After reading through all of the evangelical statements and declarations in the past five decades (start here), what strikes me is not any single issue, but a remarkably holistic moral vision that appears over and over again from 1973 through 2024.
1. Recognize that discipleship has public implications. Christianity is not merely private spirituality. Faith should shape how believers think about poverty, justice, war, racism, economics, immigration, human rights, and public life.
2. Care for the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized as a central expression of Christian discipleship. Help the poor and disadvantaged; defend the oppressed. Protect children (including the unborn), widows, refugees, immigrants, minorities, and the disabled. Work to alleviate poverty both locally and globally.
3. Pursue justice. Address both personal sin and structural injustice. Challenge systems that perpetuate poverty, exploitation, discrimination, and oppression by advocating for fair economic and legal structures. Speak prophetically (as if we are Nathan and the Empire is King David) against injustice wherever it exists.
4. Reject racism, ethnocentrism, and ethnic supremacy. Repent of racism in both personal attitudes and institutional structures and work to end racial discrimination. Model the affirmation of dignity and goal of reconciliation across racial and cultural boundaries.
5. Treat every human being as bearing the image of God. Respect the dignity of all people by refusing to practice or ignore exploitation, dehumanization, or contempt wherever it it found.
6. Maintain a clear distinction between the Kingdom of God and political power. Refuse idolatrous loyalty to any nation. Avoid identifying "being Christian" by a close alignment with any political party, person, ideology, or national movement. Since we must resist the temptation to seek influence through domination or state power, Christian nationalism must be rejected.
7. Practice peacemaking and restrain violence. Be on the front lines of pursuing peaceful resolution of conflict whenever possible. Be skeptical of war-making and militarism; oppose violence motivated by political, economic, ethnic, or religious interests.
8. Defend religious liberty for everyone. Protect freedom of conscience and defend the rights of religious minorities. This will mean demand for others the same freedoms Christians seek for ourselves. Reject coercive evangelism, which will mean opposing the urge to theocracy, which will use the state to coerce adherence to the church.
9. Love neighbors, strangers, immigrants, and even enemies. Practice hospitality by building friendships across cultural and religious boundaries. If people are hostile, respond with kindness rather than retaliation.
10. Engage people of other faiths with humility, respect, and truthfulness. Reject caricatures that cause fearmongering; reject hostility and contempt while recognizing truth, beauty, and goodness wherever it exists.
11. Live lives of personal integrity and visible holiness. Reject greed, corruption, dishonesty, pride, exploitation, lying, hypocrisy, and cruelty. Ensure that public and private behavior aligns with professed beliefs.
12. Care for creation as a Christian responsibility. Steward the earth rather than exploit it, which will mean opposing environmental degradation by addressing pollution, resource depletion, and climate-related harms.
13. Challenge materialism, greed, and consumerism. Reject excessive wealth accumulation as something to be applauded, because greed is a contributor to poverty and injustice.
14. Work for the common good of society. Support policies that strengthen families and communities: encourage education, health care, opportunity, and human flourishing for all of society.
15. Show solidarity with those who suffer. Enter into the experiences of others with humility and empathy. Listen to the pain of the oppressed and share their burdens rather than remain detached from them.
Across five decades – the five decades that formed my 56 years as an evangelical - evangelical leaders repeatedly called Christians to be this kind of people. [1] This broad, holistic ethical vision is what I was trained to believe the conservative evangelicalism should look like when faith is put into practice. There weren't just one or two issues that guided how we lived (and voted). There were many.
As I pointed out in the first post in this series, not everything was fine in the evangelical world. It wasn’t. Lord, it wasn’t.[2] But I do know this: the principles and stated commitments of evangelical orthopraxy guided my life in ways that I believed were profoundly important. I was told, to echo the prophets, “This is the path. Walk in it.”
This is why I am profoundly discouraged that today’s conservative evangelical movement too often no longer promotes or walks the path given to me by the evangelicalism I once knew. [3]
It no longer feels like home.
I still recognize the vocabulary – well, most of it – but I no longer recognize the spirit. I still hear the name of Jesus constantly invoked. I increasingly struggle to recognize the heart and mind of Jesus in the movement invoking it.
