Tag: evangelicals

You did this.

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You did this.

If you’ve spent these last eight years relentlessly demonizing the current occupant of the White House—questioning his religion (as if it should matter), doubting his citizenship, making thinly veiled racist jokes—you did this.

And no, this isn’t about being a partisan shill. I disagree with President Obama on a great many things.

If you only listen to voices that reinforce your existing bias—all while complaining about everyone else’s blind spots—you did this.

If you cheer for obstructionists who care little about finding common ground—whose sole objective is to torpedo the other side—you did this.

If you’ve demonized “outsiders”—immigrants, Muslims, gays—if you’ve perpetuated false stereotypes, refused to acknowledge their humanity, treated them as little more than a punch line to a crass joke—then you did this.

You may be shaking your head, wondering how we got to this point, where a misogynistic, xenophobic, neo-fascist demagogue is now the presumptive nominee of a major political party.

But you shouldn’t.

When gatekeepers grow their empires by preying on people’s fears, convincing white evangelicals—who happen to be one of the most disproportionately privileged groups to ever walk the earth—that we are under siege, then Donald Trump is what we get.

If you nurse a persecution mindset long enough, Donald Trump is what you find waiting for you at the end of the road.

When you perpetuate the rhetorical violence of the culture war—when you live and die by an “us vs. them” mentality—then Donald Trump is your future.

When you teach people to be perpetually outraged, Donald Trump is the only logical outcome.

When you encourage your followers to marginalize, stigmatize, and demean people because of where they come from or who they love—Donald Trump is your standard-bearer.

Already I hear some evangelicals asking, “How did this happen?”

Was there any other possible outcome?

As if choosing fear over love—and teaching our followers to do likewise—could ever lead to a different result?

Trump is not some strange aberration who suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He is a reflection of us.

You did this.

We did this.

God help us.

Photo: Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0

ISIS, genocide, and the real test of who we love

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If you’re a politician, condemning ISIS is about as risky Lois Griffin’s “9/11 was bad” campaign speech.

Still, there is something remarkable about the resolution that passed Congress this week—one of the few things to pass Congress lately, much less with bipartisan support—and the declaration made by John Kerry, accusing ISIS of genocide.

Both statements mentioned a number of groups who’ve been persecuted by ISIS: Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen, and others.

Take Christians, to start. What ISIS has done to them is beyond horrible. The Christian community in Mosul—which goes back centuries—is no more. Some fled. Some were killed.

 

Then there are the Yazidis, a small ethno-religious minority living in the northern part of the country. Their treatment at the hands of ISIS has been, if anything, even more brutal. They weren’t given a chance to leave. There are mass graves filled with the bodies of slain Yazidis. I have friends who have seen them, who have stood over the remains of slain Yazidis and wept. In addition, thousands of Yazidi women and girls were sold as sex slaves.

Then there are Shia Muslims. They’ve been targets of ISIS, too. In fact, the majority of ISIS’ victims are Muslim.

It’s normal to be drawn toward those we most easily identify with.

But the real test of our faith is not how well we love those who are most like us, but how we love those who are least like us.

Are we able to do what the religious expert in Luke 10 could not? Are we able to see those who are different from us as our neighbor? Are we able to call them by name?

The religious expert could not even bring himself to say the name Samaritan.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Not just the neighbor who looks like you. Not just the one who shares the same faith as you. (Jews in Jesus’ day almost certainly didn’t think of Samaritans as sharing the same faith.)

The true test of our faith is how well we love “the other.”

Jesus didn’t just say, “Love your neighbor.” He said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

In other words, the measure by which you love yourself—by which you love your own “tribe,” whoever that may be—that’s the measure by which your love of “the other” will be judged.

Do we really love “the other”? The outsider? The one we can relate to least? The one we are most likely to write off, dismiss, and marginalize?

Imagine a church that did not just speak up for the suffering of its own people, but for the suffering of those who aren’t even part of this body.

Photo: Foreign and Commonwealth Office / CC BY

Rob Bell’s new video, reclaiming the word “evangelical,” and the choice between power and presence

“I’m an evangelical, and I believe in good news for everybody.”

Rob Bell was written off by many evangelical leaders years ago, so on the one hand, it’s kind of surprising he’d want anything to do with the term “evangelical” now. Yet he’s back on old form in his newest video, unpacking something he taught more than once in his Mars Hill days.

