“No church in a given culture may isolate itself from other churches in other cultures, declaring itself sufficient to itself and to its own culture.”[1]
I reflect often on the status of the white evangelical church in America. The country has just completed an election and remains divided. I browsed the public Facebook page of a local white evangelical church elder and found images like these:
Implicit in these images is that voting Republican is Christian, and voting Democrat is anti-Christian; that individual freedom is Christian, and government assistance is anti-Christian; that unrestricted gun ownership and lower taxes is Christian, and that restricted gun ownership and higher taxes is anti-Christian. The problem is that it lacks any catholic personality[2]: that is, a personality formed by knowledge of the other. It is one based in exclusion, particularly exclusion of Black Protestants, who vote Democrat 80% of the time.[3] In order to understand why, it is necessary that white evangelicals transition from exclusion to embrace. This can only be done in the giving of themselves, making space for the other, prior to any judgment.[4] Why should they give such a space? Because the cross shows them the way.
It is in the cross that we find God in solidarity with the poor, oppressed, marginalized, and weak. He is giving of himself in such a way that the powers are laid low and the lowly lifted. It is in God on the cross that we see the model for our own living, the giving of ourselves for the sake of the other.[5]
“Indisputably, the self-giving love manifested on the cross and demanded by it lies at the core of the Christian faith.”[6]
This giving of the self may result in loss of financial well-being, security, or life, but that is the scandal of the cross. The white evangelical must either “reject the cross and with it the core of the Christian faith or take up [their] cross, follow the Crucified—and be scandalized ever anew by the challenge”.[7]
The challenge is that once they open space for the other, their identity will be called into question. They will realize that what they perceived as “Christian priorities” are not in fact the priorities of other Christians. They will realize that because they are white, they sit atop the hierarchy of power and wealth in this society, and as such have a skewed perspective toward the powerful and the comfortable, and away from the powerless and the uncomfortable. It is this lack of awareness that leads white evangelicals to think that “America is a Christian nation”, capitalism and individual productivity are a virtue, or that democracy is “the only true Christian political arrangement”[8]
As they currently exist, the white evangelical church in America is the problem, not the solution. In their isolation they claim superiority in their understanding of the gospel, its implications for society, and its reality for living. They have shown themselves incapable of discerning good from evil as a direct result of their rejection of the churches in other cultures. They are unaware of their history born in exclusion, and therefore incapable of a future rebirthed in embrace. Maybe if a complete reformation occurs there is hope for their future, but I remain skeptical. In the grand scheme of church history, the white evangelical church in America is but a small blip on the radar, and I look forward to its death in influence, and the resurgence of the church in the margins.
[1] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, Revised and Updated: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Revised, Updated edition (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2019), 43.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, accessed March 6, 2021, https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/.
[4] Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, Revised and Updated, 19.
[5] Ibid., 12–13.
[6] Ibid., 15.
[7] Ibid., 17.
[8] Ibid., 46.
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