Geez magazine expresses my feelings entirely.
On who is right
by Will Braun, Editor of Geez Magazine
http://www.geezmagazine.org/issue4/onwhoisright.html
Evangelical Christians gravitate toward clear divisions, even stark polarities: saved-unsaved, heaven-hell, right-wrong, good-evil, God-Satan. Just keep things nice and simple. Either you’re for us or against us. Homosexuality, abortion and terrorists are bad – period. End of discussion. Justice shall prevail.
This is somewhat of a caricature of course, but indulge me for a moment, if you will.
In this world of black and white, notions like forgiveness and love of enemies tend to get lost. And next thing you know they’re dropping bombs on the other side of all those clear-cut lines of division. The killing of innocent people turns into "fighting the forces of evil" – fighting, always fighting, opposing, righteously resisting.
They love their enemies alright – that is, they love to have enemies. The more the better. Bring ‘em on. Discernment turns into demonization. Violence becomes a divine calling. Love of God and hatred of enemy become one.
And to seal the deal, they will walk the mansion-lined streets of gold while everyone else will literally burn for a literal eternity in a literal lake of sulphur-stenched fire. An absolutely impassible chasm will separate the two.
Okay, that was the fun part to write; now comes the other part, because we, in turn, demonize evangelicals for their demonizing ways. We hate them for their hatred. Or is our hatred okay because we are right and they are wrong?
The tendency to categorize and divide and simplify and do something other than love our enemies is in us all. We have the tendency to recount with self-satisfaction the scandals of a particular political party, to soothe our righteous egos by reading (or writing) nasty things about the Christian Right, to let ourselves feel good that we’re not stupid like them. (And I only had to look at the last three days of my own life for those examples.)
Rather than seeing the spark of eternity in each person, or loving those who might qualify as our enemies, we nurture negative feelings toward them. We create distance between us and them. It feels really, really good. We’re not like them.
We all live in an increasingly binary, polarized, dichotomized, polemicized, divided world; a world of east vs west, Christianity vs Islam, Republicans vs Democrats, good vs evil, freedom vs tyranny, us vs the terrorists. Language and images are used and misused to solidify the sides and entrench the divisions.
But maybe the goal is not to refute the Religious Right or the Bush Administration or whomever we most like to sneer at. Maybe the point isn’t to be more right than them. Maybe there is something more important than being right.
Maybe the goal is to love our enemies, to blur lines of division, to forgive with relentless abandon, to disallow ourselves feelings of superiority, to look within, to act in such a way that if the Donald Rumsfelds in our lives had complete transformations and wanted to associate with us, we would not have to apologize for any past actions or thoughts toward them.
Here at Geez, we are perhaps prone to make sport of the excess and blessed sentimentality of the Jesus-in-my-heart-and-I’m-on-my-way-to-heaven-’cause-the-Bible-says-so Christians. So, for this issue, we are taking a deep breath, steeling our belief in tolerance and engaging our evangelical neighbors in sincere dialogue. Forgive us if we slip from time to time.
In it all, I suppose we are suggesting the possibility – though we still don’t totally have the stomach for it – that human redemption grows in a field of fearless, irrational inclusivity.
Evangelical Christian typologies from http://www.geezmagazine.org/issue4/anevangelicalbody.html
1. Fundamentalists (or Conservative Evangelicals)
These are usually what the press is referring to when they talk about "evangelicals" – or who they think they’re referring to. Like many evangelicals, conservative evangelicals are those who "insist on some sort of spiritual rebirth as a criterion for entering the kingdom of heaven, who often impose exacting behavioral standards on the faithful, and whose beliefs, institutions, and folkways compromise the evangelical subculture in America," says Balmer. They are also known for their defense of the Bible as unquestionable, for their "proselytizing zeal" and for their belief in a "sudden, instantaneous, dateable experience of grace." The term Fundamentalism can describe any literalistic, moralistic, pietistic – and these days militaristic – way of interpreting faith, explains Balmer.
2. Pentecostal Charismatics
To experience it first-hand, I recently attended a Pentecostal church for the first time in years. After getting over my initial difficulty breathing, I appreciated pastor Don Noble’s sermon about the Holy Spirit. Pastor Noble explained how he grew up as part of a very eccentric group of Christians – in his words, "I didn’t know they were crazy until I was a teenager."
Noble gave a good example of what many liberal Protestants worry about – a woman in his congregation explained to him how the Holy Spirit guides her in everything she does, including telling her to turn left or right when she’s riding her bicycle. Noble explained how guidance from the Holy Spirit means living like Jesus, but it also means using your God-given brain.
3. Liberal Evangelicals
This kind of evangelical is popularly associated with street preaching, Christian campus groups, missionary work and evangelism. Although both liberal and conservative evangelicals contain Bebbington’s four evangelical attributes (conversion, the Bible, activism and the cross), a liberal approach to life, politics and faith can differ so radically from that of a conservative that Liberal Evangelicals take deep offense at being lumped together with conservatives.
What makes them so different? Liberal evangelicals move away from "born again" Christianese, and are less likely to hold altar calls (though it’s not unheard of). Liberal evangelicals can be distinguished from the above types by their less offensive evangelistic tactics as well as the notable absence of war imagery and militancy in their discourse.
4. Emergent Church (and Vintage Church)
The shift into what some would call the postmodern age has uprooted these Christians and sent them scrambling to find new ways to make their Christianity "relevant" (a key but sometimes nebulous term).
The issue for Emergent types is to assert Christianity in a time when binary ideas like heaven and hell, Christian and non-Christian, spirit and body, male and female are being challenged and seen as too dualistic. Emerging Christians value individual stories more than ascribing to one grand overarching and possibly oppressive "metanarrative." This allows emergent church Christians to have a new openness to different ways of interpreting the Bible – everyone’s perspective is relevant and should be expressed.
As with so much post-structural and postmodern theory, the emergent gospel tends to come from the top down, drawing analysis from academic discourse surrounding postmodernity. Adherents tend to be internet savvy and have a heavy presence in the blogosphere, which could be deemed inaccessible.
5. Social Justice Folks
In an article in the New York Times, "Rebels with a Cross" (March 2, 2006), John Leland confuses the perspectives of new monastic radicals like Shane Claiborne and The Simple Way in Philadelphia with pop-culture Christians who dig Christian clothing lines (like souldog.com) and skateboard Bible studies.
Although these trends may have in common a young face and a rad new look, social justice Christians are distinct from any old "rebel with a cross" in that they challenge secular (and Christian) capitalist society. These Christians can be found in evangelical communes like Jesus People USA, in small queer-positive emerging church communities, in Catholic Worker communities, in conservative and pacifist Mennonite communities, or in new monastic communities. Despite their varying influences – from liberal, emerging, evangelical or contemplative – what brings this group together is a commitment to living the "social gospel."
6. Christian Leftists
Although Christian Leftists would not be considered "evangelical" by themselves or the rest of the church, I’ve included them in this typology as a group commonly misrepresented as "evangelical," much to their and everyone else’s horror.
Most of the people who are referred to as Christian leftists are known for barely hanging on to traditional Christian doctrine.Other than these heretical sound bites, Christian leftists of this sort tend to put major emphasis on social gospel and environmental issues. For example, the recently established Network of Spiritual Progressives represents the spiritual or Christian left in the States. Its vision is to be, in part, "challenging the misuse of religion, God, and spirit by the religious Right" (see spiritualprogressives.org).
This entry was originally published at Interconnectedness by Mikhail (Misha) Lomize
