If you missed part one of “What is an Evangelical, Anyway?” I discussed the Modernist-Fundamentalist divide which saw half of the American church move in the direction of modern science and philosophy and the other half retreat with their high view of Scripture and the supernatural into seclusion. This is important; their withdrawal from the world helped spark a new movement which would come after World War II: the neo-evangelicals.
In this series, at least at this point, I am simply asking questions and exploring some of the issues raised by those deconstructing their faith. I generally like questions more than I like answers and that will probably apply here. I’m kicking around ideas, trying to contextualize a movement, and asking questions.
Evangelicals and Fundamentalists and Bears, Oh My!
The neo-evangelicals (think Billy Graham, Campus Crusade for Christ, Christianity Today, Fuller Seminary, etc.) shared an activist impulse with the more modernist mainline churches (Think National Council for Churches and Christian Century). They wanted to be engaged in the world through evangelism and charity work. However, they shared a high view of Scripture and a belief in the necessity of conversion with their fundamentalist counterparts (think Bob Jones College).
It came to a point where you knew if someone was an evangelical if they liked Billy Graham. Fundamentalists did not like Billy Graham. For them, he was too ecumenical and inclusive; they balked at his refusal to segregate races at his crusade events and his inclusion of mainline figures in those same events. And so, for the first couple decades of the neo-evangelical movement, there was strict separation between the fundamentalists and the neo-evangelicals.
Jerry Falwell and the IRS
This began to change in the 1970s. The IRS, in an effort to enforce the Civil Rights Act, began threatening to take away the tax-exempt status of segregated fundamentalist schools and colleges. Many of these schools were created in the wake of the integration of public schools. These were schools where white Christians could send their children without having to worry about being around black people. Bob Jones College was one of the institutions in the IRS’s cross-hairs.
Enter Jerry Falwell Sr. He was a Baptist minister and the founder of Liberty University, as well as an elementary and secondary school. Falwell was a fundamentalist through and through. Fundamentalists, for the last 50 years or so, had withdrawn from politics just as they had withdrawn from other venues of cultural engagement. But Falwell knew that he had to fight back against the IRS, and that if he had to fight back, he had to do so politically.
His problem, though, was that the fundamentalists alone would not represent a large enough voting bloc to make much of a difference. Falwell needed to build a much larger coalition in order to promote conservative politics. He needed more people to join him. He needed neo-evangelicals.
The Moral Majority
With the ruling in Roe v. Wade, Falwell had the issue he could use to unite fundamentalists with neo-evangelicals and other socially conservative Christians. Before Roe v. Wade, evangelicals did not care all that much about abortion; they considered it more of a “Catholic” concern. However, Falwell and others were able to us opposition to abortion to build a new voting bloc, the Moral Majority, one that came to be an influential force ever since.
The upshot of this was that the lines between evangelicals and fundamentalists were blurred. People were now calling themselves evangelicals who were not evangelicals in the strictest sense. And as the national news media caught wind of this movement, they conflated any socially conservative White American as an evangelical, meaning that now people who didn’t even believe in Jesus could be found under the umbrella of evangelicalism. This is still true today. Evangelical is, at this point, probably a better political descriptor than a religious one.
Character Matters
In 1998, President Bill Clinton admitted that he had lied about having an affair with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. This led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives and his acquittal by the Senate. During this time, Christian leaders began to talk about the need for “character” in our leadership, especially in the Oval Office. They condemned Clinton for his lies and for his sexual promiscuity and fully supported his removal from office.
In an address made in September of 1998, Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and major player in conservative Christian politics, lambasted the president for his lack of character. He stated,
“As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world! Nevertheless, our people continue to say that the President is doing a good job even if they don’t respect him personally. Those two positions are fundamentally incompatible. In the Book of James the question is posed, “Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring” (James 3:11 NIV). The answer is no.”
