Evangelicals: More American Than Biblical

In terms of a social ethic, white American evangelicals are today more American than biblical.  The election of D.T. is a disaster, but a much greater disaster are the Christians who elected him---white evangelicals and Catholics, according to the editors of the January 2017 Sojourners magazine.  81 percent of white evangelicals voted for T.

"One thing is clear.  With white evangelicals and Catholics voting in such large numbers for a candidate who, as historian Heath Carter describes in this issue, 'articulated a virulently racist, misogynistic, ethnocentric brand of nationalism,' SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH OUR CHRISTIAN CONFESSION.  We'll say it plainly: THE PRINCIPLES, METHODS, AND POLICIES OF WHITE NATIONALISM ARE INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE MESSAGE OF CHRIST."

Jim Wallis adds:

"During the 2016 presidential election cycle, the vast majority of white evangelicals acted more white than biblical, putting their white identities ahead of their Christian identities. . . .  White evangelicals have been exposed as hypocrites for sacrificing their morals on the altar of power."

The Law and the Prophets were built upon the high principles of love and justice.  The Pharisees were theological experts on the sacred Jewish Law.  But Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites because they did not live according to the Law.  Specifically, Jesus accused the Pharisees of being lovers of money and neglecters of justice and the love of God.  See Luke 16:16 and 12:42.

I was educated in Christian liberal arts colleges and later taught in two of them.  In one of these colleges, a religion prof taught that the strong justice of the OT disappeared in the NT and it was replaced with a personal salvation message.  Wolterstorff declares that the English NT has been dejusticized.

In one of these colleges, I, a sociologist, taught a social problems class.  Previously, many of my students had taken a course in the Bible called Gospels and Acts.  They received good teaching on the spiritual message of Luke, but nothing on the strong strong social justice message of Luke.  So I had to take two weeks and teach the oppression/justice message of Luke.  When my students understood that social problems were taken seriously by Luke, they took the teaching by secular sociologists more seriously.

After my retirement in 1994, I spent the next 15 years volunteering at the Perkins Center in West Jackson, MS.  We had numerous Christian colleges send student missions teams for a week.  I vividly remember one spring we had a total of 40 students from three different colleges.  All evangelical colleges require several Bible courses to graduate.  I asked them if any of their Bible profs had taken just one class period to teach about the 555 references to oppression in the OT.  Not a single student raised their hand.

The book Dear White Christians declares that the strong reconciliation movement in American churches has failed to deliver.  Why?  Reconciliation without white repentance, restitution.  Cheap reconciliation, reconciliation without justice.

I think much the same is happening with the growing justice movement among evangelicals.  Cheap grace, cheap justice; no prior repentance and restitution is required by whites who benefited from their position of supposed superiority, white privilege.  There is not a strong emphasis on the need to end systems of oppression as required by the Sabbath/Jubilee laws.

Most of my white evangelical friends are not Klan-like bigots so they think they are not racist.  But most of them still believe that whites are superior and blacks are inferior; it is in the cultural air they breathe, they are slowly, unknowingly poisoned.

And they are unbelievably ignorant about the biblical teaching on oppression and justice---biblically, historically and sociologically.  For several years, each June I met with sociologists teaching at Christian liberal arts colleges.  Most were ignorant about oppression, biblically, historically and sociologically.  Most sociologists study black culture, black dysfunction much more than they do white ethnocentrism/oppression.

For the past 50 years, I have been studying oppression/justice biblically, historically and sociologically.  I lived in the black community for 35 years.  Yet, in 2010, I learned a great deal from reading The New Jim Crow, and shortly thereafter from Dear White Christians.  Even Michelle Alexander, a brilliant, black civil rights lawyer, said that she herself learned a lot of new things as she researched and wrote her book on racial profiling and mass incarceration.  In the year 2000, she knew there was racism in the criminal justice system.  But by 2010, she understood that things were much worse than that---that the criminal justice system, as far as poor blacks were concerned, had itself become a new system of oppression, a new racial caste system.

As far as ethnocentrism/oppression are concerned, most white evangelicals believe half-truths, myths or outright lies, but they talk like they are experts.

For hundreds of years, white evangelicals have been weak on social ethics; the recent election only dramatically highlighted this crisis.  It is more than a crisis; it is a catastrophe, a disaster; but to most white evangelicals this social disaster is normal so it is not a catastrophe.

In my next blog, I will outline steps to make American evangelicalism much more comprehensively biblical.  Watch for "Solutions for our American Social Catastrophe"