Schisms throughout the world of Evangelicalism have developed for several reasons. Bebbington highlights many reasons such as conservative and liberal ideas, eschatology, and pneumatology. These schisms have drifted farther and farther apart. He writes, “In the years after the first World War if became so sharply divided that some members of one party did not recognize the other as Evangelical – or even, sometimes, as Christian.”[4]<\/a> The history of these divides has clarified the depths, and origins of our current landscape.<\/p>\n In the thesis paper by Jason Clark, he maps out the \u201crelationship between Evangelicals and capitalism, and resultant loss of resistance to the deforming forces of capitalism.\u201d[5]<\/a> Clark notes how Evangelicalism has changed in different economic times. During times of economic prosperity and times of hardship, Evangelicalism ebbed and flowed. Clark writes, \u201cThis contrasts greatly and again with previous Protestant and early Evangelical approaches that saw consumerism as crass, unrestrained avarice, and a threat to morality.\u201d[6]<\/a> It must now be mapped out that Evangelicalism seems to be selling itself out to the highest political authority. For the sake of a few conservative Justices, the Evangelical Right has sold her own ethical standards. There is now a wing of Evangelicals who consume every trinket their political king sells them, from coins, to sneakers, to bibles.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I realize my mapmaking is now entering dangerous waters.<\/p>\n Bebbington highlights the diverging eschatological perspectives. “Social gospelers, in the broadening postmillennialist tradition, expected the kingdom of God to be realized on earth by the steady advance of Christian values… The growing premillennialist school, however, rejected such ideas out of hand. It looked for a king, not a kingdom.”[7]<\/a> In the 1980\u2019s and 1990\u2019s there was much fear throughout America, heightened by the Cuban Missile Crisis, post-Vietnam War, and the Cold War with Russia. During this time, some prominent preachers such as Billy Graham began to preach a gospel to the masses, focused on the \u201cend times\u201d and capitalizing on the fear of the times. (I do not argue that all of Billy Graham\u2019s work was not well-intended and used by God.) During this same period Evangelical Christians in America were captivated by the Left Behind Series. <\/em>A Fundamentalist culture developed based on a fictional understanding of the Revelation of John. This Fundamentalist culture was curated, with the help of many leaders, into a right-wing, red-hat-wearing, Evangelical voting bloc.<\/p>\n The Evangelical voting bloc is still characterized in a similar way as Bebbington describes it from over a hundred years ago. “One consequence was that Evangelicals were committed to a negative policy of reform. Their proposals were regularly for the elimination of what was wrong, the achievement of some alternative goal. Their campaigns were often explicitly ‘anti’.\u201d[8]<\/a> One of the explicitly \u2018anti\u2019 campaigns of the MAGA party right now is anti-immigration. Immigrants have been consistently labeled with derogatory terms and have been scapegoated as the source of many issues. Sadly, this has increased Christian Nationalism within our country.<\/p>\n A terrorism expert, Christian, and Trump administration employee, Elizabeth Neumann writes in her recent book, “Christian Nationalism does not lend itself to a tolerant society since it diminishes the rights of the people of other religions or no religion. It leads to a superficial Christianity rather than to sincere faith and deep discipleship.”[9]<\/a> Clark highlighted how Evangelicalism was a response to how people understood their place in the world.[10]<\/a> It seems that MAGA has developed as a response to the fear that has been stoked in White Christian circles over the last 50 years.<\/p>\n I grew up in a church with many people currently wearing those ugly red hats. It saddens me to see how fear has gripped so many. Neumann highlights her own frustration with the Conservative Evangelical community she grew up with. “The communities that had lectured me for years about principles and virtues abandoned them because they had fixed their eyes on a worldly enemy and pinned their hope to earthly power instead of Christ.”[11]<\/a> I too, find frustration in the dissonance between what I was raised to believe and the way I have seen fear overcome those who taught me.<\/p>\n My map seems to trace a line from the current Evangelical voting bloc back into British history and the line is highlighted with fear and a focus on apocalyptic times. Yet, I circle back to an earlier idea of Democratic pluralism offered by N.T. Wright and the need to have both a cross-centered perspective as well as a kingdom-centered focus.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n ______________________<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> An Interview with David Bebbington<\/em>, 2019, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=L2jouF7XW6A.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/em>, Transferred to digital printing (London: Routledge, 2005), 3.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Bebbington, 2.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Bebbington, 181.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Jason Paul Clark, \u201cEvangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship\u201d (Portland, OR, Portland Seminary, 2018), 49, https:\/\/digitalcommons.georgefox.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1131&context=gfes.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Clark, 66.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain<\/em>, 216.<\/p>\n [8]<\/a> Bebbington, 135.<\/p>\n [9]<\/a> Elizabeth Neumann, Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace<\/em> (New York: Worthy, 2024), 132.<\/p>\n [10]<\/a> Clark, \u201cEvangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship,\u201d 63.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/IMG_8915-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n