Issuu

EVANGELICALS

EVANGELICALS Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be

Mark A. Noll David W. Bebbington George M. Marsden

WilliamÂ B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546 www.eerdmans.com © 2019 Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George M. Marsden All rights reserved Published 2019 Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ISBN 978-0-8028-7695-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Noll, Mark A., 1946- author. | Bebbington, David, 1949- author. | Marsden, George M., 1939- author. Title: Evangelicals : who they have been, are now, and could be / Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, George M. Marsden. Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This books draws together significant considerations of evangelicalism from three of the historians who have contributed a great deal to putting the subject on the map, along with selected commentary from others who have benefited from, or sometimes questioned, their work”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019026125 | ISBN 9780802876959 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Evangelicalism. Classification: LCC BR1640 .N645 2019 | DDC 270.8/2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019026125

To the many historians from many parts of the world who have made evangelical history, however defined, such a lively and edifying enterprise

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

xi 1

One Word but Three Crises Mark A. Noll

PART I: THE HISTORY OF “EVANGELICAL HISTORY”

Chapter 1

The Evangelical Denomination George Marsden Chapter 2

The Nature of Evangelical Religion David W. Bebbington Chapter 3

The Essential Evangelicalism Dialectic : The Historiography of the Early Neo-Evangelical Movement and the Observer-Participant Dilemma Douglas A. Sweeney Chapter 4

Evangelical Constituencies in North America and the World Mark A. Noll

vii

Contents Chapter 5

The Evangelical Discovery of History David W. Bebbington Chapter 6

123

Re-examining David Bebbington’s Quadrilateral Roundtable Introduction 124 Charlie Phillips The Bebbington Quadrilateral Travels into the Empire Kelley Cross Elliot

127

The Bebbington Quadrilateral and the Work of the Holy Spirit Thomas S. Kidd

136

Bebbington’s Approach to Evangelical Christianity As a Pioneering Effort in Lived Religion Amanda Porterfield

141

Revisiting Bebbington’s Classic Rendering of Modern Evangelicalism at Points of New Departure Darren Dochuk

147

Noun or Adjective? The Ravings of a Fanatical Nominalist Mark A. Noll Defining Evangelicalism: Questions That Complement the Quadrilateral Molly Worthen

171

The Evangelical Quadrilateral: A Response David W. Bebbington

175

Chapter 7

188

Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word Linford D. Fisher

viii

159

Contents PART II: THE CURRENT CRISIS: LOOKING BACK

Chapter 8

217

A Strange Love? Or: How White Evangelicals Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Donald Michael S. Hamilton Chapter 9

228

Live by the Polls, Die by the Polls D. G. Hart Chapter 10

234

Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity Kristen Kobes Du Mez Chapter 11

241

The “Weird” Fringe Is the Biggest Part of White Evangelicalism Fred CLark

PART III: THE CURRENT CRISIS: ASSESSMENT

Chapter 12

247

Is the Term “Evangelical” Redeemable? Thomas S. Kidd Chapter 13

251

Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump? Timothy Keller Chapter 14

256

Idols of the Trump Era Molly Worthen Chapter 15

262

Are Black Christians Evangelicals? Jemar Tisby

Contents Chapter 16

273

To Be or Not to Be an Evangelical Brian C. Stiller

PART IV: HISTORIANS SEEKING PERSPECTIVE

Chapter 17

281

On Not Mistaking One Part for the Whole : The Future of American Evangelicalism in a Global Perspective George Marsden Chapter 18

292

Evangelicals and Recent Politics in Britain David W. Bebbington Chapter 19

300

World Cup or World Series? Mark A. Noll Index

317

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank the publishers and periodicals that permitted us to reprint materials concerning the writing of evangelical history, as well as the writers who allowed us to reprint their essays or who wrote new essays on contemporary American controversies. Specific acknowledgment is provided with the individual contributions. We also offer our thanks to David Bratt and other editors at WilliamÂ B. Eerdmans Publishing Company who affirmed the value of such a book. Because we have long enjoyed the great privilege of working cooperatively with many individuals from many parts of the world, the editors count it a humbling honor to acknowledge how much we have learned from the historians who for more than a generation have provided so much enlightenment for so many readers on so many subjects related to the general history of evangelicalism, however defined. This book is dedicated with deep gratitude to those historians.

INTRODUCTION

One Word but Three Crises Mark A. Noll

The word “evangelical” is in trouble—but for different and competing reasons. Toward the end of this book, we address at considerable length the contemporary American controversies posing the greatest difficulties for a coherent, factual, and responsible understanding of “evangelicalism.” But before reaching that point, the book charts efforts by historians who since the 1960s have been writing general histories of Protestant evangelical Christianity—first for the United States and Great Britain, but then for Christian movements throughout the world as a whole. These two matters—contemporary controversy and the development of a historiographical tradition—stand in tight, intimate, but also perplexing relationship to each other. Before it turns to contested questions of the present day, the book reprints some of the most important book chapters and journal articles that defined, clarified, or contested the historical development of the evangelical movement. From that work two conclusions are evident. First, when considered conceptually as a particular type of Protestant Christianity with a number of interconnected and recurring characteristics, “evangelicalism” has constituted a clearly defined historical reality. But, second, if consideration shifts to movements, networks, individuals, groups, activities, theological convictions, denominations, and memorable publications that might reasonably be included in histories of evangelicalism, there has been a great deal more complexity and not a little ambiguity. From these two conclusions it is possible to draw one more: because landmark statements concerning the history of evangelicalism reveal a remarkable combination of clarity and complexity, they provide an excellent vantage point for assessing confusion surrounding that term in the present day. In short, for understanding the present crisis of evangelicalism,

Mark A. Noll there may be no better path than to reconsider how modern histories of evangelicalism came to be written.

