This timely book investigates the increasing visibility and influence of evangelical Christians in recent American politics with a focus on racial justice. Peter Goodwin Heltzel considers four evangelical social movements: Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, Christian Community Development Association, and Sojourners.
The political motives and actions of evangelical groups are founded upon their conceptions of Jesus Christ, Heltzel contends. He traces the roots of contemporary evangelical politics to the prophetic black Christianity tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the socially engaged evangelical tradition of Carl F. H. Henry. Heltzel shows that the basic tenets of King’s and Henry’s theologies have led their evangelical heirs toward a prophetic evangelicalism in a shade of blue green—blue symbolizing the tragedy of black suffering in the Americas, and green symbolizing the hope of a prophetic evangelical engagement with poverty, AIDS, and the environment. This fresh theological understanding of evangelical political groups shines new light on the ways evangelicals shape and are shaped by broader American culture.
This timely book investigates the increasing visibility and influence of evangelical Christians in recent American politics with a focus on racial justice. Peter Goodwin Heltzel considers four evangelical social movements: Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, Christian Community Development Association, and Sojourners.
The political motives and actions of evangelical groups are founded upon their conceptions of Jesus Christ, Heltzel contends. He traces the roots of contemporary evangelical politics to the prophetic black Christianity tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the socially engaged evangelical tradition of Carl F. H. Henry. Heltzel shows that the basic tenets of King’s and Henry’s theologies have led their evangelical heirs toward a prophetic evangelicalism in a shade of blue green—blue symbolizing the tragedy of black suffering in the Americas, and green symbolizing the hope of a prophetic evangelical engagement with poverty, AIDS, and the environment. This fresh theological understanding of evangelical political groups shines new light on the ways evangelicals shape and are shaped by broader American culture.
Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics
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Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics
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Overview
This timely book investigates the increasing visibility and influence of evangelical Christians in recent American politics with a focus on racial justice. Peter Goodwin Heltzel considers four evangelical social movements: Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, Christian Community Development Association, and Sojourners.
The political motives and actions of evangelical groups are founded upon their conceptions of Jesus Christ, Heltzel contends. He traces the roots of contemporary evangelical politics to the prophetic black Christianity tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the socially engaged evangelical tradition of Carl F. H. Henry. Heltzel shows that the basic tenets of King’s and Henry’s theologies have led their evangelical heirs toward a prophetic evangelicalism in a shade of blue green—blue symbolizing the tragedy of black suffering in the Americas, and green symbolizing the hope of a prophetic evangelical engagement with poverty, AIDS, and the environment. This fresh theological understanding of evangelical political groups shines new light on the ways evangelicals shape and are shaped by broader American culture.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300124330 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/21/2009 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
JESUS AND JUSTICE
Evangelicals, Race, and American PoliticsBy Peter Goodwin Heltzel
Yale University Press
Copyright © 2009 Yale UniversityAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-12433-0
Chapter One
THE LION IS ROARINGDemocratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus on Thursday, January 3, 2008. In his column the next morning, David Brooks spoke for millions when he wrote: "You'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel moved by this. An African-American man wins a closely fought campaign in a pivotal state. He beats two strong opponents, including the mighty Clinton machine. He does it in a system that favors rural voters. He does it by getting young voters to come out to the caucuses. ... This is a huge moment. It's one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance." Like Jesse Jackson winning the Michigan caucus by a landslide 55 percent in the 1988 presidential primary, Obama's victory was a watershed moment in American politics: an African American was a serious candidate for president of the United States.
At the same moment, Southern Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucus for the Republican Party. A socially conservative former governor of Arkansas, Huckabee delivered speeches that sounded like sermons. He frequently mentioned his faith in Jesus Christand its relevance for American public life, a message that went over well with many Iowan evangelicals. Huckabee's vision captured the hearts and minds of the Religious Right, and his passionate populist message also appealed to a growing number of evangelicals who were increasingly concerned about racial, economic, and environmental justice.
