jQuery Slider

You are here

Evangelical Triumphalism: A Cautionary Note

EVANGELICAL TRIUMPHALISM: A CAUTIONARY NOTE

Commentary

By David W. Virtue

WEST CHESTER, PA (11/8/2004)--The election has come and gone and Evangelicals are triumphant that they got their man back in the White House. Four million of them came out to vote in Ohio and the vast Mid-West and South and gave the job back to George W. Bush.

According to surveys of voters leaving the polls, Bush won 79 percent of the 26.5 million evangelical votes and 52 percent of the 31 million Catholic votes.

But a cautionary note needs to be sounded.

Evangelicals have blind spots; they can be very thin theologically and historically forgetful.

When Ronald Reagan ran away with the White House after defeating the evangelical Jimmy Carter a new day was heralded for evangelicals - they would bring the nation back to God and all would be well. Liberalism in faith and politics would die out, the nation would return to righteousness, revival would break out, and much more.

It never happened. The culture has slid inexorably towards the gutter ever since and many conservative columnists, including Cal Thomas, later had to admit that little had changed and the culture was not profoundly affected by that president or any that succeeded him.

In this last election Evangelicals rightly bemoaned the ascendancy of gay marriage, the continued infanticide of abortion, (Roe v Wade), the fear of a Supreme Court getting other than strict constructionists and more.

But evangelicals have also ignored the horror of divorce in America, which claims almost one in two marriages; has decimated families for generations, with they, themselves, being among its biggest offenders, according to recent statistics.

As an aside, in my parish an associate rector recently got divorced when his wife walked out on him because she wanted to marry a rich older man, and a youth leader got blown away when his wife had an affair and left him with the two kids. All this is nothing less than sheer selfishness, a 'me first' mentality, and my needs come before all others and to hell with the cost to anybody, else especially the kids. And all these people call themselves evangelicals! Gay marriage will never be an issue in my parish, our rector will never solemnize a same-sex couple, and not even Bishop Bennison would dare insist that he perform such rites, however theologically stupid the man is. But divorce IS an issue and it causes havoc to whole families when it occurs.

And Evangelicals are silent. And they shouldn't be. Divorce is just as much a "values" and "first tier" issue as gay marriage.

And is not justice for the poor and downtrodden a central tenet of biblical concern, and should it not be so for evangelicals?

Dr. Christopher Hall, NT Theologian and Evangelical Episcopalian noted, "The main words for sexual sin occur about 90 times in the Bible. By a conservative count, the four words for justice (two in Hebrew and two in Greek) appear 1,060 times in the Bible."

Where are evangelical priorities?

Greed is also a major problem for evangelicals, but no one talks about it. It is the sixth deadly Sin. Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain; it is also called Avarice or Covetousness. And when did you last hear a sermon about greed from the pulpit?

Millions of evangelicals have bought into a "health and wealth" gospel that is utterly alien to Holy Scripture, and those that don't (and most Episcopalians would never overtly subscribe to such a doctrine) there is nonetheless the belief that my money is mine and I alone decide how to spend it. "No one is going to tell me what to do," is a motto for many evangelicals.

This writer was extremely troubled to see huge billboards up and down highway I95 in the state of Pennsylvania, prior to the election, trumpeting "It's Your Money" - Bush Cheney. Really. Would Jesus say that, or would he rip it down and do a repeat of the temple money-changers? No it is not your money. You are simply a steward of what God has given you, nothing more. Your money is not yours. You, like your money have been bought with a price, and you and I will both be accountable for how we spend it "in that day". An English vicar told me on the phone last week, "The last thing to get converted is the check book." He is absolutely right.

There are millions of evangelical African Anglicans who live in abject poverty. We Americans consume enormous amounts of the world's goods proportionately to other nations, where is the evangelical outrage about that?

Evangelicals now are in big danger of falling into spiritual pride. As a group we have an exaggerated self importance. But pride comes before a fall, and we as a group have fallen before and we will fall again. Any numbers of TV evangelists and Christian leaders have fallen into sexual sin and their ministries ruined. We should take heed lest we fall.

Yes, we should oppose gay marriage, it is a profound violation of the moral law of God and He will judge us as a nation if we go down that road, but it is no less a moral violation when we break our marriage vows. The abortion mills are horrible. Roe v. Wade was wrong-headed and muddled thinking, but we evangelicals have not succeeded in turning the culture around, and many of us contribute to it.

A hotel manager told me recently that he had two conventions back to back. One was a high level group of evangelical church people the other was a business group. The evangelicals watched more porn movies in their rooms than the business group! Go figure.

On the flip side of the coin there is a lot of hysteria by liberals about evangelicals bonding with Bush and turning this nation into people who look like Jerry Falwell. It isn't going to happen. (For the record, I got a nasty, threatening phone call from Falwell several years ago because I asked him to put up or shut up that Bill Clinton was involved in killing people for political ends and running drugs from Latin America and using all the money to get re-elected. Those stories, on video tape, were simply not true whatever you might think about Clinton's morals and politics.) Falwell threatened to ruin me and my ministry. Mercifully he has not succeeded.

And liberals have it all wrong that Evangelicals are a scary lot, says Eastern Baptist Seminary professor and evangelical activist Dr. Ron Sider. "We are not as scary as some people think," he told the Philadelphia INQUIRER.

Sider notes that some 55 percent of U.S. evangelicals - who number nearly 50 million - favor strict environmental regulations, and 45 per cent think homosexuals should have the same civil rights as others. Forty three percent say the middle class should be taxed to fight poverty, and 29 percent support more government spending.

It was George Bush himself who said on TV (and I saw him say it) that same-sex unions should be a state's right issue not a federal issue. By doing so he tacitly supported sex outside of heterosexual marriage! And this is an Evangelical president!

Equally, Liberals have no right to go around bashing evangelicals as simpletons. Spong is wrong. Many Evangelicals are sophisticated people who hold high university positions in nearly all disciplines and they are just as concerned for the environment and the poor as are liberals.

Most of the major American world hunger organizations are evangelically-based and they include the Salvation Army, World Vision, Food for the Hungry, World Relief, Food for the Poor and the newly formed Anglican Relief and Development, to name but a few.

The National Association of Evangelicals adopted a landmark statement last month calling its 30 million members to have "a biblically balanced concern that reflects the full range of God's concerns for the well-being of marriage, the family, and the sanctity of human life, justice for the poor, care for creation, peace, freedom and racial justice."

Every week, every Evangelical and Anglo Catholic Episcopalian prays these words from the Prayer Book: "For all who work for justice, freedom and peace...For the victims of hunger, fear, injustice and oppression..."

Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics believe in the primacy of Christian conversion, it is or should be their first concern, but it doesn't stop there and it shouldn't. Justification is the first step towards sanctification, redemption, and that involves the whole of life.

We should be holistic Christians concerned for the whole person, saving the soul is only a part of it. God's redemption is for the whole man (and woman), and creation, and we as evangelicals should admit that we can and do get it wrong from time to time.

Evangelicals may have their man in the White House, but it is not a time for gloating, this nation still needs to be called to repentance for its "manifold sins" for truly we have grievously offended thy holy laws and that includes Evangelicals....by at least four million.

END

Subscribe
Get a bi-weekly summary of Anglican news from around the world.
comments powered by Disqus
Trinity School for Ministry
Go To Top