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News Flash: All may not be well in the kingdom of evangelicalism. 

According to a Washington Post report by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, a hundred evangelical ministers attended a come to Jesus meeting in South Bend, Indiana a couple of weeks ago. 

They are discouraged and disillusioned by American evangelicalism’s alliance with and allegiance to the Republican Party and its politics. They gathered to share their mutual concerns and discuss what lies ahead for them.

Only 25 were initially invited, but word of mouth saw that number quickly grow to more than a hundred. That 80% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump a second time seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for these evangelical leaders.  

Bailey describes them as being on “a journey of deconstruction, the process of reexamining their long-held beliefs, and [wanting] to participate in reconstruction and the building up of something new,” what the ministers call a “post-evangelicalism” life.  

Actually, a post-evangelical Christianity already exists, only it’s called “mainline Christianity.”

We faced a similar dilemma these ministers are facing many years ago, and for the same reason, a fabricated biblical literalism that got in the way of genuine Christian devotion.

It was common when I was new in ministry for congregations to ask pastoral candidates if they believed in the virgin birth of Jesus. A “no” answer would likely get you disqualified. Except in rare cases today the question never comes up.  

Indeed, mainline ministers teach the Bible truthfully without dancing around silly issues biblical literalism tries to make important. 

So mainline clergy have a story to tell the South Bend evangelicals, which is that the journey of de-construction is something they went through in seminary and came out on the other side with a stronger faith than before. 

Apparently, this is not the type of study evangelical seminary students undergo so they are going through it on their own now. One of them is quoted as saying, “The problem is we were taught to take the Bible literally.”

That tells me they may have receive seminary degrees, but they didn’t get an education. 

Biblical literalism is one of the most absurd claims Christians can make, created out of thin air by fundamentalists in the early 20^th to counter the influence of theological liberalism.  

Episcopal scholar Urban T. Holmes once described it as “a modern heresy—perhaps the only heresy invented in modern times.” The recently deceased John Shelby Spong characterized it the same way in his 2016 book, Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy.

I suppose it was bound to fall under the weight of its own untruth. It’s a good thing that is happening because a faith that encourages people to be afraid of the truth will ultimately do more harm than good.

The ministers who gathered in South Bend know exactly the harm it is doing, but they are not alone.

More and more congregations are in also turmoil over the same thing according to Peter Wehner, an evangelical former Republican presidential speech writer, In a recent article in The Atlantic entitled, “The Evangelical Church Is Breaking Apart,” he discusses “the aggressive, disruptive, and unforgiving mindset” so prevalent in our politics finding a home in evangelical churches. 

In another article entitled, “Why ‘Evangelical’ Is Becoming Another Word for ‘Republican’”, Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, goes a step further than Wehner and says any numerical growth in evangelical churches is due to politics rather than religion: “Instead of theological affinity for Jesus Christ, millions of Americans are being drawn to the evangelical label because of its association with the G.O.P.”

Forgive my immodesty but I have written extensively about the unholy alliance between evangelicals and the Republican Party as early as 2004 (What’s Wrong With The Christian Right) and 2017 (Evangelicalism and the Decline of American Politics). 

In the latter book I argue that the anti-democratic attitudes among Republicans is rooted in the influence of an arrogant evangelicalism that knows the whole truth and nothing but the truth and no one else does. The South Bend gathering and the Wehner and Burge articles serve to confirm what I wrote.

Others have written about this politicization of evangelicalism as well so it is a welcomed moment that evangelicals themselves are finally recognizing the danger their community poses to Christianity and to the nation.  

Indeed, this awakening may be a foreshadowing of things to come in the evangelical world that could spell trouble for Republicans and good news for the nation. 

Evangelicals have been the Republican Party’s most loyal base for years, and that was certainly true in 2016 and 2020.

If disenchantment with this corruption of evangelicalism grows, there may be a reshaping of the political landscape among evangelical voters. Friends have friends of friends who tell their friends and so on and before you know it a small movement grows into one with influence and power.

It’s too early to tell at this point, but it is a healthy sign that serious theological and political reflection may once again have a place in evangelicalism as it once did before it was taken over by fundamentalists.

In the meantime, just as I take delight in any bad thing that happens to Donald Trump and Republican Trumpism, I am glad to learn that there is turmoil in evangelical churches.

They’ve been stoking the fires of culture wars in the country for decades. How nice it would be if their bad behavior now comes back to bite them.