What's the problem with US evangelical Christianity?

[tomndebb]

@Measure_for_Measure

I’d point our readers to this wiki page on the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy of the 1920s and 1930s. According to wiki the Modernists won and the fundamentalists re-emerged in the 1970s.

Which while differing on the causes and actions involved, is consistent with my timeline.

[lonesome_crow]

@Measure_for_Measure

I’d point our readers to this wiki page on the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy of the 1920s and 1930s. According to wiki the Modernists won and the fundamentalists re-emerged in the 1970s.

Fundamentalist–modernist controversy - Wikipedia

More wiki, this time in support of Tom: [INDENT] Prohibition in the early to mid-20th century was mostly fueled by the Protestant denominations in the Southern United States, a region dominated by socially conservative evangelical Protestantism with a very high Christian church attendance.[99] Generally, Evangelical Protestant denominations encouraged prohibition, while the Mainline Protestant denominations disapproved of its introduction. However, there were exceptions to this rule such as the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (German Confessional Lutherans), which is typically considered to be in scope of evangelical Protestantism.[100] Pietistic churches in the United States (especially Baptist churches, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and others in the evangelical tradition) sought to end drinking and the saloon culture during the Third Party System. Liturgical (“high”) churches (Roman Catholic, Episcopal, German Lutheran and others in the mainline tradition) opposed prohibition laws because they did not want the government to reduce the definition of morality to a narrow standard or to criminalize the common liturgical practice of using wine.[101] [/INDENT] Prohibition in the United States - Wikipedia

…and Presbyterians were apparently caught in the middle.

Just as a thought. Prohibition was known to increase criminal business activity - and was therefore approved by the criminals themselves. Perhaps there was a link between evangelicals and their business interests and who would be most affected by organised criminal behaviour i.e who would be most vulnerable, perhaps individuals they didn’t really care about. It does seem strange. After all, Jesus did turn water into wine. I think that shortly after prohibition ended there began the crackdown / criminalising or a sort of ‘prohibition of drugs’ which became the ‘illicits’ e.g. cannabis ( a weed ). Perhaps evangelicals also supported the soon to be ‘war on drugs’ for the same reason. Whose affected by it? Perhaps welcome some of the ‘walking wounded’ into their evangelical church - swell the congregation. Swell the ‘army’ of ‘believers’ and alcohol abstinence would help promote internal discipline as with any ‘army’.

[lonesome_crow]

@j666

I don’t think Evangelicals hate others, necessarily, but they are very easily led into hateful behavior to women, people of color, LGBTQIA, the differently poor, and others who are not powerful.

They most certainly are concerned for some, for other Christians for their sects, for unborn fetuses, and especially for men who have cheated on their wives but been forgiven by Jesus.

Is it seeing those in power as the chosen, one step closer to God, who must be believed and trusted? Or a naturally spiteful people drawn to Evangelical leadership? Okay, I’ve lost it. I am being hateful myself.

j666, I think they have a general unfeeling disposition to the wider public. They just ‘hate’ that which has happened to themselves in their own lives, perhaps with good reason and become attracted to the message of US evangelicalism - Armageddon, and then this world will be finished and exist no longer and most people in it.

I think you are right, it is about ‘leadership’ as opposed to a natural ‘grassroots’ development or impulse. I suppose that’s what makes it ‘right wing’.

[j666]

@lonesome_crow

j666, I think they have a general unfeeling disposition to the wider public.

And that is what angers me so. I was raised in a Christian faith, although I don’t run around proclaiming myself to be one. I try to live by the tenets of compassion for those less fortunate, cherishing children, separation of church and state (" render unto Caesar…"), and praying at the back of the temple.

[lonesome_crow]

@senoy

I’m a direct descendant of Anne Hutchinson, so definitely knew about Puritans not encouraging heresy.

To get back to the original question from way back when. What happened with Evangelical Christianity is what happened to everything else. The 60s. (Actually it started before that, but the 60s make a good enough breaking off point.) Prior to the 60s, Mainline Protestantism was the dominant religious force in America and Mainline Protestantism was much more conservative than it is today, but still relatively liberal in its outlook. Well, let’s back up a bit.

