The Incredible History Behind Evangelicalism That your Pastor Probably Never Told you.
By: Jess Drabnis
Tags: Evangelicals, Exvangelical, Religion, Church History, Church

photo by Justin Drabnis Photography

No matter how carefully I craft my week’s grocery list, I always inevitably forget at least one thing. I was contemplating on whether I could stretch the dog food and diapers, but I decided that my bassets and my toddler would both be happier if I did go to Target for the second time that week. So, after dropping all my babies off at my sister’s house, I made my Target run alone which when you have a two year old, feels like a luxury on par with a day at the spa. With all that free time of the eight minutes between my sister’s house and Target I had ample time to do some thinking. NPR was on my radio with some stats about the election and I found my brain wandering around in the land of questions. Mainly- How has the American Church gotten to the point where they turn their nose up at science in the name of faith, and align themselves with a political power that goes against everything we are supposed to stand for? How did the identity of evangelical come to mean what it does today? I decided some research was in order.

Since 2016, I have made it my personal mission to distance myself as far from Evangelicals as possible whilst still retaining my Christian faith. It is feeling harder and harder to do these days. I have to admit, right now any sort of Christian-ese makes me queasy, or gives me the eye-roll reflex. I feel about as un-Christian as I ever have and half of me feels like I’ve taken a load off and the other half feels unbalanced from the sudden shift in weight. So I decided to start digging in through articles, documentaries, podcasts, interviews, and books to take a broad view of how the term ‘evangelical’ came to mean what it does today for Americans.

Let’s start with the Puritans who wanted religious freedom from what they viewed as oppressive tyranny from the Church of England. Upon leaving England, they had prospered in the good economy of the Netherlands and wanted like so many others of that time to go to the New World to find a land they could call their own. The story of their precarious journey and their stoicism through hunger, disease, and death is inspiring. They persevered and against the odds, they flourished. They promoted education as much as they could, knowing literacy allowed people the freedom to read the Bible for themselves and not reliant on someone else telling them what was in the Bible. They were so adamant that education was of prime importance that they founded Harvard University in 1636, an astonishing short time period from that of 1620 when they first arrived. The Puritans wanting the freedom to worship and to live in a way that they promoted the welfare of all those within their communities was certainly an amiable aspiration in and of itself. The problem with their way of thinking is that they did not extend any kind of charity or freedom to those outside of their religious circle. They had the right to worship the way they wanted as they were God’s chosen, much like the Israelites of the Old Testament, but they did not want to extend the right to anyone else. Even though the Pilgrims that sailed on the Mayflower did extend and receive hospitality from Squanto, Samoset, and Chief Massasoit, their legacy of peace was rather short lived. Years down the road, the same mentality of being God’s chosen lead those of faith to selfish plans. Some of these plans included genocide of entire villages of native Americans. And therein lies the thread of thought that is so prevalent still today. It is ‘God’s will,’ for us to have this land. It is ‘God’s will’ for us to use the earth as much as we want. It is ‘God’s will’ for Christians to have the upper hand in government promoting our own welfare before all others.

The Church has a long history of taking specific scriptures, plucking them from their original context and audience and applying them to a situation that benefits those in charge. Frederick Douglass said, “For of all slaveholders of whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst.” We are witness to the same sentiments that use specific verses to oppress people groups stranded in the margins of society still today. Verses that are thousands of years old that when applied to today’s standard fall grossly short of not just equality but basic human rights. So when politicians began to use Christian rhetoric, the Church’s ears perked up like a dog’s to its master’s call. The Church has sat silent in its aging pews for too long, not questioning what we are being fed or even asking why we are being taught a certain way. We are far too comfortable with submitting to any scripture quoting authority figure.

In 1925, the ‘trial of the century’ took place in Dayton, TN when a young, twenty-four year old teacher named John Scopes was fined $100 for teaching his high school class the theory of evolution. He was prosecuted by William Jennings Bryan, a Christian and former presidential candidate who believed that Genesis, and the rest of the Bible, ought to be read literally. John Scopes was defended by the ACLU. Bryan won the case and Scopes was charged. Evolution being taught in schools was not brought up again until the 1960’s, nearly forty years later. Sometime in the late 1940’s, the National Association of Evangelicals was founded as a way to distinguish themselves from fundamentalists, who insisted, and still do, on reading the Bible literally. The Evangelicals of the time were willing to admit that perhaps, Darwin wasn’t completely wrong; they also admitted that there are other aspects of hermeneutics other than the literal, such as analogical, allegorical, and moral teachings.

