Evangelicalism in the Marketplace

I have an uneasy relationship with religion.  It started when I went off to Regis College as a freshman in 1966.  I fully intended to get my BA in English and Education and then toddle off to St. Thomas for my seminary training.  It didn't work out that way.  It would be the cool and fun thing to say that I discovered the liberating effect the girls at Loretto Heights and Colorado Women's College had on my libido, but that is only a small part of the truth.

Mostly it was the liberating effect Jesuit priests had on my world view (and my libido).  Father Boyle used four letter words in class.  Father Maginnis seemed to take delight in making freshmen squirm under his relentless interrogations.  Father Daly, the poor priest who had to live in O'Connell Hall with the freshmen class, was a sadist and enjoyed nothing more than paddling boys for the slightest indiscretion.  At least, it seemed that way to me.  These were not holy men like Father Sanger at Our Lady of the Mountains.  They were worldly, told off-color stories, drank alarming quantities of scotch, and laid great dinner tables.  But more than that, they were brilliant.  They were also arrogant, misogynistic, and often mean-spirited.

I had a double major of English (24 hours) and Theology (21 hours) with a minor in Philosophy (18  hours).  My senior year, I had an English seminar with six students and one priestly professor.  We met three times a week and the last weekly meeting on Friday was always held at Ernie's on 44th and Federal.  Ernie was a pretty good piano player and we gathered around the piano bar and talked Shakespearian tragedies.  My senior Theology seminar met in the Theology office above the student union building. To give you an idea of the general ambiance of the class, the professor walked in one afternoon and proclaimed, "I'm wearing my Burger King pants, the home of the whopper."  After that, we immediately launched into a discussion comparing what we knew of Schillebeeks (I forgot the spelling) and our current reading of the works of Karl Rahner.

All of that combined to make me a lapsed Catholic, but it also informed my faith.

I just got through reading a long article by  Michael Gerson in THE ATLANTIC ("The Last Temptation"), an attempt to explain how evangelicals have lost their way.  In the third to last paragraph, he says, "At its best, faith is the overflow of gratitude, the attempt to live as if we are loved, the fragile hope for something better on the other side of pain and death.  And this feather of grace weighs more in the balance than any political gain."

My faith doesn't go as far as his.  I can't bring myself to have the same belief I had as a teenager that there is "something better on the other side. . ."  But I think my faith is just as strong.  In fact, I think it is stronger.  Which is harder, to love and be loved because that is the way to a better something on the other side, or to love and be loved without the hope of any everlasting reward?  I used to teach Bible as Literature and I always tried to drum home the point that the Bible wasn't a story about God, so much as it was a story about the power of mankind to love, even to love something as ephemeral as a God.  I never said this to my classes because if I did I would have gotten into too much trouble, but I've always believed that man's faithfulness gave God existence, not the other way around.

Because of my training and beliefs, I've always looked at evangelicals as a kind of spiritual joke.  Here is what H. L. Menckin said about William Jennings Bryant after the Scopes Monkey Trial (If you've seen INHERIT THE WIND, Gene Kelly plays Mencken.):  "a tin pot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor half-wits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards."  For me, evangelicals have always been willfully stupid people who reject science and huddle around their anachronistic certainties.  And, of course, this worries me because those are the people that elected Donald Trump.  And when I consider evangelical support for perhaps the most unchristian president in history, I have to add hypocrisy to my indictment.

It is hard for me to say this because my mother was something of an evangelical.  She spoke in tongues for Christ's sake!  My brother is also evangelical.  So is my oldest sister.  They're good people.  They aren't racists, at least they believe they aren't racist.  But they believe all kinds of things that are demonstrably false and there is nothing you or I or anyone can do to change that.

Evangelicalism wasn't always as absolute as it is today.  It started with an embrace of abolitionism and a belief in the redemptive powers of faith.  As such, it was an optimistic belief.  It premised itself on the idea that men of good will can make the country and themselves better in preparation for the second coming.  Of course, the second coming didn't come.  And despite all the assurances, it probably isn't due anytime soon.  Therefore, what was once an optimistic world view became pessimistic.  The world is going to hell in a handbag.  Or, to use the words of their latest "savior," "Our country's going to hell," or "We haven't seen anything like this," or "It's a disaster and only I can fix it."

Evangelicalism is also adversarial and angry, thinking that the modern world is against it and mocks it.  And since the world is against them, evangelicals are willing to forgive a few transgressions in their new prophet.  He doesn't really tell lies; he speaks a larger truth.  One Evangelical minister actually said that we should give Trump a "mulligan" on his past sexual transgressions.  They are seemingly willing to ignore every decidedly non-Christian thing Trump does as long as the White House continues offering an open door to evangelical Christians, as long as the White House continues pandering to their wants and needs.  They really believe that Trump will manage to get Roe v. Wade overturned.  They really believe that Trump will protect them from the immoral influences of people from "shit hole" countries and that those very countries will pay for walls, both physical and psychological, that need to be built.

The point I am most taken with in the article is that the biggest contributor to the moral decay of evangelicalism is that it lacks any "organizing theory of social action."  Catholicism has such a theory.  It can be expressed as an "if . . . then" relationship.  If you are pro-life on abortion, then you should be pro-life on immigration or capital punishment.  If you espouse family values, then you should decry the breaking up of families by jack-booted immigration officers.

Like all of us,  Catholics ignore most of these "if . . . then" demands, but at least they might feel guilty about it.

There are clearly good evangelicals.  The evangelical movement has helped countless more people than it has hurt.  That is undeniable, but their willingness to sacrifice anything resembling a moral structure simply for the sake of pursuing their political agenda has made their status as a religious movement highly questionable.

Here is the final paragraph of this terrific article.  "This is the result when Christians become one interest group among many, scrambling for benefits at the expense of others rather than seeking the welfare of the whole.  Christianity is love of neighbor, or it has lost its way.  And this sets an urgent task for evangelicals:  to rescue their faith from its worst leaders."