Is ‘Evangelical’ a Historical, Theological, or Political Identity?

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Andrew T. Walker
I want to argue evangelicalism should be defined fundamentally, though not exclusively by its theological historical definitions. My main argument for this evening is this, defining evangelicalism by political behavior instead of rigorous doctrinal identity is a logical fallacy. Definitions arrived at by common political activity cannot explain underlying rationales for political activity. Thus, political definitions of evangelicalism misunderstand evangelical political ethics and obscures historic term. Let me offer one caveat to start, though I dislike defining evangelicalism politically. The point of my argument is not that evangelicalism as a theological concept is beyond criticism. There are tensions to it as a theological category, and also legitimate criticisms about its political activity. Legitimate scrutiny can thus be made about the terms theological elasticity and political activity. What I argue however, is that understanding evangelicalism on predominantly political grounds is confusing, uninteresting, incoherent and theological malpractice and I offer the five following arguments to make my case. First, where does the burden lie in justifying evangelical as a political category? Evan Jellicle is a theological term derived from the Greek Yuan Galleon literally the good news, Evan Jellicle. ism is a historical movement with origins in post reformation Europe. The burden is on those to demonstrate why contemporary times justify discarding the weight of history if history and theology whatever political realignments are happening today, they are not reducible to theological explanation alone. If that’s the case, that should cause us to question whether political activity is justified in redefining a theological term. Second, similar voting patterns by evangelicalism and non Christians tell us nothing interesting that evangelicals tend to vote in clusters reveals two main things first, that there are ethical implications to evangelical theology, resulting in political outcomes as we would expect that to be the case from scripture. But then, secondly, political and ethical convictions that evangelicalism hold, if they are indeed a function of Scripture, but also reason and natural law. We wouldn’t necessarily expect other individuals to vote like evangelicals, but who are not necessarily evangelicals themselves, if not of angelical are identifying as evangelical that tells us nothing on its own about theology. All it reveals are common ethical sentiments by diverse peoples. Third, retrofitting and fusing a theological category on to political behavior is an ill advised synthesis, the political and sociological impulse to cluster Evan Jellicle identity around voting and political behavior is a sort of post hoc genetic fallacy, if none of angelical see it as a political identity is that because evangelicalism is a political identity, or because it has morphed into that category by pundants, pollsters, and academics? Again, this is not to discount the ways in which evangelicalism has since the 1980s been more politically mobilized, and I’m not seeking to defend all of evangelicalism is total innocence, I am pleading for nothing more than clarity in our definitions. Moreover, much like the Christian nationalism discussion, it is concerning that agreement, or disagreement with a set of political positions is used retrospectively, to redefine a theological term concerning doctrine and refocus it on political behavior. I know explanations and patterns are the whole aim of Political Science and polling. But it seems to me that respect for one subject should invite more theological nuance and qualification, not less. And where does this logic end? It seems we could transpose political activity onto different historical labels that have similar political behavior and arrive at similarly contrived redefinition a similarly contrived redefinition of terms. Moreover, activism, which includes politics, but is not limited to it is one of Bebbington quadrilaterals? Now we can question whether the pronounced focus on politics is wise or not, but it is certainly not a violation of angelical identity historically, if this is so to expand evangelical to include overlapping political interests is unwarranted for the use of theological categories. To explain non Christian political behavior is confusing and misunderstands evangelicalism own interplay with politics and ethics. And I would respectfully engage Dr. Burgess own words, and a New York Times editorial where he cites data that there are Muslims, Hindus, and Mormons who identify as evangelical simply because of how they vote. Berge rehashes how data suggests that one can reject the divinity of Jesus Christ and still be an Evangelical, aside from the theological problems of that claim, or questioning whether there’s a meaningful statistical sample representing these categories, this ought to raise suspicion about both the term itself and the contents that go into defining that term. In fact, let me state this in the plainest of terms. Any demographic research that allows the use of Evan Jellicle to be applied to those who reject the divinity of Jesus Christ exhibits profound theological malpractice, historical mischaracterization and muddled polling methodology. How polls go about defining evangelical can be and often is theologically reckless, not to mention the problems that can arise if one can self identify as evangelical without being clearly defined, or defined apart from adherence to any of angelical theology whatsoever. If Evan Jellicle is at route, a mere constellation of political affinity groups where Jesus Christ is an afterthought, we should ask the question How how did this come about? Is it because Evan Jellicle became a catch all term to describe people who label themselves evangelicalism, and who are broadly conservative in their outlook, or because the ubiquity of its usage throughout American culture necessarily lead to a three definition.

