Texas evangelicals argue against evangelism

Evangelicals in Texas are now arguing that evangelism is unnecessary and impossible.

That’s a strange claim for evangelicals to make, and they arrived at it by a very strange path.

The starting point for these particular Christians was that they oppose civil equality for LGBT people. That’s a position that doesn’t afford much room for coherent arguments in its support. The latest flailing, failing attempt at such an argument involves redefining “religious liberty” in such a way as too preclude the religious liberty of everyone else and the civil liberty of anyone that one can claim to oppose for religious reasons.

Thus when San Antonio proposed adding legal protection for LGBT people to its anti-discrimination law, these Christians responded by shouting “religious liberty!”

The tail-swallowing logic of this argument forces these devout Texans to claim that legal protection against discrimination for others is tantamount to legal persecution of them on religious grounds. Their “religious liberty,” they say, is inescapably in conflict with the civil liberty of others.

But the argument also forces them to go further — arguing that their “religious liberty” claim outweighs others’ civil liberty claims.

On what grounds? Set aside the fact that they still haven’t demonstrated any actual conflict between their religious liberty and the civil liberties of others. Let’s just stipulate that such a conflict exists, for curiosity’s sake. What, then, is the basis for the argument that their religious liberty is the trump card in this conflict?

And here is where these poor Texas evangelicals go spinning off into self-negating absurdity. The Rev. Charles Flowers was committed to this kooky redefinition of religious liberty, and he saw no choice other than to follow it to its bitter end. Flowers said his religious liberty trumps the civil liberties of LGBT people because sexuality is “different” than “immutabilities like race, sex, where you were born and your creeds, that don’t change.”

Yes, the Rev. Flowers is suggesting that being gay is a choice and implying that LGBT people can be turned into “ex-gays.” That’s factually untrue, hurtful and ignorant, but don’t miss out on the other outrageous claim that Flowers is making here.

He is arguing that religious belief is “immutable.” That religious identity does not and cannot change.

It’s possible that the Rev. Flowers is some kind of hyper-Calvinist who subscribes to some extreme form of the doctrine of election that makes the preaching of the gospel irrelevant and unnecessary, but I doubt that’s what he means.

I suspect that Flowers is an evangelistic evangelical — one who believes in missionaries, altar calls, witnessing, and every other form of evangelism. I suspect that when Flowers isn’t tying himself into a pretzel trying to redefine “religious liberty,” he would insist that preaching the gospel can be meaningful. I suspect that the Rev. Flowers would tell you that he has been “saved” and that he believes others can be saved as well.

There are a thousand absurdities, contradictions, leaps of illogic and outright lies undergirding the perversion of “religious liberty” now enjoying such popularity among everyone from Hobby Lobby to the Manhattan Declarers. We need not enumerate all of those here.

Here let’s just say this: If you’re an evangelical Christian and you find yourself arguing that “religious liberty” means that religious identity is immutable and unchangeable, and therefore that evangelism is unnecessary and impossible, then you need to rethink the trap you’ve set for yourself.