Beginning in the late 1800s as the Third Great Awakening was winding down, there was a pretty serious rift in the Church united and particularly in the American Church as to how to deal with a world that was increasingly non-agrarian and increasingly more social rather than communal in aspect. The church largely began moving toward more liberal stances and developed a number of Modernist Theologies that eventually led to very liberal theologies that we still use today. These theologies apply Enlightenment philosophical thought and scientific discovery to Traditional Christian theology and you end up with something not too different than what United Methodists or Episcopalians or most Mainline Protestants believe today. Unfortunately, the Third Great Awakening had brought a lot of people into Christendom though that we’ll say were less amenable to such things. The Modernist movements were largely the work of very educated very wealthy people and they were academic and dry and not necessarily particularly appealing at an emotional level.

New people brought in by the Third Great Awakening as well as Southern Americans were not satisfied with this mainstream Academic trend (whom Southerners saw as dominated by Northerners) and they fought back. They created a new Theology that they called Fundamentalism. It was essentially an idea that regardless of whatever new discoveries or evidence we get, there are certain fundamentals which are necessarily true. There have actually been a number of these ‘fundamentals’ over the years, but they typically center on Biblical inerrancy and the literal account of the Bible (although in the beginning, fundamentalists would NOT have said the Bible is literal, that came later.) Needless to say, in Mainline Christianity, liberalism won fairly easily and within 15 years of Fundamentalism hitting the Academic circuit, there was not a single mainline Protestant seminary that taught it.

In Evangelical churches though, things were different. Evangelicalism arose out of the Second Great Awakening and gave us such hits as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. It was a time of serious religious revival, particularly in the frontier and for whatever reason the Burned Over District. Basically, there was a serious religious fervor that took hold of the country, particularly among Methodists (who later became mainline, but we’ll get to that.) As often happens in these movements, there was a bit of an Apocalyptic element and the idea that as many people as possible needed to be saved from the pits of Hell. So you get people traveling around holding revivals and camp meetings and all sorts of things to try to convince as many people as possible to repent of their sins and start living the good life. The abolitionist movement certainly aided in this and lent credence to the idea that the world was in serious need of saving. Basically, this is the start of Evangelicalism.

One of the hallmarks of Evangelicalism was its focus on the people on the outskirts of society. Evangelicalism for all of its faults in the beginning was extremely equal opportunity and was really at the forefront of social justice. Groups like the Salvation Army got their start as Evangelical groups. They really felt that they needed to reach the poor and destitute that society had forgotten about. This causes lots of problems down the road and honestly it’s why we’re where we are today, but we can get to that as well. Prior to Evangelicalism, the poor weren’t particularly cared about by pretty much anyone. Church was not something for the poor. The poor were working not attending services and there were roadblocks to get into churches like pew rental fees. Evangelicals thought that was serious bullcrap and you ended up with denominations like the Free Methodists who abolished fees for churches and particularly aimed at converting the poor. Evangelicals were responsible for the blue laws that closed down workplaces on Sundays and were instrumental in the early labor movement. So anyway, what’s important to remember is that Evangelicals actively courted the poor and so largely became comprised of the lower classes.

So hopefully, you can see what’s happening. These mainline churches and movements that are largely comprised of wealthy, educated Northerners have become bastions of liberal theology (We still are! Go us!) Evangelical churches which which largely consisted of poor, lower class southerners and minorities, rejected this and became increasingly fundamentalist. What’s important to note though is that largely it didn’t matter. Evangelicalism was largely looked at perhaps the way that we look at the Black Church today - they do their thing, it might be a little bit different, but it doesn’t really matter because by and large the vast majority of people were mainline and went to their Lutheran or Presbyterian or Methodist churches and the Baptists and other Evangelicals were just a group of weirdos from the south that could be safely ignored.

