Evangelicalism Doesn’t Have A Problem. It Is The Problem.

(Credit: Pew Research)

I don’t know John Fea.

We’ve never met.

In fact, I had never even heard his name before I read his recent article in The Atlantic that seeks to frame evangelical support for Donald Trump as an aberration, atypical of authentic evangelicalism.

I don’t know John Fea, but I met a million John Fraser growing up in conservative evangelicalism. They’re conservative white males constitutionally incapable of saying a critical word about the church while criticizing and shaming anyone who does have a critical word to say. Since their individual church isn’t guilty of some particular sin that somehow renders all criticism invalid. The concept of personal complicity in a broader problematic - of which they themselves are a part of - is anathema to them. Victims of church abuse in any form are dismissed as troublemakers because, as Dr. King once said, they’re more concerned with the absence of tension than the presence of justice.

They’re more concerned with defending the institutional reputation of the church than people hurt by the church.

Anyone who disagrees with their plain reading of the Bible that is magically bereft of any interpretation is being unfair, indisputably wrong, or worse, an agent of the devil trying to sow division in the church. Especially if they’re a woman.

If you grew up in conservative evangelicalism, I’m guessing you’ve met a lot of John Fea(s) too.

Instead of taking a moment to pause, self-reflect, and consider the possibility that those crying out in the wilderness aren’t heathen liberals but authentic devout Christians, they immediately go on the defensive the moment anyone says anything critical. It’s a toxic positivity that uses a seemingly virtuous call to unity to dismiss any complaint, criticism, or negative word as unfair, uncharitable, even sinful.

Which is exactly what I see happening in the frankly bizarre opinion piece the OG John Fea wrote for The Atlantic which, I must confess, I am baffled they published. Not because it was written by a conservative, but because the approach he took to defending American evangelicalism from its critics was to use James Dobson as an example of what is good and right about American evangelicalism.

If you’ve spent any time around American evangelicalism you’ve probably heard the name James Dobson. Growing up in conservative American evangelicalism he and his organization Focus on the Family were the first and last word on raising a Christian family.

They’re also rabidly homophobic.

I’m sure that’s part of the appeal for a conservative like Fea, but it’s an odd organization to invoke to a secular American audience to convince them that actually American evangelicalism is pretty great.

He also mentions the work of Eastern Nazarene College, a school I have deep ties to, for their work welcoming immigrants to the Boston area, something which I also admire them for because he’s right. There are absolutely good individuals within the ranks of American evangelicalism doing good things.

But 81% of white evangelicals voting for Donald Trump isn’t an aberration.

It’s also not the fundamental problem of evangelicalism because those votes were not cast in a historical or theological vacuum.

Supporting a man who is anti-Christ in every way imaginable is a symptom of a deeper rot that goes to the very foundation of evangelical theology and no amount of screaming “Not my church!” can change that fact.

That’s why I say and have continued to say for some time now, that evangelicalism doesn’t have a problem. It is the problem.

I say that as an evangelical insider.

I was born and raised in an evangelical church. I attended an evangelical college. And I was ordained in an evangelical denomination.

Which is why I can unhesitatingly affirm that there are many genuinely good people who identify as evangelical. It’s the foundational theology of evangelicalism itself that’s the problem and that problem won’t go away until evangelicalism is finally recognized for what it has long been: an old wine skin that needs to be tossed out.

Notice I said “evangelicalism” not “Christianity.” Despite my assumptions growing up they are not one and the same. Evangelicalism is an expression of Christianity but it is not the entirety of the Christian faith. Christianity thrived long before evangelicalism made its way onto the stage of history, exists in many different expressions today, and will continue to survive whenever evangelicalism finally makes its exit from the world stage.

I’ve written before about what I think the fundamental problems of evangelicalism are. In fact, about a decade or so ago, long before Trump became president, I wrote an entire series of posts entitled “Abandoning Evangelicalism” way back in 2012 about why the underlying theology evangelicalism is built upon is problematic. (I even pitched that series to a very interested publisher who shut down the day after I submitted my proposal. Sigh.) Although the posts were lambasted by many at the time, it’s been good to see some of those folks do some honest soul searching and join the dark side in the intervening years.

The underlying theological problems I see in evangelicalism range from biblical idolatry to its fetishizing of charismatic preachers, but the one point I think is most pressing, most problematic, and yet absolutely central to evangelicalism is its hyper-focus on a personal relationship with Jesus.

If you still find yourself immersed in evangelicalism I can understand how bizarre that sounds. It certainly would to me when I was an evangelical teenager on fire for God. After all, a personal relationship with God sounds great! And I agree. It does.

But here’s the rub: a hyper-focus on a personal relationship with Jesus transforms the community of faith into a cult of individualism and there is nothing more definitionally anti-Christ than individualism.

This is, after all, the (god)man who lived his entire life in service to his neighbors and who despite being wholly innocent himself allowed himself to be brutally beaten and executed for both the corporate and individual sins of people he never met.

But the hyper-individualism of evangelicalism isn’t problematic merely in the abstract. That hyper-focus on the individual has real, often devastating consequences for the real world and for strangers those folks in a personal relationship with Jesus will never meet.

A hyper-focus on an individual’s personal relationship turns Christianity into a zero sum game indistinguishable from magic: say this magic prayer and your soul will be saved from hell no questions asked, no obligation required.

When Christianity is reduced to a zero sum game of personal salvation, things like discipleship and caring for your neighbor become secondary and nonessential, nice things to do for sure, maybe even a sign you’re one of the elect if you’re a Calvinist, but ultimately the personal salvation equation frees the individual up to only care about themselves, their needs, their fears, their concerns, their lives.

Neighbors become charity cases we help during the holiday season or on short term mission trips. There’s no need to address the systemic issues that put them in a place of need to begin with because I didn’t create those issues, all that really matters is their salvation, and if they really want help they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and help themselves.

The disciples once asked Jesus “who is my neighbor” as a way to put limits on who he was calling them to serve. 2,000 years later we seem to have answered that question with “only the people sitting next to me in the pew.”

When all that matters at the end of the epoch is having a personal relationship with Jesus, then authentically following Jesus in the here and tends to fall by the wayside. Instead of being an expression of loving your neighbor and a way to become more like Christ in our daily lives, discipleship gets reduced to having all the right answers and fighting anyone who disagrees.

The problem isn’t simply that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. The real problem is a zero-sum game of personal salvation that once secured, allows the saved to detach the faith they profess from the lives they live and the politics they support.

Evangelicalism doesn’t have a problem because 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.

Evangelicalism is the problem because its myopic focus on individual salvation, frees the individual from having to work out that salvation as that faith increasingly but inevitably becomes compartmentalized and set apart from everyday life.

Immigrants, refugees, the poor, LGBT folks, women, or any other group of undesirable people can be demonized, marginalized, and oppressed by the individual without any sense of guilt or contradiction because salvation is about a personal, spiritual relationship with Jesus, loving your neighbor is just extra credit.

Again, there are definitely good evangelicals doing good things in the world, but shouting “not my church” in the face of any and all criticism reeks of denial, a sort of sanctified plugging your ears and pretending you can’t see the problem.

And maybe folks like John Fea can’t see the problem, again I don’t know him so I can’t say one way or the other.

But I do know this: when faith becomes little more than right belief and fighting for the right team, when individual salvation is all that ultimately matters, and when a personal relationship with Jesus replaces a personal relationship with our neighbors, it shouldn’t be any surprise to see 81% of evangelicals supporting someone like Donald Trump.

The only thing that should be a surprise is that the number wasn’t higher.