Article #4

What is an evangelical, and am I one?

Most older adults these days are aware of how much American culture has changed during our lifetime. I suspect that most of us applaud some of the changes and are worried about others. Some of us would like to turn back the clock on at least some of our more recent developments. Others, on balance, are more or less content with the direction our culture seems to be taking.

Many self-identified evangelicals bring a special perspective to these changes. First, they focus on what they see as decline from what they take to be biblical norms. And, second, a subset of this group often understands the decline as signs that the end times are near, including the "rapture," Armageddon, and finally the second coming of Christ. The Left Behind series has made this apocalyptic narrative widely available in popular culture. Most evangelicals at least know about this conviction and have some sympathy for it even if they don't accept all or perhaps any of the specific details. For example, up to half of self-identified evangelicals may support Israel because they believe it is important for fulfilling end-times prophecy.

Many evangelicals take their standards about proper morality, right social ordering, and God's future for the world from their special understanding of the Bible as a complete, inerrant, word-for-word account of God's dealings with the world. The Bible's historically situated depiction of gender roles and appropriate social arrangements are taken as normative, established by God. Its apocalyptic narratives such as found in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament or the Book of Revelation in the New, are taken as veiled predictions of what the future will bring. Evangelicals disagree among themselves on these points, but the authority of the Bible remains highly influential in defining or at least rationalizing their social and political views.

Most evangelicals deplore various developments in modern society such as feminism, acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, end of prayer in schools, the teaching evolution, and so on. They see it as their Christian duty to oppose these developments as best they can, exercising their rights as citizens to act on their convictions and advocate political and cultural changes in support of their convictions. Some go further and cast these developments as (in some ways, welcomed) signs of the coming apocalypse that, after a period of strife, will bring in the reign of Christ on earth. They see themselves as holy warriors in a divine struggle. This can give rise to a self-righteousness and refusal to comprise. (And, to be sure, provoke a self-righteous and uncompromising response from those they oppose).

Let's dig a bit down into two broad areas.

Gender Roles

The societies described in the Bible are hierarchical and patriarchal. For many (but by no means all) evangelicals, these patterns are understood as normative, desired and commanded by God.

As a result, many evangelicals advocate a "Christian" ordering of society. They understand the family to be properly one husband (a dominant male), one wife (a subordinate female), and however many children (subordinate to parents). Single-sex marriage and homosexuality do not adhere to this pattern and are accordingly condemned. Male superiority in the family is assumed, and the wife's responsibility to see to the sexual satisfaction of her husband is broadly advocated.

Once again, this may be the general pattern but abundant variety can be found, including evangelicals who completely disagree with these normative standards.

Christian Nationalism

When we turn to society and government, we also find a normative hierarchical understanding of the Bible at work, conditioned by range of distinctly American refinements.

Patriotism is an expression of love of country, and is not peculiar to any particular group of Americans. Nationalism, however, and Christian Nationalism in particular, is another matter.

A "nation"--from the root natio, meaning birth--tends to be understood as a group of peoples with a similar background of ethnicity, language, and religion. "Nationalism" is a relatively modern development arising in Europe soon after the Reformation (and partly as a consequence). It is in some ways an alternative to polyglot amalgamations of peoples such as found in medieval kingdoms and in some places, say, the former Yugoslavia or, to take another modern but Asian example, India. America as a nation differs in this regard from the European nations which contributed America's earliest citizens. Americans came from a variety of ethnicities, spoke when they arrived a variety of languages, and practiced (or ignored) a variety of different religions. But even so, the dominant Americans well into the 19th century were Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and America's implicit “evangelical Christian" character was not appreciably changed until mid-century with the addition of Catholic Christians and some Jews. Despite the Deism of many of the Founders, America was broadly seen by evangelicals as a “Christian nation” and, for many, as exceptional nation with an (almost?) divine calling to be an example to the world. Variations on these two conviction often underpins an insistence that Christianity should have a privileged position in governmental policy and public affairs. It can also justify a militancy, even a belligerency towards other, less "chosen" and less "Christian" nations. By survey, a large majority of self-identified evangelicals are strong supporters of American military intervention around the world. They are not alone in this, to be sure, but they tend to be more "gung-ho" than most other religious groups.

And finally, for those who see in cultural trends the signs of the approaching end times, the struggle to save this special nation takes on religious overtones and makes its actors, at least in their own eyes, God's warriors in a righteous battle between good and evil.

Questions

• How do you understand recent changes in our culture and society? What constitutes for you changes for the better, and which, for the worse?
• Do you agree that America is or should be a "Christian nation"? What would have to change for America to become, or returned to, being a "Christian nation"?
• How do you distinguish between the claims on you by your Christian faith and the claims on you because of your American citizenship? How do you reconcile the two? How do you live with the tension, assuming there is a tension?

