‘Evangelical’ is still a religious term
For a half-century or more, there has been no question about whose name would top any list of the “Most Influential Evangelicals in America.”
Conservatives at Newsmax have produced just such a list for 2017 and, sure enough, the Rev. Billy Graham was No. 1. At 99 years of age, he remains the patriarch of conservative Protestantism, even while living quietly in the family’s log home in the North Carolina mountains. For many, the world’s most famous evangelist is the living definition of the word “evangelical.”
However, the 100-person Newsmax list also demonstrates that no one really knows what the word “evangelical” means, these days. Should it be defined in terms of political clout, religious doctrines or mass-media popularity?
The rest of the Top 10, for example, includes Graham’s son Franklin, prosperity gospel superstar Joel Osteen, talk-show politico Mike Huckabee, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, Rick “Purpose Driven Life” Warren, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., TV host Joyce Meyer, Vice President Mike Pence and the duo of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, religious entertainment mavens in Hollywood.
Disputes about the meaning of “evangelical” are so sharp that “several people on this list would not even agree that some other people on the list are ‘Christians,’ let alone ‘evangelicals’ as defined by any set of core doctrines,” said historian Thomas Kidd of Baylor University, whose research includes work on American religious move-
open to visitors on Sundays, but space is limited and those are structured prayers, not performances.
“We want them to have this beauty, and that’s the only way we can do it,” Bogdanowicz said. “It can even be in another country or part of the world or somebody who doesn’t even have a clue who we are, but if they’re quietly listening to this and it’s elevating them towards God, then God’s done everything we wanted him to do.”
The unconventional recording artists got their start in the music business a few years ago, when the sisters were approached by Monica and Kevin Fitzgibbons, music industry veterans who founded DeMontfort Music and attended the sisters’ service known as Vespers. The label specializes in sacred music produced by “hidden communities,” and the Dominican Sisters of Mary’s latest album is distributed by Sony Music Entertainment.
Some time and prayer, not surprisingly, were necessary, but a spiritual match was lit.
“My thought was, if we’re going to do it, we need to do it well,” Sister John Dominic Rasmussen, also a founder of the 20-year-old order that started with four sisters and now has roughly 130. “The team that came here and approached us — just from my conversations I knew they would be able to do it well.”
Rasmussen oversees the business side of the sisters’ musical projects, and she comes by it honestly: Her mother was a country music publicist in Nashville, working for major record labels and then independently. Growing up around the industry has helped her understand some of its language and logistics.
Her mother attends a weekly breakfast meeting of music industry people, and Rasmussen recently tagged along. She wanted to share a video of her sisters performing, so she turned to a longtime TV show host.
“I said, ‘Let me see your iPhone,’ and I called it up and showed it to him,” she said, and soon, others grew intrigued. “They’re like, ‘This is beautiful, let me see that. … We got to promote this.’ My mom’s like, ‘We’ll get ’em for everybody.’”
“When you love what you’re doing … you want to find every moment to bring people you know to that experience,” she added.
While the sisters live a structured, contemplative life, they recognize the importance of engaging with culture. Their primary mission is that of education — they teach preschool through college at private schools across the United States — and making and sharing their music is a natural extension of that.
“If (people) only hear bad music or see ugly art, how are they ever going to know the beauty of music or the beauty of art or the beauty of the universe?” asked Mother Mary Assumpta Long, mother superior of the Dominican Sisters of Mary. “It’s all in education — you have to expose them to beauty and goodness.”