Andrew T. Walker
Just because a cluster of political beliefs feature predominantly within a group united in the same theology, it does not, on its surface, reveal whether those outside the faith tradition, who share similar political convictions are wrong to do so? Or do so for the same reasons. The first task is to determine what the foundation of those political views are, and whether those outside the faith tradition and question could find the political implications of a particular theology intelligible, but who do not adhere to the religion itself. For example, a pro life Muslim might find common cause with a pro life Christian, but that should not mean that the pro life Muslim embraces the label of angelical. This is a simple application of how the Christian natural law tradition conceives of morality, individuals of different backgrounds ought to be able to recognize why abortion is wrong. Thus, moral convictions held in agreement by a wide array of traditions does not entail a neutrality in moralities Foundation, only common moral operations, namely reason relatedly common political practice does not tell us much about the theology in question, except that the theology can produce political outputs that other groups of individuals outside that theological tradition can find appealing for the sake of the common good. If a theological system espouses a view of morality or politics that others agree with. This is not the evidence of the politicization of faith, but of the inherent non sectarianism of the faith in question. So a better way forward for us is to separate what is Evan Jellicle as a doctrinal matter, from political convictions, that many within evangelicalism might espouse, but are not into themselves, exclusive to evangelical belief. The pro life Hindu might have significant overlap with evangelicalism insofar as evangelicals are pro life. But a pro life Hindu is not adopting an Evangelical Theological rationale for their pro life activism and thus, the Hindu should not be considered Evan Jellicle for the purposes of political identification, even if he or she agrees with evangelicalism. Fifth. Is this a somewhat provincial discussion, debating whether evangelicalism should be theologically and historically defined obscures the global Church’s confessional identity? My own understanding of my evangelical identity has more in common with a conservative Nigerian Anglican from the global south than a white factory worker from the Midwest who votes Republican, but never goes to Church. Sure, we may vote the same way because we are opposed to progressive policies, and my fellow midwesterner may have strong affinity for America as a Christian nation. But his lack of church attendance, drunkenness, and serial monogamy is a terrible measure of his credentials as an Evangelical, regardless of how he would identify for polling purposes, but I would never know this from how most polls are conducted, that define or use the term evangelical. Let me end my remarks with my own definition of evangelical, and the implication that follows from my argument. And Evan Jellicle Christian is a Christian who believes in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the physically resurrected Son of God, the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the necessity of living for Jesus Christ in every dimension of life, and who aims to see others converted into under normal circumstances, attends church services every week, by definition does not consider someone who merely self identifies as evangelical for a poll and authentic evangelical. And by my definition, evangelicalism is ranks are going to decline. And I say to that, so be it. I gladly acknowledged that my narrower parameters for defining of angelical ism would mean the share of evangelicalism in the general population would precipitate precipitously decline. And that’s fine, because I’m not interested in bigness, for goodness sake, but for theological fidelity. Let me end with a thought experiment. The Amish believe in Jesus Christ, but the Amish also value manual labor. Is it therefore correct to say that all people who value manual labor are therefore Amish because they associate valuing manual labor as what it means to be Amish? No, such a determination completely misses the meaning of the word and goes looking to define something by common action, instead of common belief. But it is this logic which underscores why defining evangelical on political grounds is so facile and problematic. It’s a post hoc fallacy, we can acknowledge that language adapts and is reappropriated over time, and we should certainly investigate the role of religion in society and criticize any movement that would use religion as a pretext for political control, but not at the expense of muddying theological categories that proved to be more confusing than clarifying. Using evangelicalism as a political category reinforces the confusion sown by allowing the political to displace the theological.

