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Some of the most interesting letters we receive are too long for publication in the magazine. One such letter arrived a couple of weeks ago from a new subscriber, William Mehr of Dumfries, Virginia, in response to our September/October issue. A small portion of his letter will appear in the Letters section of the November/December issue, but I wanted to share the entire letter with you. I'll respond to it in this space next week. (And I hope you will respond as well—I look forward to your reactions to Mr. Mehr's letter.)

Dear Editor:

The September/October issue was marvelous! It's the second of my subscription, and I'm thrilled. Perhaps it's just the way my mind works, but the articles seemed to flow in a way where one or two central ideas kept surfacing in different form. If that was intentional, bravo to the editor! If it wasn't, … "never mind!"

With your continued indulgence, though, I wanted to ride that train through a few stations and maybe convince you of something that wasn't intended! To begin, the word, "evangelical" in the handy American Heritage Dictionary, 1981, is defined as "of, pertaining to, or being a Protestant group emphasizing the authority of Gospel and holding that salvation is from faith and grace rather than from good works and sacraments alone."

I've been reading the stories of 19th-century abolitionists like John Quincy Adams and William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison was an evangelical of sorts, not one primarily operating through an otherworldly faith and grace but one who moved toward achieving salvation through the creation of justice in culture. These are not mutually exclusive positions. There is discernment, rather, of where obedience lies within the call of an American social gospel.

This summer, as chairperson of an ecumenical Christian council, I've led an effort to fund and manage a local homeless shelter in partnership with the financially strapped county government. There were times when the secular professionals and the Christian "do-gooders" clashed, especially in terms of how many chances people are entitled to, but all things tended to work productively on a daily ongoing basis, as the process of open discourse continued, not completely resolved.

The editorial, "Seven Years of Culture," quotes poet Joy Harjo: "there's no sense engaging evangelical Christianity. … because they don't encourage interaction and thinking for yourself." In one sense our presence at the homeless shelter refutes Harjo's charge. We are certainly Christians who encourage interaction and thinking. But do we still belong in a category called "evangelical"?

Again, I look toward Garrison. In his newspaper, The Liberator, he relished nothing better than to publish the letters and speeches of opponents so he could publicly debate the contents. Liberal Christians—not entitled by common usage to call themselves "evangelicals" any longer—sense that those described as evangelicals today are unwilling to engage in discourse, and would rather move to suppress disagreeable media than to openly dispute opposing views, and further that the evangelicals of today disingenuously claim discrimination when their efforts to suppress materials are challenged and thwarted! Is that a fair judgment by the liberals? Is there truth in it?

Would David Lyle Jeffrey, following the logic of his column "The Beginning of Wisdom," describe the progressive actions of the abolitionists of the 19th century as "usurpations of God's prerogatives that are at best unworkable"? Remember, the vast majority of American clergy and university educators in the 19th century never endorsed abolition, nor even were willing to provide meeting space to debate the issues. Is the Sermon on the Mount a guidebook for daily living, or is it an example posited by Jesus of what's not achievable by humans unless they surrender total obedience and personal initiative to God?

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September (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46