Over 2,000 years ago, God showed up on the planet. Jesus, whom Christians believe to be the promised Jewish Messiah and the Son of God, came to the earth to make it possible for humans on the earth to be connected to God and to know God intimately. Jesus showed us a way of life that was radically different from that of his contemporaries— a way of servanthood, of compassionate service, and of self-sacrificial love. After modeling this beautiful, magnificent way of life to all who would follow, he died on a cross as a sacrificial payment for the sins of humankind, getting rid of the obstacle (sin) and its consequence (death) that kept us from being in relationship with a God who is not only completely loving but also completely holy and completely just. By taking the penalty for our sins upon himself, he died so that we could be forgiven. He arose from the grave to prove that he had conquered sin and death, defeating the enemies of humankind. He arose into heaven, returning to the Father who sent him. He is coming back to rule over the earth, ushering in a kingdom of peace and justice. He invites his followers to begin fleshing out the principles of that kingdom by living out the values, ethics and lifestyle of his Sermon on the Mount as a living proclamation of the kingdom to come. He sends his Holy Spirit to enable and empower this authentic lifestyle of love, peace, hope, and joy. He establishes his Church, which is his divinely empowered community that demonstrates the reality of the living Christ to a watching world. This beautiful message has been proclaimed for over 2,000 years in every nation on every continent. It is a beautiful narrative. It is God’s narrative. Many Christians throughout the centuries have discovered that this narrative is all true, that it’s worth living for, and that it’s worth dying for. Over the course of time, Christianity divided into many smaller tribes. One of those tribes, the Evangelicals, arose to challenge some of the more sluggish expressions of Christianity by promoting a rugged expression of evangelism, missions, discipleship, prayer, personal and small-group Bible Study, personal piety, and, to some degree, social action. What had been taught by Jesus as an “all in” lifestyle had turned into the religious equivalent of a spectator sport under the jurisdiction of some of the more institutional expressions of Christianity, and Evangelicalism sought to restore Christianity to its original fervor as a dynamic lifestyle, not a passive acquiescence to a formal theological creed. Though not laying aside their solid biblical theology as heirs of the historic Protestant Reformation, Evangelicals believed that Jesus had called his followers to experience major life change, not to embrace a formal religion that left the heart untouched and the lifestyle unchallenged. When Evangelicalism reached the North American shores it began moving in two different directions, both ideologically and geographically. In the North, the movement placed its emphasis not only on personal piety but also on social action. Evangelicals in the North became abolitionists. They saw no contradiction between being both proclaimers of the Gospel and social reformers. Through their evangelism, they were proclaiming the Gospel in word. Through their social reforms, they were proclaiming the Gospel in deed. In the South, Evangelicalism tended to form and affirm the culture rather than challenge it. Evangelicals saw themselves as the preservers and defenders of both the Gospel and what they considered to be the American way of life, enmeshing the two currents into one stream. Their version of Evangelicalism became a sort of civil religion that tended to enable and validate the movements within the culture rather than challenging them. Evangelicals in the South tended to see themselves as the guardians of an older way of life, a God and country, cross and flag, Bible and Constitution culture that was quickly fading in the North. Then came the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy of the 1920s. The Fundamentalists embraced the Bible, were politically conservative, and looked upon science and the social sciences and all of academic scholarship with great suspicion. The Modernists questioned the Bible, were politically liberal, and had a high regard for science, the social sciences, and academic scholarship. In the South, many Evangelicals merged into the Fundamentalist movement. In the North, the situation was more complex. Some Evangelicals in the North become Fundamentalists, some became Modernists, and some continued to call themselves Evangelicals. Those in the North who continued to call themselves Evangelicals embraced the Bible as fully as did the Fundamentalists. Their view of science, the social sciences, and academic scholarship was somewhere between the two extremes, respecting some academic scholarship without compromising the authority of Scripture, always interpreting scientific theories through the lens of the Biblical worldview, with the goal of raising up intelligent and well-educated Christian scholars, bringing all of scholarship under the scrutiny of