"I Didn't Move; You Did" (Part 16): The Shift Away From Honoring The Imago Dei In Everyone

One of the things evangelical Christianity taught me was that every human being bears the image of God. Probably everything in this series references this is some fashion: the help of the poor, the care for the immigrant and refugee, the rejection of racism and unjust discrimination, the interest in alleviating global poverty, the concern for the environment so that deadly pollution is curbed, the rejection of war as the preferred way to solve conflict, the importance of honoring the autonomy of people, etc. 

All these things were embedded in the evangelical creeds that formed my life and my evangelical church community for decades.

That conviction helped make me "pro-life" (though these days I prefer the term "whole-life".) I believe human life should be protected and honored from the moment it begins until the moment it ends. But honoring life means more than keeping someone physically alive. It means treating people with dignity, justice, mercy, kindness, and love.

The unborn child bears the image of God. So does the immigrant at the border. So does the prisoner. So does the person with a disability, the elderly person, the poor person, the Muslim, the atheist, the political opponent, the transgender person, the Republican or Democrat politician...the list goes on.

Human dignity cannot depend upon whether someone looks like me, votes like me, worships like me, shares my citizenship, or seeks my approval. If the image of God means anything, it means that human beings possess a dignity we did not give them, and we cannot take away.

That is why the last decade has been so disorienting for me.

Something has changed in significant parts of American evangelicalism. Language and behavior that Christians once would have recognized as cruel, vulgar, degrading, or dehumanizing are increasingly excused—and sometimes celebrated—when they come from the right political leaders.

We seem to have lost something more fundamental than civility. We have lost some of our capacity to walk in another person's shoes—to do and say unto others as we would have them do and say unto us. We have lost not only sympathy, but empathy.

Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us. Charlie Kirk famously said that he couldn't stand the word empathy. Books with titles such as The Sin of Empathy and Toxic Empathy have found receptive audiences in conservative Christian circles.

Of course, empathy can be misguided. Feeling another person's pain does not require agreeing with everything that person believes or does, and it doesn't mean we have to avoid truth and confrontation.

Yet the Christian tradition that has often spoken about orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right action) has an underused third "ortho" -  orthopathy (rightly ordered affections). It asks. "What kind of heart am I cultivating? Or, more simply: am I learning to feel about people the way Jesus does?

I am concerned that conservative evangelicals will win political battles while losing something far more important: empathy. We can become the kind of people who no longer recognize dishonor and cruelty when we see it - or, even worse, when we do it.

So, let’s look at how the administration that evangelicals have put into office twice is doing in the areas of orthopraxy and orthopathy when it comes to viewing, treating, and speaking about everyone as image bearers of God.

"I Didn't Move; You Did" (Part 3): The Manila Manifesto (1989)

In my first post in this series, I explained why I have become increasingly uncomfortable identifying as an evangelical, as it has become increasingly willing to excuse attitudes, behaviors, and priorities that seem incompatible with the character and teaching of Jesus.

 

My second post began the process of offering a sampling of decades of statements (beginning in the 1970s) put out by evangelical leaders, organizations, denominations, colleges, and ministries. They are declarations and manifestos explaining what they believed Christian evangelicals should value and how Christians should engage the world. They provide a record of what the movement publicly claimed to stand for, even if evangelicalism did not always live consistently with its principles.

 

This post is about a major manifesto in the 80s called the Manila Manifesto. The Manila Manifesto was produced and drafted by the British evangelical pastor and theologian John Stott. He led the drafting team at the Second International Congress on World Evangelization (Lausanne II) held in Manila, Philippines in July 1989. [1]