Ryan Burge
I’ve got to admit something up front. I feel a little bit out of place at gatherings like this. I’m a part time pastor. But I’m certainly not a theologian. I took a few classes in ministry and Bible as an undergraduate, but that was 20 years ago, I know where to stay in my lane. My expertise is in the area of social science, pastors and theologians spin years, decades of intense study, thinking about what I call the vertical orientation in life that’s between an individual and God. I spent my entire adult lives thinking about the horizontal dimension of religion. That’s the relationship that a member of a church has to their pastor or other fellow members or the community outside the walls of the sanctuary. That means when I think about the context on the concept of evangelicalism, I’m not thinking about the Protestant Reformation, the Second Great Awakening or penal substitutionary atonement theory, I’m thinking about how terms are socially constructed. Thus, when someone is asked them to serve a quote, would you describe yourself as a born again, or evangelical Christian or not? My mind immediately begins to try and figure out how the average American parses that term. What’s the first thing they think of when they hear that word? Evangelical? I think for some respondents in the national survey, their thoughts immediately go to life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They consider the local church they attend, where their pastor extols the congregation to say the senators prayer and invites the Holy Spirit in their heart. But I think for most respondents, that’s not the image that’s conjured up when they hear that term, evangelical. In fact, I don’t think that most Americans think of the term as being primarily theological, religious or spiritual at all. Instead, the word immediately brings to mind other concepts like the religious right you In the culture war in how evangelicals have become the key voting bloc for the modern Republican Party. evangelicalism, despite the best efforts by many fine theologians and Christian institutions has been pulled away from its historical roots. And it’s now a term that denotes a social and political orientation more than it expresses a connection to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And no matter how many tweets are sent, no matter how many op eds that are written, no matter how many pastors preach sermons, about what it means to be an Evangelical, in my opinion, there’s very little possibility that the term will somehow revert to its historical usage. Let’s talk for a second about what that means exactly though. From a statistical perspective, surveys have been asking about evangelical self identification now for about 15 years. It’s a simple yes or no question. Do you identify as a born again or evangelical Christian or not? According to the cooperative election study in 2008 33% of Americans said yes to that question. And 2020 34% of Americans said yes, to that question. A third of Americans are born again when Barack Obama won the White House, and a third of Americans are born again when Joe Biden bested Donald Trump in 2020. As I mentioned in my new book, 20 myths about religion and politics in America, there is no evidence that evangelicalism is in decline in the United States. When I say this fact that Christian conferences I usually get a hearty Amen or two from the crowd. But this is the part where I have to stop and say, Wait a minute, there’s a lot more to the story than just the number. Well, the share of evangelicals in the US has not dropped. The composition of self identified evangelicals has changed fairly significantly. In 2008 16% of self identified evangelicals said they never or seldom attended church in 2020, that number had swelled to 29%. In 2008 29% of Evangelicals attended church once a year or less, in 2021 42% of Evangelicals said they went to church less than once a year. To put that in larger context amongst the general public 59% were attending a yearly are less than 2008. That’s up to 69% by 2021, a 10 percentage point increase in the Gen pop. But amongst evangelicals, it’s a 13 point increase. But that’s not the entire story not even close. Not only our non attenders, embracing the label of evangelical non Protestants are also more likely to self identify as evangelical on surveys to, for instance, about one in five Catholics say they are born again, or evangelical 7% of Jews say they’re evangelical 18% of Latter Day Saints. So they’re evangelical in 2008, and 2020, and nearly doubled to 34%. For the theologians in the room, I’m sure your head is on the verge of exploding. It seems completely nonsensical, a born again, Muslim, yes, a born again, Muslim. When social scientists hear something like that they automatically turn to measurement error. That’s the idea that when people take these surveys, they just make mistakes, they hit the wrong button, or they’re going too quickly through the survey, they don’t really understand the concepts. Maybe they just don’t have the skills necessary to understand what the word evangelical means. But I’ve dug into this a bunch. And I’m fairly convinced now that these aren’t just random people, mashing buttons on surveys and hoping of getting an amazon giftcard. more quickly. I set out with a straightforward question, what factors would lead a Muslim to say they’re evangelical? And I think I found it. The formula wasn’t that hard to put together amongst Muslims who say they never attend service at the local mosque, almost none of them said they were born again, five or 6%. Those who attended more than once per week were much more likely to identify as born again. But that effect was multiplied exponentially by political partisanship amongst Muslims who attended services frequently and identified as Democrats. 30% said they’re evangelical amongst high attending Republican Muslims. It was over 50%. By going through this exercise, I think we could all see what I’m pointing to the average American regardless say they’re Protestant or Catholic or Jewish or Mormon or Muslim. They see the term evangelical as denoting one of two things. One, I’m religiously devout, or two, I’m a conservative Republican, in sometimes it’s both how the average server responded, get to this place. It’s hard to know really, but I do think it’s fair to pin at least some of the blame on the influence of the media, and the echo chambers that often exist on Facebook, Twitter and the like. I remember in 2002, I was attending a Free Methodist college we were talking about better ways to brand ourselves to bring in a new crop of students and one of the older professors and the back said we should tell more people that we’re an evangelical institution. And I remember looking at my friends Go on what in the world is an evangelical and I grew up Southern Baptist. I never heard the term from the pulpit and the Sunday school or any youth group I ever went to. Today, it seems like the terms everywhere. Seems like everyone has a decent grasp of what that word means. And where that knowledge come from. I think the most likely culprit are the media reports about the close linkage between the evangelical movement and the Republican Party. For a book chapter I wrote a few years ago, I collected Tweets that contain the word evangelical in March of 2017. And then in December of 2018, in that first collection in March of 2017, only 15% of the word, the tweets with the word evangelical also contain the word Trump 18 months later that 15% had become 30%. In the minds of people, at least on social media, there’s an inextricable link in our American psyche, between evangelical Christianity and the GOP. And Donald Trump has only accelerated that trend. There’s this constant tension in the social sciences about how to interpret facts like this. What do we do with this? The tendency is to believe that we should somehow exclude those people because they’re making some kind of mistake on a survey. I can’t tell you how many times people scoff when I show them these results, something must be wrong here. I’ve been advised to remove these people from surveys entirely and do some other type of work. But I’m going to push back strongly against that kind of sentiment. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, when people tell you who they are, believe them. When someone says they’re Evangelical, the first reaction of Christians should not be to engage in boundary maintenance by trying to explain to them why they really aren’t an evangelical. And so the correct response is to try to find out how and why someone would voluntarily take on such a label, especially with some of the negative connotations that come along with it. One of the primary questions that human beings try to answer as they go through life is, who am I? And who are my people, a third of Americans willingly say on surveys, that they locate themselves in social space with the evangelical tribe. But that poses a difficult scenario for those people who identify as evangelical based on the more historical definition. Do they embrace these newcomers, even though they don’t really agree with them on most theological issues? Or do they find ways to create daylight between theological evangelicals and cultural evangelicalism? To make sense of this, let’s have two separate groups. There are traditional or old school evangelicals. They’re the ones that go to church, they read Christian books, they attend a life group, but then they’re your cultural evangelicals. They don’t go to church. They’ve never read The Purpose Driven Life. They can explain the difference between Transubstantiation and concept standardization, the drawing of the label, because they vote for Republicans, and they don’t like critical race theory, and they are on board with a woman’s right to choose. In my estimation, the old school evangelicals are the ones telling the cultural evangelicals, that they are invited to the party. Good luck with that. When former president of the Southern Baptist Convention JD Greer tried to change the name of his denomination, a great commission Baptist, he quickly realized how hard it is to change an institution has existed for over 150 years. Change is hard. So whether you like it or not traditional evangelicals, that word doesn’t belong to you anymore. It doesn’t belong to me. Words just float out there in the ether and people can grab on to them if they want. policing, it’s you should seems a bit silly if I were being honest, instead of every run, how about some introspection? Why would these non attenders become so willing to embrace this highly politically charged word? What are the factors that led this muddying of the waters? I will stand before you here and clearly say, I don’t think it’s entirely the fault of traditional evangelicals, news outlets have latched on to the connection between the GOP and evangelicalism and run with it. Social media has amplified that. But they couldn’t just invent this alliance out of whole cloth. There was something there to begin with, what was that? And can that be changed? In my newest book, I point out that Trump was the preferred choice in 2016. Amongst evangelicals in the primary at every attendance level, except for those who attended more than once a week, weekly attending evangelicals referred Trump over Cruz in the primary. So you look at the polling around Donald Trump about 2016 and 2020. There’s no evidence at all that evangelicals held their noses to cast a ballot for him. They liked him more than they liked Cruz and more than they liked Rubio, why could that be? What was attractive about Donald Trump that was not as attractive about Cruz, Rubio or John Kasich? Those questions lead to difficult answers, but they will tell us everything we need to know about what evangelicals are who they will be in the near future.

Jim Davis
Well, thank you both. I have to admit I was a little nervous when I realized that we have a theologian and a sociologist debating this that that you guys might talk past each other. And I actually don’t think that’s happening at all. I think this This couldn’t have been organized any better. I wouldn’t want to sociologists, I wouldn’t want to theologians you I like that we have a sociologist, and a theologian. So thank you for your arguments. I want to start with you, Ryan, I want to be clear, you’re you’re not saying that we should abandoned the term Evangelical, you are saying that how you use the term depends on the context. And as a Christian, what give us some guidance as we use the term? Where would be a wise way to use it? And where might we be wise not to use it?

