Russell Moore
CHICAGO, IL (November 18, 2016) — The presidential election cycle saw a growing number of evangelicals saying they no longer want to be associated with the word. Some say it has become a barrier to sharing the gospel and has become irredeemable in terms of its meaning for the public. Others, however, say we shouldn’t cast aside the term and that, in fact, this is an opportunity for evangelicals to embody the true meaning of the word as they live it out among themselves and in the world.
Covenanters of various perspectives have taken to Facebook, pointing to articles written by prominent evangelicals. Below are some of the articles being most frequently discussed:
After Trump, I Can’t Relate to My Evangelical Faith
Post-Election Evangelical: A Statement from Mark Labberton and Richard Mouw
After Trump, Should Evangelicals Part Ways?
Trump Won. Here’s How 20 Evangelical Leaders Feel.
I Was an Evangelical Magazine Editor but Now I Can’t Defend My Evangelical Community
Russell Moore: Why This Election Makes Me Hate the Word Evangelical
The September/October issue of the Covenant Companion includes an column by Jelani Greenidge titled “A Modest Proposal About the E-Word.”
Let us know what you think.
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News
Thanks for the articles. It’s encouraging to know that other evangelicals feel about the election as I do. These writers capture well the frustration and complexity of these days. It is so important to be reminded that the good news of Christ transcends politics, and that Christ challenges our grasping for power through politics.
Part of the work of the church is to name things. The pollsters are required to have a degree of civility and political correctness, and so they are going to avoid pejoratives and instead lump in the “fundamentalists” (aka, rigid traditionalists and failed evangelicals who, in Carl Henry terms, haven’t admitted how uneasy their conscience is) and the “blasphemers” (aka, the bigots and others who spew hate and untruths in Christ’s name) with the “evangelicals”. As a church, we don’t have to succumb to this same lumping of terms. One of the advantages of claiming the word “evangelical” is that we can contrast ourselves with–and therefore name–the “fundamentalists” and the “blasphemers” for who they really are (with the caveat, of course, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God…).