Political Evangelicals?

According to the Pew Research Center, more white Americans adopted than shed the evangelical label during Trump's presidency, especially among his supporters.

This is odd because I distinctly remember reading in the NYT during the 2016 GOP primaries that the less a Republican went to church, the more likely they were to support Trump. Well, I don’t think those Republicans have necessarily joined a church, but I guess they have now adopted the label “Evangelical.”

CT has a good write-up on this and they report religious historian Thomas Kidd’s observation that the fact that white Americans have begun calling themselves “evangelical” simply because they backed president Trump “should be of concern to all pastors and committed churchgoers.”

Kidd is quoted further by CT:

“There are good reasons for churches to continue to describe themselves as ‘evangelical,’ if by that term they are referencing their historic commitment to the Bible's authority, the necessity of spiritual conversion, and the felt presence of God in daily life,” Kidd said this week. “But pastors in particular should realize that the meaning they attach to evangelical may not be the same as that of some in their congregation. I suspect most pastors would not want to inadvertently signal to their congregations that they are effectively branch offices of Donald Trump’s GOP, simply by making undefined use of the term evangelical.”

That last line is crucial. America is going to end up with two or three types of evangelicals. Fox News Evangelicals. Nominal Evangelicals. Devoted Evangelicals.

I hate to say it, but in the US context, “evangelical” is increasingly reduced to a political designation. It can mean something like, “Vaguely religious, fanatically Trumpian.”

The irony is that the adjective “evangelical” now needs its own adjective to distinguish it from the political evangelicals.

Why do we go for?

• Religious evangelicals

• Church-going evangelicals

• Historic evangelicals

• Orthodox evangelicals

Or do we abandon the term evangelical altogether in favour of something like:

• Missional Christians

• Reformational Catholics

• Orthodox Protestants

Thankfully this only applies to the US context and English-speaking social media. Outside of the USA, the politicization of evangelicalism is less an issue, but no doubt it might creep in in certain places, like Brazil or Canada, or even Australia!

Again, I still like the term “evangelical” because of its heritage, from William Wilberforce, to Amy Carmichael, to John Stott, to Inter-Varsity Fellowship, to Beth Moore. I believe in the Bebbington quadrilateral and the mission of historic evangelical organizations. I believe in the evangel as good news, salvation in Christ, and the way of life that proves itself worthy of the evangel.

But we need to remember that the word “evangelical” is going to mean very different things to very different people.