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Christians should speak prophetically to every administration—Republican, Democrat, or Independent. When politicians or parties violate the way of Jesus, the church should have the courage to say so. That was true under Carter, Reagan both the Bush presidents, Obama, Biden (that's all the presidents I personally remember). It remains true now. [4] David French recently wrote:
"The proper Evangelical position toward any president is not hard to articulate, though it is exceedingly difficult to hold to, especially in polarized times when one party seems set on limiting religious liberty and zealously defending abortion: We should pray for presidents, critique them when they’re wrong, praise them when they’re right, and never, ever impose partisan double standards. We can’t ever forget the importance of character, the necessity of our own integrity, and the power of the prophetic witness.
In other words, Evangelicals can never take a purely transactional approach to politics. We are never divorced from our transcendent purpose, which always trumps political expediency. In scripture, prophets confronted leaders about their sin. They understood a core truth, one clearly articulated in the Southern Baptist Convention’s 1998 Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials: “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.”
Donald Trump happens to be the president at this moment, which means this is the administration currently exercising power. The question is not whether Christians should criticize him more than previous presidents. The question is whether we are still willing to criticize the same things we once did.
I remember how boldly we conservative evangelicals called out past presidents - particularly Democratic presidents - because I participated. We had discerning eyes and prophetic denunciations for Clinton, Obama and Biden. Conservative evangelicals continuously held their feet to the fire when it came to alignment (or lack of it) with Christian character, language, and policies. [5]
And then Donald Trump became president, and so many voices I had followed before fell silent at best, or began to actively excuse or applaud behavior, character and policies that had been so vociferously denounced mere years before.
Two examples.
First, read what Dobson had to say about Bill Clinton after his affair while in office. Among other things, he said it was "foolish" to believe that someone who lacked honesty and moral integrity could lead a nation well, as this was"fundamentally incompatible" with the good of the nation. In addition, he wrote: "What has alarmed me throughout this episode [with Lewinsky] has been the willingness of my fellow citizens to rationalize the President's behavior..." [6]
Dobson also argued that Clinton's infidelities prior to becoming President, including his initial lies about the Flowers affair, were early warning signs of a severe character flaw that ultimately made him unfit for the presidency.
But in a letter that clearly encouraged people to vote for Trump (without saying his name), he seemed to reduce the opposition to Trump to a dislike of "rhetoric, tone, style, or likeability," and later dismissed any concerns about Trump's character as "frivolous personality characteristics."
Second, during the late 1990s, Franklin Graham publicly lamented Clinton's moral failures (at least 5 women claimed affairs at best or assaults at worst). He rightly emphasized that adultery, deception, and abuse of trust even before being in public office reflected a person's fitness for leadership.
When Franklin Graham wrote an editorial after Bill Clinton's affair, he noted:
Much of America seems to have succumbed to the notion that what a person does in private has little bearing on his public actions or job performance, even if he is the president of the United States... private conduct does have public consequences.
Some of Mr. Clinton’s defenders present King David of the Bible, one of history’s great leaders, as an example as they call on us to forgive and forget the president’s moral failings. Since God pardoned David’s adulterous act with Bathsheba, the reasoning goes, we should similarly forgive Mr. Clinton. But forgiveness is not the end of David’s story. Huge consequences followed immediately...
Acknowledgment must be coupled with genuine remorse. A repentant spirit that says, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I won’t do it again. I ask for your forgiveness,” would go a long way toward personal and national healing..."
That firm stand on personal character seems to have shifted.
When the Stormy Daniel's story broke (a lawyer for Trump paid Daniels $130,000 in return for her agreeing not to publicly discuss a sexual encounter in 2006), Graham said, “I believe at 70 years of age the president is a much different person today than he was four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. He is not President Perfect.”
When the Stormy Daniel's story broke (a lawyer for Trump paid Daniels $130,000 in return for her agreeing not to publicly discuss a sexual encounter in 2006), Graham said, “I believe at 70 years of age the president is a much different person today than he was four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. He is not President Perfect.”
Eventually, Graham told the Associated Press that the Republican pursuit of Clinton was a “great mistake that should never have happened.” He actually echoed Clinton by claiming that adultery is an entirely private matter. Graham said, “This thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business.”