Ryan Burge
Yeah, I think the best way forward for you know, our traditional evangelicals is to start using modifiers. Before that word, evangelical, right? I think we need to make a very clear distinction between a cultural Evangelical, and by the way, we talk in churches about being culturally Christian versus, you know, committed Christians all the time, I think the same kind of language and the cane, same kind of structure has to apply here, right? We’ve got to start thinking about what it means to be an evangelical who goes to church every week, versus one who never goes to church, we’ve got to start thinking about are the people who say they’re Evangelical, but don’t go to church? Are they willing to embrace church attendance? At some point? Are they turned off by church attendance? Are they only being drawn to it for the social, cultural, political reasons? Or do they like the entire package? What about things like abortion, same sex, marriage, transgender, where are they on those issues? Because that actually might be a tip off, right? That they’re actually trying to edge their way back towards religion, but they’re sort of doing it where they’re taking on the label first, and then the behavior follows afterwards. And I think that there’s a very real possibility that might be true. I think there’s a there’s a tension in religion all the time to engage in what I call boundary maintenance, right, which says, you’re in and you’re out. And I think all too often evangelicals have continued to say you’re in and you’re out. And the group that’s in gets smaller and smaller and smaller over time, it seems like I mean, if we look at the Southern Baptist Convention, right now, it’s basically some really conservative people telling some very conservative people that you’re not conservative enough. That’s what happens in evangelical ism. The problem is, though, they’re a lot more against you than they are, they’re a lot more for you than they’re against you. And I think there needs to be less discussion about who’s in and who’s out more than what do we have an agreement in? What do we disagree on? And can we overlook the things we disagree on to create a movement that makes more sense from not just the inside, but also the outside as well?

Jim Davis
How’s that land with you?

Andrew T. Walker
So I actually, there’s there’s a lot to agree with what he just said, first off, I want to commend him because he’s not necessarily speaking normatively here. He’s saying, he’s speaking of a descriptive reality. That this is simply the facts on the ground, you may not like it, but these are the facts on the ground. I still think that there is an argument for a defining evangelicalism, according to theology, and I acknowledge in my own remarks, even even with the the concept of evangelical theologically, there’s some elasticity to it. I mean, 1015 years ago, hypothetically, you would have had John MacArthur and Brian McLaren referring to themselves as evangelical if, if both of those individuals could hypothetically adopt that category. And I mean, they did at one point 20 years ago, perhaps I forget the exact timeline that shows there’s some fuzziness around it. But I still think at the end of the day, the term has a connotation of being overtly religious in nature. And so I don’t necessarily disagree with with his main argument, I, I do think wish we had more precision when we were dialing down into the polling methodology. And I hear Ryan saying, Well, it’s kind of the default for evangelicals to do the boundary marking. To that, I simply would say, Well, I mean, if words mean something, words, actually need to have definitions to them. And so I hear what you’re saying, Ryan, about the temptation to perhaps be evermore narrowing and exclusive. We can say that that’s a narrowing and an exclusivity. I could also call that theological precision. And I think dealing in the level of theology, I would like for there to be some coherence to this concept. We’re going to use it.

Jim Davis
So you make the case that non Christians shouldn’t use the term evangelical that that’s that’s ideal. Dr. Berge makes the case that working to get them to stop is ultimately a futile endeavor. Do you agree and how does what does? If you agree, what is the way forward?

Andrew T. Walker
I think one of the ways forward is to me, I do

Jim Davis
agree with the statement then that they are trying to get them to stop using the term is a futile endeavor.

Andrew T. Walker
I wouldn’t say that it’s futile. I’m not a determinist. I would say that we would need to have some serious work done at the level of denominational Life. And then even from there at the level of the local church, and kind of my view on theology and ecclesiology, we can resolve a lot of these things from the pulpit. Now, that doesn’t mean we need to have our pastors every Sunday, defining the four principles of evangelicalism, as though Bebbington quadrilateral is listed alongside the 10 commandments. That’s not what I’m calling for. But I would say that if we’re going to use the term Evangelical, let’s be consistent about it. And I’ll even acknowledge something else right and said, I find myself out of frustration and exhaustion. I still claim the title of angelical. But I find myself at times having to have qualifiers behind it. So I’m a confessional of angelical. I’m an orthodox evangelical. And so, again, I’m still defending my position. I think I’m I think I’m correct. But I still am acknowledging that the facts on the ground, dilute the word to a certain degree that it does require some type of additional nuance behind it.

Jim Davis
What do you say to that?

