Why Do Evangelicals Outside the U.S. Sound Like the U.S. Reporters at CNN?

Why Do Evangelicals Outside the U.S. Sound Like the U.S. Reporters at CNN? February 5, 2016

Over at Sojourners (via John Fea) Wes Granburg-Michaelson, the former General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America, reminds us that most evangelicals around the world are closer to Pope Francis than Ted Cruz. He notes that evangelicalism is a global movement made up Christians who are ethnically and racially diverse.

Globally, these changes are even more dramatic. Seventy percent of the world’s evangelicals now live in countries of the global “South” — Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Their views of global economic justice, protection of the climate, defense of human rights, and the alleviation of poverty are far closer to Pope Francis than Ted Cruz or Jerry Falwell Jr. Those voices are actually forging the future of evangelicalism, but are largely unnoticed in a framework where white, evangelical older men in the U.S. are seen as the center of power.

And yet those non-American evangelicals not only resemble Pope Francis but also the outlook of Democrats and mainstream reporters. This reminds me of the interview I heard on Fresh Air about Pope Francis and how he was not really a liberal but a voice that spoke for the non-Western world. Never mind that the interviewee, a man firmly enmeshed in Europe, was enthusiastic about Pope Francis and the non-Western world.

Is this some sort of false consciousness among Americans and Europeans to think that non-Westerners think differently from us? Or is it a tad self-delusional not to see that Westerners seeing the non-West through very Western lens?

In which case, aren’t appeals to globalism just one more testament to the West’s dominance of the world?

Image by Chris Green


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