Defining Evangelicalism

I just finished attending a conference called "Envision 08: The Gospel, Politics, and the Future" at Princeton University's Campus. It was basically a group of theologians, activists, and church leaders that identified themselves as "Evangelicals" but rejected the "Religious Right" social and political identity. It was a group of people that wanted to maintain the integrity and role of Jesus Christ in the Christian faith, but wanted to see God’s kingdom furthered here on earth. Of course that is a gross oversimplification of the way these two elements overlap, interplay, and build upon each other, but recent church history paints a general picture of an over-emphasis on the spiritual or an over-emphasis on the material/physical.

The general sentiment of the EV08 conference was to bridge this gap, and there were certainly many excellent and important points raised at this conference. But there were also many points that raised red flags for me. I suspect many of these people were frustrated with the “brand” of Christianity that I often witnessed growing up – a Christianity that had as its main focus personal salvation, personal piety (often a collapse into unhealthy legalism), and a rather narrow political emphasis on gay marriage and abortion at the cost of little dialogue about poverty, AIDS, homelessness, racial reconciliation, etc. And I certainly understand the problems here – Christianity certainly deals with salvation, but it also deals with justice and poverty and service to others.

I suppose the big worry I had at this conference is the fact that “Love” is supposed to solve everything. Over and over again I heard about Christ’s love, and the way he served others, and how the solution to all our racial, ethnic, socio-economic problems, etc. is to just love each other like Christ loved others. But this mentality seems to broach upon an over-emphasis on the material world – yes, Christ loved others and served others. But he also called people into a new and costly way of life. His costly way of life was not the “I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re all okay whatever it is that we’re doing as long as we love one another.” Christ’s love was not always warm and fuzzy; often it was demanding and difficult and required drastic lifestyle changes. So loving others with the end goal of material comfort for all is not the be-all-end-all of Christianity – lots of secular organizations have that goal. Christianity is also concerned with “the cost of discipleship” and the way that we are to encourage and prod and grow one another through authentic discipleship that sharpens our spiritual lives in tandem with our material lives. Shane Claiborne made a very important and much needed statement at this conference: “It’s easy to fall in love with love, but Shalom always had some sense of order.” He said you cannot think people can just get together and love one another and magically fix the world – there has to be some sense of order and structure. And let’s face it: Christ had very distinct things to say about helping the poor and about lifestyle expectations regarding sexuality, the value of life, and our salvation. So yes, Christianity is a “BOTH/AND” situation…and I think that Evangelicals are still struggling to carve that middle road from both the left and the right.