When David French wrote an article calling out this inconsistency, more than 47,000 followers of the American Family Association signed a petition condemning his “character assassination” and “yellow journalism.”
This is the kind of move I am talking about. I even wrote a song about it. Think of it as an ode to what was, and what could have been.
"Evangeline"
I met you when I was a boy
In Sunday shirt and corduroy,
I asked your name, and in tones serene
You said, “Evangeline.”
We spent some time over the years
I learned to love what you revere
It was Jesus, and you and me, as a team,
Evangeline
You taught me how to love the lost
To give and love despite the cost
How to pray and how to kneel
How to tell what’s fake from real
Stand up for truth and righteousness
Live like God commanded us
Cheer for the good and for the just
Embrace what’s pure, and flee from lust
Fight for the weak, and then repair
The broken with God’s loving care
Love mercy, make the way for peace
Till all in bondage find release..
But something shifted toward the dark
Both in your words and in your heart,
And I watched someone I loved
Look at the world and shrug
I long to hear your old voice
Hidden beneath Empire noise
But every year you look less kind
A bit more hardened in your eyes
The lies you hear you just don’t care
They turn to gossip in your prayers
The voiceless ones you used to hear
You now stay mute when they appear
Where you once opened the door
You now build walls blocking the poor
You used to cry for those in pain
Now you’re amused while they’re ashamed
The weak you once tried to protect
Are now victims of your neglect
The powerful, men in white halls
Now order where your footsteps fall
And power takes you where it pleases
And it doesn’t look like Jesus.
I didn’t move, you did
I stand where you once said you lived
Somewhere the world got in your heart
And now we’re worlds apart
I stayed where you said truth should be
I didn’t leave… you left me
So I’ll shake this dust from off my feet
And follow Jesus where you used to be…
… oh, Evangeline…
* * * * *
This is not a call to reject conservatism or embrace liberalism any more than it is a comparison between Republicans and Democrats.
It is a comparison/contrast between what evangelicalism once publicly taught Christians to value and support through their words and actions [7] and what they are supporting now.
I've shown you the declarations and public statements articulating a recognizable moral vision.
We will start in the next post with the treatment of the poor and disadvantaged.
- the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern (1973) , and the Lausanne Covenant (1974)
- the Manila Manifesto (1989)
- the Amsterdam Declaration (2000) and The Health Of Our Nation (2004)
- the Evangelical Manifesto of 2008
- the Capetown Commitment (2010)
- The Health Of Our Nation (2018
- The Seoul Statement (2024)
We will start in the next post with the treatment of the poor and disadvantaged.
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[1] Whether evangelicals consistently lived up to these ideals is another question. But these were the ideals that mainstream evangelicalism, both in the United States and globally, publicly claimed as our own.
[2] Some Fundamentalist Evangelicals were resisting desegregation and starting their own schools. Movements associated with Bill Gothard and Purity Culture were doing a lot of damage. (It felt subtle to me, but I know others for whom it was not subtle at all). The Moral Majority fought to be in the halls of power. Billy Graham had an embarrassing friendship with Nixon – one that led Graham to warn against the entanglement of church and state. Televangelists were being exposed left and right for their sinful scandals. The evangelical closet does not want for skeletons. If you want to read a sobering and unsettling book that focuses on evangelicalism in the United States, check out Jesus and John Wayne.
[3] I am thinking specifically of the part that is specifically so deeply intertwined with the political movement of Donald Trump, such as the folks in the White House Faith Office, as well as evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffres, Lance Wallanau, Eric Metaxas, Doug Wilson, Charlie Kirk, etc.
[4] Andy Crouch, writing for Christianity Today in 2016, tried to stay consistent. After all, CT had called out both Clinton and Nixon pretty strongly for their wrongdoings. He had some things to say about both candidates. After a long list of concerns about Hillary Clinton, he wrote:
But because several of the Democratic candidate’s policy positions are so manifestly incompatible with Christian reverence for the lives of the most vulnerable, and because her party is so demonstrably hostile to expressions of traditional Christian faith, there is plenty of critique and criticism of the Democratic candidate from Christians, including evangelical Christians....
As for Trump,
"…there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date...
Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us—in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us."