In short:

The term evangelical comes from the Greek word for “good news.” It was the term Rome used to announce each military triumph over their adversaries, as they proclaimed their version of peace on earth. Whether or not it was truly peace, Rob points out, depended on “which end of the sword you were on.”

The early Christian sect reappropriated the Greek word to refer to another kind of victory—Jesus’ triumph over death—and what it meant for the world. For them, “good news” was something that spread “not through coercive military violence, not through crushing your enemies, but through love.”

How a term once used by those who fed the hungry and welcomed outsiders in the name of Christ came to be associated with a mostly white American voting bloc advancing a narrow, exclusionary political agenda is indeed mystifying.

Some of us have wondered if it’s time we gave up on the word “evangelical.”

Others, like Brandan Robertson, have fought to hang onto the term. It’s not been an easy fight, as I’m sure he could tell you.

Some of us have settled into faith traditions that aren’t widely seen as “evangelical.” I’ve been a confirmed Episcopalian for more than four years now. But you almost never leave your past behind entirely. The baggage—good and bad—travels with you. I still value many things about my evangelical heritage. As Rachel Held Evans writes in Searching for Sunday, evangelicalism taught many of us to read the Bible. Granted, it didn’t always teach us to read the Bible well. But I might not have had the same understanding of and appreciation for the Scriptures if I hadn’t grown up evangelical.

Part of me would like to see the word “evangelical” reappropriated. It’s been done before—by the very first Christians, who stole it from Rome. Why can’t it happen again?

What would it take?

To start, those who wear the label “evangelical” (in particular, white American evangelicals) must learn the difference between power and presence—and decide which they really want. Because it can’t be both.

Evangelicalism lost its way when it embraced the pursuit of power—namely, political power—a pursuit, incidentally, that is nowhere encouraged in the New Testament.

Evangelicalism lost its way when it prioritized its own advancement over the good of others, when it stopped valuing others above itself.

Evangelicalism can find its way again—but it has to relinquish the pursuit of power. Relinquishing power doesn’t mean withdrawing from the world, essentially repeating the fundamentalists’ mistake of the early 20th century. Christians are called to love, to serve—in other words, to be fully present.

Scripture puts no qualifiers or limits on who we’re called to love and serve—in other words, who we’re called to be fully present with. The pursuit of power is by nature an exclusionary path. Invariably, it’s about rival groups trying to defeat and displace one another. It’s about othering those you don’t like. It’s a zero sum game.

Choosing presence over power may or may not require rethinking some of your convictions. But whether you identify as conservative or progressive or somewhere in between, choosing presence over power certainly means rethinking what you do with your convictions. Do you use them to keep people out? Or do your convictions lead you to be fully present wherever you are, loving and serving all without qualification?

This, as Rob says, is what it means to be “evangelical” in the truest sense of the word. This is what it looks like to proclaim good news for everyone.

If, instead, you seek to coerce society into becoming more “Christian” through political enforcement, you have lost sight of what it means to be evangelical.

If you view your enemy, whoever you may think that is, as someone to be crushed or defeated or displaced—instead of someone to be loved and served without hesitation—you have lost sight of what it means to be evangelical.

If you’re more interested in keeping the “wrong” kind of people out than offering the greatest possible welcome to all, you have lost sight of what it means to be evangelical.

If you think Jesus’ resurrection changes your eternal destiny only and not everything here on earth, you have lost sight of what it means to be evangelical.

Such a gospel is not “good news.”

There are some who would limit the term “evangelical” along narrow ideological lines. Their “good news” has more in common with Rome than Jesus.

I don’t know whether the term “evangelical” is worth salvaging or not. But I do believe that, as Rob says, “If it isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.”

Why do evangelicals like Trump? Because he’s one of us.

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Donald J. Trump the leading choice for president among evangelical voters right now. This isn’t going down well with some of the gatekeepers—and for good reason.

Russell Moore, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, summed up nicely the problem with Trump:

He’s an unrepentant serial adulterer who has abandoned two wives for other women. He’s someone who has spoken in vulgar and harsh terms about women, as well as in ugly and hateful ways about immigrants and other minorities. I don’t think this is someone who represents the values that evangelicals in this country aspire to.