Ryan Burge
I think Andrew makes a really interesting point about how how would you begin to reshape the conversation about what an evangelical is like? What how does that work? And, and Andrew brings up pastors, I think pastors are being less prophetic now and guiding their congregations less now than then at least in my entire lifetime. And if I mean, if you look, if you look at the denominations that are growing in America, the only tradition that’s growing in America over the last 10 years, it’s not Methodist, it’s not Baptist, it’s not Lutherans, Presbyterians, it’s non denominational Christianity, that’s the only tradition over the last 10 years is larger today than it was 10 years ago. And if you look at the kind of, you know, pastors that lead the church, and sometimes they’re very professionally trained, right, they have theology degrees, a lot of times, it’s guys who are insurance salesmen who started a church in their basement, who have mostly no theological training. But what those churches are really defined by is their growth, you know, that’s the reason those exists many times. And what they do then is they change the way they preach. When growth is the key, you change everything you do to center around that key. And what you realize as a pastor very quickly is controversy usually does not grow a church, it does the opposite of growing a church. So in a lot of those non denominational churches, they don’t talk about what makes an evangelical and evangelical they don’t talk about different ways to think about atonement. They don’t talk about different ways of forgiveness and different interpretation of the Old Testament. They teach. They preach sermons on ways like three ways to be a better father, or four ways to be a better parent, which doesn’t at all touch this. And so in that void, something has to inject itself in that in that hollowness. And unfortunately, I think social media and the media, the mainstream media has reinforced this narrative that evangelicalism, they’re not talking about the divinity of Jesus Christ, and he talks about evangelicalism on MSNBC, right? It’s not being talked about the from the pulpit, so that word has become like this hollow shell that other people are pouring into. And now young people are understanding it, because pastors are, I’ll be I’ll be I’m a pastor, too. We’re cowards. I don’t want to lose my job. You know, I don’t want to be offensive, I want to try to make everyone happy. And when you try to define words, sometimes you make people unhappy, because you’re saying I’m in and you’re out. You belong, I don’t belong. So I don’t know how we get to a point where we can overcome that growth problem.

Andrew T. Walker
Can I kind of add some please do so a lot of this conversation, I think, we have to consider that. evangelicalism is sometimes a victim of its own success. So one of the reasons it’s gotten diluted or redefined in society is for a whole host of reasons that really no one singular person is responsible for social scientists didn’t just wake up one day and think we’re going to ruin this term. But I do think, though, that that there is some further work that needs to be done. When we think about the relationship between political identity, and we’re political behavior and evangelical theology, because at the principio level, we will we hear the the criticism of a well, you evangelicalism, I’ll just vote Republican. I hear that criticism, and my first response is, okay, well, that sounds like you’re, you’re immediately D legitimizing that. My first question would want to be well, why might that be the case? Because what I’m interested in as a theologian as an as an ethicist, is to ask, what about a particular theologies system might have outputs in a certain direction. So for example, if if Evan Jellicle is believe, and an idea of metaphysics that created reality is, is immutable, that’s going to lead us in the direction of certain beliefs around gender around sexuality. And so I don’t think that adverting to political definitions, dismiss the theological overtones. I think we need to figure out. How does theology actually relate more to politics? Which say you’ve opened

Jim Davis
a door to a very interesting question, I think. So Ryan has talked about the void, then I thought that was a really good point. But on the other side of it you we have Evan Jellicle, leaders, and let’s just say people like Robert Jeffers at First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, who we hear talking primarily about political issues. So what effect do you think theologians and pastors who are primarily heard to be speaking on political issues inside evangelicalism? How did you think that effects

Andrew T. Walker
were? So I mean, I think some some pastors have a native reflexive interest in these issues, and they want to discuss those issues. Everyone has kind of their pet projects, right? So I have to have a category for the pastor who just actually feels called to be a pastor who who is engaging issues in the public square. At the same time, I often want to kind of reframe this conversation and to ask, Well, why wouldn’t we expect evangelicals to perhaps be a little bit more political right now? Because look at the culture around us. Right now. It is, though, it’s presented on social media, by certain scholars, that evangelicalism or the culture war aggressors, that we are the ones who are wanting to bring about our morality, this foreign morality, this religion, morality, on a society that doesn’t want it. That’s not what we think we think that my goodness, society is changing all around us, basic creation, order, norms are being overturned, we’re not we’re not debating taxation, and line item vetoes. We’re, we’re discussing what is a man and what is a woman and who gets to live. And so necessarily, you’re going to expect evangelicals to have to address those issues. Now, we can and I acknowledged this in my remarks, we can scrutinize and criticize how some certain pastors do it, I wouldn’t endorse how all pastors talk about politics, but the idea that politics is simply off the table, because that’s controversial, or that’s gonna get you in trouble. I just reject that. Because that’s, that’s evidence of an underdeveloped theology, a theology of engagement and a theology of order. All politics is, is a reflection on order. If we believe order is given to us by a creator, we’re necessarily going to want to see that order reflected in our common lives together, that we call a political community. And that’s not just the Bible, that’s Aristotle, we are seeking to figure out how to live our life together in ways to seek the common good, that all would flourish. I’m not seeking to do politics, for my privilege, my dominance, because it’s because I genuinely want to see people thrive. And that thriving is a reflection of that theological order that I think really exists.

Jim Davis
I think we would agree that there’s you hear the refrain, just preach the gospel, don’t get political. Well, the Christian ethic is essentially political. You can’t you can’t pursue kingdom values without being political in some way. But is it fair to say there’s a difference when Evan Jellicle is being political, and our evangelical leaders saying this presidential candidate is God’s man for the

Andrew T. Walker
job? Yeah. So I mean, as as as much as I trumpet the need for Christians to be politically aware and politically engaged, I would still be someone who would say, pastors ought not to be making political endorsements. Churches ought not to be making political endorsements. As a general rule. Carl Henry wrote a famous, had some teachings back in the 70s on this, where he talked about the church and only speak where it has the mandate, the competency, and the steward and the jurisdiction. So churches should not be issuing proclamations about marginal tax rates, or sugar subsidies. But if there are issues that hit upon those creation, order, buckets, life, human flourishing, what is a human being? I think it’s appropriate in limited circumstances for the church to say, hey, we do need to speak here you mentioned JD Greer. At some point, you did. JD Greer, who is one pretty averse to getting really politically entangled. Commendably. I think it was in 2012. His Church released a video because North Carolina was debating a marriage amendment and JD Greer, not an overtly political guy. He said, Hey, Church, marriage is a first order creation ordinance issue that we need to get right because we think everyone’s interests are at stake. We think you should vote for this. And I thought that’s totally appropriate. That this is something the church actually has the mandate the competency and the jurisdiction to speak to