200 evangelical leaders promptly wrote a letter pushing back, defending themselves at one point by writing, "We are proud to be numbered among those in history who, like Jesus, have been pretentiously accused of having too much grace for tax collectors and sinners," a line which does not seem to characterize their stances toward Harris, Clinton, Biden, Obama, and Clinton.
Trump's response was to tweet, "A far left magazine, or very 'progressive,' as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today," that would prefer to have an unspecified "nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns" in the White House rather than him.
[5] And to the degree that followers of Jesus can be the conscience of culture and state by consistent words and lives of integrity guided by the truth and love of Jesus, that is not a bad thing at all.
[6] Later he would say, "Donald Trump is not a perfect man, but he is pro-life. To my knowledge, Donald Trump has never abused women physically or had oral sex in the Oval Office with a vulnerable intern." Apparently, the 28 women who have publicly accused Trump of assault, the multiple affairs (he cheated on his first two wives with his next wife, as well as with a porn star), the bragging about grabbing women by their genitals, his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and the tens of thousands of mentions in the Epstein files, and losing a civil lawsuit to E. Jean Carroll for sexual assault, are all unimportant now.
[7] Over the years, I have agreed with many of the moral critiques conservative evangelicalism had to offer Democratic politicians and policies. This blog has a history of examples. What unsettles me is that this does not seem to have been applied consistently.
[1] Whether evangelicals consistently lived up to these ideals is another question. But these were the ideals that mainstream evangelicalism, both in the United States and globally, publicly claimed as our own.
[2] Some Fundamentalist Evangelicals were resisting desegregation and starting their own schools. Movements associated with Bill Gothard and Purity Culture were doing a lot of damage. (It felt subtle to me, but I know others for whom it was not subtle at all). The Moral Majority fought to be in the halls of power. Billy Graham had an embarrassing friendship with Nixon – one that led Graham to warn against the entanglement of church and state. Televangelists were being exposed left and right for their sinful scandals. The evangelical closet does not want for skeletons. If you want to read a sobering and unsettling book that focuses on evangelicalism in the United States, check out Jesus and John Wayne.
[3] I am thinking specifically of the part that is specifically so deeply intertwined with the political movement of Donald Trump, such as the folks in the White House Faith Office, as well as evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffres, Lance Wallanau, Eric Metaxas, Doug Wilson, Charlie Kirk, etc.
[4] Andy Crouch, writing for Christianity Today in 2016, tried to stay consistent. After all, CT had called out both Clinton and Nixon pretty strongly for their wrongdoings. He had some things to say about both candidates. After a long list of concerns about Hillary Clinton, he wrote:
But because several of the Democratic candidate’s policy positions are so manifestly incompatible with Christian reverence for the lives of the most vulnerable, and because her party is so demonstrably hostile to expressions of traditional Christian faith, there is plenty of critique and criticism of the Democratic candidate from Christians, including evangelical Christians....
As for Trump,
"…there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date...
Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us—in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us."
200 evangelical leaders promptly wrote a letter pushing back, defending themselves at one point by writing, "We are proud to be numbered among those in history who, like Jesus, have been pretentiously accused of having too much grace for tax collectors and sinners," a line which does not seem to characterize their stances toward Harris, Clinton, Biden, Obama, and Clinton.
Trump's response was to tweet, "A far left magazine, or very 'progressive,' as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today," that would prefer to have an unspecified "nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns" in the White House rather than him.
[5] And to the degree that followers of Jesus can be the conscience of culture and state by consistent words and lives of integrity guided by the truth and love of Jesus, that is not a bad thing at all.
[6] Later he would say, "Donald Trump is not a perfect man, but he is pro-life. To my knowledge, Donald Trump has never abused women physically or had oral sex in the Oval Office with a vulnerable intern." Apparently, the 28 women who have publicly accused Trump of assault, the multiple affairs (he cheated on his first two wives with his next wife, as well as with a porn star), the bragging about grabbing women by their genitals, his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and the tens of thousands of mentions in the Epstein files, and losing a civil lawsuit to E. Jean Carroll for sexual assault, are all unimportant now.
[7] Over the years, I have agreed with many of the moral critiques conservative evangelicalism had to offer Democratic politicians and policies. This blog has a history of examples. What unsettles me is that this does not seem to have been applied consistently.
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