The Obvious The first trouble for contemporary evangelicalism is the most obvious. Ever since Donald Trump emerged as a major player in American political life, pollsters and pundits have fixated on the overwhelming support he has received from a constituency often called simply “evangelicals”—or, if there is a pause for breath, “white evangelicals.” Various polls tracking the presidential election of 2016 announced that Trump won 81 percent of “the evangelical vote”; subsequent polls show that this same constituency has approved President Trump’s deeds in office with just about that same stratospheric majority. Spokesmen and spokeswomen for the 81 percent have called Donald Trump “Cyrus,” the ancient Persian king who, though not of the Hebrew chosen people himself, was nevertheless enlisted by Yahweh to protect Israel and its interests. Their voices have been magnified many times over, not least because of Trump’s frequent appearances on the Trinity Broadcast Network, the nation’s largest Christian television network.1 Yet huzzahs of affirmation from evangelicals who back Trump have been matched in fervor, though not in quantity, by cries of anguish from a different corner of the evangelical world. From that corner, some who once were entirely content to be known as evangelicals have published a wave of books, articles, and blog posts with titles like Still Evangelical? Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning;2 “Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican”;3 “The Unlikely Crackup of Evangelicalism”;4 1. Ruth Graham, “Church of the Donald,” Politico, May/June 2018, https://www .politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/22/trump-christian-evangelical-conservatives -television-tbn-cbn-218008. 2. Mark Labberton, ed., Still Evangelical? Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018). 3. Peter Wehner, “Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican,” New York Times, December 9, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/opinion /sunday/wehner-evangelical-republicans.html. 4. Richard Mouw, “The Unlikely Crackup of Evangelicalism,” Christianity Today, January 3, 2018, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-web-only/unlikely -crack-up-of-evangelicalism.html.

One Word but Three Crises and “Polls Show Evangelicals Support Trump: But the Term ‘Evangelical’ Has Become Meaningless.”5 In this recent flurry, some noteworthy authorities have reinforced impressions left by the popular media that Donald Trump’s nationalist and populist backers are simply writing the last chapter of the American evangelical story in its entirety. A major recent book by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Frances Fitzgerald presents such a narrative in extensively researched detail. Entitled The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, it implies that the book’s plot line—with three-fourths of its over six hundred pages devoted to the white Christian Right since World War II—captures the essence of evangelicalism.6 Yet not entirely lost in the superheated ideological cauldron of American political punditry has been another salient fact. That important fact raises the types of questions this book wants to address. This is the fact: the very high level of evangelical support for Donald Trump is like nothing seen in America’s recent religious-political history—except for the even higher percentage that since the 1960s Democrats have received from Bible-believing, born-again African Americans. To mention this other exceedingly strong religious-political connection immediately spotlights why the word “evangelical” is in trouble. For much of postwar American polling, George Gallup identified “evangelicals” as those who said they were born again or who had undergone a born-again experience. Yet if significant numbers of African Americans have been born again and have been voting for Democrats—in even higher proportions and over a longer period of time than white evangelicals have voted for Republicans— how can anyone speak responsibly about “evangelical support” for Donald Trump without serious qualifications? The supposedly tight bond between evangelicalism and Donald Trump becomes even more mysterious if analysts take account of work done by histo5. Thomas S. Kidd, “Polls Show Evangelicals Support Trump: But the Term ‘Evangelical’ Has Become Meaningless,” Washington Post, July 22, 2016, https://www .washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/07/22/polls-show-evangelicals -support-trump-but-the-term-evangelical-has-become-meaningless/?noredirect =on&utm_term=.ef9420fce2d1. 6. Frances Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017). A perceptive review of this book that accepts Fitzgerald’s basic narrative was provided by Garry Wills, “Where Evangelicals Came From,” New York Review, April 20, 2017, 26–29. A review that challenged Fitzgerald by documenting the political pluralism of evangelical history was offered by Randall Balmer, Christian Century, April 12, 2017, 37–38.

Mark A. Noll rians committed to careful examination of developments over time. Indicating how those efforts should influence contemporary punditry also makes a bridge for introducing the contents of this book. We begin below with two of the pathbreaking historical statements that have been most widely cited as conceptual frameworks for recording the history of modern evangelicalism. Attempts at defining evangelicalism as a subject of historical analysis in its own right and then writing specifically “evangelical histories” gradually increased after World War II. As several of the contributions below detail, the “neo-evangelical” movement in the postwar United States coincided with, even as it drew considerable inspiration from, self-conscious evangelical renewal in Britain that reached across the long-standing divide between evangelicals in the Church of England and Dissenting Protestants holding evangelical convictions. Although one of the results on both sides of the Atlantic was an intensification of scholarship, historians in those constituencies trailed biblical scholars and theologians in mobilizing for serious intellectual effort. Once those efforts began, however, they expanded rapidly. The Historians’ Study Group of Inter-Varsity Fellowship in Britain and the American Conference on Faith and History, both founded in the 1960s, drew together individuals eager to promote deeper historical insight while still maintaining firm Christian convictions. The number of important historical works attempting to communicate a generally evangelical story also grew steadily. Most observers award pride of place to Timothy L. Smith’s Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War, published by Abingdon in 1957, and George Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, published in 1980 by Oxford University Press, but the number of others was also expanding rapidly.7 In 1984, when George Marsden described “the evangelical denomination” in the introduction to a book on modern American evangelicalism, and in 1989, 7. Others included William G. McLoughlin Jr., Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New York: Ronald, 1959); Haddon Willmer, “Evangelicalism, 1785–1835,” Hulsean Prize Essay (Cambridge University, 1962); Richard Allen, The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971); Bernard L. Ramm, The Evangelical Heritage (Waco, TX: Word, 1973); Donald C. Bloesch, The Evangelical Renaissance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973); David F. Wells and John D. Woodbridge, eds., The Evangelicals: What They Believe, Who They Are, Where They Are Changing (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975); Donald W. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); and Nathan O. Hatch, Mark A. Noll, and John D. Woodbridge, The Gospel in America: Themes in the Story of America’s Evangelicals (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979).

