This is what, the third or fourth time in the past week that word evangelical has crept onto this blog?
I have no idea why.:^)
I find this survey a bit discouraging.
PBS, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, and U.S. News & World Report is taking at look at this group - the white evangelicals in the US.
This is an interesting survey. If you don’t have a clue what an evangelical is, it is well worth the read. Keep in mind this survey doesn’t include Hispanic or African-American evangelicals, although previous surveys have shown similar attitudes across all ethnicities of evangelicals in the US.
A quick primer:
They are a diverse group, sharing many characteristics of Americans in general. For example, white evangelical Christians are not overly concentrated in the South, despite popular assumptions. Rather white evangelical Christians are evenly spread out throughout the country. Slightly less than a third (31 percent) of white evangelicals live in the Deep South, compared with 28 percent of the general population. Many also live in the East North Central (19 percent, versus 16 percent of the general population) and Pacific (14 percent, versus 16 percent of the general population) states. They are an aging population.
They go to all kinds of denominations and the vast majority of them don’t go to the mega-churches you may hear about in the news or drive past if you visit the US.
They don’t like the label much.
Most interestingly though, as with their Protestant denomination, over a third of these Christians (34 percent) reject any such label, preferring to say they are none of these, or they don’t know. (fundamentalist, evangelical, charismatic or pentecostal)
There are 28 million white evangelicals in the US. (There you go The Dane, you may be a minority, but not that small a one! That’s 3 million less than the population of Canada)
The rest of the world doesn’t mean much to them compared to homeland security and keeping the US military strong. Persecution in other countries, AIDS, and development aren’t as important as what is going on in their neighbourhood. Political conservatism rules in this population with US domestic issues and economic security taking high priority.
I wonder if anyone else in the world who uses the label evangelical would find much in common.
The most important thing to come from this survey is how this group which is scattered all over America perceives itself.
…there is inherited religiosity, which is somewhat contradictory for a group that inherently believes they should spread their faith to others. About 63 percent say that at least one of their parents was a born-again Christian when they were growing up. Half say that both of their parents were. One-third of white evangelicals are “converts,” that is, neither parent was a born-again Christian when they were growing up. Being an evangelical is a largely non-immigrant phenomenon.
This group really wants to be liked, represented well, understood and be ‘mainstream’.
Evangelicals motivate each other by thinking of themselves, much as the first Christians did as an embattled minority, marginalized at best or persecuted at worst for their religious beliefs. While other Americans may not necessarily see them in this way, what is most important is that this is how evangelical Christians see themselves. And it is their shared profound dissatisfaction with aspects of the American mainstream that gives them cause to fight to be heard by the American mainstream.
Seems to me this is a group more mainstream than they give themselves credit for.
Link via Christianity Today
Published 4 years, 4 months ago
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I think that, in America, the label “evangelical” mostly describes someone who believes the Bible is trustworthy in matters of faith and practice (not that I did not say “inerrant”), but does not subscribe to a wooden interpretation of it and does not wish to be labelled with the perjorative “fundementalist”.
The rest of the world doesn’t mean much to them compared to homeland security and keeping the US military strong. Persecution in other countries, AIDS, and development aren’t as important as what is going on in their neighbourhood.
I am realizing, I think, that there is a lot of missions work to be done right here. How do you get the converted to care?
An interesting confirmation of a lot of basic trends. However, the Methodists don’t seem overly evangelical, so I wonder what definition they were using.
The article put the figure at 23% of the population, not 23 million. Since the US population is about 280 million, that would mean that there is 64 million of them.
“Seems to me this is a group more mainstream than they give themselves credit for.”
Umm..well…yes. Exactly.
There’s nothing more bizarre than a large, wealthy, powerful, congress-and-white-house-controlling segment of the population stridently insisting that they are the embattled minority. It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad…and scary…
I think the reason so many so-called evangelicals view themselves as marginalized or persecuted is twofold:
1) There is a general political feeling common to most conservative evangelicals (though not all of us) that runs with the “Christian Right” and experiences a of ridicule from the more-liberal media. American vangelicals have a tendancy to tie faith and politics together to such a degree that to offend the one is to offend the other.
2) Reading the words of Christ that his sheep will suffer and be at odds with the world, evangelicals want to view themselves at odds with the world even when they are not. It becomes a mark of distiction - hence, never having tasted real persecution, you have people describing light mockery as “persecution in the workplace.”
I always get a chuckle out of these situations as Christianity unfettered is not mainstream, nor was it ever intended to be mainstreamed. When believers fight to make the ideas of Christianity palatable to the world around them, they are missing the point that unbelievers can only view a proper Christianity as foolish (so sayeth the Apostle).
As far as the lack of international focus in evangelicals, i think this is less a function of their faith than it is of the culture in which they were raised. Americans, generally, are very focused on their own communities and are loathe to cast their eye elsewhere if all is not running well in the local sense. While some view this as selfish, I tend to see it more as a brand of pragmatism (e.g., how can the minister properly minister to his congregation unless his own home is in order). Most evangelical Americans don’t see an international perspective as integral to their faith or lives simply because they look down their street and see kids on crack and co-workers cheating on their wives. It is only when they perceive a large-scale threat to their lives from abroad that the turn their attention outward (this is why most Americans still don’t know what US involvement in Somalia or Bosnia was all about).
Thanks Mark, I fixed the numbers.
The definition of evangelical used in the survey is defined this way in The Religion and Ethics Magazine.
By evangelical the survey means EITHER respondents who indicated that they are Protestant or another Christian religious preference other than Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Mormon and who indicated they would say they are a fundamentalist, evangelical, charismatic or Pentecostal Protestant OR respondents who indicated that they are Protestant or another Christian religious preference other than Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Mormon who do not consider themselves liberal or mainline and call themselves a born-again Christian. This is not the only definition of evangelical, of course, but it does define the core of the evangelical community.
…An overwhelming majority of all evangelicals (84%) believe that personal faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation, compared with 38% of Catholics and 56% of non-evangelical Protestants. Just half of white evangelicals, however, believe that only born-again Christians go to heaven, and even fewer black evangelicals (42%) say they believe only born-again Christians will go to heaven.
Laura:
I don’t think we can do much to get the converted to care. I think that is something God has to do.
We can educate, we can help people look past their own horizon, we can love and pray, but not much else.
It was interesting posting this because as a Canadian I am very much an outsider and have no emotional investment in this survey.
I posted this in Wales too at connexions.
Thought I’d toss it out and see what I could hear. Blog on!
I am powerless over the converted and my life has become unmanagable/I am powerless over the…
Thanks for the reminder.