Posts
In
a blog posted on the Sojourners site, I read Jim Wallis commenting about “The
New Evangelical Agenda.”
I
forwarded Wallis’s article to some friends and colleagues with this
comment: “You need to read this. Pass it
on to anyone who thinks “evangelical” means “conservative white male Fox News
hound.”
(Before you go on, it
would be wise to look at Wallis’s essay.)
One
of my friends responded: “Very interesting. Just how large is this liberal
evangelical movement?”
Welcoming
the opportunity to clarify, here’s what I told him [slightly edited]:
Here's my take on answering the “how
big” question:
It's probably better described as “moderate”
and falls into many classifications with labels such as, “new-evangelicals,” a
late 20th-century group that deliberately sought to move away from the
anti-intellectualism of Fundamentalism, to a later iteration of “progressive
evangelicalism,” which often gets confused with the more theologically liberal “progressive
Christianity.” Another label is “post-evangelicalism.” There's also a group
referred to as “Red Letter Christians” that expresses many moderate evangelical
views.
The best representatives of a more “liberal”
(another catchword) evangelicalism seem to be people with a concern for social
justice: Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren, come to mind,
along with popular writers such as Peter Yancey, Eugene Peterson, Frederick
Buechner, Donald Miller, Walter Wangerin, Lauren Winner, and Anne Lamott,
though she would probably eschew such a label, as would several of the others
on my informal list.
Among theologians, the most
representative among the living would be N.T. Wright, Donald Bloesch, Miroslav
Volf, D.A. Carson, Clark Pinnock, Ben Witherington, and J.I. Packer (Wright and
Packer are Anglican priests). Here, too, some would probably demur from being
so listed.
There's also a host of Roman
Catholics or Catholic sympathizers who probably fit the evangelical mode:
Brennan Manning, Thomas Howard, Kathleen Norris come to mind.
Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim
LaHaye and most of the TV evangelists who like to use the term evangelical
because of its historic connection with “proclaiming the gospel,” would
not fit any of the categories mentioned above, and, in fact, are
guilty, I think, of being among those whom Wallis in the article refers to as
having “co-opted” the term evangelical by re-uniting it with the “Fundamentalism”
from which it was intended to distinguish itself. Politicians come to mind--Rick
Santorum (Roman Catholic) and Mike Huckabee (Southern Baptist)--who seem to fit
this pattern.
Clearly, few journalists and media
people (and politicians) are alert to the distinctions, especially when referring to the
evangelical right voting bloc.
Here's the three I suggest you read
to get a taste of clearly defined moderate evangelicalism:
--Jim Wallis, Why the Right
Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.
--Miroslav Volf, A Public
Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good.
--Brennan Manning, The
Ragamuffin Gospel
There are many others. My recommended
shortcut to these thinkers is to read the Wikipedia articles (or the Theopedia articles) about them. The
writings of moderate evangelicals are enough to keep you busy for years.
By the way, I could continue for
pages on the subtleties of thought that make the term “evangelical” a
philosophical and religious morass. I’ll stop here for the time being.
