The title of a Salon article makes a bold accusation.
That Salon article is one of several recent articles that talk about so-called “evangelicals”.
In a USA Today commentary, Tom Krattenmaker claims that Evangelicals are making a big mistake by supporting Donald Trump.
In a CNN article, Daniel Burke writes, “In the days before Super Tuesday, conservative Christian leaders cautioned, cajoled and pleaded with evangelicals to reject Trump, saying the New York businessman epitomized the opposite of their values.”
In a Christian Century commentary, Steve Thorngate writes, “Still, this is an important point: it’s not evangelicals who find Trump appealing so much as it is nominal evangelicals.”
In a blog post, Joel J. Miller, writes, “The religious right, in other words, is a spent and sputtering force. We should have seen it coming. North American evangelical leaders lamented declining influence more than five years ago in a revealing Pew Research Center survey conducted at the Third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization.”
In an American Thinker article, Fay Voshell writes, “What exactly does evangelicals’ support for a man like Trump signify? First, it reveals the extent to which many evangelicals have been assimilated into secularist culture.”
In a Washington Post commentary, Russell Moore makes this proclamation:
The word “evangelical” has become almost meaningless this year, and in many ways the word itself is at the moment subverting the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Russell Moore is mistaken. The word evangelical has been subverting the Gospel of Messiah Jesus for quite awhile now, because the word currently pertains to a political ideology that is promoted in the guise of Christianity.
In the above-cited Salon article, Amanda Marcotte writes, “Evangelical voting behavior makes way more sense if you assume the politic views come first and the Bible is just the rationalization for them.”
Granted, Amanda Marcotte’s article is a diatribe presenting numerous false claims. Yet, she is correct to equate evangelicals with a particular political ideology instead of with Christianity.
The political ideology of so-called “evangelicals” isn’t the Gospel message described in the New Testament, and so-called “evangelicals” err by assuming that their political positions are the Christian positions. Christianity Today editor Mark Galli says it best when he writes, “My Christian faith informs my judgment. But it would be self-righteous to say that mine is “the Christian position” and that any other is not “Christian.””
It is wrong to use the label evangelical to describe Christians who are a part of the Political Right because Christian evangelism is separate from politics. Biblically, members of the Christian Middle are just as evangelical, and they manage to share the Gospel with others without tainting their message with politics.
In short, when members of the Political Left criticize so-called “evangelicals”, the former are criticizing members of a political movement, not members of a faith.
Image Note: What is shown in this post’s featured image would not be seen in a game of Scrabble because the words used in that game contain 7 letters or less.