Then, we get Baby Boomers who basically suck and ruin everything that they touch. What began happening in the 1960s was that Boomers had largely decided that they had enough of organized religion. They decided that organized religion was for schmucks and the Beatles and Timothy Leary had the right idea and you see young people start to leave. The people that left though were largely white, wealthy and educated - which was the exact group of people that dominated mainline Protestantism. So all of these white, wealthy educated people start to see their white, wealthy educated spawn drop out of the church and it causes a crisis. People start asking themselves, what the heck is going on? They look at who is leaving and it’s basically the sons and daughters of the people who are advocating a very liberal theology. Meanwhile, they look at Evangelicals who aren’t having that problem at all. They’re actually growing and some mainlines go “Here’s what happened, we embraced these liberal theologies and people abandoned us.” From here, you actually start to see movement from mainline churches towards Evangelical churches. This encourages their worst tendencies. During the 70s and 80s, Evangelicals are slurping up disillusioned mainlines and mainlines are getting absolutely hammered from both sides. Conservative mainlines are becoming Evangelical and liberal mainlines are dropping out of Christianity completely.

Evangelicals figure, “Hey, the problem is that these liberal ideas are killing Christianity, we need to fight these ideas or else we’ll become mainlines.” (To be fair, they aren’t wrong.) So they get these new influx of converts who are generally wealthier and increasingly better connected and people begin to take the fight to the political sphere. We end up with groups like the Moral Majority who are actively supporting conservative candidates. Mainlines on the other hand have lost their moderating voice and are increasingly seen as irrelevant while Evangelicals essentially take up the mouthpiece of Christendom. As they gain power and prestige, they become more and more associated with their political wings. This encourages people on that side of the political spectrum to join Evangelical churches. Eventually what we see by early 2000 is that liberals are essentially persona non grata within Evangelical churches, so you end up with a sorting effect. Mainlines were able to recoup some of those disillusioned liberals, but largely they have just left the church. What this does to Evangelicals is that they see attendance fall and they are going through the same crisis that mainlines did 40 years ago. Their response though is to look back on their history and say, “Why were we successful then?” “Because we were fundamentalist and conservative.” Instead of saying, “Why isn’t that working now?” They are saying, “We need to become more fundamentalist and conservative. We know that becoming liberal makes you die like the mainlines have, so the only other option is to go further right and further fundamentalist.”

So, the long and the short of it is that it’s really Baby Boomers and Millennials fault that Evangelicals are the way they are. If you actually managed to read this tome, I hope you learned something.

Ok, it was the 60’s then. Your post explains how events happened but does not really explain why.

‘New people’ and ‘southerners’ fought back.

Why were they not satisfied with this new ‘dry’ liberal theology? If they had of been, it would all of ended there. Why the variation in a professed belief in God? You have explained how they thought but not why.

Evangelicalism…was extremely equal opportunity.

Is this more to do with seeing the ‘poor, destitute and forgotten’ as easy pickings compared to the ‘rich, empowered and highly regarded?’ They are more vulnerable in some way?

evangelicals actively courted the poor.

Yes, perhaps in a self serving cynical way? Again, sounds like the poor were targeted.

Why don’t poor people like liberal theology?
Why are these liberal ideas killing Christianity as indicated by smaller congregations? Their attitude again seems cynical. As though they are prepared to change their professed beliefs in order to increase the size of the congregation.
Doesn’t this in itself show what is wrong with evangelicalism?

It’s like the evangelicals are not just disillusioned with mainstream Christianity, instead they are disillusioned with what’s happened in their lives, they are The Disillusioned and evangelicalism has found a way of tapping into this, to exploit it, in a way that even mainstream Christianity finds it is increasingly unable to do. It’s like a heretical theology that has adapted itself to meet the needs of some very disillusioned individuals. Whatever, they appear to not like the ‘dry’ liberal theology - it is not emotional enough.

[senoy]

A couple of points.

Early Evangelicalism probably did not care about ‘Easy Pickings.’ Christianity dominated the public sphere. We can look at the writings of the Second Great Awakening and it seemed to be out of genuine concern. It was more of a reformer’s movement to fight back against class oppression.

