particularly matter, but where a literalist reading of the Bible and certain political positions certainly did. “Right belief” was vigilantly policed. There was a little sp…

Evangelical Fiction Helped Shape a Culture of Faith — Along with Suspicion, Fear, and Resentment

By Christopher Douglas

…, in its embrace of ambiguity and indeterminacy, is akin to the “emergent” evangelicals who disliked Left Behind and who saw belief as “experiential, rather than propositional,” a “relationship.” Eventually, Silliman reports, evangelical fiction became the largest category of sales in Christian bookstores after Bibles. These stores catered to laypeople, particularly middle-class suburban white women. But by the time The Shack was self-published in…

Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

By Daniel Silliman

…great actors, and high production values.” This has been the debate about Left Behind. Among evangelical Christians who like the franchise —which doesn’t include all of them—there are real differences about what the film should be. In this way, Left Behind represents a big question about the persistent problem of the market for faith-and-family films. The past few years have seen attempt after attempt to do what Lalonde wants to do: make quality…

Making College Great Again: Evangelical Outsiders in the Age of Trump

By Adam Laats

…te Americans. As institutions that rely on the good faith and trust of the evangelical community, evangelical colleges and universities have often been the stage on which this never-ending debate has played out. In one sense, evangelicals have always been leaders in American higher education. Schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were established to teach new generations the truths of evangelical religion. In the 1920s, though, the idea of…

How the Study of Evangelicalism Has Blinded Us to the Problems in Evangelical Culture

By Christopher D. Cantwell

…rt based upon their biography. The careers of these three self-identifying evangelicals mirrored evangelicalism’s broader rise in American politics and culture in the 1970s, linking their professional success with their personal faith commitments. Marsden, for instance, taught for more than two decades at a small, conservative Dutch Reformed school before his pioneering work earned him positions at major research universities like Duke and Notre D…

Pew Finds Trump-Era Increase in the ‘Evangelical’ Label — And Yes, They’re ‘Real’ Evangelicals

By Chrissy Stroop

…lf. Rebranding is a constant of American religious life and not limited to evangelicals, but evangelicals do exhibit a pattern of being very conscious about their brand. That’s why some of them have attempted to drop the evangelical label in recent years, and numerous Baptist churches have dropped their affiliation from their names in recent decades because of widespread negative associations with the term “Baptist.” Let’s be clear. The evangelica…

What the Fight over Allah says about the Future of Evangelical Christianity

By Richard Flory

…fessor Hawkins is just the latest casualty. But things are changing within evangelicalism. Evangelical schools are facing decreasing enrollments and a declining pool of religiously acceptable students. Other evangelical institutions (such as megachurches) appear to be carrying on as usual, but they are showing signs of stress. Memberships have plateaued over the last several years, and some megachurches are seeking new ways to appeal to younger pe…