Moore is right. Yet for now at least, a plurality of evangelicals want just such a man—a serial adulterer who disparages women, immigrants, and minorities—to be their next president.

A lot can change between now and the first primaries. But how did so many evangelicals come to support a man whose values are so very far from theirs?

Maybe it’s because they’re not as far apart as we think.

You see, Donald Trump is a living, breathing, blustering manifestation of our culture’s addiction to outrage.

We live to be outraged, and Christians are no exception. In fact, we’re often the worst offenders.

We’re addicted to outrage because, as Tim Kreider observed, it feels good to be angry. “Somatically it feels a lot like the first rush of an opiate,” he wrote.

Outrage is a means of coping with our fears—rational or otherwise. We’re afraid of those who are different from us. We fear the loss of our cultural dominance. So we turn to outrage because it’s cathartic.

Not surprisingly, rage-filled posts spread more rapidly on social media than any other kind of content. Posts conveying other emotions, such as joy, trail far behind, according to a 2013 study.

Outrage isn’t always bad. It can be a healthy response to real injustice. But like any drug, it can be toxic. We use outrage to dehumanize those we don’t like. Conservatives use it to demonize Muslim refugees; progressives use it to hillbilly-shame Kim Davis.

We use outrage to delineate the boundaries of our tribe—who’s in, who’s out. As one writer put it, our communities are increasingly “defined by an ‘us’ and a reflexive exclusion of ‘them.’ ”

Christians have been doing outrage for years. We’ve spent decades nursing a persecution mindset and a culture-war mentality. We claim to be outraged by all sorts of injustices—some real, some not—but mostly we’re angry and fearful at the loss of our cultural dominance.

So we treat those who are different as enemies… by which I don’t mean we love them like Jesus actually told us to.

We look upon “outsiders” with suspicion, fear, and contempt.

In sermons and in blog posts, we cultivate a siege mentality among the faithful because, as it turns out, making people angry and afraid is a very effective way to build a platform.

But there are consequences.

When you teach people to be outraged all the time, they might end up voting for someone who is the personification of a YouTube comment section.

To those who are shocked and unsettled by Trump’s resonance among evangelicals, what else did you expect?

Donald Trump is exactly the kind of candidate we deserve. He is a reflection of us.

His popularity is an indictment of our addiction to outrage. It’s an indictment of our culture-war mentality.

All these years, when we should have been encouraging Christians to love and serve their neighbors, instead we told them to prepare for battle.

When we should have been opening our doors to let outsiders in, instead we built walls to keep the world out.

Is it any wonder, then, that a man who promises to build an even bigger wall—the self-aggrandizing mogul who preys upon our fear and outrage—is the most popular candidate?

I can’t think of many good things that can come from Trump’s candidacy, no matter how long it lasts. Whether he makes it to the finish line or flames out tomorrow, his presence in the race hasn’t exactly elevated our political discourse, which was already hovering around junior-high-cafeteria levels.

But maybe there is one good thing about Trump’s popularity. Maybe it will prompt us to look in the mirror, to look at ourselves and how we treat others. Maybe seeing all this venom and bile spill from someone else’s lips will cause us to reconsider all the harsh and dehumanizing language that we use.

There is, after all, one thing worse than voting for Donald Trump. And that is being Donald Trump.

But we can renounce our addiction to outrage. We can jump off this train and stop demonizing those we disagree with—or those we just don’t understand. Instead of building bigger walls, we can welcome others into our communities—and maybe learn something from their perspectives and experiences. We can lay down our fear. We can listen to the apostle John for a change and drive out fear with love.

This won’t be easy. As Daniel Kirk recently observed, “The disease [fear] keeps us from the medicine [love].” But we can try all the same.

Love is the antidote to the Donald Trump in each of us.

Photo: Gage Skidmore on Flickr / CC BY 2.0

If you think “standing with Israel” means never criticizing them, you’re going to have to get a new Bible

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Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that from a biblical perspective the modern state of Israel and the Old Testament nation are one and the same. Let’s say the old covenant is still in force, that the founding of modern-day Israel in 1948 fulfilled biblical prophecy.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Paul’s assertion that “all Israel will be saved” was a political statement rather than an expression of his belief that Jesus would rescue his own people from sin and death, along with Gentiles.