Biblical revelation, and bringing Christ into the university setting. They continued to promote social reform, so politically they tended to be somewhat left-of-center, at least on some of the issues, but avoided political polarization. Billy Graham and Wheaton College and the Christianity Today magazine became identified with this brand of Evangelicalism. During the Civil Rights era, Martin Luther King and many African Americans openly identified themselves as Black Evangelicals. This changed, however, after the assassination of Rev. King. Evangelicalism began to be seen by some African Americans as a “white man’s religion”, a successor of white European Protestantism, so many former Black Evangelicals dropped the term “Evangelical” and started calling themselves African American Christians. In the following decades, due to Pentecostal revivalism in many Latin American countries, many former Latino Evangelicals preferred to start identifying themselves as Pentecostals rather than as Evangelicals. With the African Americans gone and the Latinos gone, Evangelicalism in America became more white and more politically and culturally conservative and eventually morphed into what is now sometimes called “white Evangelicalism”. During the Reagan years, the Evangelical and Fundamentalist movements, at least to some extent, started to fuse into one movement in both the North and the South. Many Evangelicals in both the North and the South had, for the most part, come to adopt the interpretation of Evangelicalism that had been held in the South. They had come to see themselves as the guardians and preservers of not only the Gospel but also of what they considered to be an American way of life that was quickly fading. The Gospel had become so totally enmeshed with conservative American values that the Evangelicals had lost their ability to challenge the culture. Rather, they saw themselves as heirs of an American way of life, and they saw it as their mandate from God to preserve and defend that culture, which, in their mind, had become inextricably attached to the proclamation of the Gospel. In their eyes, to defend the American way of life (at least in its most conservative expressions) and to defend the Gospel were two sides of the same coin, and to attack either was to attack both. Later, in reaction to Obama-era reforms, a nasty storm of white nationalism was brewing. Some white Americans felt that they were the ones who had controlled America since the days of the Founding Fathers, and they wanted to keep it that way. Minorities could be given some token rights but white Americans would continue to dominate, if they had their way. Ethnic minorities, immigrants (both legal and illegal), and all other challengers to a white-dominated America would need to be “kept in their place”. Both white nationalists and many white Evangelicals seemed to be magnetically drawn to the personality and politics of Donald Trump. This brings us to the weekend of July 4, 2020, on Mt. Rushmore. President Trump gave a speech that resonated with both the white nationalists and with many white Evangelicals. Instead of utilizing the moment to bring America together against racism, the President instead opted to defend the preservation of statues that, at least in the minds of many, have become symbols of racism and that exist in order to celebrate a white-dominated culture that enabled and supported slavery. The President spoke. The white nationalists cheered. Many white Evangelicals cheered. I believe that Heaven wept. I believe that what we saw on Mt. Rushmore was the last rallying cry before the beginning of the end of white nationalism. It will be a slow and painful demise, and it will not go down without a fight, but the handwriting is on the wall. America has turned a corner. Most Americans no longer want a white-dominated America. Most Americans now realize that if we really want to honor the vision of the Founding Fathers, a vision of “liberty and justice for all”, then a white-dominated America needs to give way to an America that is both comprised of and led by ethnic minorities, with white Americans as one of many minorities of the American people, with no special rights or privileges or claims to leadership. Rather than being “unpatriotic” this may be seen as a new patriotism, more consistently loyal to the ideals of American Democracy than was the older white-dominated order. I believe that President Trump is the last hope of the older white-dominated order. The end of the Trump era will represent the end of a white-dominated America. White nationalists will cheer and will celebrate for as long as they can, but they are running out of breath. The problem with all of this is that by now much of white Evangelicalism has hopelessly enmeshed itself with the politics of Donald Trump, and in so doing has unwittingly tied itself to the fate of Donald Trump. When white nationalism dies, the engine that produces some of the drive behind the Trump administration dies, and when the popularity of Donald Trump and his version of American greatness declines, it brings down white Evangelicalism with it. Evangelicalism