About face! - Evangelicals and public morality

[Bootstrap]

I still think it's way too early to say what Trump will be like as president - but it's not to early to think about the changes Trump has brought to Evangelical Christianity.

What does this say about us and our political allegiances? For the record, I was one of the people who thought Clinton should be impeached after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and I see the same inconsistency that the article points out today.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of the shift in white-evangelical political ethics is the way in which white evangelicals have evaluated the personal character of public officials. In 2011 and again just ahead of the election, PRRI asked Americans whether a political leader who committed an immoral act in his or her private life could nonetheless behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public life. Back in 2011, consistent with the “values voter” brand’s insistence on the importance of personal character, only 30% of white evangelical Protestants agreed with this statement. But this year, 72% of white evangelicals now say they believe a candidate can build a kind of moral wall between his private and public life. In a shocking reversal, white evangelicals have gone from being the least likely to the most likely group to agree that a candidate’s personal immorality has no bearing on his performance in public office. Today, in fact, they are more likely than Americans who claim no religious affiliation at all to say such a moral bifurcation is possible.

This about-face is stunning, especially against the backdrop of white evangelicals’ outrage in response to Bill Clinton’s indiscretions in the 1990s. As Jonathan Merritt documented, Pat Robertson called Bill Clinton a “debauched, debased, and defamed” politician. But this year, Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network featured multiple friendly interviews with Trump — the candidate who bragged about sexually assaulting women and appeared on the cover of Playboy. And Robertson had this to say directly to Trump: “You inspire us all.”

The Trump era has effectively turned white-evangelical political ethics on its head. Rather than standing on principle and letting the chips fall where they may, white evangelicals have now fully embraced a consequentialist ethics that works backward from predetermined political ends, refashioning or even discarding principles as needed to achieve a desired outcome.

[Bootstrap]

Russell Moore, president of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty, implies our religion is seen as a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it, and says this:

When a religion is seen as a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it, one will end up pleasing those who see the primacy of politics while losing those who believe the gospel.

He also warns about the health and prosperity gospel:

But when, for instance, prosperity gospel hucksters are received as fellow Christian leaders by evangelical Protestants, we have declared war on the gospel itself. Health and wealth prosperity theology, in its hard or soft forms, is not just another stream of historic Christianity. It is the old Canaanite fertility religion except worse, because it takes the name of our Lord in vain under the pretense of apostolic Christianity.

Moore also warns about a religion based in nostalgia and appeals to return to the past:

Moore said nostalgia and appeals “that we are losing our country” only work if success is defined as a nominal cultural Christianity “that can be quite good for restraining some aspects of overt immorality, but is worse than paganism if there is in fact a hell.”

And warns about using biblical apocalyptic language for American presidential elections:

“Likewise, the sort of apocalyptic language that presents every presidential election as an Armageddon, from whence one cannot recover, is the sort of theological liberalism that makes no sense in a religion in which Augustine wrote the City of God in the context of a collapsing Rome,” Moore said.

“Even at the level of pragmatic politics, such appeals leave a constituency cynical and burned over. The younger generation of evangelicals sadly, and to the church’s detriment, they hardly ever speak much about biblical prophecy,” Moore continued. “Why? Because they are exhausted by the hyperventilating of some evangelicals in the last generation over blood moons and red heifers.”

“That is much more the case with endless appeals to act now or lose everything that prove not to be true in a world that is fallen and depraved but also made resilient by the sustaining power of common grace and the grain of theology of creation itself.”

I think Moore is on to something. We have to shed a lot of false gospels if we really care about the true Gospel.

These excerpts are taken from an hour-long lecture I have not yet heard.

[Josh]

The same shift has happened on the progressive end of things, where I run into the belief that John Howard Yoder's teachings and books can stand on their own unaffected by his reputation of how he actually lived.

It's a uniquely modern, western, and individualistic view of truth that truth exists apart from the credibility and reputation of the person speaking it. At the time the New Testament was written, nobody thought this way; what gave authority to a speaker or writer was his overall reputation.

[Bootstrap]

The same shift has happened on the progressive end of things, where I run into the belief that John Howard Yoder's teachings and books can stand on their own unaffected by his reputation of how he actually lived.

I think there is also a shift on the progressive end, it basically amounts to replacing the Bible with liberation theology as the authoritative source.

But I know very few progressives who think Yoder's teachings are not affected by his life. I discussed this a year ago with Mark Thiessen Nation - there is very little market for Yoder's works these days, former Yoder scholars are moving to study other people like Bonhoeffer instead.

