On Evangelical Theology

Expanding the Vision

One of my points of focus over the last decade or so has been trying to unpack the fragmentation of the evangelical world. Generational changes, technological advances, shifts in cultural practices, and a general sense of cosmopolitanism have made understanding evangelicalism much more difficult.

There is nobody charged with managing the boundaries of who is in and who is out. The old saw about “liking Billy Graham” no longer works. The Bebbington Quadrilateral (authority of scripture, the atonement, Christ as Savior, and evangelism/activism) is a useful heuristic but is sufficiently open to interpretation to allow many factions under its umbrella.

We have data from the major polling organizations — Pew, PRRI, Gallup — that could potentially tell us something about evangelical belief but it tends to be vague. There are questions about belief in God (or a higher power), the Bible, and Heaven/Hell but these are too often like the questions in children’s church where the fight answer is always clear (Jesus!). Practices are not necessarily correlated with these beliefs (which is not surprising given the lack of variance on the belief questions). And a shocking (to me) number of evangelicals rarely if ever attend church.

Given all that, it is not surprising that evangelical voting patterns look amazingly similar to Republican voting patterns. As I’ve written before, things may be as simple as understanding that evangelicals are Republicans who attend church marginally more often than non-evangelicals do. What we really need to understand is how these evangelical Christians are operationalizing their theology to inform their voting preferences.

As a general rule, my focus in this newsletter is on issues of sociology, religion, politics, culture — things I know something about. I get nervous when I have to wade into unfamiliar waters. Like Theology.

I am not a theologian. At best, someone studying the sociology of religion is theologically adjacent. I have many friends who are theologians and hope they can add to what I’m posing here.

My reflections today come from the convergence of three things I recently came across. Last week, my friend Scot McKnight devoted his newsletter to a consideration of Mike Glenn’s Preaching in a Post-Truth World: Recentering the Pulpit in a Chaotic World. He quotes Mike’s observation about his neighbors: “These days, I was talking to people who didn't seem to have any theological foundations in their lives at all.” That prompted me to make the following comment:

This captures something I’ve been pondering for several years. Pastors, pundits, and pollsters (including sociologists) have long acted as if the positions taken by religious folk are grounded in theological understandings. I’m coming to believe, as Mike has, that this was a big mistake. People start with their preferred positions and then find rationales to support them. These rationales (patina?) might involve a couple of prooftext scriptures and a vague reference to being a Christian. Responding to that will require moving the focus of identity from preference to a more substantial ground of Gospel and Restoration.

The second thing that got my attention was the news involving Iowa Senator Joni Ernst. In a town hall last week, she faced questions about the potential impact of Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill. When told that “People will die”, she responded “We’re all going to die.” Over the weekend, she posted a video that showed her walking through a cemetery. She “apologized” for saying that everyone would die and then for not telling people that the tooth fairy wasn’t real. If that weren’t enough, she ended her video telling people that they’d have eternal life if they just believed in Jesus (I’m told she’s Lutheran, but still).

The third piece came from my friend Bruce Barron’s SubStack. He often writes on international religion (and has recommended many followers to this page). Today, he was exploring the upcoming presidential vote in South Korea. He quotes Fuller Seminary professor Sebastian Kim, who is Korean.

Korean evangelicals are ideologically anti-communist, hold conservative values on moral, ethical, and social issues, pursue democracy (with a certain hierarchical and authoritative approach), and favor a capitalistic and neo-liberal economic system.

What motivates the South Koran vote? Social issues, democracy, capitalism, and free markets.

Too much of what passes for popular evangelical theology, it seems to me, is not unlike what Joni Ernst pointed to. As I wrote that last sentence, Holly Berkley Fletcher’s SubStack showed up in my inbox making the same critique I’m making (great minds and all that).

Politically, evangelicals’ small government conservatism has been premised on this as well. Private, Christian charity has long been seen as superior to government intervention, and personal faith and repentance is viewed as a good way for a person to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and, at scale, for eradicating society’s social ills. The problem is, of course, that this doesn’t really work out, as seen in the lagging social and economic indicators of the most evangelical states.

What kind of theological position assumes that the health and well-being of people in the world is irrelevant to God’s creative work? Is His grand plan to simply introduce individuals to the potential offered by the Four Spiritual Laws? Is this all about Cara Meredith’s “Cry Night”?

A little over fifteen years ago, I read The Hole In Our Gospel by Richard Stearns, then-president of World Vision. He wasn’t a theologian either, but recognized a glaring problem. He wrote:

I believe that we have reduced the gospel from a dynamic and beautiful symphony of God’s love for and in the world to a bare and strident monotone. We have taken this amazing good news from God, originally presented in high definition and Dolby stereo, and reduced it to a grainy, black-and-white, silent movie. In doing so, we have also stripped it of much of its power to change not only the human heart but the world. (18)

Scot McKnight often reminds us of the importance of “Gospeling”; to follow the image of Christ’s life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension. There is far more involved than the Sinner’s prayer.

Even the use of biblical texts by evangelicals needs to be supported by theological reflection. It’s one thing to quote Genesis 1:27 as a proof point that God created males and females. It’s quite another to actually reflect on the wonders of Creation, including the remarkable diversity among eight billion souls.

Mike Glenn is right that his neighbors don’t have a theological framework. I’m very afraid that this holds true for his parishioners as well. Changing that can go a long way to inform South Korean (and American) voting patterns, to create a more just society (including health care for those in need), and inoculating against Christian Nationalism.

In my book (which just got to 500 copies sold!), I offer a critique of Biblical Worldviews as reflecting an underdeveloped theology of Christian Higher education. It its place, I offer insights from Old Testament scholar Pete Enns who shifted my focus to Colossians 1:16-17.

I’m no theologian. Just a retired sociology professor. But I think this provides a useful starting point for how evangelicals can understand their role in the world.

To be partners in that Creation, aligning with Christ in holding all things together.