in America becomes written off, in the eyes of many, because it has become tainted with elements of white nationalism. This is because many white Evangelicals have proclaimed a white, conservative, status-preserving misrepresentation of the Gospel rather than the genuine Gospel of Jesus. They have been more interested in winning the “culture wars” and preserving their rights as Christians than in proclaiming Jesus and representing him well and going to bat for the rights of others. They failed to learn the lesson of history: When the Church ties itself to any political or nationalistic agenda, it is corrupted by that agenda and loses its ability to proclaim the Gospel without compromise. Then when the agenda fails, the corrupted expression of Christianity to which it has bound itself also fails. Maybe that is God’s way of cleaning up the Body of Christ. I have no desire to judge what is going on in the hearts of white Evangelicals. They are my friends, and they are good people. They are my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I love and respect them. Only God knows what is in the heart, and only God can judge. I understand the predicament of having to choose between a pro-choice Democrat and Donald Trump, and I understand the logic of voting for the lesser of two evils (though there are third options). What I am concerned about is that many white Evangelicals look to Trump not as the lesser of two evils, but as their hero. While most white Evangelicals are not white nationalists (at least not the ones whom I know personally), by tying themselves to the personality and politics of Donald Trump, who is supported by white nationalists, they have made themselves look like white nationalists (guilt by association), and their reluctance to speak out against Donald Trump, when necessary, has caused the watching world to assume that their silence means complicity. In their zeal to support Donald Trump at any cost and in their refusal to challenge him on any issue, they have painted themselves into a corner, with the tragic loss of authentic Christian witness. I have no desire to bring disunity into the Body of Christ. I want unity, but what good is unity if we are unified around the wrong things? We need to be unified on the person of Jesus Christ and on the proclamation of a pure version of the biblical Gospel. I am neither conservative nor liberal and am not a member of any particular party, so I have no particular political banner to wave. I am a conflict avoider by nature and I hate to make waves, but I feel compelled to speak, for silence is complicity. Hear my heart. I write these words only because I am concerned that uncritical Trump-supporting white Evangelicalism is undermining the credibility of the Gospel and is dragging the name of the Lord Jesus Christ through the mud. That is the only reason that I am speaking out. I desire unity, not disunity, but it must be the right kind of unity, not that kind that will discredit the name of Christ and that will put another stumbling block (other than the stumbling block of the cross) in front of the very ones whom the Lord loved enough to die for. My hope and prayer and expectation is that out of the ashes of a compromised white Evangelicalism will emerge an expression of Christianity that is much more biblical, much more authentic, and much more Jesus-centered than the agenda-driven misrepresentation of Christianity that white Evangelicalism has become. There is a generation of Christians rising up that understands that a “Christian” who is not a follower of Jesus is a contradiction of terms. They will not allow themselves to be taken hostage by a political ideology (from either the Right or the Left). We will get back to the authentic Christianity of Jesus, the undiluted teachings of the New Testament, the lifestyle and values and ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, and the proclamation of the genuine Gospel in both word and deed. Christianity in America will get back on track. We will never Christianize America, but that was never the goal. The goal is to gather Christ’s sheep (John 10), not to Christianize a nation. Many will abandon the faith, but new believers will be added into the fold. There will be both falling away and revival. The death of white Evangelicalism will not be the death of Christianity in America. It will be the birth of a much more authentic community of followers of Jesus, proclaiming and living out a much more accurate and credible and chastened expression of the Gospel than we have seen in many years. Yes, some people will be attracted to the beauty of Jesus and his Way and will want to join us. They will come to realize that our narrative is really God’s narrative, that it’s all true, that it’s incredibly beautiful, that it’s worth living for, and that it’s worth dying for. Yes, many people will not like us and will be threatened by a pure, undiluted, uncompromised expression of the Gospel. The same Light that attracts some repels others. Yes, we will be persecuted, but at least we will be persecuted for the right reasons.
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