HOW NEO-EVANGELICALS LOST THE “GOOD NEWS”AND SINNED AGAINST DONALD TRUMP

      Abraham traveled to the Negev and settled down. While he was there, he said of his wife Sarah...“She’s my sister.”

So Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent for Sarah and took her. But God came to Abimelech in a dream that night and told him, “You’re as good as dead—that woman you took, she’s a married woman.”  Now Abimelech had not yet so much as touched her. He said, “Master, would you kill an innocent man? Didn’t he tell me, ‘She’s my sister’? And didn’t she herself say, ‘He’s my brother’? I had no idea I was doing anything wrong when I did this.”

God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know your intentions were pure, that’s why I kept you from sinning against me; I was the one who kept you from going to bed with her. So now give the man’s wife back to him. He’s a prophet and will pray for you—pray for your life. If you don’t give her back, know that it’s certain death both for you and everyone in your family.”

Abimelech called in Abraham and said, “What have you done to us? What have I ever done to you that you would bring on me and my kingdom this huge offense? What you’ve done to me ought never to have been done. Whatever were you thinking of when you did this thing?”

Abraham said, “I just assumed that there was no fear of God in this place and that they’d kill me to get my wife. Besides, the truth is that she is my half-sister; she’s my father’s daughter but not my mother’s”.                                                                           Genesis 20

How would you feel if God came to you and said “You’re as good as dead…you took something that isn’t yours!”?

Now, Abimelech was the King and could basically take anything he wanted…as he took Sarah...believing she was not married. But, taking her was not the sin. Sleeping with another man’s wife was. So Abimelech defended himself and said “I’m an innocent man! I never touched that woman!” Literally, by the grace of God, Abimelech had abstained from sin. God said “I know. That’s why I kept you from sin “. Of course …all sin is worthy of death. The Apostle Paul reminds us, in his letter to the Romans, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

Abimelech found himself in a precarious situation. If he had slept with Sarah…innocently…he was going to die.  He was understandably upset and asked Abraham “how could you have done this to me? What have I ever done to you?” Abraham said “I JUST ASSUMED THERE WAS NO FEAR OF GOD IN THIS PLACE”.

What an insult to Abimelech…putting him in such a precarious situation because of an “assumption”.

So here is the real sin in this incident: Abraham sinned against Abimelech by “assuming” something about him. Assuming is believing something is true…or probably true…without any real knowledge. Most important, in this case Abraham was wrong.

Which is often the case with assumptions…

In church parlance this is called “Eisegesis”. Eisegesis is the interpretation of a text (or, situation) by reading into it one's own ideas — as compared to “Exegesis”. Exegesis is an explanation of a text (or, situation) based on the content of the text itself. Every evangelical knows the only proper hermeneutic is “Exegesis”.

Except…apparently…Neo-evangelicals.

Let me begin by explaining what an Evangelical is…borrowing liberally from Wikipedia. The word evangelical has its roots in the Greek word for "gospel" or "good news". In the beginning of the movement "gospel" always meant "good news", or the story of the historical Jesus…Son of God. As time passed, "gospel" began to be understood synonymously with “Bible”, the written account of the "good news".

It’s not difficult to discern that the Bible is central to Evangelical theology…and fully informs the evangelical distinctive. Evangelicals believe in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity. One influential definition of Evangelicalism has been proposed by historian David Bebbington. He notes four distinctive aspects of Evangelical faith: CONVERSIONISM, BIBLICISM, CRUCICENTRISM, and ACTIVISM, noting, "Together they form a quadrilateral of priorities that is the basis of Evangelicalism."

Conversionism, or belief in the necessity of being "born again", has been a constant theme of Evangelicalism since its beginnings. To Evangelicals, the central message of the gospel is justification by faith in Christ and repentance, or turning away, from sin. Conversion differentiates the Christian from the non-Christian, and the change in life it leads to is marked by both a rejection of sin and a corresponding personal holiness of life. (Wikipedia)

Biblicism is reverence for the Bible and a high regard for biblical authority. All Evangelicals believe in biblical inspiration…the notion that God inspired the authors of the Bible to write specific content…effectively making God the author.  Many Evangelicals believe the Bible is unimpeachable (infallibile) and the text, as originally given, contains no errors (inerrancy). (Wikipedia)

Crucicentrism is the attention that Evangelicals give to the Atonement, the saving death and resurrection of Jesus, that offers forgiveness of sins and new life. This is understood most commonly in terms of a substitutionary atonement, in which Christ died as a substitute for sinful humanity by taking on himself the guilt and punishment for sin. (Wikipedia)

Activism describes the tendency towards active expression and sharing of the gospel in diverse ways that include preaching and social action. This aspect of Evangelicalism continues to be seen today in the proliferation of Evangelical voluntary religious groups and parachurch organizations. (Wikipedia)

These four characteristics explain the unwavering guiding hermeneutic principle of “Exegesis”. Evangelicals should not espouse beliefs that cannot be derived directly from the Biblical text. This movement that predates our United States remained relatively unified until the 20^th century. In the post–World War II period, a split developed between Evangelicals, as they disagreed among themselves about how a Christian ought to respond to an unbelieving world. Many Evangelicals urged that Christians must engage the culture directly and constructively. They began to express reservations that the “holiness” quality of evangelicalism (fundamentalism) had become an embarrassment instead of a badge of honor".

