TOP STORY: RELIGION AND POLITICS: What’s an evangelical? It depends on who you ask

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Margaret and William Young have a deep faith in Jesus and they believe they should share their faith with others. Margaret, an office manager, frequently listens to the popular evangelical radio program”Focus on the Family”hosted by psychologist James Dobson. She says the show provides valuable insights for raising […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Margaret and William Young have a deep faith in Jesus and they believe they should share their faith with others. Margaret, an office manager, frequently listens to the popular evangelical radio program”Focus on the Family”hosted by psychologist James Dobson. She says the show provides valuable insights for raising their four daughters.

William, a telecommunications manager, is a registered Democrat; Margaret is a Republican. They oppose both abortion and expanded gay rights, but decline to define themselves as”liberal”or”conservative.”The Youngs, who are African-American, live in Clinton, Md., attend Mount Sinai Baptist Church in the nearby District of Columbia and consider themselves to be strong evangelical Christians.


But according to William, when he and Margaret see media stories about evangelicals, they feel”like (the reports) are talking about someone else.”Usually, he says, the media find”an extreme person”to represent all evangelicals.”Right-wing and evangelical are spoken in the same sentence almost all the time,”he complains.

In inner-city Philadelphia, Gil and Sarah Blaisdell have more liberal political views. Members of a Mennonite church, the Blaisdells take clear stands against defense spending and in favor of federal programs to help the poor.

Sarah, who works for a pharmaceutical company, says she is against abortion but would never base her vote for a candidate solely on that issue. Gil, who is an accounting clerk, emphasizes that because of their views _ and their Democratic Party affiliation _ they in no way identify with conservative evangelical political groups such as the Christian Coalition.

But are they evangelicals?”I think so,”says Sarah,”but I might define it differently than other people do.” Therein lies the problem. In the last decade _ particularly with the rise of a new political activism by conservative Christians _ the term”evangelical”is widely used in public discussions. But pollsters, pundits, pastors, and the press often have diverging definitions of exactly who is part of the evangelical community. As a result, many observers concede that in the American lexicon,”evangelical”is an ill-defined and often misused term. “The term is being used in a multiplicity of ways in today’s culture,”says prominent evangelical theologian Carl F.H. Henry, a founding editor of Christianity Today magazine. “There are a variety of depictions and definitions of evangelicals,”he says, adding that most are far from accurate.

The impact of loose usage of”evangelical”has been particularly evident within political discussions. In a now infamous 1993 article in The Washington Post, reporter Michael Weisskopf wrote that evangelicals were being mobilized for conservative political causes because they were”largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”Thousands of evangelicals called the Post to complain or faxed their diplomas and tax returns to indicate otherwise. “The lack of a common understanding of the term `evangelical’ has contributed to further confusion about what’s going on politically,”says Corwin Smidt, professor of political science at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., a liberal arts college affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church. “Differing definitions give differing pictures,”agrees Lyman A. Kellstedt, professor of political science at Illinois’ Wheaton College, an interdenominational evangelical institution.

According to Kellstedt, depending on the definition used, estimates of the size of the American evangelical community can range from about 4 percent of the population to a figure as high as 46 percent.

The 1996 U.S. presidential tickets highlight the complexities. Most observers consider Bob Dole, a longtime Methodist who now attends a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregation, to be a mainline Christian rather than an evangelical. (His wife, Elizabeth, however, is considered an evangelical because of her outspoken emphasis on her personal faith.) Dole’s running mate, Jack Kemp, attends a congregation affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church denomination, which is firmly aligned in the evangelical tradition. Bill Clinton and Al Gore both belong to Southern Baptist churches. Some Southern Baptists identify themselves as evangelicals, but many do not.”You’d think it should be a very simple thing to determine what percentage of the American people are evangelicals … but the ways of defining these groups are still being thought out,”Smidt says.


The term”evangelical”comes from the Greek word euangellismos, meaning”good news”or”gospel.”The first popular usage began in the Protestant Reformation with the idea that the reformers were recovering the good news of the Gospel. In Germany today _ and in other places in the world such as Latin America _”evangelical”is applied to all Protestants.

The term was used again in England and the United States with the religious revivals of the 18th century, led by such religious reformers as John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards. It was brought back yet again in the 19th century to describe much of American Protestantism.

The complexities began to emerge early in this century, with controversies between conservative and liberal or”modernist”Christians. In the 1920s, this tension came to a head, and several groups starting breaking away to become known as fundamentalists _ those who felt they were conserving the fundamentals of the faith.

Then in the 1940s, Carl Henry _ along with evangelist Billy Graham and other conservative Protestant leaders _ encouraged use of the term”neo-evangelical”as an alternative to”fundamentalist,”which Henry says had unfavorably become”associated with a pugnacious temperament”and a tendency to”reduce the essentials of biblical Christianity to fine points.”In time,”neo-evangelical”was eventually shortened to simply”evangelical.” Margaret and William Young are among many evangelicals who fear the term is now in danger of being saddled with the same negative connotations once associated with fundamentalism. Media stories, William says, usually portray evangelicals as”close-minded, narrow-focused individuals who can only see from one perspective in life and who don’t have the capacity to be sensitive to circumstances that other people find themselves facing.””I’d like to think that is totally opposite of who I am,”he says.