One Word but Three Crises when David Bebbington brought out Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, this earlier momentum led to the publication of definitive conceptual statements.8 When he published that introduction, Marsden was a history professor at Calvin College; he would later go on to train graduate students at Duke and Notre Dame. When Bebbington published a refined framework for conceptualizing evangelicalism as the first chapter of the substantial history that followed, he was in the early years of what became a distinguished career as teacher and supervisor of doctoral students at the University of Stirling in Scotland. (It is a pertinent detour to notice a common, though never uniform, difference in transatlantic conventions of capitalization. In Britain, “Evangelicalism” and “Evangelical” have usually been capitalized, in large part because these terms have been used to describe a party in the Church of England, alongside Anglo- Catholic and Broad Church parties, before being used as a transdenominational adjective for all who embraced more general evangelical convictions. In the United States, the terms usually appear as lowercase, in large part because they were first used as general designations for most Protestant denominations before, from the mid-twentieth century, becoming more specifically applied to narrower interdenominational movements. In the United States, the lowercase convention also usually applies to “fundamentalists,” “modernists,” and “liberals.” The second essay by David Bebbington in this book, “The Evangelical Discovery of History,” explains in rewarding detail the development of what became a shared historical enterprise differentiated, if only slightly, by a common language!)9 The 1984 and 1989 contributions of these two historians rode the crest of a publishing wave, which these works measurably strengthened.10 Yet their care 8. George Marsden, “Introduction: The Evangelical Denomination,” in Evangelicalism in Modern America, ed. George Marsden (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), vii–xix; D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 9. Other detailed efforts to write the history of evangelical history-writing are provided by Mark Noll, “Timothy L. Smith, George Marsden, David Bebbington, and Anglo-American Evangelicalism,” and David Bebbington, “Andrew Walls, Brian Stanley, Dana Robert, Mark Noll, and Global Evangelicalism,” in Making Evangelical History: Faith, Scholarship, and the Evangelical Past, ed. Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019), 235–56, 257–74. 10. For recent examples of such work produced by students and friends of the editors of this volume, see Darren Dochuk, Thomas S. Kidd, and Kurt W. Peterson, eds., American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014); A. R. Cross, P. J. Morden, and I. M. Randall, eds., Pathways and Patterns in History: Essays on Baptists, Evangelicals,

Mark A. Noll in defining “evangelicalism” is also relevant for contemporary questions. Marsden drew a distinction between evangelicalism as a set of self-consciously integrated movements and evangelicalism as a “conceptual unity” that identifies a broader set of groups possessing common traits. For defining the latter, he specified five salient beliefs: “1) the Reformation doctrine of the final authority of Scripture; 2) the real, historical character of God’s saving work recorded in Scripture; 3) eternal salvation only through personal trust in Christ; 4) the importance of evangelism and missions; and 5) the importance of a spiritually transformed life.”11 David Bebbington’s characterization, which resembled Marsden’s in some but not all particulars, enumerated four distinctive evangelical emphases. These four characteristics were presented as often held in common with other Christians, but as being stressed by those who were known as evangelicals. This “quadrilateral” rapidly became, as it were, the industry standard put to use fruitfully by many other writers in many other studies. Bebbington’s account of the four characteristics contains much important detail, but they can be summarized succinctly: • conversion, or “the belief that lives need to be changed”; • the Bible, or “the belief that all spiritual truth is to be found in its pages”; • activism, or the dedication of all believers, especially the laity, to lives of service for God, especially in sharing the Christian message and taking that message far and near; and • crucicentrism, or the conviction that Christ’s death on the cross provided atonement for sin and reconciliation between sinful humanity and a holy God.12 So how does Marsden’s and Bebbington’s careful work of definition from a generation ago relate to current political controversies? In 2015, LifeWay Research, in collaboration with the National Association of Evangelicals, carried out an extensive American survey that operationalized four statements similar to Bebbington’s quadrilateral.13 It was not a surprise, given earlier polls and the Modern World in Honour of David Bebbington (Didcot, UK: Baptist Historical Society, 2015); and Heath W. Carter and Laura Rominger Porter, eds., Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017). 11. See below, 23. 12. For full elaboration of those characteristics, see below, 31–55. 13. The four statements to which it sought responses were as follows: “The Bible

One Word but Three Crises trying to identify the evangelical component of the national population, that this survey found 29 percent of Caucasian Americans affirming all four evangelical markers. Everything else from the survey, however, could be considered a surprise, at least to those mesmerized by “evangelicals for Trump.” This 29 percent certainly did include “white evangelicals,” many of whom were members of largely white evangelical churches and doubtless voted for Donald Trump. But numbered among the 29 percent were also many Protestants from so- called mainline or liberal denominations, more than a few Roman Catholics, and a number of Mormons and others. And quite a few in white evangelical denominations did not affirm all the evangelical markers. And 44 percent of the nation’s African Americans did affirm all four. And so did 30 percent of Hispanic Americans. And 17 percent of Americans of other ethnicities as well. Needless to say, the evangelicals identified by affirming evangelical beliefs included a large number who did not support Donald Trump. Here’s the point: the careful conceptual definitions that historians have used to write histories of evangelicalism relate only partially to the evangelicalism so casually evoked in much contemporary punditry. What Marsden described in trying to write about evangelicals in modern America and Bebbington described from his research into more than two hundred years of British history did overlap to some degree with that popular usage of “evangelicalism.” But not comprehensively, not coherently, and far from completely.

Not So Obvious: The Past Two other relationships, which are not as obvious as those fueling contemporary political debate, make for different kinds of crises. One concerns academic pushback to the canonical work of George Marsden and David Bebbington. The other concerns the viability of the term “evangelical,” with its Anglo-American origins, in a contemporary world where there is now much is the highest authority for what I believe. It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of sin. Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.” For the questions and a report of the survey results, see Ed Stetzer, “Defining Evangelicals in Research,” Evangelicals (National Association of Evangelicals) 3, no. 3 (Winter 2017/18): 12–13.