As to why certain elements of Christianity became modernist and others didn’t, it’s complicated. The south didn’t embrace modernism as a whole likely due to the whole post-bellum movement toward tradition i.e. antebellum attitudes. Modernism by its nature is modern and rejects tradition. The southern church was tied up into their concepts of honor and really early Lost Cause ideology. They saw themselves as noble defenders of the past put upon by an industrialized North. Anything out of the north was suspect, including modernist theology.

There’s also clearly a class divide in effect. The lower classes were more recent converts, so the zeal of the convert is always a powerful thing. Modernism largely developed in Europe and the upper-classes in the US had more European contacts than the lower classes. The late 1800s and early 1900s as today were a time of upheaval with large-scale immigration, so there was a fear of cultural loss among the lower classes, so they rejected European ideas including theological ones. As for emotional engagement, that could probably be a dissertation topic unto itself, but I might theorize that at least part of it has to do with social cachet. If you’re say a miner, you’re probably not going to get many social points by attempting to debate the fine points of Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott since it’s probably way over your head, but you do get social credit for having emotional experiences, so chasing those experiences is both socially satisfying as well as internally satisfying, so why not do so. In mainline Christianity, those emotional experiences carry negative social credit, so they are more easily ignored. A lot of this also just comes out of culture and the difference between northern and southern cultures and what constitutes acceptable social behavior. Evangelicals come out of southern and lower class cultures where emotional behavior is less heavily regulated and more expected.

As for the idea that changing beliefs in response to external stimuli is what is wrong with Evangelicalism, I think one could just as easily posit the opposite. It’s the failure to abandon early 20th century models of Christianity that are what most people say is their issue. They are pretty dug in on fundamentalism at this point and that’s really what the OP is complaining about.

You’re also mixing up causation. Individuals change their beliefs all of the time. That’s part of being a human. We’re attracted to different things at different times in our lives. In 1996, I was 18 and voted for Bob Dole. In 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader. I stopped voting for a number of years and identified as an anarchist and in the most recent election voted for Hillary Clinton. You could say that that is a problem with me, and maybe it is, but I think that it’s not a particularly strange experience to have. You receive information and you process it and you change. Evangelicalism is not like Mormonism, there is no prophet or even much of a hierarchy. Prophet Bob doesn’t wake up one morning, decide that there are black converts to be made and then decree that black people are suddenly favored by God. The movement is organic and ideas that attract the most people take hold and those that don’t die. If you have a church and start preaching that God saves everyone regardless of their belief, your church dies because people don’t believe that. If you have a church that says that God gives you money if you pray really hard, it grows because people do want to hear that. Different pastors have different beliefs at different times and when their beliefs match the zeitgeist, they grow. When they don’t, then they fail. When I say that Evangelicalism sees that modernism didn’t grow their churches, what I mean is that individuals within Evangelicalism believe that modernism is not correct and not a means to reach others, so they attend churches that don’t preach that. (It’s actually not monolithic, there are plenty of very liberal Evangelicals - the Emergent church movement or the Red Letter Christians as examples, but they are minority movements that are unable to capture large numbers of adherents.)

[Chisquirrel]

@j666

And that is what angers me so. I was raised in a Christian faith, although I don’t run around proclaiming myself to be one. I try to live by the tenets of compassion for those less fortunate, cherishing children, separation of church and state (" render unto Caesar…"), and praying at the back of the temple.

In my view, Evangelical Christianity has left behind the teachings of Christ for political power.

[j666]

@Chisquirrel

In my view, Evangelical Christianity has left behind the teachings of Christ for political power.

And I can see how this could happen, because Evangelicals actually read the Bible, or so I’ve understood. Do they just ignore the gospels?

[gytalf2000]

@j666

And I can see how this could happen, because Evangelicals actually read the Bible, or so I’ve understood. Do they just ignore the gospels?

The church I grew up in, the “Church of Christ”, certainly emphasized an in-depth knowledge of the Bible – from an ahistorical fundamentalist viewpoint, at least. I don’t know how they can reconcile the gospel message with the current version of republicanism, but they do!