Article #3

What is an evangelical, and am I one?

In this Tidings piece we're going to sketch one of the foundational "evangelical" convictions shared by most, but not all self-identified evangelicals: namely, to be Bible-believing you must accept the literal, word-for-word truth of the whole Bible.

As we saw earlier in this series, scripture alone--sola scriptura in Latin--became the touchstone for Luther and most subsequent Protestants then and now including most contemporary American evangelicals. The rub was that folks soon found that they couldn't agree on what "scripture alone" taught about Christian belief and practice. And so the principle of "scripture alone" actually facilitated the repeated splintering of Protestant groups, as each group adopted conflicting "takes" on what Scripture teaches.

By the time Protestant Christianity reaches America, its many varying and disagreeing defenders had developed their own way to claim and even, they thought, "prove" that their understanding of Scripture alone was the true and correct one, and the alternatives offered by other Protestants or, for that matter, Catholics, were false. Much of this debate and defense rested on what came to be called "prooftexting," that is, taking verses of Scripture, assumed to be true, and employing them in a logical argument (deploying "reason") to "prove" the rightness of the position they were defending or the falseness of the position they were attacking. With this they moved step-by-step towards a foundational assumption that all of Scripture had to be divinely inspired, without errors, and infallible. The Bible, rightly understood, gave a true picture of the world, humanity, salvation, and morality.

With the rise of science in the 18th and 19th centuries, it became common to argue that since God was the creator of the world, including all of nature and human beings, and since God was also the author of scripture, therefore nature and scripture must agree with and reinforce each other. It was further assumed that morality could also be derived both from the "Book of Scripture" and from the "Book of Nature."

This worked for a time. But the approach found itself under increasing strain with the rise of two modern developments.

1. An approach to Bible that treated it like any other ancient piece of literature and placed its accounts within their quite varied historical contexts and concerns, and
2. The development of modern, evidentiary science (especially Darwinism), which favored "natural causes" including variation and natural selection (evolution) over claims of divine design.

Christians began to divide over how to handle these tensions. The so-called "modernists" or "theological liberals" found ways to accommodate Christian claims with the findings of history and natural science, often by confining claims of Scriptural truth to matters of divine-human relationship, salvation, and morality. Most mainline Protestant denominations (and ultimately Roman Catholics) took variations on this course. Others, however, some of whom came to be called Fundamentalists, doubled down on the truth claims for all of Scripture, including insisting on the literal truth of creation stories of Genesis, the literal historical accounts of the Old and New Testaments, and the divine origin of morality based on divine commandments and scriptural examples.

With variations and some subsequent developments we find much the same insistence on the literal word-for-word truth of Bible in our contemporary Evangelicals. This (much contested) conviction, they believe, gives them a solid foundation on which to oppose the "modernizing" tendencies of historical scholarship, natural science, and, most importantly, morality rooted in something other than Biblical commandments or exhibited in Old and New Testaments (as variously understood by evangelicals).

Scripture and the Word of God Distinguished

The brief account verges necessarily on caricature, I admit. But it still captures, I hope, the main history of the literal word-for-word approach to Scripture deployed by many evangelicals.

Now it is time to briefly contrast this view with the one found in Martin Luther and some, but by no means all, subsequent Lutherans and other Protestants.

Living in the 16th century, Luther did not have to wrestle as did American evangelicals with the findings of 19th and 20th century biblical and scientific scholarship that challenged the authority of the Bible as traditionally understood. Luther did not question the divine authorship of Scripture broadly understood but also did not insist that every word in Scripture had been dictated by God and should be taken as literally, word by word, true. That was not the important question for Luther.

The authority of Scripture, for Luther, came from the Gospel message it contained and conveyed.

First, Luther generally distinguished between Scripture, on the one hand, and the Word of God, on the other. “God and the Scripture of God are two things,” he said at one point, “no less than the Creator and the creature are two things.” At another point Luther distinguished between the cloths that swaddled the infant Jesus and Jesus himself. The cloths in which the infant Jesus was wrapped “are nothing but Holy Scripture, in which Christian faith lies wrapped up.”

Second, Luther understood the "Word of God" to be the message, the "good news," that God through Christ has forgiven our sins, apart from works. God's forgiveness is an act of unmerited grace. The Word of God can be found in Scripture wherever this unmerited grace through Christ is clearly taught--in both the Old and New Testaments!

The distinction between the gospel content of Scripture and Scripture itself finds perhaps its clearest expression in Luther’s 1522 prefaces to the New Testament. Here Luther identified his central concern, namely, that the readers of the New Testament be instructed so that they could rightly distinguish “laws and commandments” from the “Gospel and promises of God.” For the Gospel, Luther insisted, “does not in fact demand our works so that we become pious and holy through them.” Rather it condemned such works. It demanded only faith in Christ, faith “that he has overcome sin, death, and hell for us and thus made us righteous, alive, and saved, not through our own works but through his own work, death, and suffering so that we may take on his death and victory as if we had done it ourselves.”