Jim Davis
Ryan, you again going a little bit back to you’re talking about the difficulty of trying to get people to stop using the term Evangelical, the late RC sprawl, I can remember him being frustrated by the muddy waters around the term evangelical and he, I honestly don’t know if he was joking or how serious he was. But I remember him saying why don’t we embrace a new term and the term he, he put forward with substitution missed it to get to the substitutionary atonement? Yeah. How does the idea of creating a new term land with

Ryan Burge
you? I think it’s a tremendous mistake. I just think people don’t think about how many think about New Coke for a second, right? It was focus group like crazy in the blind taste test, New Coke beat old Coke, hands down over and over again, they spent $100 million publicizing how great New Coke was and it ended up being one of the largest failures in the history of corporate branding. And we’ll never do that again. Right, that word? It still has cachet, right? In American culture. But I think my here’s, here’s where I really, really struggle with. You know, we talk about pastors in endometrioid. I do think the churches speak out prophetically on issues that are first order issues, right? Things that do kind of bump up against the biblical ethic. But then I guess, when I push back, here’s what I would say. Then why do evangelicals basically speak with one voice on things like taxation and immigration, which are not first order theological issues? I mean, in the new book, I basically make this one of the arguments is that evangelicals don’t vote for the Republicans just because of abortion and gay marriage. They both Republicans because they like low taxes, they like low regulation, they like less immigration. So how is that happening? Who is discipling evangelicals? Because I’ve, I’ve talked to a lot of sermons in my life. I’ve never heard a pastor say we should have lower tax rates. I’ve never heard that. So where is that idea coming from? And what I would argue is that partisanship now is a more formative factor in the lives of Evangelicals than theology is even amongst evangelicals who go to church a lot.

Andrew T. Walker
Can I Can I please get a response? So, so you and I had talked before this, and we both agreed that when you measure for church attendance, what we refer to as kind of democratic virtues necessary for a healthy liberal democracy, those tend to increase. And I remember I participated in a report of a year, a few years back, that showed the more you attend church, the more sensitive you are to issues of racial reconciliation, the more tolerant you are of immigrants in your community, to me that see that actually backups, my argument, because I’m saying, Okay, well, it’s because those people are actually being discipled. I would respectfully question in the polling methodology that Ryan would have appealed to whether or not those individuals who are identifying as evangelicalism in are doing so because you know, they like taxes a certain way, and they like immigration a certain way. Do they truly understand the theological implications of that? Or is it just kind of a broad self ID of angelical labeled? Well,

Jim Davis
you also brought this up in your arguments. And so let me let me ask you for clarity sake, Dr. Walker, he’s made the case that and I quote, any demographic research that allows the use of angelical to be applied to those who consider themselves Muslim, Hindu, or who reject the demitted, Divinity of Jesus Christ exhibits profound theological malpractice, a historical characterization, and muddled polling methodology. How would you respond to that statement?

Ryan Burge
First, I’m not a theologian, so I don’t get

Jim Davis
it from a sociological standpoint, it is a sociological statement. Actually, it Yeah.

Ryan Burge
So to me the question, Are you evangelical? It’s not a vertical question. It’s a horizontal question. Right. I think everything in life is a horizontal question. Because, you know, I’ve been taught to think that way. Right? So I think it’s a completely valid question, because what it does is it says, like I said, I think the number one question we ask ourselves is, we walk in a room with a bunch of random people, we have to sit down and eat lunch, how do we figure out what table to sit at? How do we figure out who our people are? We’re looking for any kind of touchstone that we do. And I even do this too. When I go to a different church, I can automatically say a couple of words and know that I’m part of the crew because we speak the same language, right? I think it’s what evangelicalism can like a Shibboleth, right. It’s almost like a an entree into the kingdom, a certain kind of Kingdom. You say the certain guy, even the word patriot, right? You said the word patriot almost is almost synonymous with Republican today. They’re Democrat patriots. I don’t think anyone can deny the fact. But the word patriot now has a connotation because people like Donald Trump people when the Republican Party basically said, You my followers are patriots. My voters are patriots, right. I think the same thing has happened with Evangelicals even think about how Trump taught he said words like the Evangelicals love me, you know, which is like such a ham fisted way to say it, but evangelicals said yes, we do. Right like and by the way 80% of Don’t even just vote for Donald Trump. They are the you know what the are the strongest Republican voting bloc in America today. So, in a world where politics seems like it’s taking up every ounce of our lives every inch of what we do, that is the way that we orient our lives now. And here’s what I worry about as a, as a democratic theorist, here’s what I worry about. When the church becomes a mono culture, it does not invite new people in. Right, I think that is an absolute travesty. Because in the night, late 1980s, about 45% of Evangelicals were Democrats, about 45% were Republicans. By the way, the main lines also was pretty evenly split. And Catholics are evenly split in the late 1980s. Now, 70% of white even though we go to church every week aren’t Republicans, it was 30% in the 1970s, that it to me is bad, if any organization by the way, I’ll say this about atheists to atheist 85% of atheists vote for Joe Biden, they don’t welcome in people who are not progressive, that is any religious organization, that’s a political monoculture is incredibly problematic, because it’s already creating barriers between us and them. There are already enough barriers to getting someone to church to begin with.