Sarah Blaisdell agrees.”American society has been given a poor idea of what evangelical Christians are,”she says, offering a”basic”definition of her own:”An evangelical Christian is someone who believes in the Gospel and wants to promote it throughout the world. It’s not a political thing.” (BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

Despite the cultural misunderstandings, Henry insists that”evangelical”is”still a good term”today because it is rooted in the Bible. The theologian points to the Apostle Paul’s definition of”evangel”in his First Epistle to the Corinthians:”For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures. …” That, in a nutshell, is what the evangelical still believes, Henry asserts.”Paul defines the content of the evangel as the death of Christ for sinners and his resurrection, and he emphasizes the importance of the Scriptures twice.” (END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)


The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), founded in 1947, also places strong emphasis on Scripture in its definition of”evangelical.”In March, the NAE released”An Evangelical Manifesto”which outlined evangelical beliefs and goals for the coming century.

NAE Vice President David Melvin says one of the main motivations for developing the manifesto was the”great confusion culturally, demographically and politically”over what an evangelical is.

Initially, the NAE manifesto committee was going to devise a specific definition of the word”evangelical.”But, Melvin says, by the end of the three-year process, they decided the best identification would simply be the NAE Statement of Faith.

That statement professes beliefs in the Bible as the”only infallible, authoritative Word of God”; God existing as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; the deity of Christ, his virgin birth, death and resurrection; the necessity of salvation; the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit; the”resurrection of both the saved and the lost”; and the spiritual unity of Christians. “Evangelical as we perceive it is really the historic orthodox Christian faith,”Melvin asserts.”I personally think there are more evangelicals than would assent to it because of the great confusion over what an evangelical is.” From a social-scientific point of view, Kellstedt, Smidt and colleagues John Green and James Guth have attempted to develop their own definition to measure evangelical opinion for political surveys. They believe there is no one way to define the term, and so they consider a combination of three factors:

_ Identification with various movements such as evangelicalism, fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, or the charismatic movement;

_ Theological distinctions, such as a conversion experience, a belief in the truth of Scripture, a belief that Jesus is the only way to salvation, and a commitment to spread the faith;

_ Affiliation with a particular church denomination or tradition that is considered evangelical.

According to their scenario, the more an individual holds each of the above factors, the more he or she is a”card-carrying evangelical.” Yet those who hold some, but not all of the factors, are more difficult to categorize. Catholics, for example, may share some doctrinal essentials, but would not identify with any evangelical tradition or denomination. Mennonites such as the Blaisdells also share many of the theological distinctions but have historically shied away from identifying themselves with the evangelical community. However, in recent years, increasing numbers of Mennonites have begun to affiliate with evangelical institutions.


African-Americans such as the Youngs are also difficult to categorize. Many are put in a separate category apart from”evangelical”because historically, black denominations have not been considered part of the evangelical sociological tradition. “It’s not your race that assigns you, but your tradition and what type of religious body you worship in,”says Smidt.”There are many blacks in black Protestant churches who exhibit evangelical beliefs, but … in terms of their cultural interactions, they are really part of a different sociological world.” He quickly admits, however, that”there is going to be error”in making such distinctions.

A recent study on religion and politics by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press is an example of the difficulties. In that study, researchers created separate categories for white evangelical Protestants, white non-evangelical Protestants and white Catholics, but considered all black Christians in a single category.

The Youngs say they believe the media help perpetuate the stereotype that evangelicals are only white.”I don’t think I’ve ever seen any report where they were talking about evangelicals and a black person was shown,”says Margaret.”That bothers me.” (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS)

What difference does it make how we define evangelicals?”Obviously, in terms of casual conversation, people are not necessarily going to be that precise (in defining evangelicals),”acknowledges Smidt. But he says it is important.”From a political point of view, it helps to explain why some evangelicals move in one political direction and others move in a different one, even those they hold the same religious beliefs.” Religion scholar Timothy Fulop, assistant dean of faculty at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., says it is perhaps not surprising that definitions have become muddy.”Language is fluid, and this happens,”he says.”Who knows what the term `evangelical’ will be like in the future … although I haven’t heard any alternatives.” Fulop argues that while many in the culture may not have a fully accurate picture of evangelicals, there is actually better understanding today than there was even 10 years ago.

The NAE’s Melvin says inaccurate perceptions do not hinder the actual work of evangelicals.”NAE is committed to being a forum for evangelicals to work together, to cooperate together, and to proclaim the word of God, and in doing that, we define evangelicalism,”he says.

Billy Graham agrees that the lasting meaning of the word will depend on the community itself. Graham wrote in the NAE Manifesto:”Our faithful united witness may or may not result in a new understanding of the name `evangelical’ by the culture and media. … But our faithful united witness will result in revival and reconciliation and renewal.”


MJP END LAWTON

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