A potential U.S. evangelical crack-up continues as a lively story topic since Guy Memos here since these two Memos here at GetReligion, “Are we finally witnessing the long-anticipated (by journalists) evangelical crack-up?” and also “Concerning evangelical elites, Donald Trump and the press: The great crack-up continues.” In USA Today, Daniel Darling, for one, sought hope despite his recent victimhood in these tensions.
Media professionals considering work on this theme should note a lament at book length coming next week: "Struggling with Evangelicalism: Why I Want to Leave and What It Takes to Stay" by Dan Stringer. The author is a lifelong evangelical, Wheaton College (Illinois) and Fuller Theological Seminary alum, leader of InterVarsity's graduate student and faculty ministries in Hawaii and Evangelical Covenant Church minister. This book comes from InterVarsity Press.
The Guy has yet to read this book, but it looks to be a must-read for reporters covering American evangelicals in the Bible-Belt and elsewhere. Stringer ponders how evangelicalism can move beyond too-familiar sexual scandals, racial and gender conflicts, and Trump Era political rancor -- what a blurb by retired Fuller President Richard Mouw calls "blind spots, toxic brokenness and complicity with injustice."
Regarding the Donald Trump factor, the evangelical elite was largely silent, with one faction openly opposed, while certain outspoken evangelicals backed the problematic populist.
As The Guy has observed, recent politics exposed the already existing gap between institutional officials and the Trumpified evangelical rank and file. Problem is, to thrive any religious or cultural movement needs intelligent leaders united with a substantial grass-roots constituency to build long-term strategy.
Evangelicalism has always combined basic unity in belief with a wide variety of differences. Think denominational vs. independent, Arminian vs. Calvinist, gender "complementarian" vs. "egalitarian," Pentecostal-Charismatic vs. others and a racial divide so wide that many Black evangelicals shun the e-word alltogether.
In an October 21 Patheos article, historian Daniel K. Williams at the University of West Georgia added North vs. South to those internal divisions. He recounts that the Southern Baptist Convention remained mostly apart when northerners began to supplant "fundamentalism" with "evangelicalism" in the World War II era. Eventually, he says, this movement formed a North-South alliance but it's now eroding.
The Guy (news editor at flagship magazine Christianity Today in the 1960s before joining Time) could raise quibbles, but Williams is very much on target. For instance, the Southern Baptist Convention has never joined the National Association of Evangelicals and star southern evangelical Billy Graham leaned heavily on northern advisors and donors.
New topic. LGBTQ+ advocates ardently seek to cripple the finances and stature of religious colleges that uphold the traditional belief against sexual relations outside heterosexual marriage. This overarching issue took on a strong partisan flavor with sweeping Democratic support for Congress's Equality Act, which would limit religious-liberty claims (click here for more background).
Then last week, 18 of the nation's 24 state attorneys general who are Democrats -- and not one of the 26 Republican A.G.s -- joined a potentially significant federal lawsuit against 28 Protestant colleges and the two Brigham Young University campuses over their belief about marriage. See prior GetReligion coverage here.
The Democratic A.G.s do not adopt the full rhetoric in the lawsuit (.pdf here), but argue that the Department of Education's rule for religious exemption from civil rights law is too broad, for instance covering faith groups’ "practices" as well as their "tenets." The A.Gs do, however, agree with the plaintiffs that religious exemptions "cause harm to students by creating conditions for discrimination, harassment and assault" against gay, transgender and gender nonconforming students.
Paul Southwick of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project represents the student plaintiffs (paul@paulsouthwick.com, 503-806-9517). The project is aided by SoulForce.org (800 810-9143 or hello@soulforce.org), whose founders include gay ex-evangelical Mel White. Its slogan is "Sabotage Christian Supremacy" to counter centuries of "violence and domination."
A related culture-war theme is long-running problems facing religious groups on secular campuses, Note these recent Big Ten developments. For example:
* University of Iowa. The administration cancelled InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's on-campus status because the parachurch group requires student officers (though not other program participants) to uphold its religious beliefs, including those on marriage and sexuality. On July 16 the 8th Circuit federal appeals court denounced this as clearly unconstitutional "viewpoint discrimination." A September 30 announcement said university officials must personally pay the penalty for this.
* University of Nebraska. On October 27, the local chapter of Ratio Christi filed a federal lawsuit against school officials and a campus agency for refusing to fund a talk by Robert Audi, a University of Notre Dame professor who formerly taught at Nebraska. The students claim favoritism toward other groups. For example, the school required Ratio to include a speaker taking an opposing viewpoint, an action not required of similar student advocacy groups.
Our third update involves COVID.
A prior Guy Memo could not cite any religious tradition except Christian Science that refuses vaccination. But stances on mandates are another matter. Asbury Theological Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary filed a petition November 5 in the federal 6th Circuit seeking religious exemption from the federal vaccine mandate that goes into effect January 4.
This test case will presumably formulate a Protestant theology against forced vaccination during epidemics.