Many evangelicals take some or all of these assumptions to be indisputable fact (though evangelical support for Israel may not be as unanimous or unilateral as commonly thought). A plurality of evangelical leaders believe the founding of modern Israel fulfilled biblical prophecy. White evangelicals overwhelmingly sympathize with Israel in their conflict with the Palestinians. Half of evangelicals reject any possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine. Only 12% of white evangelicals believe the US should scale back its support for Israel.

The belief that the modern state of Israel is entitled to the blessings and benefits of what Christians regard as the “old covenant” gives way to yet another evangelical sentiment: namely, that it’s never OK to criticize the Israeli government. That “standing with Israel” means supporting them no matter what they do.

No matter how many Palestinian children are killed in the crossfire.

No matter how many homes and farms they bulldoze.

No matter how many walls they build.

No matter how many settlements they establish on Palestinian land, knowing full well that each one makes a viable Palestinian state more unlikely.

This sentiment was on full display in the aftermath of the reprehensible kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers and the subsequent retaliation by Israeli extremists. As Benjamin Corey wrote:

What bothers me most is that when news broke of the death of the Israeli teenagers, the internet lit up with your standard “stand with Israel” cheers, yet whenever Israel is the agent of aggression or retaliation, things go silent. The only voices who speak up are a few brave souls who are willing to be castigated by other Christians for having the courage to stand up against the violence and oppression of the nation state of Israel.

Why do we do this? Why does Israel get a free pass in doing whatever they want? They bulldoze communities so they can build illegal settlements, and we say and do nothing. They systematically use violence and oppression over their neighbors, and yet we say and do nothing. When things over heat, they retaliate—burning children alive, and we say and do nothing.

Why? Why would we be so foolish as to completely ignore behavior on the part of Israel that would in any other circumstance result in international sanctions or worse?

Let’s say modern Israel IS a continuation of the Old Testament kingdom (with the noticeable absence of a king or a temple). Let’s say the new covenant promised by Jeremiah and inaugurated by Jesus didn’t bring the old covenant to completion. Let’s say God didn’t expand the definition of Israel (in a spiritual sense—that is, his chosen people) to include Gentiles alongside Jews. Let’s say the dispensationalists are right.

Or, to put it as Benjamin Corey did, let’s say the “stand with Israel” folks are right.

How do we conclude from any of this that it’s not OK to criticize the Israeli state—especially when so much of the Hebrew Scriptures are themselves a prophetic critique of Israel? 

If “standing with Israel” means never saying anything negative about the Israeli government and berating anyone who does, then we should have nothing but contempt for the biblical prophets. We should cut them out of our Bibles. They should be condemned for treason against Israel.

In fact, they were. Amos was accused of conspiring against the government and was driven out of town. Jeremiah was thrown in prison by the king of Judah for predicting Jerusalem’s downfall.

The prophets routinely condemned Israel and its leaders for wishing destruction rather than mercy on their enemies (Jonah); for wrongly assuming that their military advances and territorial expansion were signs of God’s favor (Amos); for murder, theft, and adultery (Hosea); for coveting and seizing other people’s fields and houses (Micah); and for relying on military power instead of trusting God to protect them (Isaiah).

The prophets did not hold back. For them, “standing with Israel” meant speaking out whenever the nation fell into idolatry and injustice. Being God’s chosen people didn’t mean they got a free pass. If anything, they answered to an even higher expectation of integrity.

The prophets understood what Benjamin Corey states so well:

The best way to bless someone who is caught up in destructive behavior is not to condone or to support the behavior, but to lovingly confront the behavior and show them a better way.

Believing that the Israeli state is synonymous with the Old Testament kingdom shouldn’t change how we respond when it acts unjustly toward its Palestinian neighbors. Nor should our response be different when Palestinians perpetuate the cycle of violence in their own ways—though, as Benjamin Corey argues, those with greater power should be held to a higher standard.

It would be disingenuous to read the prophets as divinely inspired Scripture yet condemn others for doing and saying what they did. The best way to truly stand with Israel is to follow the prophets’ example, to lovingly but firmly confront evil and injustice, whoever the perpetrators might be.

Image credit: Zach Evener on Flickr / CC BY 2.0