Obama and Huckabee, and their victories in the Iowa caucuses, symbolize the two primary streams of American evangelical politics: the prophetic black Christianity of Martin Luther King Jr. and the socially engaged evangelicalism of Carl F. H. Henry. With Obama's invocations of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr., and Huckabee's summoning of Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, these two political candidates self-consciously worked out of these two religious traditions. With common roots in an antebellum revivalist past, black and white evangelicalism were coming together again, but a deep, persistent, and intractable problem remained: racism.
The convergence of the black and white evangelical traditions in the third millennium is still plagued by the problem of white supremacy, the moral contradiction on which America was built. From slavery to segregation, America's tragic past demands a robust evangelical theological accounting. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, chattel slavery divided blacks and whites in the southern interior, but today black and white evangelical Christians are coming together in a post-civil rights moment. Prophetic black Christianity that had been tucked away within a white evangelical modernity gradually emerged to redirect evangelicalism to its deepest prophetic roots.
We are witnessing a major paradigm shift in evangelical political life: the birth of a new prophetic evangelical politics. Within the evangelical world, prophetic evangelical politics are biblically based and theologically conservative, marked by a broad focus on racial justice, internationalism, environmentalism, and decreased identification with partisan politics. Drastically different from the warrior politics that defined the Religious Right and the Republican Party in past decades, the prophetic politics of a growing group of evangelicals is serious about proclaiming and embodying peace and justice. Among prophetic evangelicals, we see the emergence of a strong aversion to violent, warrior discourse; disillusionment with party politics of all stripes; and a broadening of social concerns beyond issues such as abortion. Although prophetic evangelicals generally oppose abortion and support the traditional family, they are engaging a broad array of social justice issues, such as racial justice, poverty, sex trafficking, AIDS, and the environment. They not only vote in elections but also daily seek to work collectively for the common good locally, nationally, and internationally. Prophetic evangelicals have come of age.
Carl F. H. Henry likened the evangelical movement to "a lion on the loose" in 1976, the year Newsweek dubbed the "Year of the Evangelical." At the beginning of the 1970s, evangelicals were largely invisible in American public life; by 1976 they were taking their first tentative steps away from the fringe of American society. Today they have taken center stage. The lion is roaring and people everywhere, both within and beyond the United States, are scared and quaking. Yet many people don't understand that evangelicalism is moving from a warrior politics to a prophetic politics or that Carl Henry's and Billy Graham's late internalization of the egalitarian ideal of the civil rights movement is the reason why.
The election of George W. Bush as president in 2000 and 2004 was the symbol par excellence of a new evangelical political establishment, but also symbolized the twilight of evangelical warrior politics. As Esther Kaplan writes, "Bush's religiosity [was] so widely embraced on the Christian Right that when Pat Robertson resigned as president of the Christian Coalition at the end of 2001, American Values president Gary Bauer told the Washington Post, 'I think Robertson stepped down because the position has already been filled. [Bush] is that leader right now.'" Evangelicals delivered key swing votes in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, becoming the foundation of Karl Rove's strategy to maintain "permanent" Republican hegemony through the evangelical voting base. One Pew survey showed that 87 percent of "traditionalist" evangelicals (10.7 percent of the adult population) voted for President Bush in the 2004 election. Those overwhelming statistics verify that although not all evangelicals categorically embraced Bush, his presidency has nevertheless symbolized a form of conservative warrior politics.
When asked who his favorite philosopher was, George W. Bush responded, "Jesus Christ," although Bush's form of strong-arm, cowboy politics did not reflect the prophetic values of Jesus Christ. A self-identified evangelical, George W. Bush has moved through a series of conversions in his life. His first conversion to faith came under the influence of Arthur Blessitt in Midland, Texas, and his second came by way of the best-known world evangelist of the late twentieth century, Rev. Billy Graham. Within a year of his encounter with Graham, Bush had traded in bondage to alcoholism for a newfound strength in his Christian faith. Renouncing exclusive pursuit of personal self-fulfillment, he turned to a life of public service. Years later, the horrific events of September 11, 2001, triggered in President Bush what he described as a moment of religious-like calling. As he tried to come to terms with this terrorist attack, a new "presidential mission" was visited, like a religious conversion, upon him: to protect American citizens from terrorists. With the confidence of a nineteenth-century postmillennialist, President Bush assured U.S. citizens that safer days lay ahead as America continued to implement its providential destiny in the international sphere.