Drawing on the distinction between law and Gospel, Luther offered a fascinating one-page excursus entitled “which are the true and most noble books of the New Testament.” In effect Luther was telling his readers that not all Scripture was of equal value, since not all taught equally well the proper distinction between law and Gospel. The Gospel of John, Paul’s epistles (especially the one to the Romans), and Peter’s first epistle were “the true kernel and marrow among all the books,” he said. In contrast, he questioned, for example, whether James even belonged in the New Testament because it “contradicted Paul and all the rest of Scripture in attributing justification to works,” and that it failed to mention the suffering, resurrection, and spirit of Christ. He asserted that, “[t]he true touchstone for judging all books is to see whether they promote Christ or not.” But all James did was to promote the law and its works.

Some questions

• What do you think of Luther's distinction between Word of God and Scripture? Do you agree with him?
• What do you think of Luther's way of determining what is authoritative in the Bible, namely, "that which promotes the ‘good news’ and the promises of God in Christ"?

Remember: Luther lived before many significant developments that changed the way we view and understand Scripture and grant it authority. We can never completely recapture the naiveté that informed Luther’s understanding of Scripture even if we explicitly adopt his position. In some cases, we probably would not want to.

• Can you think of some cases where we are likely to disagree with our eponymous founder about the right understanding of the "good news," the Gospel?

Article #2

What is an evangelical, and am I one?

In the first Tidings in this four-piece series, I sketched what Luther and many Lutherans mean when they call themselves "evangelicals." In this piece we're going to jump four centuries forward to explore what modern "evangelicals" may mean when they claim this label and sketch the history of their development into the present.

Modern self-identified evangelicals are actually a highly diverse group and difficult to categorize. Historians often point to four traits or inclinations shared by many evangelicals but by no means all. These “Pattern of convictions and attitudes” were identified by the historian David Bebbington. They are,

• Bible or Biblicism – reliance on the Bible as the ultimate religious authority (“bible-believer”) [“the Bible is the inspired word of God” or “the Bible is God’s word, and is to be taken literally, word for word”]
• Cross or Crucicentism – a focus on Christ’s redeeming work on the cross, (normally) the only way to salvation [“through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God provided a way for the forgiveness of my sins” ]
• Conversion or Conversionism – emphasis on the “new birth” and its life-transforming implications (often, but not always, “born again”) [“I have committed my life to Christ and consider myself to be a converted Christian”]
• Activism – a concern for sharing the faith (concern for evangelizing, saving souls for Christ, etc.) [“it is important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians”]

We can roughly trace this set of convictions back to European pietists in the 17th century. Again, this was a diverse group in England and on the continent that, with the rapid rise of literacy among the common people, showed great zeal for private Bible study and for personal holiness. They were inclined toward a religion of the "heart" rather than the "head," that is, toward an experiential religion.

We find similar concerns in the two Great Awakenings of American history, the first in the late eighteenth century and the second in the decades following the American Revolution. Evangelical Protestants thereafter dominated American culture and politics in the 19th century, but divided among themselves on a variety of issues, most importantly slavery and, later in the 19th century, Darwinian evolution and German biblical criticism.

On the matter of slavery, evangelically inclined churches divided into northern and southern denominations. On evolution and biblical criticism, a group called "fundamentalists" calved off from the more "liberal" or "modernist" evangelically inclined denominations. The fundamentalists shared various beliefs in addition to the four "evangelical inclinations" listed above, two of which are important for this series:

1. Insistence that every word of the Bible was "inerrant," that is, absolutely and literally word for word true, and
2. That civilization was in decline and heading towards Armageddon and the turn of Christ to restore his kingdom.

After its apparent defeat in the Scopes "monkey" trial, fundamentalism nonetheless continued to spread in American society but was not much in the national news. That changed when Billy Graham, originally a fundamentalist, began his revivals after World War II and became an important public figure. He broke with the fundamentalists and called himself "evangelical." The term "evangelical" came in the next several decades to be applied to a variety of still quite conservative Protestant institutions associated with Graham and his supporters.

Another strand of "evangelicalism" arose out of Pentecostalism and various charismatic movements beginning in the early 20th century. These movements put special emphasis on the Holy Spirit and advocated various spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues.

Many African-American religious movements shared the concerns of white evangelicals and Pentecostals, but they tended not to call themselves "evangelical" and generally remained separate from white evangelicals, not the least because of racial discrimination and segregation.

