Evangelicals in public

I can’t stand listening to some people talk about theology. Driving to Arkansas before Christmas, I had the teeth-grinding experience of listening to my favorite talk radio host talk about the theological reasons for people to be good. The conversation was between two men with whom I have broad agreement about general subjects?men very knowledgeable about most of the Bible. It was as if they were just making things up.

What is the problem with these otherwise wise and knowledgeable conservatives? My frustration called to mind recent articles about the significance of a United States Supreme Court with no Protestant justices, after the appointment of Elena Kagan, who is Jewish. The assumption of those who cared about that seemed to be that a court without Protestants might be significantly unrepresentative of the U.S. I listened with half an ear to that discussion, partly because those with a Protestant heritage have been little discernably Protestant, or even Christian, during the past decades. If Catholics are the most conservative members of the court for our time, it’s all good. If Jewish talk show hosts are the most articulate on the national scene, fine.

Nothing will necessarily improve if a larger, more representative percentage of Protestants enter national leadership or punditry. Remember what we’re talking about when we call someone a Protestant. It’s shallow shorthand for “Christian other than Catholic.” Many opinion makers would consider Mormons “Protestant.” The term includes denominations that have long since abandoned any kind of Reformation distinctives. It’s the same way with Roman Catholicism?from the late Ted Kennedy to current Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia. That’s broad.

Another too-broad but more useful term is “Evangelical.” Inclusion on that category requires a commitment to biblical inerrancy, though that defining trait is starting to smudge in our day. Nevertheless, Evangelicals are distinct from both Catholics and Protestants, although some of us are in the Protestant tradition. About half of the non-Catholic Christians in the U.S. are identifiably Evangelical. Numbers are rough but as best I can tell, Evangelicals are a greater percentage of Americans than are Catholics. For argument’s sake, let’s call it even.

What’s the difference if our leadership or opinion makers come from one group or the other? There are some ways in which it matters.

Theologically, Evangelicals are taught that the Bible?the whole and complete revelation of God?is authoritative for all mankind. Specifically, we believe that the Christ revealed in the New Testament is the key to understanding the Old Testament. I think we’d have to say a teacher does not understand the God of the Old Testament if he does not believe the revelation of God the Son. Neither observant Jews nor practicing Catholics officially believe that the New Testament is the sole authority for the day-to-day practice of their faith. Observably, neither do a large percentage of Protestant denominations believe the Bible to be simply true and ultimate.

Practically, Evangelicals are relentlessly taught to be what they are, Christ followers, every moment of their lives. It is our identity more surely than our race, culture of origin, vocation, or any other thing. We should not, and really cannot, segment what we do from what we are. Those of other groups, often called moderate, whose conduct is not recognizable at all as being Jewish or Catholic or Christian, disagree with Evangelicals regarding the role of faith in a person’s life. They shudder and call us “Fundamentalist.”

Here are a few examples. They were easy to find, and you’d likely look in the same places I did. Think of politicians in the past 10 years whose religion terrified the New York Times or Newsweek or MSNBC.

I’ll bet you thought of Sarah Palin. Newsweek went into some detail regarding Mrs. Palin’s association with Pentecostal churches?you know, speaking in tongues, healing, and such. The article noted that her “deep and long” experience in the Pentecostal tradition would be a Rorschach test for many voters, for or against the vice presidential candidate. Clearly, the article found her religion weird. The Chicago Tribune piped in, also right before the 2008 election, that Mrs. Palin’s strange biblical worldview could “potentially shape a believer’s environmental and foreign policy.” It’s good we were warned because a leader’s worldview has never before impacted his or her decision-making.
Maybe you thought of John Ashcroft, U.S. attorney general during the first term of George W. Bush. Mr. Ashcroft was also a Pentecostal. The ACLU was concerned that the attorney general might be blurring the line between church and state when he held Bible studies and prayer meetings in the Department of Justice. A New York Times columnist was even more disturbed, noting that “certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, people like John Ashcroft and Osama bin Laden.”

Certainly you thought of George W. Bush. Right before the 2004 election (hmm), the New York Times Magazine ran an essay in which we were warned that re-electing Mr. Bush would further aggravate the war between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, and between reason and religion. The essay made many references to the president’s first term as a “faith-based” presidency, and of course the author and those he admired were more prone to reality-based thinking. But here’s the pay-off line. The essay quoted with respect a columnist who said that George Bush “understands [Al Qaeda] because he’s just like them.” Many of us could hear that last phrase coming; we’ve heard it before, especially of late.

These three, and others, were not singled out for being biased by their race or region or life experiences but for being Evangelical Christians. And they were singled out because of the fear that they might do according to what they say they believe. And yet, in each case, even the critics of the three former governors cite examples where they upheld laws they considered wrong. They did their jobs. But they also prayed and even invoked God in a non-secular way from time to time. Scary. What these critics fear is real, but the fear is absurd and thoughtless. They fear earnestly held and devoutly practiced Christianity. But they also fear harm from the faith that undergirds our Constitution, that philosophically spawned our system of government and respect for human rights, that ended slavery in the U.S., that founded and funds manifold educational institutions and compassionate ministries?the worldview that built our nation. Regardless of the faith of the men who signed the Declaration and regardless of the increasing spiritual torpor of our nation, what we’d now call Evangelical Christianity has been the driving force behind the best things our country has done.

The paucity of Evangelicals among conservative opinion makers is not a national crisis but it matters, especially if we fall into the trap of letting someone who knows one thing become an “expert” in things he doesn’t know so well. As for the Supreme Court, I do believe the nine justices are missing a significant viewpoint in their interpretation of our laws. I’m not suggesting a remedy (if I knew that, we’d have a pro-life court) but I’m saying they are men and women whose core beliefs matter.

This is not an overt call for Bible-believing Christians to become pundits or politicians. But I am saying that there is a difference between redeemed people who believe God and those who believe something else. That difference will manifest itself often and unexpectedly.

What we should do is be more aggressively Christian. “Aggressively” in the sense of being overtly in public what we are in private?not as a display, though it will be that, but as