Of course, I must admit, most of the people (from the Church of Christ) that I talk to don’t like Trump as a person at all, they just want to make sure that their policies – primarily anti-abortion – are enacted. And they are not particularly racist or anti-immigrant, either. They just didn’t want Hilary in power.

[j666]

@gytalf2000

The church I grew up in, the “Church of Christ”, certainly emphasized an in-depth knowledge of the Bible – from an ahistorical fundamentalist viewpoint, at least. **I don’t know how they can reconcile the gospel message with the current version of republicanism, but they do!
**
Of course, I must admit, most of the people (from the Church of Christ) that I talk to don’t like Trump as a person at all, they just want to make sure that their policies – primarily anti-abortion – are enacted. And they are not particularly racist or anti-immigrant, either. They just didn’t want Hilary in power.

“Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone”?

[Jasmine]

It’s full of hypocrisy, and only a minority of them even understand what it is that they profess to believe much less practice?

All you have to do is look at their words, actions, and voting to see that.

[Chisquirrel]

@j666

And I can see how this could happen, because Evangelicals actually read the Bible, or so I’ve understood. Do they just ignore the gospels?

Everything that matters happens in Leviticus.

[rsat3acr]

@j666

And I can see how this could happen, because Evangelicals actually read the Bible, or so I’ve understood. Do they just ignore the gospels?

no they just pick and choose which parts they want to follow/believe.

[j666]

@rsat3acr

no they just pick and choose which parts they want to follow/believe.

Oh.

like me and the gospels

Thanks, that puts it in perspective for me.

[BigT]

The difference I’d say is that Evangelicals don’t admit they are picking and choosing. They have their Biblical literalism, and so they have to pretend they are using the entire Bible. So it instead changes to more creative interpretation, where scriptures are pulled out of context to support preexisting beliefs. Despite claiming to be sola scriptura, the Fundamentalists do heavily depend on traditional interpretations, rather than interpreting the text anew from the ground up, which is what “fundamentalism” should mean. They just keep their old ideas, and claim that it means they’re following Scripture.

[j666]

My beliefs were shaped by early religious training, the tenets of humility, compassion, do unto others. And I was taught the New Testament superseded the Old Testament, so I could give all the smiting a pass.

[Nava]

Conversely, some of those guys seem to really like the smiting; hellfire and brimstone preaching is in general more popular in the US than in Europe. Maybe they wish they could be conservative Jews, but with bacon.

[senoy]

@BigT

The difference I’d say is that Evangelicals don’t admit they are picking and choosing. They have their Biblical literalism, and so they have to pretend they are using the entire Bible. So it instead changes to more creative interpretation, where scriptures are pulled out of context to support preexisting beliefs. Despite claiming to be sola scriptura, the Fundamentalists do heavily depend on traditional interpretations, rather than interpreting the text anew from the ground up, which is what “fundamentalism” should mean. They just keep their old ideas, and claim that it means they’re following Scripture.

Just as an aside, ‘fundamentalism’ does not refer to somehow starting at a no knowledge point and then building a faith from this ground zero. It refers to a preconceived set of theological ‘fundamentals’ that are axiomatic and thus anything that contradicts them is by definition incorrect since it violates the axioms. The exact ‘fundamentals’ vary, but they are typically the following:

–Substitutionary atonement of Christ (Christ died for our sins)
–Virgin Birth
–The Resurrection and Ascension of Christ
–The Bible was directly inspired by God and thus inerrant
–The Bible is a literal account of what happened (mostly, they allow for examples that are obviously metaphor to be metaphor - for instance, Christ’s parables and usually Revelations. Song of Solomon for some reason is always considered metaphor despite the fact that it reads pretty much as literal as you can get, but whatever.)