Mark A. Noll more evangelical-like Christian religion outside the Atlantic region than in the United States and Great Britain. A 1991 article by Douglas Sweeney, which is reprinted below, explored an early objection to the way George Marsden had recounted the history of American evangelicalism. To some observers, especially those concentrating on the extensive influence of Wesleyan, Arminian, Holiness, and Pentecostal movements, Marsden had overemphasized the influence of Reformed and Presbyterian traditions in the general evangelical story. Sweeney’s discerning parsing of that challenge offered particularly wise words concerning how a historian’s own standpoint might affect the shape of the historian’s work. Other similar efforts followed. In 1991 Donald W. Dayton and Robert Johnston edited a book, The Variety of American Evangelicalism, in which contributors were asked if enough commonalities linked their particular group (fundamentalists, Pentecostals, Adventists, Holiness advocates, Restorationists [Disciples and Churches of Christ], African Americans, Baptists, pietists, Mennonites, the confessionally Reformed, and Lutherans) to an entity that could legitimately be called “American evangelicalism.” They were, in effect, probing George Marsden’s 1984 attempt to explain both differences and commonalities within the broader stream of American Protestantism. As an anticipation of later debates among historians, but also later commenters on contemporary American religion, many of the authors equivocated. Editor Johnston defended the notion of evangelicalism as “an extended family,” while editor Dayton expressed doubts about the usefulness of the category.14 This introduction has already touched upon the most obvious fact supporting Dayton’s skepticism, a fact that will be examined several times throughout the book. It has long been obvious that America’s black Protestant churches contain a higher percentage of members marked by the four Bebbington characteristics (or affirming Marsden’s five salient beliefs) than do white Protestant churches. Yet the American embrace of slavery, followed by culturally enforced segregation, means that whites and blacks who share these religious emphases have shared very little else. An evangelicalism that includes both blacks and whites makes sense from an angle focused on nar14. Donald W. Dayton, “Some Doubts about the Usefulness of the Category ‘Evangelical,’ ” 245–51, and Robert K. Johnston, “American Evangelicalism: An Extended Family,” 252–72, in The Variety of American Evangelicalism, ed. Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991).

One Word but Three Crises rowly religious characteristics, but far less sense in the actual outworking of American history. My book chapter reprinted below, “Evangelical Constituencies in North America and the World,” explores a development that has gained considerable force only in recent decades but now also complicates the picture. The extensive survey of Canadian and American citizens described in that chapter shows that quite a few Roman Catholics in both countries look an awful lot like evangelicals in their beliefs and practices. Not that long ago, to be an evangelical simply meant to be anti-Catholic. The differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants, especially evangelical Protestants, were as clear-cut as possible. But no longer. Many more surveys than the one I examine now turn up numerous Catholics, though never a majority of that communion, who are marked by the four Bebbington characteristics and who affirm the five Marsden beliefs (apart from reference to the Reformation). As this once unbridgeable chasm is bridged, clarity in defining evangelicalism becomes more complicated. David Bebbington’s fourfold definition has been put to use positively far more than it has been questioned. But questions nevertheless have arisen. For instance, against Bebbington’s depiction of British evangelicalism as a new tradition arising in the eighteenth century when Puritan, revivalistic, and Enlightenment trajectories flowed together, some have argued that eighteenth- century developments must be viewed as only the latest chapter in a much longer evangelical history stretching back to the Reformation.15 A new guide to general evangelical history, edited by Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones, begins with a wide-ranging chapter by the editors that broadens understanding of both evangelical cohesion and evangelical contention.16 Among other revealing insights, it shows that while “Evangelicalism” did appear as a general description from the early nineteenth century, that common coinage also showed up much less often than words and categories used to describe clashes among those who might be called evangelicals. A broader historical challenge has recently come from Linford Fisher of Brown University, in a substantial article contending that “evangelical” has 15. This criticism is made by some of the contributors to Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart, eds., The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Nashville: B&H, 2008), which concludes with Bebbington’s “Response,” 417–32. 16. Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones, “Evangelicals and Evangelicalisms: Contested Identities,” in The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism, ed. Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018), 1–21.

Mark A. Noll often meant less, and sometimes more, than the Bebbington characterization.17 It is reprinted below in abridged form. Fisher shows that from the time of the Reformation and for several centuries afterward, “evangelical” usually meant simply “Protestant” or, almost as frequently, “anti-Catholic.” During the eighteenth-century revivals George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and “awakened” believers in Britain and America spoke much more often of “true” or “real” religion (as opposed to nominal or only formal adherence) than they did of “evangelical” faith.18 Fisher argues that the word took on its recent connotations only after the Second World War, when former fundamentalists in the United States sought a less combative, more irenic term to describe their orthodox theology and their desire to reengage with society. In the process some Pentecostals, Lutherans, Mennonites, Christian Reformed, and others who had not been associated with the main body of America’s earlier “evangelical Protestants” were now glad to join in using the word to describe themselves. At the same time, other Protestants who had thought of themselves as evangelicals began to avoid the word as designating something too close to fundamentalism. A different approach to assessing the Bebbington quadrilateral came from symposia convened by the Conference on Faith and History to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Evangelicals in Modern Britain; that is also reprinted in this book. The seven contributors to that venture, including myself, expressed general appreciation for the clarity with which Bebbington had highlighted an international and transgenerational understanding of evangelicalism. But they also probed the definition for what it might have left open conceptually or historically for further examination. The breadth of that symposium testifies at once to the significance but also the open-ended nature of evangelical history writing in the modern period. As the documents in the book’s first section indicate, uncertainties, challenges, omissions, and controversies have always surrounded the question of who is and who is not an evangelical. Yet these difficulties—as David Bebbington’s article “The Evangelical Discovery of History” also shows clearly—have not prevented the emergence of a vigorous tradition of “evangelical history.” 17. Linford Fisher, “Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word, 1500–1950,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 26 (Summer 2016): 184–226. 18. That usage has recently received noteworthy exposition in a book by D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

One Word but Three Crises Attention to this history of history writing becomes potentially relevant as background for current political considerations, especially for underscoring the possibility that contention over the meaning of a word and fruitful exposition of what it designates may exist together.

Not So Obvious: The World A third complication for “evangelicalism” is the striking, though often neglected, fact that the United States does not equal the world. The changing shape of world Christianity deserves full consideration when thinking about contemporary American debates. The 2001 edition of David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia, for example, identified 210 million Christian believers as “evangelicals” worldwide. He counted another 510 million as Pentecostal, neo-Pentecostal, and “charismatic,” most of whom should also be considered evangelicals. Of those numbers, only 64 million evangelicals lived in Europe and North America, while only 116 million of the Pentecostal-charismatic total lived on those continents. Throughout the world, in other words, an increasingly diverse array of loosely connected movements, churches, voluntary organizations, and educational institutions shares broadly evangelical commitments. Many of them also trace their origin to missionary efforts sponsored by Western evangelicals. But their shape, their chief concerns, their preoccupations, and their goals often lie very far from the politics and preoccupations of the contemporary American media. The rapid expansion of evangelical-like movements around the world presents a different challenge to any coherent understanding of evangelicalism. Not political or ideological standoffs, but sheer, mind-boggling diversity is the crux. Yet, as several contributions to this book suggest, though the proliferation of such newer spiritual forces makes it more difficult to speak responsibly about a single evangelicalism, it may still be possible. However that question is answered, from a global perspective the clearest conclusion must be that the fate of evangelicalism depends on more than the ebb and flow of parochial American concerns.