It has often been observed how evangelical faith has significantly shaped the staff and practices of the Bush White House. Inclined toward prayer and Bible reading, the president surrounded himself with Christians both inside and outside his two administrations, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his speechwriter and friend Wheaton College graduate Michael Gerson. Furthermore, this climate was maintained at the highest to the lowest levels; in 2004, seven of almost one hundred interns in the White House came from Patrick Henry College, a small evangelical liberal arts college founded in 2000 in Purcellville, Virginia. Beyond their presence in central leadership and intern positions within the George W. Bush administration, evangelicals also have exerted considerable influence through lobbying efforts and business networks. The explosion of evangelical political action committees (PACs) throughout the 1980s and 1990s was noted by Kevin Philips: "In recent years, as evangelicals have gained importance, corporations have begun to take note, hiring more Washington lobbyists with biblical worldviews or Christian Right connections."
The networking extends beyond PACs: evangelical businessmen gather as part of a "Fellowship," arranging throughout the year to have heads of state meet with the president at the National Prayer Breakfast. Furthermore, the visionary Hispanic evangelical leader Luis Cortés Jr., president of Nueva Esperanza and Esperanza USA, founded and hosts the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast and Conference, providing an opportunity for the Hispanic community to interact with the president. Clearly, evangelicals-ranging from powerful politicians to influential businesspeople, from college presidents to internationally renowned artists-have been on the rise in American public life. This potent network, referred to by sociologist D. Michael Lindsay as the new "evangelical elite," evinces the current influence evangelicals have in American political society; their voices are being heard.
But whose voices are they, and who exactly are the evangelicals? The label itself remains highly contested among historians of American religion. It takes on many meanings, and many theological traditions make claim to it. The terminological debate surrounding the word "evangelical" has become so knotty that Donald W. Dayton argues for an outright moratorium on the term. As much as one might sympathize with Dayton's frustration, there is no getting around the fact that the term "evangelical" is not going to go away. Its use is constantly reinforced by talk show hosts, political strategists, academics-indeed, by members of countless disciplines-and perhaps most indelibly, by regular churchgoers themselves. Drawing a common thread through such disparate multitudes is a delicate study and one that requires a step back and a look at historical roots.
Meaning "gospel" or "good news," the term "evangelical" originates in the magisterial Reformation that began in Germany with Martin Luther's nailing the Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517. In Germany, evangelisch continues to be used in this Reformation tradition to signify both Protestants in general and Lutherans in particular. The primary tenets of the European Reformation continue to shape the theologies and ethos of both black and white evangelicals in the United States; however, the revivalist background of American evangelicalism has played an even greater role in the emergence of postwar twentieth-century evangelical politics. To better understand evangelicalism in America today, we need to place it in its historical context, paying special attention to revivalism and race.
British historian David Bebbington provides an excellent starting point, citing four distinctive features of evangelical faith and practice: (1) an experience of conversion to Jesus Christ, (2) a view that the Bible is the ultimate religious authority, (3) an activism expressed through evangelism and social witness, and (4) an emphasis on Jesus's death on the cross and bodily resurrection from the dead. Bebbington's definition has become a standard in the field of American religious history. To these four points I would add a fifth: transdenominational populism.
Evangelicalism has long been characterized by "shifting movements, temporary alliances, and the lengthened shadows of individuals." Nathan Hatch has argued forcefully for evangelicalism's democratic character, which I describe as populism. The concept of transdenominationalism is borrowed from John Stackhouse, who rightly argues that evangelicals are found throughout traditional denominational structures as well as outside of them, within nondenominational and parachurch structures. Evangelicalism has been able to adapt, grow, and engage the world in many ways precisely because of its fluid character. Considering evangelicalism in terms of transdenominational populism provides a way to expand analyses of evangelical churches and denominations and apply them to broader evangelical social movements that seek to effect political change. Viewing American evangelicalism as a populist movement provides a theoretical landscape for thinking about its various submovements, and it allows us to draw on the particular historical and theological heritages that different evangelical submovements represent. This is a crucial step in our efforts to historicize the term "evangelical."
