The New Old-Time Religion
Evangelicals defy easy labels. Here's why--and why their numbers are growing
The chosen. As a major promoter of the First Great Awakening, the religious revival that swept through the Colonies in the 1740s, Edwards modified his own highly orthodox Puritan-Calvinist heritage and unintentionally launched a new and distinctively American strain of Protestantism. That tradition became the dominant religious force in American culture and politics in the 19th century and up through the early 20th. Along the way, it touched just about every major social movement, from abolitionism to Prohibition. "It is the glory of American Christianity," says Nathan Hatch, provost of the University of Notre Dame and author of The Democratization of American Christianity, "and it is also the shame."
Starting in the late 19th century, however, waves of new immigrants and an assortment of intellectual challenges from Darwinism to "modernist" theology began edging evangelicals from their place at the center of American life. In reaction, a core of the faithful adopted a hypermoralistic, biblically literalist, and anti-intellectual stance that came to be known as fundamentalism. In the 1940s, more open-minded carriers of the torch, including Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry (founding editor of Christianity Today), broke with the bunker mentality and attempted to reconnect with the larger culture. Abandoning the apocalyptic scenarios of the fundamentalists and much of their anti-intellectual baggage, they broadened their appeal, often reaching out to Christians in mainline Protestant churches and even to Catholics. Fundamentalism didn't just disappear; many highly visible leaders and televangelists remain of that tendency. But it is now only one current within a larger movement. "We are back to a situation in which evangelicalism dominates our culture," says Wolfe. "But that doesn't mean `fundamentalist.' It means revivalist, personalist, therapeutic, entrepreneurial--the megachurch."
Consider the political arena. In addition to George W. Bush, whose conversion experience is arguably what set him on the road to politics in the first place, evangelicals in prominent places include the attorney general, the speaker of the House, and the House majority leader. Evangelical language and concerns, from faith-based social initiatives to attitudes toward abortion, same-sex unions, and America's relations with Israel, shape both the rhetoric and many of the policies of the current administration. And particularly since 9/11, evangelical notions about God's special covenant with the American people have contributed to a quasi-religious nationalism that casts America as the chosen nation engaged in a righteous struggle with evil.
The bottom line. Throughout most of American history, the evangelical constituency has tended to be, as Wheaton College historian Mark Noll points out, "more Democratic than Republican and relatively passive." But Supreme Court decisions on school prayer and abortion began to change that. Today, thanks to three decades of organizing efforts by the Christian right, most white evangelicals have come to be aligned with the Republican Party. In the last presidential election, 40 percent of Bush's votes came from religious conservatives. But not all evangelicals have ended up at the conservative end of the political spectrum. Theologically conservative African-American evangelicals and a minority of white evangelicals combine to make the evangelical perspective a force to be reckoned with inside the Democratic Party. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to be a beacon of evangelically inspired liberal activism, and President Jimmy Carter was every bit as open about his personal relationship with Jesus as George Bush is.
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