The 1960’s was quite the decade for Americans. The sexual revolution along with the invention of the birth control pill, the Vietnam war and the open sentiments of those against it, the Civil Rights movement, Medicare, and other things from history class that I can’t remember. We saw a lot of division then, much as we do now. So by the time that Roe V. Wade came about in ’73, the division was deeper and the gap was wider. The Church was responding to the sexual revolution of the 60’s with the countercultural Jesus movement. And then, 1976, the nation’s bicentennial, we elected Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter may have been one of the first openly Evangelical presidents to be outspoken during his campaign. He was seen as a ‘Jesus-loving democrat.’ I remember as a kid in the early nineties thinking that phrase was an oxymoron, so deep was the Republican Party tied to Christianity in my immature mind. (As a side-note, I don’t know much about Carter, but from what I’ve read and heard, though he had a naive, somewhat simplistic view on how to heal the racial divide in our country, he seems like an actual believer and follower of Christ’s teachings. Maybe this is why he only served one term. America has never actually been ready to be an authentically Christian nation.) But what did happen in the 1976 election that the American people barely noticed was the fact that Christian faith apparently won the election for Carter. Ronald Regan and the Republicans certainly took notice. According to Thomas Kidd, professor of history at Baylor University and author of “Who is An Evangelical?” It was shortly after the election that “pollsters started actually asking voters about religious affiliation that we saw the coalescing of a powerful political voting bloc.” Consequently, that was the year that Gallup started polling people about whether they were evangelical or ‘born-again.’

In 1979 Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich started an institution called the Moral Majority urging Christians to vote according to their biblical principles. Weyrich had already founded the Heritage Foundation on February 16, 1973. It was a conservative think tank aimed at reducing taxes, supporting big-business, and being outspoken against communism. I had been wondering for some time how the Evangelical right came to be so closely tied with being pro-big business and harsh on tax laws. Here is the tie that bound the two completely separate convictions: Weyrich and Falwell both saw an opportunity to line their own pockets and gain the kind of political power they desired for our country by exploiting Evangelicals with fear, intimidation, and outrage.

After Brown vs. the Board of Education in the 1950’s and the Civil Rights Act of the 1960’s, southern public schools found themselves in a dilemma. They had to now admit African American students into their more privileged, white schools. Many communities responded by creating private schools that were for white children only. Many of the poor white children could not afford to attend private school, but were awarded state grants to cover tuition. Some estimates found that 70–80% of the tuitions were paid for by state grants. It became evident that the gaping loop hole could no longer be ignored and private schools were faced with a second dilemma. Either admit African American students or have your tax exemption withheld from your institution. Probably the biggest school that came under fire was that of Bob Jones University. Mr. Bob Jones Jr., the founder of his namesake university, was quite open about his racism. He felt that according to the Bible that segregation was mandated by God. Yikes! His cohorts, such as Jerry Falwell and Rich Weyrich, may have had similar views but at least had enough tact to not say it so blatantly. Tact aside, they decided to do something much more sinister. They knew that no true, believing evangelical in their right mind would support a cause that was outright defending segregation. So they decided to rephrase their agenda and when they did, their supporters grew by the multitudes. They cleverly marketed their cause as not supporting segregation or racism, but instead, claiming their religious freedoms were being stripped away. That was the bait they had been waiting nearly a decade for, and that bait has ironically proven fatal to the morality of our country.