The Book What follows is divided into four parts. First come seven documents reflecting on the meaning of evangelicalism, problems involved in defining that meaning, and debates generated by the definitive accounts of George Marsden and 11

Mark A. Noll David Bebbington—but all concerned with the effort to write general histories of evangelicalism. They are presented chronologically according to the order in which they were published. A small amount of repetition is found in these accounts, but even that repetition illustrates important landmarks in the development of evangelical history. Each contribution is introduced briefly, with George Marsden explaining at greater length how his 1984 essay came to be written. 1984. George Marsden, “The Evangelical Denomination.” 1989. David Bebbington, “The Nature of Evangelical Religion.” 1991. Douglas A. Sweeney, “The Essential Evangelicalism Dialectic: The Historiography of the Early Neo-Evangelical Movement and the Observer- Participant Dilemma.” 2001. Mark Noll, “Evangelical Constituencies in North America and the World.” 2013. David Bebbington, “The Evangelical Discovery of History.” 2015. Charlie Phillips, Kelly Cross Elliott, Amanda Porterfield, Thomas Kidd, Mark Noll, Darren Dochuk, Molly Worthen, and David Bebbington, “Roundtable: Re-examining David Bebbington’s ‘Quadrilateral Thesis.’ ” 2016. Linford D. Fisher, “Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word.” The next two parts offer nine, mostly shorter comments concerning the recent American treatment of evangelicals as the prime religious constituency supporting the policies of Donald Trump. Brief introductions identify the authors and position their comments in the unfolding of recent developments. The first four, in part 2, look back in order to explain where evangelical support for Trump came from: “A Strange Love? Or: How White Evangelicals Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Donald” (Michael S. Hamilton); “Live by the Polls, Die by the Polls” (D. G. Hart); “Donald Trump and Militant Evangelical Masculinity” (Kristin Kobes Du Mez); and “The ‘Weird’ Fringe Is the Biggest Part of White Evangelicalism” (Fred Clark). The next five, in part 3, attempt assessments of what occurred: “Is the Term ‘Evangelical’ Redeemable?” (Thomas S. Kidd); “Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump?” (Timothy Keller); “Idols of the Trump Era” (Molly Worthen); “Are Black Christians Evangelicals?” (Jemar Tisby); and “To Be or Not to Be an Evangelical” (Brian C. Stiller). In the book’s final brief section, George Marsden, David Bebbington, and I offer short essays prompted by this effort at drawing together the history 12

One Word but Three Crises of evangelical histories and the upsets of contemporary American politics. Marsden returns to the question that occupied his attention in 1984—how to account for the mingled chaos and coherence surrounding the notion of “evangelicalism.” This time he uses the analogy of biological taxonomy to describe evangelicalism as a class that includes numerous species. For Bebbington, it is particularly pertinent to explore the relationship of evangelicals and politics in recent British history. His essay is a timely reminder that “the Bebbington quadrilateral,” which has generated such unusually fruitful application along with such unusually contentious debate when applied to American history, began as an account of British history. It also underscores the reality that the contemporary relation of evangelicals and politics is quite different in Britain than in the United States. My contribution expands comparative perspectives by asking how the recent American history of evangelicalism relates to the development of evangelical forms of Christianity throughout the world. Thick connections link evangelical history in the United States to evangelical developments in the world, but the two should never be mistaken as identical. The object of this book is to illuminate trajectories from the past in relationship to recent debates about evangelicalism, especially in the United States. Its concerns, regarded from a global perspective, are admittedly parochial. Yet George Marsden and David Bebbington join me in knowing that the word “evangelical” comes from the New Testament term for “gospel” (“good news”). Affirming the relevance of the Christian gospel to the contemporary United States, as well as to the world, is the most basic reason why historians of evangelicalism who are also evangelicals (with whatever burden of ambiguity that term now entails) have undertaken their work.

CHAPTER 15

Are Black Christians Evangelicals? Jemar Tisby

Jemar Tisby is president and cofounder of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective. His first book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, was published by Zondervan in January 2019. Tisby’s essays on race, religion, and contemporary America have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Christianity Today, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi; he is now a PhD student studying race and twentieth-century American history at the University of Mississippi. This essay, which visits a subject addressed several times in the preceding pages, was written expressly for this book.

The 2016 US presidential election brought questions of religion and politics surging to the fore of national conversations. Evangelicals, in particular, became the subject of much debate, as observers analyzed and commented on the massive support, 81 percent, that evangelical voters gave to the man who became the forty-fifth president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. These men and women, often labeled “values voters” and the “Religious Right,” mobilized their support behind a man notorious for philandering, vulgar language, half-truths, and lies, all while showing only a passing familiarity with the Bible and basic Christian doctrines. In the wake of the election, the baffled, the curious, and the outraged public started asking a question American religious scholars have debated for decades, “What is an evangelical?”

262

Are Black Christians Evangelicals? What goes unstated in most of the contemporary discussions about evangelicals is that the designation refers mainly to white evangelicals. People of color, black people in particular, do not fit many of the descriptions, especially in terms of political patterns, that apply to white evangelicals.1 To complicate matters further, many black Christians share much in common theologically with white evangelicals. They believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, the need for a personal relationship with Christ, and the importance of evangelism to spread the good news. Some black Christians are even members of predominantly white evangelical churches. The question arises, then, “Are black Christians evangelicals?” This essay addresses that question from an interdisciplinary perspective by means of a theoretical framework and a case study. Borrowing from theologian and philosopher John Frame’s tri-perspectival method, we will examine the term “evangelical” from multiple angles to assess whether black Christians are evangelicals. Once the theoretical parameters have been set, an examination of Tom Skinner, a self-described black evangelical, will demonstrate whether black Christians fit within late twentieth-century manifestations of evangelicalism. This study will show that from a variety of perspectives, black Christians can be considered evangelicals, but to the extent that they assert racial and social justice concerns, their participation in white evangelical circles has been circumscribed. Black Christians in evangelical churches and organizations must always face the issue of limits and control based on how explicitly they address the issues—such as racism, police brutality, economic inequality, and access to quality education—in their ministry and how comfortable the white majority is with their message. In the end, this study illuminates more than whether black Christians are evangelicals. It also asserts the importance of race in the broader endeavor to define and describe evangelicalism. Race sits at the heart of evangelical theology, church polity, and political outlooks. Any explanation of evangelicalism that treats race as a peripheral matter misses a primary characteristic of the movement. Insisting on the centrality of race to definitions of evangelicalism highlights the ways race informs religion and how religion informs race.

