Chuck Redfern: “It’s time for evangelical myth busting. I say that as the not-so-secret secret unravels: White American Evangelical Christianity has plunged into a theological, spiritual, and moral abyss. Many claiming the evangelical label laud an obviously decadent president while jettisoning the movement’s time-honored convictions: Lifeway Research found that majorities believe the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force, that Jesus was a created being, and that family worship is an acceptable swap for regular church attendance.

I gladly pinned on the evangelical badge in the early 1980s as liberation’s insignia. The term signaled a more ecumenical, gracious, and intellectually viable species of back-to-the-Bible Christian. Wesleyan-oriented nineteenth-century evangelicals pushed for reform. They advocated abolitionism; they intentionally dwelled in slums and befriended the poor; they were the first to ordain women. Now? Not so much.

Two questions: What went wrong and what’s the remedy? An inevitable third question flows from the second: Should we fight to preserve the evangelical tag or was Russell Moore right in 2016: “In many ways the word itself is at the moment subverting the gospel of Jesus Christ.””