The term neo-evangelicalism was coined in 1947 to identify a distinct movement within evangelical Christianity at the time. The new generation of Evangelicals began aligning with the ideals of the political left (progressives) and set as their goal to abandon a militant Bible stance and adopt a hermeneutic tool called “Biblical Criticism”. Biblical Criticism is a study of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings…viewing biblical texts as being ordinary pieces of literature…open to the inevitable skeptical analysis that follows. It draws upon a wide range of scholarly disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, folklore, linguistics, Oral Tradition studies, and historical and religious studies. Armed with this new tool, Neo-evangelicals chose to pursue dialogue, intellectualism, non-judgmentalism, and appeasement. They further called for an increased application of the gospel to the sociological, political, and economic areas.

And…this is when things went off the rails. You see, when we take this view of scriptures we necessarily enter the world of subjectivism and begin relying on how we feel about issues rather than what the Bible teaches. We now inter the world of “Eisegesis”. We are now free to make “assumptions” about the world around us based on how we feel rather than on what the Bible teaches. This notion of “feeling” is what perpetrated Abraham’s sin against Abimelech and is the foundation of the Neo-evangelical sin against Donald Trump.

I will use Katelyn Beaty’s opinion piece in the Washington Post, I Was an Evangelical Magazine Editor, But Now I Can’t Defend My Evangelical Community, as a case in point. Her piece is saturated with assumptions (eisegesis) about who Donald Trump “is” and who the Evangelicals “are” that voted for him. And.…none of her assumptions are charitable.

She opens with “Wednesday greeted me as it did half the voting population, with waves of grief. But since then, the grief has turned into a more complex emotion — something like soul abandonment. After an election in which 81 percent of my white coreligionists supported Trump, the faith that has been my home for 20 years seems foreign, even hostile”. While I won’t deny her “feelings”, it is clear they have no basis in truth. Feeling “waves of grief” before our president elect has served one day in office is not grounded in empiricism of any kind. Nor, is her sense that her faith home is now “foreign and hostile”. Rather she grounds her feelings on the conviction that “electing Trump would “seriously harm our already fragile democracy and undo the church’s witness, and [she]  believed the white evangelical community would take heed”.

Seriously harm our democracy? Really?

Undo the Church’s witness? Really?

The “white evangelical” community should have understood? Really?

Of course, her basis for feeling this way? It’s the fact that that “white evangelicals broke sharply from Christians of color in supporting a candidate who was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan”. In her words this will undo generations of efforts to heal the racial injustice tearing apart the church and our country.

She continues…

“Meanwhile, Muslims now wonder if the liberties that white evangelicals are eager to protect by electing Trump will extend to their own worshiping communities…”

“Women who have been sexually assaulted wonder if white evangelicals’ support of Trump means their trauma will be minimized in Christian communities…”

“Immigrants who have been embraced by churches wonder if said churches will no longer shelter them after threat of deportation…”

She says “when evangelical starts to sound like very bad news for very many Americans, it has drifted far from its roots. A prophetic consensus has emerged that U.S. evangelicalism is irreducibly linked with white privilege”.

She closes by saying she loves Evangelicals “like the way you love your offbeat uncle — the one who rambles at Thanksgiving dinner about threats to his freedoms and political correctness run amok. You understand why he feels the way he does. You sympathize with him on many points. But when he starts in with racial slurs and sexist jokes and complaints about “illegals,” at some point you have to get up and leave the table”.

Where do I begin?

I can only speculate…because she does not enumerate…her assumptions (sins) derive from her assumption that Donald Trump’s positions on immigration reform and halting refugees from terrorist regions make him a racist. I imagine his checkered past with women make him a misogynist and I have no idea what makes him a proponent of “white privilege”. This is all hyperbolic speculation and assumption. It is what journalists do today but it is not what Christians are supposed to do.

I’m not disappointed Katelyn has a view remarkably different from most evangelicals. I am disappointed she had such a venal response in her frustration. This is venal on so many counts. Judging Trump as a “racist” because the KKK endorsed him is, as we all know is “guilt by association” and is not empirical evidence of anything. Also, she implies that the primary concern for Evangelicals must necessarily be racial justice. Laying this at the feet of her fellow Christians judges Evangelicals as complicit in the demise of both our nation and our Church.

This is like Abraham saying, when he sinned against Abimelech, “I assumed nobody here feared God”.  I can understand how Katelyn has come to her conclusions. We are reminded in the “Good News” she claims to revere, “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." Katelyn ought to be more circumspect. Matthew, Chapter seven says “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you”. I am not judging Christians like Katelyn Beaty but the “Good News” she claims to revere does.

Somebody once defined (tongue in cheek) an “alt-right” Christian as “anybody who loves God more than I do”. I suggest that all of us who claim to love God be swift to listen, slow to speak and be charitable in all things. We can disagree on social and political policies but we have no right to assume those with whom we disagree do not fear God. That would be a sin.

Live boldly out there today…