1. For example, responses from black Protestant Christians are often separated from white evangelical Christians in surveys and polls.

263

Jemar Tisby

The Theory: A Tri-Perspectival Approach Historians have not yet agreed on a definition of evangelicalism. This is partly because it is a dynamic movement constantly shaped by and shaping the context around it. Mark Noll points out that “evangelicalism was and is a set of defining beliefs and practices easier to see as an adjective (e.g., evangelical Anglicans, evangelical missionary efforts, evangelical doctrine) than as a simple noun.”2 Nevertheless, David Bebbington’s description of four main evangelical characteristics proves a beneficial starting point. According to this “quadrilateral,” evangelicals emphasize “conversionism,” an emphasis on a personal decision to follow Jesus Christ; biblicism, an understanding of the Bible that interprets miracles as true and Scripture as divinely inspired; crucicentrism, a focus on the crucifixion of Christ as a sacrifice for his followers; and activism, an engaged faith whose adherents seek to influence the broader culture with their beliefs. To Bebbington’s quadrilateral, other historians have added helpful modifications. For instance, Timothy Gloege emphasizes the individualism present in much of evangelicalism. An individualistic relationship to a personal God coupled with a similarly individualistic interpretation of the Bible that opts for a “plain” reading of sacred text makes evangelicalism distinctive from other Christian traditions that might otherwise fit into Bebbington’s quadrilateral.3 Journalist Kenneth Woodward defines evangelicalism as “essentially an entrepreneurial religion.” This tendency to strike out and start new churches and religious organizations captures evangelicalism’s distinguishing feature.4 After a detailed linguistic analysis, Hannah Butler and Kristin Du Mez emphasize the political aspect of modern evangelicalism. They conclude that “it seems reasonable to assume that when Americans self-identify as evangelicals today, many are identifying with the movement as it has taken shape in recent decades—a conservative politicized movement—and not with a static conception rooted in a centuries-old history.”5 The basic theological contours 2. Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 21. 3. Lutherans, for example, might fit Bebbington’s quadrilateral description, but the ecclesiology of the church precludes the kind of individualistic interpretation of Scripture inherent in large segments of American evangelicalism. 4. Kenneth L. Woodward, Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Ascent of Trump (New York: Convergent Books, 2016), 129. 5. Hannah Butler and Kristin Du Mez, “The Reinvention of ‘Evangelical’ in American History: A Linguistic Analysis,” Anxious Bench, May 31, 2018.

264

Are Black Christians Evangelicals? of evangelicalism can be debated and refined, but there’s another approach, actually multiple approaches, to defining evangelicalism. John Frame served as the chair of systematic theology and philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary’s Orlando campus. He has written multiple lengthy volumes on Christian epistemology and apologetics. He, along with his colleague Vern Poythress, devised a way of understanding theology known as tri-perspectivalism. As the term indicates, it focuses on three perspectives: normative, situational, and existential. Although Frame has extended treatments of each perspective, they broadly correspond to knowledge of God, knowledge of the world, and knowledge of self.6 In Frame’s words, the normative perspective asks, “What do God’s norms direct us to believe?” The situational perspective asks, “What are the facts?” The existential perspective asks, “What belief is most satisfying to a believing heart?” Each perspective informs the others, and all are necessary for a more complete understanding of the object under scrutiny. The specific Christian connotations of Frame’s framework need not enter into this discussion, but his categorizations prove helpful in defining evangelicalism. For the purposes of this essay, the normative perspective corresponds to evangelical theology as a standard of religious truth. The situational perspective includes the patterns and events within evangelicalism as they have unfolded throughout American history. Finally, the existential perspective refers to an individual’s experience of evangelicalism as well as whether one self-identifies as an evangelical. Disagreements about the definition of evangelicalism may happen, in part, simply because historians attempt to define it from different, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, perspectives. One historian may point to Bebbington’s quadrilateral, which emphasizes the normative-theological aspects of evangelicalism. Another may point to the rise of the Religious Right and the connection between evangelicalism and conservative politics, which places the situational-historical perspective at the fore. Yet others may speak of an existential-individual perspective and point out whether a person self-references as an evangelical, as in the case of Billy Graham. When applied to the question of whether black Christians are evangelicals, each perspective lends valuable insights. Normative-theologically speak6. For a detailed explanation, see Frame’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God: A Theology of Lordship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1987). A short explanation can be found in his essay “A Primer on Perspectivalism,” in John Frame’s Selected Shorter Writings, vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2014).

265

Jemar Tisby ing, can black Christians be considered evangelicals? The answer is yes. Black Christians hold many of the same core beliefs as evangelicals. Referring again to the quadrilateral taxonomy, many black Christians would adhere to biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, and activism. From the situational-historian perspective, black Christians should also be considered evangelicals. White missionaries had little success converting black slaves to Christianity until the Great Awakenings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many black people converted to Christianity in the revivals hosted by evangelists such as George Whitefield. Some of these large open-air revivals allowed both black and white participants, although they were still segregated into different areas; so black and white listeners converted under the same preacher and the same preaching. If black Christians and white evangelicals found the same messages convincing, then it would be reasonable to include black believers as evangelicals. Historically, black Christians even attended the same congregations. As Charles F. Irons writes in his book The Origins of Proslavery Christianity, “Sunday morning only became the most segregated time of the week after the Civil War. Before emancipation, black and white evangelicals typically prayed, sang, and worshiped together.”7 This interracial interaction was not the result of egalitarian notions of white Christians but an expression of paternalism and a means to prevent slave insurrection. Nevertheless, black Christians and white evangelicals showed up to the same place on Sunday and often heard the same message. So from the situational-historical perspective, yes, black Christians should be considered evangelicals. Lastly, from the existential-individual perspective, many black Christians have in fact referred to themselves as evangelicals. The clearest twentieth- century example of this is the organization called the National Black Evangelical Association (NBEA). The reasons for the formation of the NBEA in 1963 out of the National Evangelical Association (NEA) necessitates a separate study, but it is telling that black Christians called themselves “evangelical” in the title of their new organization. Howard O. Jones, a member of the NBEA, served as the first black associate evangelist for Billy Graham, and Christianity Today called him “the Jackie Robinson of evangelism.”8 Since using their own 7. Charles F. Irons, The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 1. 8. Edward Gilbreath, “The ‘Jackie Robinson’ of Evangelism,” Christianity Today, February 9, 1998.

