What Is An Evangelical Christian?
By Sam Weaver (12/21/04)
Exactly what is an evangelical Christian? This is not merely the title of my latest column. It is a cry for help. It is a bold experiment in my quest for Truth. I am inviting—no, I am begging!—everyone who reads this article to think about this question and then shoot me an answer at veriphile@ev1.net.
If you are a Christian, I want to hear your introspective answer to this query. If you are Jewish, I yearn to hear from you. I heartily and very sincerely seek thoughtful responses from Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, pagans and atheists!
I welcome every reply. Long and profuse, short and sweet, liberal, conservative, loving, vitriolic, within the United States, outside the U. S.—I want to hear all sides. I cannot promise to answer every response, but I will read them all. If I get enough participation, I’ll share the results in a future column.
Some of the most profound and dedicated research of my quest for Truth that commenced almost exactly 20 years ago convinced me that the United States of America was built largely by evangelical Christians upon the truths and principles of the Judeo-Christian worldview. [NOTE: I was very skeptical of the Judeo-Christian faith when I began this quest.] Since I started writing these columns two years ago, I’ve received numerous responses from all over the world claiming that America’s Founders were not Christians; rather, they were deists. Had those responders perused the great body of work—i.e., speeches, writings, journals, personal letters and memoirs—of America’s most influential Founders, they would have known as well as I do that this is revisionist “history”.
One can pick and choose excerpts from various documents and make a tenuous case that America was founded by faithless, slave-holding misogynists who wanted to establish a purely secular state. In fact, this is precisely what several writers (including authors of many if not most of the textbooks found in schools and universities all across America) and countless secular, atheistic—left-leaning—websites and organizations have done. The corpus of discourse by America’s Founders belies this stark-raving, naked revisionism. It is very plain to see by anyone who takes the time to research in an open-minded, unbiased way that America was established upon Judeo-Christian principles.
It is true that in their youth, both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were almost certainly deists. [Deism was very popular during the “Age of Enlightenment” of eighteenth-century Europe. Simplistically stated, deism is the philosophy that some Higher Power/Intelligent Designer created the universe and all things therein, but for some unknown and unexplained reason(s) lost interest and left the universe and its inhabitants to fend for themselves.] Yet in their later writings and statements, it becomes obvious that both Franklin and Jefferson—especially Franklin—came to maintain that “God governs in the affairs of men.” (See, for example, http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes.nsf/quotes5/646e5e258485852d8525697c00579d2c.) By the time Ben Franklin became influential in the Constitutional Convention, and, respectively, Thomas Jefferson became president of the United States, it is crystal-clear that they both publicly rejected the idea of deism in favor of a Personal Creator Who is both the Author of all just law and the Source of human liberty.
There is no irrefutable evidence whatsoever to support the slightest notion that any other prominent American Founder was even remotely deist. The Great Awakening, a huge and very influential evangelical movement of the late 1700’s had an enormous impact on the ideology of many Americans, including Franklin, Jefferson, and a number of America’s Founders. This widespread spiritual revival helped to form the blueprint of the American Ideal and the rift between spiritual America and secular Europe that exists to this day.
As a result of my previous column on this and other sites, I’ve received emails from readers which declare that evangelicals should stay out of politics. A loyal reader sent me a link to an article by Franklin Graham—son of the great evangelist Billy Graham—entitled “Christians must focus on God, not politics.” (Please see http://www.availablelightonline.com/blog/archives/2004/11/30/franklin-grahams-editorial) I deeply respect and admire Franklin Graham, and I whole-heartedly agree with the premise of that title. Reverend Graham makes some very good points in this article. However, both I and the faithful reader who sent me the link find equal wisdom in a rebuttal to Graham’s piece by Gary DeMar. (Please see http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/11-30-04.asp?)
Perhaps Reverend Graham should heed the words of Charles Finney (1792-1875), one of America’s all-time great evangelists:
“The Church must take the right ground in regard to politics…The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men, and be consistent in politics or the Lord will curse them…God cannot sustain this free and blessed country, which we love and pray for, unless the Church will take the right ground. Politics are a part of religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as a part of their duty to God…[God] will bless or curse this nation, according to the course [Christians] take [in politics].”
What IS an evangelical Christian? Following is my own personal, opinionated idea. Granted, my opinion has evolved over the past twenty years, and I cannot say that it will be exactly the same twenty years from now.
An evangelical Christian is one who accepts on the basis of faith the Gospel of Jesus Christ and all of the tenets and teachings of the New Testament. Love, tolerance, acceptance of others, denial of self, altruism, and salvation through faith—not by works—are among these tenets and teachings.
There are two types of evangelical Christians in modern America. One type almost totally ignores both the meaning and the message of the Old Testament and tends to focus squarely upon the meaning and message of the New Testament. The other type both understands and reveres the meaning and the message of both the Old and the New Testaments of the Holy Bible.
The first sort of Christian evangelicals envision a role for government to reflect and, perhaps, even to mete out the principles and exhortations of the New Testament Gospel. In other words; love, compassion, tolerance, alms to the poor, etc. are legitimate roles/concerns of government.
The second sort—Judeo-Christian evangelicals—understand that the Old Testament (a Covenant of Law) was written by the Creator to a nation (the nation of ancient Israel). The purpose of government in a fallen state of nature is to protect and to serve its people through intolerant (swift, severe and sure) judgment against those who would deprive its citizens of their God-given rights. However, this second type of evangelicals also realizes the meaning and the message of the New Testament (a Covenant of Grace and Mercy). The New Testament was written for and to every individual who has both the will and the faith to accept it. In a free society, it is the duty of every citizen to love his neighbor as he loves himself. Love, compassion, tolerance, alms to the poor and needy, etc. are requirements of individuals—not of government. When governments are handed the duties and responsibilities that belong to individuals, then individuals become irresponsible and socially corrupt. At that point, government necessarily becomes despotic.
Patrick Henry is the author of one of my favorite quotes pertaining to American liberty. No, it is not his most famous quote—“…give me liberty or give me death!” A lesser known statement of his is this:
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here.”
“In today's America, powerful minorities and special-interest groups are using the courts to rip away every vestige of the Judeo-Christian ideas, values and principles upon which this nation was founded.” Is this a true statement, or is it merely modern conservative opinion? If it is merely opinion, is it dangerous? If it is dangerous, then what makes it any more or less dangerous than the opinions of those who embrace an opposite view--i.e., a completely secularized society?
PLEASE, let me know what you think. Your input is extremely valuable to me! Email me at veriphile@ev1.net.
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