I had an interesting experience a few years back. A message was sent to me on social media from a family member asking me, “Why do you hate evangelicals?”

I Am Evangelical

If you follow this website or know me personally, that may seem like a weird question. I’ve spent the vast majority of my life as a Baptist and am now teaching at my third evangelical college. When I got the message, I was sitting in the dining hall of the evangelical college where I was teaching.

I assured this family member that I did not hate evangelicals; I am an evangelical; I grew up as an evangelical (as this person well knew); I attended an evangelical church; I taught at an evangelical university; I was even studying art and religion, not at an evangelical institution, but at an institution where everyone knew I was evangelical. 

So, why did this family member believe that I hated evangelicals?

I don’t know for sure, but I think there is good reason to believe the answer involves groupthink.

Evangelicalism Is My Home

You see… I am evangelical. It is my religious tradition and the religious affiliation I claim. However, I am not an uncritical member of this culture.

I agree with basic evangelical hermeneutics, but that interpretive paradigm often takes me to very different political and social expressions of my Christian faith than many of my peers in the evangelical movement. I fear that evangelicalism has some strong, unhealthy inclinations, as can be seen by some of the choices our tribe has made over the last few years, such as the pervasive Christian nationalism, support for Donald Trump by the religious right, and the conflation of “conservative Republican” with “evangelical.”

In the United States, there is an unfortunate tendency among conservative Christians to cast those who question the assumptions of white evangelicals as “other.” This division impacts our religious experience and daily lives. No individual, even an evangelical leader, is seen as a part of the group if they question. They wouldn’t ask such questions or point out such problems if they were.

In recent years, evangelical culture has developed a strong lack of reflection. Religious groups often don’t question our assumptions. We fear asking the question that the Serpent asked in the Garden: “Did God really say?” We feel that to ask such a question is to betray God.

Back to the Garden

We must remember, however, that the Serpent used this question to draw humanity away from God. The same question could have been used to draw humanity nearer to God. In the time between Adam’s creation and the machinations of the Serpent, Eve had twisted what God had said. God had commanded humanity not to eat of the tree of knowledge. Eve had twisted it to be to neither eat nor touch. The question could have been used to bring Eve back to what God actually said.

Would that have kept Eve from touching or eating the forbidden fruit? Quite likely not. But the question presented by the Serpent wasn’t the problem. The problem was using the question to pull further away from the Kingdom of God rather than to draw nearer.

Too often, white evangelical Christians feel that questioning is an act of faithlessness. But questions can be an act of deep faith that builds Christian values. For many of us, questions are at the core of our faith. We ask questions to try and determine if our held beliefs are rooted in the God who is love, in American culture, or in the religious cultures that we humans have constructed and perverted.

Questioning

That, I believe, is at the heart of my sibling’s belief that I hated conservative evangelicals—I was violating the growing groupthink that has infested our evangelical churches. I was asking, “Did God really say?” not as a way to pull away from God but as part of my spiritual practice to seek him. I was asking: Is what we have come to believe and how we have come to behave actually what God has asked of us?

There is a real danger when a lot of people believe that God approves of everything of which we approve. We’ve seen such behavior in the past, with crusades and atrocities performed in the name of God around the world. We’ve seen it in this nation when we baptized slavery and Jim Crow laws in scripture and when religious leaders opposed civil rights. We see it today when we baptize our hate of others in God’s name. We need to ask, “Has God really said?”

God is big enough to handle our questions.

In short, I don’t hate evangelical Christianity. I love evangelicals. But we must do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. If our actions and beliefs lack the Fruit of the Spirit and do not show our justice, our kindness, and our humility, are our “good works” reflecting the Good News of Jesus Christ? Maybe we need to look at the doctrines and practices that led us to this place and ask, “Has God really said?”

This essay is from our Anastasis Series where we resurrect articles from the past that are either still relevant today. This piece was first published on August 26, 2019, and has been lightly edited and updated.

About Post Author

Rondall Reynoso

Rondall is an artist and scholar. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Tennessee. He holds an MFA in Painting and an MS in Art History from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and is completing a Ph.D. in Art History and Aesthetics from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.

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