266

Are Black Christians Evangelicals? terms ascribes agency to the subjects under consideration, the fact that black Christians themselves used the term “evangelical” to describe their beliefs and associations is perhaps the most compelling reason to answer the question, “Are black Christians evangelicals?” in the affirmative. From all three perspectives, black Christians can indeed be called evangelicals. But additional factors complicate this answer. Why are there so few black Christians in white evangelical churches and denominations? Why are black Christians pushing back against the term “evangelical” and refusing to claim the label? Why do black and white evangelicals express their faith so differently? All these questions point to the final salient factor in answering whether black Christians are evangelicals—race.

The Case Study: Tom Skinner at Urbana ’70 None of the twelve thousand college students at Urbana ’70, the triennial conference on evangelism hosted by the InterVarsity campus ministry, knew what to expect when Tom Skinner took the stage for the keynote address. But they were eager to hear him. The nationally known black evangelist from Harlem had ignited tens of thousands of people with his evangelistic crusades. What they heard that night was no different. “Any understanding of world evangelism and racism in our country must begin with an understanding of the history of racism,” Skinner began.9 He then went on to trace America’s racial history from 1619 to the late twentieth century. Skinner decried the failure of Christian fundamentalists and liberals alike to address the spiritual and physical well-being of inner-city inhabitants. Skinner then made a rhetorical move that his largely white, evangelical audience probably did not anticipate. He started talking about systems, revolution, and liberation. “I am a militant; make no bones about it,” he proclaimed. “Jesus was militant. And there are those of us who will be called to adopt the militant lifestyle.” Skinner added an evangelical inflection to his liberationist discourse. In a climactic ending, Skinner shouted, “Proclaim liberation to the captives, preach sight to the blind, set at liberty them that are bruised, go into the world and tell men who are bound mentally, spiritually and physically, ‘The liberator has come!’ ” 9. Tom Skinner, “The U.S. Racial Crisis and World Evangelism,” InterVarsity, December 1970, https://urbana.org/message/us-racial-crisis-and-world-evangelism.

267

Jemar Tisby Tom Skinner’s momentous speech at Urbana ’70 illustrates the limits of black Christians within majority white evangelicalism. The backlash he faced in the aftermath of that address related directly to his connections between traditional evangelicalism and the specific applications he made to racial problems and the plight of black Americans. Skinner’s story serves as a helpful case study not because everyone experienced exactly what he did, but because his narrative puts in stark relief what many everyday black Christians experienced on a smaller scale when they pushed the boundaries on race and justice. Born in 1942 to Alester and Georgia Skinner, a couple who had moved to Harlem as part of the great migration of black people out of the South, Thomas Skinner spent some of his teenage years as a gang leader until he underwent a dramatic conversion to Christianity. In 1954, when he was twelve, a couple of neighborhood teens approached Skinner about joining their gang, the Harlem Lords. Having been beat up on the way to the grocery store and accosted by neighborhood teens more than once, Skinner decided to join the Lords. Two years later, he challenged the gang’s captain to a duel for control of the group. He won and became a teenage gang leader. After two years of gang activity, Skinner turned from a life of crime and violence literally overnight. As he recalls in his autobiography published in 1969, Skinner had sat down to map out a strategy for a gang fight the next day. He was listening to a rock-and-roll radio program, but instead of the regularly scheduled station break at 9 p.m., the radio station aired a sermon. As he listened to the radio, all of his objections to Christianity began to fall away. “There was no emotional, traumatic experience that night. I simply accepted God at his word.” Skinner bowed his head and prayed for Jesus Christ to enter his life. When he looked up again, he knew something had changed.10 Skinner, now an ex–gang leader and a new Christian, could not contain his enthusiasm about his newfound faith. He immediately began talking about religion to any Harlem resident who would listen and telling them to believe his interpretation of the good news. Eventually, he began holding Billy Graham–style crusades in Harlem and other majority black communities. In fact, Skinner’s oratorical flair and evangelistic fervor gained him a nickname at the time as “the black Billy Graham.”11 10. Tom Skinner, Black and Free, rev. ed. (Tracys Landing, MD: Skinner Leadership Institute, 2013), location 1090. 11. Randall Balmer, Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 530.

268

Are Black Christians Evangelicals? As the 1960s progressed, comparisons between evangelicals like Graham and Skinner would become increasingly difficult to make. By the time of Skinner’s speech at Urbana, he was speaking out against white evangelical apathy in the face of persistent racial discrimination. Skinner’s form of evangelicalism consciously drew on elements of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, which emphasized a collective racial identity, an awareness of national black freedom struggles, and a militant style of proclamation. In the process, it provided an ideological challenge to white dominance within evangelicalism and a broader social critique of racial inequality in America. Skinner’s words that night at Urbana ’70 gave a clear sense of how he redeployed evangelicalism within a black racial framework. As Skinner brought his exhortation to a close, he explained that the choice between a message of spiritual salvation and social uplift was a false dichotomy. “There is no possible way you can talk about preaching the gospel if you do not want to deal with the issues that bind people. If your gospel is an ‘either-or’ gospel, I must reject it.” Instead of this binary choice, Skinner pointed to an alternative—black power evangelicalism. He spoke of Jesus as a “revolutionary.” He described Jesus as a radical concerned with overthrowing an unjust system, but who did not use guns. Instead he healed the sick, spoke words of comfort to prostitutes, and aligned himself with the poor. The most revolutionary act of this religious leader, according to Skinner, was willingly dying for a people who rejected him. “It was more than just a political radical dying. . . . On that cross Christ was bearing in his own body my sin, and he was proclaiming my liberation on that cross.” Skinner climaxed his speech with a challenge to be a new kind of Christian. “You will never be radical until you become part of that new order and then go into a world that’s enslaved, a world that’s filled with hunger and poverty and racism and all those things of the work of the devil.”12 In redefining “radical” in religious terms, Skinner had used the ideology and vocabulary of the Black Power movement and attached it to an evangelical framework. Although Skinner received a rousing ovation from the students at the end of his talk that night, not everyone received his message at Urbana ’70 so positively. Just over a week after the conference ended, Warren B. Appleton, the white father of a student who attended Urbana, typed an angry letter to John Alexander. He objected to Skinner’s appropriation of the words “revolution” and “revolutionaries,” which he associated with communism. “The net results are that twelve thousand of America’s finest 12. Skinner, “The U.S. Racial Crisis and World Evangelism.”

