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It's Respect an Evangelical Day!
Later today, Weblog will comb through the weekend's religion stories, discovering what's been happening the last few days in the religion world. Already, there's indications that it was a relatively busy weekend—at least 18 people are dead in fresh Christian-Muslim violence in Indonesia's Maluku islands, and there was lots of religion talk over at the D.C. abortion demonstrations.

But this weekend was also significant for something that we evangelicals—like everyone else—love to do: hearing what others are saying about us. Tony Campolo and other evangelicals have talked about a kind of inferiority complex in the movement. Christian leaders have often been driven by a quest for cultural respectability and acceptance. A few years ago, it was common to hear parachurch and advocacy organizations pushing for "a seat at the table."

Two major articles in the mainstream media this weekend touch on precisely those issues of cultural respect—but evangelicals may not like the conclusions.

The first item is noteworthy not just for its content, but for its authorship. "Nearer My God To Thee," in the new issue of U.S. News & World Report, marks the return of Jeff Sheler's byline to that magazine's pages (he was laid off about a year ago, and Jay Tolson has been writing most of the publication's few religion stories since then). Since Sheler is also a contributor to PBS's Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, which collaborated with U.S. News on this major survey of evangelicals, it's not too surprising to see him as the magazine's author for the piece. One hopes to see his byline on more articles.

"Despite the booming popularity of evangelical artists and authors, evangelicals themselves remain an enigma to many outside the tradition—a people often stereotyped, whose agendas and motives are viewed with suspicion," Sheler writes. "They are a people, too, who often seem ill at ease with their own success and insider status in an America that they often regard as hostile to their values."

Those internal and external attitudes aren't really supported by the survey data, Sheler says:

… [E]vangelicals—their distinctive faith aside—are acting more and more like the rest of us. They are both influencing and being influenced by the society around them. While they harbor deep concerns about the moral health of the nation, they are more tolerant than they're often given credit for, pay far more attention to family matters than to politics, and worry about jobs and the economy just about as much as everyone else. And while it comes as no surprise that white evangelicals are overwhelmingly Republican and back President Bush by a wide margin, nearly a quarter say they might vote for Democrat John Kerry.

This will sound familiar to readers of Alan Wolfe, whose latest book, The Transformation of American Religion (Free Press), was discussed in a recent Christianity Todayeditorial and a review and interview in Books & Culture.

Evangelicals "are far more shaped by the culture than they are capable of shaping it to their own needs," he summarizes in the U.S. News piece. "American culture is an enormously powerful force. It will change religion, just as religion will change culture."

Those who have read Wolfe know that he sees this as a positive development. "I have enough faith in the leveling capacities of American democracy to say to the evangelical community, 'Welcome to the culture! We'd much rather have you in here than out there being a fundamentalist, being marginalized, being angry,'" he says.

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April (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48