Faith and politics
Tell Joan of Arc, FDR, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King that faith and politics shouldn’t mix and you’ve dismissed heroism that changed the world immeasurably.
In 2018 the American pastor Andrew Brunson was released from prison in Turkey, having been imprisoned for his Christian faith. After his release, in an interview with the Washington Examiner, Brunson stated, “There is a turning in our culture that used to have more respect for Christianity. Christians are now portrayed as bigots and racists.”
Brunson is right. However, evangelical Christians must not be as “holier than thou” as their critics have claimed. If “holier than thou,” how could they support the supposedly evil man, President Trump?
For the last three years evangelicals have been impugned for at least three “sins.” One is their curious support of the president. Another is their non-support of Christianity Today, the evangelical magazine which recently editorialized against the president. The third is the sexual abuse that has allegedly occurred in evangelical churches, particularly in the Southern Baptist Convention. Although Southern Baptist churches are totally autonomous, critics are claiming that the denomination at large should still be held accountable for what happens in a local church.
The first charge boils down to a matter of opinion. People of all different faiths support the president. The second one raises the question: Is Christianity Today actually still an evangelical publication? The third charge, from a legal standpoint, is ludicrous.
Before exploring the criticism, let’s establish just who the evangelicals are. An evangel is a messenger. Hence, evangelical Christians are those Christian denominations who, by virtue of the New Testament words of Christ, believe they are to collectively and individually “go and teach all nations … to observe all things I have commanded you,” and “… stand ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason for the hope that is in you.” In other words evangelicals are commanded to be evangels and spread the Gospel.
According to Pew Research, seven in 10 evangelical Protestants say they overwhelmingly support President Trump. But how, critics ask, can evangelicals support a president whose language is so rough and whose past is so checkered? One might ask the critics how they could have supported Trump’s 2016 opponent whose views on abortion were so cavalier?
Apparently when evangelical voters have a choice between a cussing campaigner and an abortion apologist, they prefer the one who defends religious liberty and promises to get the economy humming as well. Evangelicals are encouraged by the fact that many of their most respected and beloved pastors agree with them.
As for the Christianity Today editorial, many evangelicals turned against their formerly respected journalistic voice because it called outright for the president’s removal from office. Since CT now has only 130,000 subscribers, it enjoys the readership of less than 1% of the nation’s evangelical population.
The third charge, that evangelicals are covering up sexual abuse in their churches, is aimed primarily at Southern Baptists, the nation’s largest protestant denomination. Wherever there has been sexual abuse, the guilty must answer for it; however, some of the accusers of Southern Baptist pastors or staff members are claiming that the entire denomination is liable for not “responding to the abuse problem.”
Southern Baptists can hardly be called a denomination. They are a loosely “associated” group of 47,000 plus congregations across the nation. The 16 million-member SBC is totally non-hierarchical. There are no legal ties between those 47,000 churches. Each is a voluntary part of a local “association” (normally a county or a small group of counties), a state “convention,” and then the SBC. Neither a local “association” nor the state convention nor the SBC holds sway of any stripe over the local church. Sexual abuse committed by an SBC pastor in Wisconsin can hardly be laid at the feet of a church in Georgia or at the feet of the SBC president.
SBC churches are literally independent churches. They “co-operate” (their most beloved term) only for the purpose of financially supporting Christian missionaries, colleges and universities, hospitals, orphanages, crisis relief, producing literature and influencing legislation that regards religious freedom, the family, abortion and support for Israel.
Evangelicals have never been a monolithic voting bloc, but they are becoming one. Why did FDR specify freedom of religion as one of our “Four Freedoms” if all he meant was the freedom to enter and exit a building — a church or synagogue — without our lives and our politics being affected?
Evangelical support for President Trump is likely to increase, partly because of the political left’s growing contempt for all things faith-related, the things evangelicals hold dear.