Within the wide parameters of Bebbington's definition of evangelicals (biblical authority, conversion, cross, activism), all four of the Christian social movements discussed in this book would be considered evangelical, yet each is formed by a different theological and cultural heritage. One of the limitations of Bebbington's definition that is indicative of most of the genre of "defining evangelicalism" literature is its focus on Christian theological identity without deeply engaging social location and cultural history. For example, according to Bebbington's definition, many Roman Catholics and many African Americans would be considered evangelicals, yet this quick designation can mask important theological and cultural differences. Definitions like Bebbington's do provide various degrees of theological boundaries for those who identify themselves as evangelicals, but they do not properly address the movement's historic and cultural complexity.
One of Bebbington's students, evangelical theologian Timothy Larsen, takes up the challenge of historicizing the definition of evangelicalism. Larsen engages the historical context when he argues that an evangelical is an "orthodox Protestant who stands in the tradition of the global Christian networks arising from the eighteenth century revival movements associated with John Wesley and George Whitefield" while at the same time stressing key Bebbingtonian theological characteristics: biblical authority; reconciliation with God through Jesus's work on the cross; and the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion, fellowship, and evangelism. Larsen thus builds on Bebbington by addressing the historic and global dimensions of evangelicalism. Furthermore, through mentioning the work of the Holy Spirit, Larsen introduces the pneumatological motif that has become so important in twentieth-century evangelicalism, influenced by the explosive rise of Pentecostalism.
This historical grounding of evangelicalism in eighteenth-century revivalism helps us to answer the question: are African American Protestants like Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson Sr., John Perkins, and Barack Obama evangelicals? Many African Americans experienced conversions during the eighteenth-century revival meetings of Wesleyan preachers like George Whitefield and also John Wesley himself, but these occurrences alone were not sufficient to create a new space for African Americans to work out of a broadly evangelical theological orientation. That evolution began to emerge during the nineteenth century through increased participation by black and white evangelicals in a collective struggle for the abolition of slavery. In this situation, a purely Bebbingtonian, ahistorical definition of evangelical theology becomes limited. It is chiefly through an inextricable welding of theology onto a historical and political context that African Americans began to emerge within the evangelical tradition on a broader scale, transforming it from the outside in.
The complexity and controversy of black-white interaction in the antebellum period reverberates today. Mark A. Noll draws similar conclusions: "The decades before the Civil War constitute, thus, not only the most intensely partisan period in American history but also the period in which theology was most directly applied to public issues. The only era that comes close is our own." Noll goes on to identify two parallels between the antebellum period and the contemporary period (1956-present): both periods exhibit a deep cultural divide that expresses itself along political lines, and both exhibit contentious public debate. In contrast to religious leaders in colonial New England, evangelical populist preachers of the antebellum period often chose to incite religious controversy, a tactic for which there is obviously no shortage today.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Mark A. Noll....................ixAcknowledgments....................xi
Introduction....................xvii
PART I: EVANGELICAL HISTORY 1 The Lion Is Roaring....................3
2 Revival, Race, and Reform: The Roots of Modern Evangelical Politics....................13
3 Martin Luther King Jr.'s Theology of the Cross....................45
4 Carl F. H. Henry's Uneasy Conscience....................71
PART II: EVANGELICAL POLITICS 5 Focus on the Family: Nurturing and Defending the Family....................91
6 National Association of Evangelicals: For the Health of the Nation....................127
7 The Christian Community Development Association: A Quiet Revolution....................160
8 Sojourners: The Great Awakening....................178
9 Evangelical Politics in a Shade of Blue Green....................203
Notes....................219
Index....................251