At the time of its founding, the Moral Majority had some pretty packaging, but under the bright, enticing wrappings of pro-America and pro-family, it was just another lobbying group aimed at trying to coerce political leaders into voting for or against laws that would either help or hinder the evangelical Christian Right. Personally I don’t think lobbying and Christian should be in the same sentence, but apparently I’m a minority on that one. The hot topics that the group was mostly concerned with were the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, and a government that would allow them to take away rights from anyone who didn’t fall in the categories of white and heterosexual and who was adamantly opposed to women having rights over her own body. They were ‘concerned’ that the legality of abortion would lead to the legalization of euthanasia and that if private schools were told they must admit people of color, then they would someday soon be forced to admit those from the LGBTQIA community as well. They claimed that a Christian’s rights were being taken away and pointed to the losses that the Christian faith had already sustained such as taking prayer out of school and the lack of tax exemptions for schools who allowed whites only. I remember well the sentiment as a child of ‘America is a Christian nation, and anyone who claims otherwise is wrong.’ I was taught this in my home life, my church, and my private school as well. It was a sentiment that implied that Christians had the only claim to the morals that our country was founded upon. I now find it supremely ironic that the Church was and still is so consumed with our basic right to worship but doesn’t want to concede the right to worship to Muslims or anyone who isn’t straight. It is pure hypocrisy in its most pharisaic form.

I completely understand and applaud differences in point of view, differences in denomination, differences in religion, and the different sides to politics; what I can’t stand is there is no room for gray. There is only room for black and white. If you don’t fall into either of those categories then you are left alone and stranded. I’m tired of yelling at the other side just as much as I am tired of being yelled at. I’m tired of assumptions based off certain categories that I do fall into. I am a democrat, yet I am pro-life, but I am all for a woman having the freedom to choose what is best for her. Are you confused now? Don’t worry, many others are as well. You see, no one is cookie dough meant to be squeezed into certain moulds. Pro-life to me, means seeing that life through until its natural death, not just until it is out of the womb and at that point protected under the law. And no, I will never see the death penalty as morally acceptable because I believe as a Christian we are called to a higher standard of living and of giving life. And because I believe in that giving of life, I am all for the government supporting the impoverished, the needy, the disabled and disadvantaged. But just because I want to see my government help those in need in no way diminishes how the Church should be standing up just as tall to reach out and support them too. And because I believe in love, I believe that a woman who knows that she cannot support another child, has the right to an abortion. Not that I think that the loss of that life is not tragic in any way. Instead of judging that woman, I will stand with her, I will comfort her, and I will support her rights just as much as I support my own rights to birth control.

Within the Church today we are witnessing our own version of a ‘monkey trial;’ we see the divide between evangelicals and progressives. One side still wants to read Genesis literally and the other side is saying that we combine our faith with science. Do we read a library of ancient texts compiled into one, flowing book literally, or do we pick apart each book, each chapter, and each verse and use history and science as guides for how we can do so as accurately as possible? I know that many, if not most, Evangelicals are not fundamentalists in that they choose to read books like Psalms as poetry, and Proverbs as a book of morals. I think it’s evident that we as a collective have come far past reading the entire Bible as literal. But why do Evangelicals still cling to what Leviticus says on homosexual relations but also laugh at not being able to eat pork or wear clothing made of two different materials? Those subjects are only verses apart and if it seems ludicrous to believe you can’t wear a cotton/poly blended t-shirt, why are we still so sure that it if homosexuality was wrong thousands of years ago, then it must be the same today? Why do Evangelicals only take hermeneutics as far as they are comfortable with? On pbs.org, I found a nicely succinct rehash of an old article published in 1960 looking back at the ‘trial of the century.’ In the article they quote, “Rather than the validity of the law under which Scopes was being charged, the authority of the Bible versus the soundness of Darwin’s theory became the focus of the arguments.” And just like the trial wasn’t really about the validity of the law against teaching evolution in public schools, the arguments in the church today are largely about power. The kind of power the social elites have who refuse to extend equality to their neighbors for fear of losing that power and their positions. And if you are a person who listens to authoritative figures who believe that a heterosexual patriarchy is what is Biblically correct for a society, please ask yourself if it is fear that is keeping you reading and interpreting in a way that aligns with this point of view. Just remember that in the words of Yoda, “fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate,” and our God became a human being so God’s perfect love could cast out every fear. So I encourage you to dig deep. Admit your doubts, admit you have questions, and admit that not you, nor anyone else, has it all figured out when it comes to being a Christian or an American.