Beginning in the 1970s more militant and conservative evangelicals began re-asserting themselves. They took over the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelically-inclined denomination, and some took to national politics forming the so-called "Christian Right." As a political movement, these activists and their organizations such as Falwell's Moral Majority or Robertson's Christian Coalition or Dobson's Focus on the Family combined the theme of civilizational decline with exhortations to take back "our Christian nation" and return to "traditional values" in opposition to feminism, abortion, homosexuality and, later, same-sex marriage. From the 1990s onward, self-identified evangelicals were a large and reliable source of support for Republican politicians and policies.

Summary

Evangelicals in America vary greatly among themselves, but for convenience they may be said to share four distinctive impulses or convictions summarized by cross, bible, conversion, and activism. Some also share deep concern for what they see as the decline of "Christian America" and the need to "take back their country" as part of God's plan for the world. Not all evangelicals share these four or five convictions, and some who share all four or five do not call themselves "evangelical." So be wary of generalizations, including these!

This crib-notes history is meant to serve as background to what follows in subsequent Tidings pieces. Not much to discuss, but questions for clarification are fully in order!

In the concluding two Tidings piece we'll examine briefly two to the four (or five) characteristically "evangelical" impulses--biblicism and civilizational decline.

Article #1

Holy Trinity's full name is Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. Its parent body is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Yet both the ELCA's and Holy Trinity's confession of faith and religious practices may strike the careful thinker as not overly "evangelical" as we in America understand the term.

How do we make sense of this?

For the next several Tidings I'll be doing a series on what the term "evangelical" means. These little articles are meant to serve as setups for a series of adult forums on this topic. The forums are scheduled for September 26, October 17, November 15.

I begin the Tiding series with a brief historical overview of the origin of the term in the 16th century (which you're now reading). Over the course of three more short Tidings articles, we'll jump about four centuries forward to sketch what the label "evangelical" generally means in today's America.

The Greek "Evangelion" and the German "Evangelisch"

The word "evangelical" comes from the Greek evangelion, which means "good news" or "gospel." It is in this sense—being gospel-centered—that Luther and his co-religionists called and still call themselves evangelisch (in German) or "evangelical" in English. The Lutheran church in Germany is still called Die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland.

Consider that Luther's dispute with Rome was often fought out over questions of authority. Was Scripture the sole authority or did it need to be interpreted and, if necessary, elaborated by the authority of the Pope?

For Luther it was scripture alone as the only authority, sola scriptura in Latin. In this famous confrontation at Worms in 1521 Luther clearly stated the principle, that in matters of faith Scripture was the sole authority. “I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God,” he said when he declined to recant his teachings.

But for Luther, "Scripture alone" meant something different than we'll see in later American evangelicals insistence on the sole authority of the Bible. The authority of Scripture rested for Luther on its gospel content, not on its being divinely inspired Scripture. That is, Luther distinguished between the Word of God and the Holy Scriptures. The one was contained in the other. For Luther, Scripture and the Word are not identical and, as a result, he felt free to criticize parts of Scripture that did not “promote Christ.” In this Luther differed from later evangelical claims that the "whole bible" is inerrant and authoritative for Christian belief and practice. We'll look at this crucial distinction more closely when we look at how contemporary evangelicals tend to understand and interpret the Bible.

"Lutheran"

Nowadays we call ourselves "Lutheran" or "Lutheran Christians" or just "Christians." Luther himself did not want his evangelical followers called "Lutheran" but only Christian. As he insisted in his 1521 A sincere admonition by Martin Luther to all Christians to guard themselves against insurrection and rebellion,

I ask that people not mention my name and not call themselves Lutheran but only Christian. Who is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone! ...How does it happen to me, a poor sinking sack of maggots, that the children of Christ should be named with my wretched name? Not so, dear friends, let us abolish all party names and be called Christians, whose teaching we follow!

But with time the name "Lutheran" stuck, especially as 16th century "evangelicals" increasingly splintered into different groupings including Reformed and Anabaptists. This is often true of names that are meant to belittle or undermine but come to adopted as a badge of pride by those so stigmatized!

With time the gospel-center "evangelicals" called Lutherans and the gospel-centered "evangelicals" called Reformed (or sometimes Calvinist) came to be called, and sometimes called themselves, "Protestants." Why? Because their representative governments "protested" a 1529 decision by the Holy Roman Emperor that took away their freedom of religious choice.

"Lutherans" then are named after a man; "Protestants" are named after an obscure 1529 political-religious protest of a group of princes and city states!

In the next Tidings we will jump four centuries forward to explore what modern American "evangelicals" may mean when they claim this label, and we'll sketch the history of their development into the present.

Some discussion questions

1. Are we Lutherans truly “gospel-centered”? In what ways?
2. Why do we also call ourselves “Lutheran”?
3. Can we think of other examples of names that we give to others that are meant to belittle or criticize them? Can we think of examples where people have adopted the stigmatizing term and made it a badge of pride?