Perhaps Martin Luther King would be a better example for progressives? While he was a tremendous force for good, his personal life also included immorality that we must not ignore if we want to tell the whole truth. I think it's harder to set Martin Luther King aside because of his greater accomplishments.

It's a uniquely modern, western, and individualistic view of truth that truth exists apart from the credibility and reputation of the person speaking it. At the time the New Testament was written, nobody thought this way; what gave authority to a speaker or writer was his overall reputation.

I'm not sure I agree. Sometimes an immoral person can speak truth. But Christians need to be clear headed about both truth and morality, not excusing either falsehood or immorality to reach political goals.

[Josh]

Engaging in falsehood or half truths is an aspect of immorality. (I would not consider someone penitent of his past sins like Paul to be immoral.)

But overall the Bible talks a lot about false teachers, and one of the signs it talks about is that they live immoral lives out of sync with the lofty ideals they want to preach about. Both left and right wings would do well to heed this advice.

I fully agree with what you are saying that evangelicals seem to have adopted a "the ends justify the means" worldview, although I think that's inevitable once you think you can use force and violence to transform the world. I think Jesus' message was that he (and by extension, us) can transform individuals. Society will be reformed inasmuch as individuals are reformed and turn away from immorality, violence, falsehood, and all manner of wickedness.

[Dan Z]

A morality of expediency becomes pretty hard to hide after a while.

(This is not just an evangelical condition by any means...but when religious folks do it, the hypocracy Label is hard to avoid).

[Szdfan]

The same shift has happened on the progressive end of things, where I run into the belief that John Howard Yoder's teachings and books can stand on their own unaffected by his reputation of how he actually lived.

I'm not sure who you're talking to, but that's not the discussions I've been having about Yoder. I've had conversations with progressives who wonder who they can ethically dispose of their Yoder books.

I was at Goshen a year or so after Yoder's death and I remember the issue of his behavior coming up in class and the professor shutting down the discussion and moving it along as fast as possible. Even when I was in seminary 2007-2010, it was still and uncomfortable and taboo subject. My sense it's a completely different situation now.

The challenge is that Yoder's theology has played an integral part in contemporary progressive Mennonite theology. For a long time, Yoder (through Stanley Hauerwas) was the first theological introduction that many non-Mennos had of Mennonites. It's going to take a while for that to shift to a post-Yoder framework. But as Bootstrap points out, that shift is already happening. Yoder is no longer the hot thing in theology that he was when I was in seminary.

In regards to evangelicals and Trump -- yeah, they don't have credibility anymore when it comes to public morality and complaining about the morality of the country. The sense from my side of the aisle is that they dumped their stated values because it benefited them politically.

[Szdfan]

A morality of expediency becomes pretty hard to hide after a while.

(This is not just an evangelical condition by any means...but when religious folks do it, the hypocracy Label is hard to avoid).

The reality is that we are all hypocrites on some level and while we tend to view morality to be primarily about sexual behavior, there are many, many ways we fall short of our ideals or the glory of God.

If we say we believe certain things and bitterly complain in the public sphere that others don't believe the same we do, then should we be surprised when people hold us accountable for a failures and indiscretions?

It's one of the reasons I'm not really into "proclaiming" particular stances or theological positions. I'm more interested in behavior and spiritual development. What we do often says much more about what we actually believe than what we say.

I've met Ted Haggard a few times. He's a fascinating example of this dynamic of a well-liked, influential religious leader who fell off his pedestal because of his behavior and it's been interesting to see how his experience of scandal has shaped him.

[RZehr]

The reality is that we are all hypocrites on some level and while we tend to view morality to be primarily about sexual behavior, there are many, many ways we fall short of our ideals or the glory of God.

If we say we believe certain things and bitterly complain in the public sphere that others don't believe the same we do, then should we be surprised when people hold us accountable for a failures and indiscretions?

It's one of the reasons I'm not really into "proclaiming" particular stances or theological positions. I'm more interested in behavior and spiritual development. What we do often says much more about what we actually believe than what we say.

[MaxPC]

The reality is that we are all hypocrites on some level and while we tend to view morality to be primarily about sexual behavior, there are many, many ways we fall short of our ideals or the glory of God.

If we say we believe certain things and bitterly complain in the public sphere that others don't believe the same we do, then should we be surprised when people hold us accountable for a failures and indiscretions?

It's one of the reasons I'm not really into "proclaiming" particular stances or theological positions. I'm more interested in behavior and spiritual development. What we do often says much more about what we actually believe than what we say.

Amen, amen, and amen!