269

Jemar Tisby young, idealist[ic], Christian intellectuals are mis-lead into giving a standing ovation to a speaker demanding overthrow of the present order he branded as Satanic, while the musicians brandished Communist clenchedfist salutes.”13 Appleton ended with a challenge to Alexander and the other leaders of InterVarsity to explain why they would permit such messages to be part of Urbana. Skinner might have anticipated such a response, since he had received pushback before. Earlier in 1970, Bob Jones, the founder of the ultraconservative Bob Jones University that would later lose its tax-exempt status for refusing to admit black students who were in interracial relationships, wrote a booklet entitled Is Jesus a Revolutionary? He asserted that talk of rebellion contradicted the Bible, which taught that God had set up the government for society’s protection. “A popular evangelist [Skinner] echoes this blasphemy in an effort to court the favor of lawless men and make himself acceptable to the Communists,” wrote Jones.14 Skinner continued to apply evangelical beliefs to the black situation in America, and as he did, others became agitated. Four months after Urbana, the Moody Bible Institute radio station, WMBI, canceled Skinner’s thirty-minute weekly program because “the broadcast has been becoming increasing political with less emphasis on God’s message to all men.”15 The managers of the station had become concerned that Skinner’s insistence on discussing issues of racism and injustice would alienate their white evangelical listeners. These responses indicate that a message challenging the social, political, and theological categories of white evangelicals could be the source of controversy. White evangelicals favorably received Skinner as an evangelist who talked about soul winning but not as a Christian who taught a race-conscious and socially active faith. Although subsequent correspondence shows that Skinner stayed in touch with the white leaders of InterVarsity, he was never again invited to speak.

13. Appleton to Alexander, January 9, 1971, Wheaton College, Billy Graham Center Archives, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Records, Collection 300, “Urbana—1961–1974.” 14. “Bob Jones: Jesus No Revolutionary,” Evangelical Press News Service, September 26, 1970, 5. 15. E. Brandt Gustavson, memo from Moody Broadcasting Department, April 14, 1971, Wheaton College, Billy Graham Center Archives, Papers of Tom Skinner, Collection 430, Box 1, Folder 45—“Correspondence, 1971–1982.”

270

Are Black Christians Evangelicals?

The Limits of Black Christians within White Evangelicalism Skinner died from an acute and aggressive form of leukemia in 1994. He was fifty-two years old. Although the grave silenced his voice, his speech at Urbana ’70 provided part of the motivation for further efforts by black evangelicals and their allies to close the racial gap and focus on issues of social justice. The current CEO of InterVarsity is an Asian American. The organization created a position called Executive Vice President of People and Culture, which is currently occupied by a black woman.16 The organization also has a department of multiethnic missions that specifically serves African Americans, Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans.17 In spite of the shifting demography of organizations such as InterVarsity, black Christians continue to distance themselves from the “evangelical” label. According to the comprehensive Pew Religious Landscape study of 2014, only 6 percent of black Protestant Christians identified themselves as evangelicals.18 In terms of voting patterns, black Christians exhibit consistently large differences with white evangelicals. Of those who identified themselves as “bornagain” Christians in a special election runoff for an Alabama US Senate seat between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore in 2017, 95 percent of black Christians voted for Jones while 80 percent of white evangelicals who voted cast their ballots for Moore.19 A New York Times article labeled the steady departure of black Christians from white evangelical churches a “quiet exodus.”20 The tri-perspectival method of examining the definition of “evangelical” reveals that in multiple ways, black Christians can be considered evangelicals. Yet the theological, historical, and personal aspects of religion work themselves out in markedly different ways among black Christians and white evangelicals. 16. “Our Ministry,” InterVarsity.org, accessed February 14, 2019, https://intervar sity.org/our-ministry. 17. “We Are Multiethnic Ministries!” InterVarsity.org, accessed February 14, 2019, mem.intervarsity.org. 18. “Religious Landscape Study,” Pew Research Center, 2014, http://www.pewfo rum.org/religious-landscape-study/. 19. Michelle Boorstein, “The Stunning Difference between White and Black Evangelical Voters in Alabama,” Washington Post, December 13, 2017; Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “ ‘A Spiritual Battle’: How Roy Moore Tested White Evangelical Allegiance to the Republican Party,” Washington Post, December 13, 2017. 20. Campbell Robertson, “A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches,” New York Times, March 9, 2018.

271

Jemar Tisby While the question most often raised is, “Are black Christians evangelicals?” the more salient query is, “What limits do white evangelicals place on black Christians?” or “When do black Christians distance themselves from white evangelicalism based on race and justice concerns?” In other words, can black Christians bring both their race and their religion with them into white evangelical spaces? Addressing the question, “Are black Christians evangelicals?” is the beginning, not the end, of a discussion. Further research should address how class affects black Christian views and participation in evangelicalism. The role and impact of black Christians within predominantly white churches and parachurch organizations remain only lightly explored. The differences among self-identified black evangelicals in the twentieth century also require detailed examination. Historians must also probe how the intersections of gender and class influenced black Christians in the context of white evangelicalism. Regardless of how one defines “evangelical” or whether black Christians are indeed evangelicals, the answers must include considerations of race as a critical component.

272