c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) As labels go, “evangelical” is an old one. It comes from the Greek word for gospel and means, on one level, someone who believes in sharing “the good news” of Jesus Christ. But though it’s been widely used in Christianity through the ages, it has perhaps never been used more divisively than it is now.

Since the last presidential election, the word “evangelical” is either an insult or an inspiration, depending on who is using it and whether they’re denigrating others or describing themselves.

According to typical news stories _ Time magazine recently devoted its cover to the “25 Most Influential Evangelicals” _ evangelical Christians are everywhere, flexing their muscles in the White House, in Congress, over the airwaves, on the Internet and from the pulpit. We’re told that evangelicals are behind every controversial conservative idea being shopped around the public square, from the outright prohibition of abortion, assisted suicide and stem-cell research to the defense of traditional marriage, a ban on “activist” judges, the selection of future Supreme Court justices and the establishment of a truly Christian United States.

But now evangelicals themselves are beginning to object.

They aren’t as single-minded as they’re portrayed to be, they say. They have a broader base, a wider range of concerns and less interest in imposing a Christian perspective on the United States than the media or their enemies have claimed.

“Evangelicals are not defined by a political party, by their views on when life begins or by their justification for the war in Iraq,” says Barry H. Corey, academic dean and a professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary outside Boston.

Evangelicals are Democrats, Republicans and independents; they are conservatives, liberals and moderates; Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians; members of churches large and small.

Part of the problem is that precise definitions of the term are hard to come by. There isn’t a universal charter that evangelicals sign. There is no one evangelical leader who speaks officially for the whole movement, as the pope does for the Roman Catholic Church. It also doesn’t help that many people, journalists included, confuse evangelicals with fundamentalist Christians, who became a powerful cultural force in the 1980s.

Fundamentalists and evangelicals are not necessarily the same, says Randall Balmer, a professor of American religion at Barnard College and, by his own description, a liberal evangelical.

“The flippant definition is that a fundamentalist is an evangelical that is mad about something,” he says. “That’s not a bad definition. It points to a distinction not so much in theology or doctrine as it is in temperament. There is a militancy to fundamentalists that you don’t find among evangelicals.”

Fundamentalism arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as many Christians resisted the modernist, or liberal, trend in biblical interpretation. They held fast to “fundamentals,” including the virgin birth, the deity of Jesus, his atonement for human sins, the second coming and the inerrancy of the Bible.

Fundamentalists withdrew from a dominant culture that they believed had been contaminated, creating separate churches, schools and political organizations. In recent decades, fundamentalism gave rise to the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority and became synonymous with the politics and social values that elected Ronald Reagan.

Evangelicals believe in the authority of the Bible, the saving power of Jesus Christ, their own conversion experiences and the necessity of sharing the good news with others. But they do not all define moral values exactly the same way. They do not all read the Bible literally. They don’t all want to condemn popular culture; many want to engage it and share their Christian values. Some care about a range of issues _ protecting the environment, ending racism, reducing poverty and working for peace.

Some evangelicals want the government to act on their behalf, but believe in the separation of church and state and fear that eliminating that wall will only corrupt their faith. They recognize the contribution that other religious traditions make to American culture. The last thing they want is a Christian country.

That’s the message of Jim Wallis, an evangelical Baptist and founder of Sojourners, a national magazine and network of “progressive” Christians. Wallis is the author of “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.”

Wallis says his goal is a broader dialogue in which conservatives cannot claim to be the only evangelical voice. “The religious right is running scared,” Wallis says. “They are not the only show in town. They are not the only voice anymore.”

They may not be the only evangelical voice, but conservatives did get a head start, Balmer says. More liberal evangelicals are just beginning to play catch-up. “We woke up on Nov. 3 and said that these (evangelicals) do not speak for me. Their values are not the values of the faith as I understand them.”

It’s taken these evangelicals a while to find ways to speak out, he says. “We didn’t own our own radio or television stations” as conservatives do. “We’re a quarter of a century behind, but now those of us on the left are gaining a little bit.”

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(Nancy Haught is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore.)