Evangelical Chicken and GOP Egg

Last updated on: April 14, 2016 at 10:38 am By D. G. Hart

Which came first? Evangelicalism or Republicanism? You hear a lot from evangelicals who have been involved in politics that their convictions about government, foreign policy, and economics come both directly and indirectly from faith. But I have long wondered if faith is the language some Americans use to justify their politics. Part of what got me wondering was a review that Fintan O’Toole wrote of Marcus Tanner’s Ireland’s Holy Wars. I quote from a paper in which I cited O’Toole:... Read more

Edward Said Meets Dwight L. Moody

Last updated on: April 12, 2016 at 11:40 am By D. G. Hart

For readers who have spent time with Edward Said’s influential book, Orientalism, the thought that a leading critic of the West’s understanding of the East was a graduate of Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts will no doubt surprise. Mount Hermon was the creation of the revivalist, Dwight L. Moody, and as Said observed in his autobiography, Out of Place, thoroughly beholden to quirks of evangelicalism in the United States: The mythology of D. L. Moody dominated the school and made... Read more

Blame the Anti-Smoking Social Justice Warriors

Last updated on: April 8, 2016 at 12:40 pm By D. G. Hart

I still remember walking through a park in a southern California city and experiencing a child of no more than 8, sticking his head out the window, and yelling at me. The reason? I was smoking a cigar. And this was before California had passed laws prohibiting smoking in parks. This child had learned well that smoking is evil and smokers need to be condemned. The recent skirmishes on U.S. university campuses about trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions has... Read more

Can Guys Who Look at Porn Be Victims Too?

Last updated on: April 7, 2016 at 12:42 pm By D. G. Hart

Has the desire not to be Donald Trump become so pronounced that anti-Trump Christians are channeling Trump’s incoherence? Consider one of the reactions to Trump’s out loud thought that women who seek abortions should be punished. With all of the comparisons between abortion, slavery, and Hitler, one might think that someone who encouraged the death of an unborn child might suffer some consequence for her actions. But Rachel Lu thinks mothers who have their children aborted are more victim than... Read more

After Trump Can Social Scientists Still Talk about Evangelicalism as a Bloc of Voters (with a straight face)?

Last updated on: March 31, 2016 at 4:02 pm By D. G. Hart

Lydia Bean and Steven Teles are nostalgic for an evangelical constituency in which spokesmen and women actually represented the evangelical rank and file. Theirs is a mildly interesting story about the way that political progressives a decade ago courted born-again Protestants to join ranks with the environmentalist cause through the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). To lay a foundation for the idea of climate care, the EEN targeted the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), a historic fellowship that represented nearly 40... Read more

Evangelicalism’s Pietist Roots

Last updated on: March 30, 2016 at 4:37 pm By D. G. Hart

Chris Gehrz is correct to offer the badge “pietism” as an alternative to evangelicalism, which is on the ropes these days: I strongly suspect that many evangelicals are actually Pietists — they just don’t know it. Now, I don’t pretend that every evangelical is a Pietist, or vice-versa. But the connections are not merely historic, confined to the influence that German Pietists like Phillip Spener, August Francke, and Nicolaus von Zinzendorf had on 18th century evangelicalism (in part via John... Read more

First Billy Sunday, Now Joel Osteen

Last updated on: March 25, 2016 at 10:53 am By D. G. Hart

Those are just a few of the comparisons that observers are drawing about Donald Trump. First, the Billy Sunday analogy (shameless self-promotion alert): For born-again Protestants, a personal encounter with God is essential to faith. Having “Jesus in my heart” is one way to put this. And such an emphasis on experience has meant that for evangelicals the structures or hierarchies that have typically defined and regulated Christianity – clergy, creeds, liturgy – are impositions that come between a believer... Read more

The Great Thing about being a Calvinist

Last updated on: March 25, 2016 at 9:03 am By D. G. Hart

You don’t have to sweat the commercialization of Easter. Mollie Hemingway, a Lutheran, is right to complain about the triumph of the Easter Bunny over Jesus: Earlier this week I went to get my children Easter cards. I was in a holiday store that sells goods for Christmas, Halloween, and Easter. Its Easter card selection was cute but didn’t include anything even remotely religious. So I went to the neighborhood card store to pick up something a bit more on-topic... Read more

An Evangelical Guide to March Madness

Last updated on: March 18, 2016 at 3:53 pm By D. G. Hart

The prominence of Roman Catholic universities in the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament is readily obvious from the brackets (heck, the Big East Conference is virtually the Big Roman Catholic Conference — it consists of Creighton, DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall, Villanova, and Xavier; only Butler, an Indianapolis institution originally founded by the Disciples of Christ, remains outside fellowship with the Bishop of Rome even while belonging to the Big East). The prominence of Roman Catholic universities... Read more

Why Expect People Who Don’t Fear God to Act Like They Do?

Last updated on: March 16, 2016 at 11:13 am By D. G. Hart

Jason Jones and John Zmirak think liberals are incoherent at best and dangerous at worst. The danger comes from a set of assumptions that liberals make, like these: Christianity is intrinsically intolerant and dangerous. Islam is a religion of inclusion and peace. Women can serve as front-line combat troops for the United States Marines. Female Islamist refugees can pose no threat to America. It is healthy and good for most people in the world to identify themselves with their racial... Read more