Andrew T. Walker
But then I want to kind of push back there and say just a little bit, okay. Leaving aside the bland nominalism of evangelicalism, if you were to get a secular progressive, and a conservative Christian, let’s remove evangelical for a second. And you said, Hey, your philosophical system says X, there’s this political party that says Why, tell me how you’re going to correlate your your voting behavior. And it’s the conservative Christian. They value the dignity of human life, because Genesis chapter one, Psalm 139, I can’t necessarily criticize them for saying, Well, I’m going to vote for the party, leave aside labels for a second I, I’m going to vote for the party that represents this first order issue over here. And so again, I and then with the philosophical progressive, I want to say, Okay, well, this party over here says, bodily autonomy, reign supreme, you’re, you’re a materialist in your philosophy. So you don’t believe believe in the soul. So you’re okay with abortion. So therefore, you’re going to vote for that party. That’s okay with abortion. This, this speaks to what you and I are discussing as more or less the growing polarization of our parties. And as politics grows more partisan, all political platforms are a reflection of some underlying metaphysics, we maybe want to think we can not have that conversation. But remove Republican and Democrat for our conversation. If you have two platforms, with certain political convictions at their core, and one comports a little bit more with Christianity, and one is vehemently opposed to Christianity. I just can’t say that those individuals voting collectively are necessarily wrong to do so.

Jim Davis
So let’s let’s switch gears for a moment. In your argument, you talked about the this being a provincial debate, because we are connected, in fact, to a larger Evan Jellicle global movement. But I started to think about other parts of this world, and how the term is used and it and it, I’m just not sure, I want to push on that a little bit and get your input on it. Because I know there’s some places in East Asia where the term Evan Jellicle is just not used. It’s just not used. If you go to India, and you’re among Indian Christians who do not speak English, so that they’re not influenced by the West, they don’t use the term of angelical. Now they do have other qualifiers, a Jesus follower, a Bible believer born again, those kinds of things. I was a missionary for five years in Italy, where Christians don’t use of angelical Christians don’t use the word Christian anymore, because in that context, it purely means Roman Catholic. So if if Ryan’s making the argument that contextually we should, our context is going to dictate how we use the term Evangelical, and if that’s already taking place globally, why should we not do the same thing here?

Andrew T. Walker
I mean, I think I would answer that, in part by the fact that whatever morphs, and adaptations are present with the term of angelical. I still still don’t think that it has been completely taken over by political connotation. Now I know that I’m an academic, I study these ideas for a living. I know that I’m a little not like the rest of the population. But I still think If I were to go on the man on the street, woman on the street and say, an Evangelical, what do you think that means? I actually still think and I Ryan, I’m sure would disagree with me here. I’m sure he would disagree with me. I still think that there’s going to be some religious overtone to it. Now I’ll let him have his rebuttal. Because I know he, he wants to rebut though,

Ryan Burge
I think it depends on what part of the country you. I mean, you asked it in Massachusetts, you’d get the political stuff to the top, you ask it Alabama, you might get more religion, but I think you would also get some politics wrapped up in the whole thing together. But I think that’s the, that’s the other thing about evangelic, even in America, and Evan Jellicle. In Massachusetts, it’s not the same as Evan Jellicle. Politically as one from Alabama or Mississippi, there’s even regional variations and what that term means, based on where you live in the country. But I think, here’s, here’s really the core of the problem that we have in America, we have a two party system, which I think in many ways has ruined the religious political situation that we have in this country, because in a lot of European countries, you can be a liberal economic policy, but be pro life and have a party that represents you. In our current situation, we you can’t do that there are very few politicians that are pro life, but also Democrats or progressive liberals, and then vice versa, right. So what’s happened is the political polarization because you’ll have two parties that are moving and we know that statistically, by the way, both parties are moving towards the edge that’s forcing American religion to basically choose. And what we’re seeing is the hollowing out of American religion I wrote a piece one time called Are we all evangelicals now? Because I think in the future, we’re going to see 30 40% of Roman Catholics gonna say they’re evangelical why because they go to Mass every Sunday, and they vote for the Republican in their pro life, and they’re anti LGBT, because they’re going to link those two things together. And the Catholics who aren’t those things are not going to be going to Mass at all. Jews, Latter Day Saints are all going to start moving in that direction. So we’re just gonna have Evan Jellicle religion, not Christianity, but Evan Jellicle religion on one side, and then the nones on the other side. And there’s nothing in the middle. How do we move forward as a democracy when we’re so politically polarized, but also, we’re so religiously polarized that there’s not any people who are just like, Well, I see both sides and pluralism, there is no pluralism, right? Either I’m right and you’re wrong, or you believe in something I don’t believe in. And that’s it. That’s what we’re getting to is that we’re getting to and this is, this sudden, when you talk about a lot more is the the share of Americans who say that religion is a net negative on society is also growing every year. And I think a lot of that a lot of the atheist movement in America, secularization movement in America has actually pushed back against evangelical culture, and politics, we cannot deny the fact that a lot of atheists will go on social media, and they empty the pews and tell terrible stories about how they were abused by religion not to minimize that, because many of them were harmed by religion, but they’re trying to influence the people following them to do the same thing. So what we’re seeing is really, we’re creating this, we call the culture war, which is this overly blown concept, we’re really seeing a religious war in America between a growing number of secular people who hate religion, and number of evangelicals, who have no room for anything, but their style of religion. And that leaves a huge chunk of America who used to go to church 50 years ago, not going at all and not getting any of the benefits that we see from church attendance.

Andrew T. Walker
So I think a part of me here also wants to say like a evangelical is not an inspired inerrant term. It’s a construct that we use, historically, theologically. And if we are 100 years in the future, and the Internet has continued to morph and change, I would be potentially okay with reconsidering the usage of that term. What I would say right now, though, is I think it still has religious overtones to it. And I think that the media, I think some of polling methodology, I think they bear a a significant portion of the burden for allowing the term to be moved from its theological Center. I’m not a pollster Ryan, is I couldn’t sit here and tell you how every poll goes about defining the term Evangelical, my understanding is it’s more or less, are you in of angelical? Yes or no? I think that’s, that’s a design flaw. And so my plea, if there was a common ground that we were trying to find in this conversation, I would say, Hey, do me a solid. And if you would define evangelical by certain parameters, and in fact, the study I was involved with, a few years ago with an organization I was working for, we actually defined evangelical more narrowly along those lines of church attendance, and we got different results than what I think Ryan would get with kind of generic self ID. So I think to me, the argument that I’m trying to make a sustained plea for is more Precision around the term evangelical if we’re going to keep using it, because words do matter, they do have historical continuity. And so let’s go backwards, define the term theme with more precision, and then see what happens. And if I mean, this is what I said in my in my remarks, if evangelicalism precipitously declines because of narrowed parameters, that’s fine. I don’t necessarily have to be big for the term to be justified. I want the term to be coherent.