Televangelist Pat Robertson said in a speech before 3000 members of the Christian Coalition, that the president had “debauched and defamed” the office of the president and turned the White House into a “playpen for the sexual freedom of the poster child of the 1960s.” Ralph Reed, the leader of said Coalition, said, “We care about the conduct of our leaders, and we will not rest until we have leaders of good moral character.”*
Jerry Falwell urged his subscriber base of 160,000 evangelical pastors to call on the congressmen to vote for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem signed a public letter denouncing Clinton for his “ill use of women.” Southern Baptist leaders like Al Mohler also publicly took the president to task.*
I am old enough to remember all of this quite well. For the entire duration of Bill Clinton’s presidency, evangelical leaders told us that “character matters.”
Character Matters Until It Doesn’t
The politicization of evangelicalism is a major contributing factor in the deconstruction process for many former evangelicals. We need to understand the context behind this piece of deconstruction. Many people who call themselves #exvangelicals cannot honestly use the label because they weren’t evangelicals in the strict historic sense. Were they actually fundamentalists or were simply raised in socially conservative white America? What they are deconstructing may not actually be evangelicalism, or, at the very least, may not need to be a part of the evangelical movement. It’s non-essential.
These people however did not wake up one morning and decide to be liberal Democrats. For many, the final straw was the hypocrisy they observed in the Religious Right’s treatment of Bill Clinton as opposed to Donald Trump. Why did Bill Clinton come in for such heavy criticism and not Trump? Why was he condemned repeatedly and publicly? And why did he deserve to be removed from office and while Donald Trump deserved to be president?
In the eyes of those who left the faith because of this, Trump was just as morally corrupt, if not more so, than Clinton. Why did he get a pass? Did character stop mattering? Was the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices enough to look the other way from Trump’s indiscretions? Was the whole Bill Clinton thing really about not liking his politics and character was just an excuse to be rid of him? Is the Religious Right just a naked play for political power?
These are the questions being asked and answered by those who are leaving behind their evangelical faith. The cognitive dissonance between how religious leaders condemned Clinton but staunchly supported Donald Trump was too much for them. And so, this foundational piece of their faith was demolished, leading to the crumbling of other parts of their faith. If the people who taught them were so wrong about politics, then what else were they wrong about?
Which Evangelicalism?
For me, this has not shaken my faith, but mostly because instead of deconstructing politics within my faith, I simply removed it gently from my faith like one might safely remove a Jenga block from its tower. I do not consider partisan politics to be an essential part of my faith. It’s not tied up in theology or the person and work of Jesus Christ. Don’t get me wrong, my theology and my commitment to Jesus Christ informs they ways in which I engage politically. But I have been able to keep my politics downstream from my faith rather than vice versa. “Evangelicalism,” to me, does not have to be about politics.
But for many, politics did become a foundational aspect of their faith. It helped form their group identity: “I am an American, a Christian, a conservative, a Republican.” That’s not easy to pull apart and separate. And so, many people go to throw out their politics, but their theology and faith go along with it.
All of this leads me to ask, which evangelicalism are people leaving? What faith are they deconstructing? Is it the Billy Graham-style neo-evangelicalism that is historically what evangelicalism is? Or is it a more neo-fundamentalist faith that came about when evangelicals and fundamentalists came together in Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority?
Are people leaving evangelicalism as a socio-political identifier or are people leaving evangelicalism as a Protestant faith movement? Is it some of both? As far as I can tell, for right now, many #exvangelicals are using the word evangelical differently than I do.
A Starting Point for Dialogue
I think this needs to be a part of a dialogue that evangelicals have with exvangelicals. We need to define what each other means by the word “evangelical.” If we find out there is a difference in how we are using the word, then that means we might have more common ground than we think we do. Much of the deconstruction done by exvangelicals and much of the reaction to that deconstruction by evangelicals may simply be misunderstanding.
Of course, there are deeper issues at play here. Politics is probably only a surface reason for deconstruction. We’ll explore one of those deeper issues next time.
*Credit to Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Du Mez for the information in these paragraphs.
Hey, thanks for joining me. If you liked this article, please share it with your friends on any social media platform. You can connect with me on Threads, Instagram, and Twitter (I’m never calling it X) @revsteve83. You can email me at revsteve1983@gmail.com.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In