The Evangelical Crackup
October 29, 2007, 7:34 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
An article from the New York Times describing the turmoil within Evangelical circles.
It seems some evangelicals are tiring of the culture war lanaguage as well.
A very interesting article. I can only hope the following comment from an evangelical pastor, Gene Carlson, will come to pass:
“’There is this sense that the personal Gospel is what evangelicals believe and the social Gospel is what liberal Christians believe,’ Carlson said, ‘and, you know, there is only one Gospel that has both social and personal dimensions to it.’ He once felt lonely among evangelicals for taking that approach, he told me. ‘Now it is a growing phenomenon,’ he said.”
“’The religious right peaked a long time ago,’ he added. ‘As a historical, sociological phenomenon, it has seen its heyday. Something new is coming.’”
There was a show on TV in my area last night about a group that coordinates field trips to Alaska to study the effects of global warming. The interesting twist was that the participants were a mix of environmental scientists and evangelical leaders, two groups not ordinarily at ease with one another (evolution: a process that took 6 days or eons to accomplish? To your battle stations, please). Not only do the trips have the salutary effect of melting social barriers as the participants get to know one another as people, but there are also seem to be palpable gains by both sides in understanding that there need not be a divide between religion and science when it comes to stewardship of the life on our planet.
Was it just last year or two years ago that I read all about how the theocrats had taken over the country?
Didn’t the libelous book about Fr. Neuhaus just get reviewed and panned in Commonweal?
I’m glad that Commoweal didn’t fall for the NYTimes invention of the theocrats and I hope it won’t fall for their dis-invention now.
Yes, the Times does like its incendiary headlines. But there is an interesting issue buried within, which n my view Fr. Neuhaus’s response on the First Things blog doesn’t quite address.
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=884
Here to my mind are the key paragraphs of his response:
The reality is that, for millions of voters—evangelical, Catholic, and other—the number-one moral and political issue is the defense of the unborn. Join that to the defense of marriage and family and it seems certain that we are talking about no less than twenty million people. That is more than enough votes, or decisions not to vote, to decide a presidential election. It seems probable edging up to certainty that, if the choice is between a pro-abortion Republican, such as Giuliani, and a pro-abortion Democrat, such as any of the Democratic candidates, those millions will take it as an invitation not to be bothered with election day.
In sum, there is no evangelical crackup. Thirty years after the “religious right” appeared on the radar screens inside the liberal bubble, there is a normalization of conservative Christian activism in the public square. As on the left, organizations and activists on the right maneuver mightily to direct sometimes contentious constituencies toward their preferred political outcomes. In America, we call it democracy in action.”
My question is: is there or is there not an indication that one-or -two issue voting is becoming less popular in evangelical circles? That’s not an evangelical crackup, it’s more like an evangelical evolution, with political consequences; in Catholic lingo, it would be an emerging preference in evangelical circles for a consistent ethic mentality over a culture war mentality.
Cathleen,
I left the article with a similar idea, I think: now, the evangelicals are going to be like us catholics, very torn about who to vote for because of a broader idea of the common good.
I wonder if Neuhaus et al.’s influence on evangelicals hasn’t actually played a part in this change. Though Neuhaus is quite conservative too, he brings a broader catholic view to a lot of evangelicals.
But, I still think the NYTimes is full of it.
Finally getting to David Kirkpatrick’s piece yesterday, I found that it’s a well-reported story, i.e., he gathers his info, does interviews, and comes to some conclusions based on that.
It’s not Kirkpatrick’s work that’s at issue, but the NYT magazine’s declaration of “End Times for Evangelicals” as the cover headline. That’s what the magazine’s editors would like, but that’s not exactly what the story says. As with certain other issues, Times, readers have to discount–in this case, its understanding of the “religious right”–and religion in general.
Yes Peggy.
You wonder if they know that they’re cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
But I suppose we all do that.
The headline bothers me because it conflates evangelicalism and fundamentalism, which have some superficial similarities, but tend to respond to social challenges and Scripture in different ways.
I also think evangelicalism is extremely resilient and nimble in its response to social challenges. Rather than cracking up, it’s simply doing what it’s always done–trying to find tactics that work.