The Evangelical Kaleidoscope: Part Two - Quadrilateral"isms"

If you’ve not read Part One, you should. It’s long, but it give context to the following installments. 

Four “isms” have deeply impacted evangelicalism as we experience it today. Some are bad; some are good; some just are. All of them have been formative. I will try do draw them together in Part Three. For now, I offer them as separate pieces in the evangelical kaleidoscope. 

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RACISM

The failure to address racial issues well has been a long-standing and pervasive problem in American history, and evangelicalism has not been exempt.

The strain of evangelicalism that most closely aligns with modern evangelicalism developed the Midlands and the North initially, where people believed that salvation manifested redemptive movements in the community, not just the individual. However, in spite of this belief in communal justice as an expression of personal salvation, the struggle over race and inequality plagued evangelicalism from the beginning.

• Jonathan Edwards owned household slaves. Though he was critical of the abuses in the slave trade, he never came to believe that slavery was wrong. 
• George Whitefield actually bought a South Carolina Plantation and became a slave owner before seeking to legalize slavery in Georgia. In fact, he became a leading pro-slavery voice instrumental in getting slavery legalized in Georgia in 1751.[1]

White evangelicals sat in churches and revival tents with their black slaves. They believed God offered salvation of all souls, but too often they believed this would simply make slaves better slaves.[2] Not all evangelicals felt this way - generally speaking, the further North one moved, the more evangelicals defended the rights and freedom of slaves. Prior to the Civil War, the vast majority of white Southern evangelicals were pro-slavery, or at least saw it as a political issue rather than a church issue.

The Evangelical Kaleidoscope: Part One - Evangelical History In A Quadrilateral Nutshell

I've always been an evangelical - maybe even a fundamentalist? - but I've recently realized I need to spend some time gaining a better understanding of the terminology in which I was immersed and by which I identify my Christian faith. I credit at least four developments for this new interest:

• fielding dozens of queries like this from my non-religious friends: "Help me understand why 81% of evangelicals voted for Donald Trump." On the other hand, I also heard from a lot of evangelicals, "Why would you not?" Those two comments are worlds apart, and yet somehow they both resonate. 
• reading Colin Woodard’s American Nations: A History Of The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures Of North America, a fascinating book on the regional cultures that shaped North America, and the influence that has had on politics, religion, and the intersection of the two. [1]
• listening to The Holy Post’s podcast about evangelicalism vs. fundamentalism after Christianity Today’s editorial about Trump’s impeachment blew up the Christian internet. 
• a brewing sense that Inigo Montoya’s insight is relevant in connection to the use of the word ‘evangelical’ by myself and others: “I do not think that word means what you think it means.” 

So, I picked up Thomas Kidd’s Who Is An Evangelical?[2]and Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, And Could Be (edited and partially written by three of the big historical hitters in the discussion - Mark Noll, David Bebbington, and George Marsden), and started digging through evangelical/fundamentalist articles, websites and organizations online. What follows is not a definitive overview by any means, but hopefully it will serve to provoke your thoughts as it has mine.

I’ll give away my conclusion: “evangelical” is, I’m afraid, no longer a helpful word.[3] It is simply too imprecise to describe the current forms of Christianity fragmented together in what Timothy Smith has called an evangelical kaleidoscope.

George Marsden offers a partial list of what that evangelical kaleidoscope looks like today: 

• Black and White evangelicals (read "Democrats and Republicans." More on this in a later post) 
• Calvinists and Arminians 
• Pentecostals/Holiness and Separatist Fundamentalists (who don't care for Pentecostals) 
• Pacifist Churches (such as Mennonites) and Baptists (who are not pacifists) 
• Southern Baptists (are they really evangelical, though?) 
• Missouri Synod Lutherans and Reformed church (confessional heritage) and Methodists (Pietist heritage) 

Saying “I am an evangelical” is like saying, “I like fast food.” That’s interesting, but not terribly informative. What kind of fast food? What counts as “fast food” anyway? You mean Paneras, Boston Market and Culvers are the same kind of restaurant as Dairy Queen and McDonalds?[4] Pizza Hut is considered fast good but has a salad bar. Does "liking fast food" mean you eat out twice a week or just a few times a year?

Those are the kind of follow-up questions one must ask concerning evangelicalism: What kind of evangelical? Are you sure you know what it means? Should all those who claim to be evangelical be on the same list? Do they actually attend an evangelical church and do evangelical things on a regular basis?

So...let's look at this kaleidoscope.