Those are the fundamental axioms, so they aren’t starting from scratch, but rather with certain preconceptions. It’s important to note that those preconceptions are not necessarily traditional. A literal reading of the Bible for example was not the traditional view of Scripture. I won’t say that no one took the Bible literally, but it was an extremely minority view until the Enlightenment. Biblical literalism was a pendulum swing push-back against Enlightenment tendencies to completely deny anything transcendent (as in for instance the Jefferson Bible), so Biblical literalism appeared as a counter-weight to essentially say everything was transcendent. Prior to the Enlightenment, Christianity (including Protestantism-after all, it was Luther who expunged the Apocrypha as not sufficiently ‘true’ enough.) took a much more nuanced view of Scripture.

[lonesome_crow]

@senoy

Just as an aside, ‘fundamentalism’ does not refer to somehow starting at a no knowledge point and then building a faith from this ground zero. It refers to a preconceived set of theological ‘fundamentals’ that are axiomatic and thus anything that contradicts them is by definition incorrect since it violates the axioms. The exact ‘fundamentals’ vary, but they are typically the following:

–Substitutionary atonement of Christ (Christ died for our sins)
–Virgin Birth
–The Resurrection and Ascension of Christ
–The Bible was directly inspired by God and thus inerrant
–The Bible is a literal account of what happened (mostly, they allow for examples that are obviously metaphor to be metaphor - for instance, Christ’s parables and usually Revelations. Song of Solomon for some reason is always considered metaphor despite the fact that it reads pretty much as literal as you can get, but whatever.)

Those are the fundamental axioms, so they aren’t starting from scratch, but rather with certain preconceptions. It’s important to note that those preconceptions are not necessarily traditional. A literal reading of the Bible for example was not the traditional view of Scripture. I won’t say that no one took the Bible literally, but it was an extremely minority view until the Enlightenment. Biblical literalism was a pendulum swing push-back against Enlightenment tendencies to completely deny anything transcendent (as in for instance the Jefferson Bible), so Biblical literalism appeared as a counter-weight to essentially say everything was transcendent. Prior to the Enlightenment, Christianity (including Protestantism-after all, it was Luther who expunged the Apocrypha as not sufficiently ‘true’ enough.) took a much more nuanced view of Scripture.

–One God in three. The Holy Trinity. Unusual for a monotheistic religion.

Are you delineating Bible from Scripture?

Previous post above #126

“Your’re also mixing up causation. Individuals change their beliefs all of the time. That’s part of being a human.”

…“individuals within Evangelicalism believe that modernism is not correct and not a means to reach others,”

Yes, that’s the point i’m making. Some change their beliefs in response to what happens to them in life. They respond by reaching out for something that comforts,soothes and consoles them. A wider concern for the general public is not what they are really about. Evangelicals understand the needs of these individuals and attempt to satisfy that need.
The Disillusioned reach out for ‘something’. This is their ‘action’, to be in a state of ‘reaching out’. The ‘reaction’ of The Evangelicals is to reciprocate and reach out for The Disillusioned knowing that they are ambivalent and vulnerable. Just ripe for some snake oil, that should do the trick. I think The Disillusioned are vulnerable and The Evangelicals are rather cynical. This is what is wrong with US Evangelicalism.

“mixing up causation”

Well senoy, why do human beings behave in the way they do? Causation? That’s a difficult one.

[The_Plutonium_Kid]

@MichaelEmouse

From millionaire televangelists preaching hurricanes as punishment for gays, Creationism, Prosperity Gospel, military & gun worship and widespread support for Trump, American evangelical Christianity looks like particularly nasty Know Nothingism. What’s wrong(er) about that particular flavor of religion? What does that twistedness stem from?

You’re obviously not seeing this from the viewpoint of someone who doesn’t identify very strongly with either evangelicals or left wingers. From that perspective, both are often annoyingly silly or just downright bizarre, sometimes frighteningly so. The dolt who refuses to understand that mass immigration is an existential threat to our nation or believes surgery and hormone treatments can turn a man into a woman and vice versa, is every bit as ridiculous as the dolt who believes Genesis is literal science and history and the second coming will happen any day now.

Progressivism is no less a fanatical religion than Protestant evangelicalism.