Jim Davis
Well, let me ask a very overlapping question. Given the history of our country and how we came up how we got to this term, I think you stated the term evangelical was invented, because of a need to contextually differentiate our selves from fundamentalist and theological liberals in the early part of the century, the term fundamentalist was originally embraced as a good term that create that communicated our belief in the things like inerrancy of Scripture, virgin birth, substitutionary, atonement, bodily resurrection, of the authenticity of the gospel, miracles and those kinds of theological things. But as time grew on, fundamentalism grew as well. And to a new meeting no longer just those essentials, but toward what we now today call fundamentalism. So Carl Henry, who you mentioned just a little bit ago, and others pioneered the term Evan Jellicle, to distinguish from this new fundamentalism, as we now know it today, and theological liberalism. So even the origin of the term evangelical was one of recent clarity to distinguish from other groups because other terms became muddied. Now, the evangelicalism is shifting into a new meaning not by any of our desires. And you admit there might be one day where it might be helpful to adopt a new clarifying label, when would that time be? When would we as the church know? Yeah, it’s it’s time to think about a new term.

Andrew T. Walker
Oh, goodness, that’s beyond my probably capacity to answer. I would say, goodness, I mean, I don’t I don’t have a good answer for this. That’s fair.

Jim Davis
I mean, I’m curious just because we’ve already done it once. Yeah. And it’s in our heritage, what would necessitate and we can make this an old

Andrew T. Walker
play. I mean, I would maybe dispute some of the historical narrative, because it does predate the mid 20s or the early 20th century, it kind of a post reformation. And I’m not a history’s I’m not going to dwell historian. I’m not going to dwell on this at length. But there are there are theological ideas behind the movement. The movement can stay this the movements identity stays the same. The language I understand whether it’s fundamentalist evangelical can be modified, but there’s still a coherent concept. So my question is, is has the has the concept itself lost all meaning? And I don’t think it has. Yeah,

Ryan Burge
that’s good. We’ll get I’ll give you a great example that that is mind blowing to a lot of people who don’t know much about American political history is William Jennings Bryan, willing to use Brian was a biblical literalist. Right. I mean, he was the prosecutor in the Scopes Monkey Trial In Tennessee, where he basically said or stopped in the Old Testament and got completely ridiculed by that by Clarence Darrow and HL Mencken in the entire, you know, mainstream media, right? He politically, he was a socialist, like a Bernie Sanders socialist. He said, No one can make a million dollars honestly, in this country. He hated rich people. I mean, just with a passion. So he was an evangelical theologically, but politically, he was the opposite of any modern day, evangelical. I mean, these words, you know, the parties, even people say, Well, you know, the Republicans are the party of Lincoln. Well, I mean, that’s a very interesting like approach, right? Because we know the parties have sort of switched in space over time, the word evangelical can switch in space over time, where it means something else, and maybe there’s a future evangelicalism that is not so tied to the Republican Party in in conservative politics. But I think at this point, the die has been cast, right? How do you come back from what it is now, I don’t see any major you know, evangelical preacher pulling us back towards the center or even trying to pull us back to the center we’re seeing one or two things pastors up saying the Robert Jeffress route, which is being very political and being very right wing or not being political at all. So I think the die has been cast in this has been so solidified in the minds of not just older people, younger people to they’re gonna carry that mentality throughout the rest of their lives. And I think I don’t see a world in which we bring evangelicalism back to being a multi, you know, multi party, multi, you know, etiology approach. It’s going to be more of the same kind of thing.

Jim Davis
Well, we’re running out of time I want I want to say how much I’ve enjoyed being around you to even just even before the debate I think you’ll just met but it seems like you’d become fast friends. Sure. And and they’re really you’re both seeking clarity on a On this issue, and you’re coming at it from different disciplines, which I think has been very helpful and interesting. Let me ask you as a final question, what’s been the most compelling argument of your opponent?

Jim Davis
I think Andrews discussion of how much should we prompt people on surveys about what an evangelical is, is something that we always struggle with as social scientists, because we know if we give you too much in the question, you’re not going to read it all. And you’re gonna be less likely to finish the survey. So how do we balance those two competing interests of giving you even when I say like 80% of Atheists say they’re liberal, someone goes, well, what’s a liberal? I’m like, I don’t know, you know, like, how do we define what a term means? But the problem that I guess my second question, though, is how would I define the word evangelical in a survey, you know, in a short, concise way that most evangelicals would agree with? I think you would even have a problem there. It has to include this.

Jim Davis
All right. I’m ready. Y’all can work together. That’d be wonderful. Yeah.

Andrew T. Walker
So what I would say is a couple of things. First off, Ryan is really good with the numbers game, describing how things are not necessarily how he would like things to be. So again, he’s doing descriptive analysis, not normative analysis. And I think that is, in an age of kind of partisanship has infected everything. I detect less of that in Him. And so I also sense that there is less of an ideological axe to grind with how he talks about evangelicalism. One of the reasons I admire some of his work is because he presents data that kind of goes against some of the popular narratives out there. And that sends the signal to me that someone is interested in doing honest work, not just simply backing up their tribes, viewpoints.

Jim Davis
Well, guys, it has been a joy getting to know both of you and hearing your work and your ideas. And I look forward to seeing where this goes. And we may sit down sometime in the future as things change and revisit it. So thank you so much for today. Thanks