This essay “Evangelicalism: A Love Story” is lovely writing. But the author works hard to redefine the word “evangelical” so that he can have the provocative framing. Growing up Methodist and having a dalliance with Catholicism before becoming Anglican isn’t what most of us know as “evangelical”.
@chrishubbs.com I am glad for his church experience growing up and wish more young people had it. But he’s intentionally poking at exvangelicals all the way through the piece. It’s not charitable.
@cjhubbs I am glad for his church experience growing up and wish more young people had it. But he’s intentionally poking at exvangelicals all the way through the piece. It’s not charitable.
@cjhubbs Yeah that doesn't feel right. I grew up in a fundamentalist Reformed sect and I don't think of myself as being raised evangelical. That said, I did attend an evangelical Anglican church for a while. It was interesting.
@cjhubbs I think his definition is a great example of why defining things with lists of criteria goes so wrong so often. That's not what people think of when they think of evangelicalism, I would wager.
@cjhubbs For me, when I think of evangelicals, I think of churches aligned with conservative political parties, committed to biblical literalism, and baptist-adjacent.
@dandb Yes, pretty much this. Which is what I grew up in, and what so many of the public exvangelical types came from. Which is why his piece feels so disingenuous in its framing.
@cjhubbs Extolling evangelicalism “when appended to robust ecclesial structures” is extolling a very rare thing. The Larsen Pentagon was new to me; Bebbington Quadrilateral is what I knew.
@dandb As someone who is evangelical, spends my life with global evangelical pastors, has a kid at Wheaton, etc., the Christian nationalist trope feels more like a parody that the media overplays. Or if anything, it’s only a Southern U.S. thing. It doesn’t represent most of evangelicalism.
@cjhubbs And this is the issue. Regardless of if it’s a subset or the norm. The ambiguous nature of ‘evangelicalism’ means my global experience and the typical excangelical fundamentalist experience both fall under its wide umbrella.