White Evangelical Racism

White Evangelical Racism
Author: Anthea Butler
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469661187

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power. Butler reveals how evangelical racism, propelled by the benefits of whiteness, has since the nation's founding played a provocative role in severely fracturing the electorate. During the buildup to the Civil War, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy. During Reconstruction, they used it to deny the vote to newly emancipated blacks. In the twentieth century, they sided with segregationists in avidly opposing movements for racial equality and civil rights. Most recently, evangelicals supported the Tea Party, a Muslim ban, and border policies allowing family separation. White evangelicals today, cloaked in a vision of Christian patriarchy and nationhood, form a staunch voting bloc in support of white leadership. Evangelicalism's racial history festers, splits America, and needs a reckoning now.

Political Evangelism

Political Evangelism
Author: Richard J. Mouw
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Total Pages: 111
Release: 1974
Genre: Christianity and politics
ISBN: 9780802815446

Evangelism and Politics

Evangelism and Politics
Author: John C. Barrett
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2020-02-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725263742

In a fallen world, politics will be a brutal, at times violent, sport. Grandstanding, demonizing, misleading, and lying are the native language of political debate. Violence is historically how political conflicts are ultimately resolved. This fact raises important questions about our faith. Should Christians participate in politics and government? If so, how should we participate? Evangelism & Politics argues that Christians should participate in politics and government but their ultimate goal in doing so is evangelism, not political change. The way Christians participate in politics is therefore generally more important than the specific policies they advocate for. In short, Christian participation in politics should be marked by the fruit of the spirit. At the same time, Christians should not be naive in thinking godly engagement in politics guarantees political success. Ungodly tactics are effective and Christians will be at a political disadvantage when they refuse to use such methods. Nevertheless, Christians should refuse to use them because they see God, not the government, as their ultimate protector and provider and godly engagement in politics as a way of providing an evangelistic witness to society that fulfills the Great Commission.

Politics - According to the Bible

Politics - According to the Bible
Author: Wayne A. Grudem
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2010-09-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310413583

Should Christians be involved in political issues? This comprehensive and readable book presents a political philosophy from the perspective that the Gospel pertains to all of life, including politics. Politics—According to the Bible is an in-depth analysis of conservative and liberal plans to do good for the nation, evaluated in light of the Bible and common sense. Evangelical Bible professor, and author of the bestselling book Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem unpacks and rejects five common views about Christian influence on politics: "compel religion," "exclude religion," "all government is demonic," "do evangelism, not politics," and "do politics, not evangelism." Instead, he defends a position of "significant Christian influence on government" and explains the Bible's teachings about the purpose of civil government and the characteristics of good or bad governments. Grudem provides a thoughtful analysis of over fifty specific and current political issues dealing with: The protection of life. Marriage, the family, and children. Economic issues and taxation. The environment. National defense Relationships to other nations. Freedom of speech and religion. Quotas. And special interests. Throughout this book, he makes frequent application to the current policies of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, but the principles discussed here are relevant for any nation.

Toward an Evangelical Public Policy

Toward an Evangelical Public Policy
Author: Ronald J. Sider
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2005-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801065380

Deepens thinking about biblical and other conceptual foundations for political engagement in order to unify and give consistency to evangelicals' involvement in politics.

The Evangelical Voter

The Evangelical Voter
Author: Stuart Rothenberg
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 190
Release: 1984
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

This study of evangelicals and fundamentalists is based on a nationwide survey conducted by Lance Tarrance and Associates in 1983. It examines the relationship between religious beliefs and behavior and political consciousness. It also examines evangelical and fundamentalist attitudes on a wide variety of policy questions and their political mobilization and behavior.

Evangelicals and Democracy in America

Evangelicals and Democracy in America
Author: Steven G. Brint
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2011-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0871540126

Separation of church and state is a bedrock principal of American democracy, and so, too, is active citizen engagement. Since evangelicals comprise one of the largest and most vocal voting blocs in the United States, tensions and questions naturally arise. In the two-volume Evangelicals and Democracy in America, editors Steven Brint and Jean Reith Schroedel have assembled an authoritative collection of studies of the evangelical movement in America. Religion and Politics, the second volume of the set, focuses on the role of religious conservatives in party politics, the rhetoric evangelicals use to mobilize politically, and what the history of the evangelical movement reveals about where it may be going. Part I of Religion and Politics explores the role of evangelicals in electoral politics. Contributor Pippa Norris looks at evangelicals around the globe and finds that religiosity is a strong predictor of ideological leanings in industrialized countries. But the United States remains one of only a handful of post-industrial societies where religion plays a significant role in partisan politics. Other chapters look at voting trends, especially the growing number of higher-income evangelicals among Republican ranks, how voting is influenced both by "values" and race, and the management of the symbols and networks behind the electoral system of moral-values politics. Part II of the volume focuses on the mobilizing rhetoric of the Christian Right. Nathaniel Klemp and Stephen Macedo show how the rhetorical strategies of the Christian Right create powerful mobilizing narratives, but frequently fail to build broad enough coalitions to prevail in the pluralistic marketplace of ideas. Part III analyzes the cycles and evolution of the Christian Right. Kimberly Conger looks at the specific circumstances that have allowed evangelicals to become dominant in some Republican state party committees but not in others. D. Michael Lindsay examines the "elastic orthodoxy" that has allowed evangelicals to evolve into a formidable social and political force. The final chapter by Clyde Wilcox presents a new framework for understanding the relationship between the Christian Right and the GOP based on the ecological metaphor of co-evolution. With its companion volume on religion and society, this second volume of Evangelicals and Democracy in America offers the most complete examination yet of the social circumstances and political influence of the millions of Americans who are white evangelical Protestants. Understanding their history and prospects for the future is essential to forming a comprehensive picture of America today.

Still Evangelical?

Still Evangelical?
Author: Mark Labberton
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2018-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830880429

Evangelicalism in America has cracked. What defines the evangelical social and political vision—is it the gospel or is it culture? Edited by Mark Labberton, this collection of essays offers a diverse and provocative set of reflections from evangelical "insiders" who wrestle with the question of what it means to be evangelical in today's polarized climate.

Jesus and Justice

Jesus and Justice
Author: Peter Goodwin Heltzel
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2009-07-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300155735

This timely book investigates the increasing visibility and influence of evangelical Christians in recent American politics with a focus on racial justice. Peter Goodwin Heltzel considers four evangelical social movements: Focus on the Family, the National Association of Evangelicals, Christian Community Development Association, and Sojourners. The political motives and actions of evangelical groups are founded upon their conceptions of Jesus Christ, Heltzel contends. He traces the roots of contemporary evangelical politics to the prophetic black Christianity tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the socially engaged evangelical tradition of Carl F. H. Henry. Heltzel shows that the basic tenets of King's and Henry's theologies have led their evangelical heirs toward a prophetic evangelicalism in a shade of blue green--blue symbolizing the tragedy of black suffering in the Americas, and green symbolizing the hope of a prophetic evangelical engagement with poverty, AIDS, and the environment. This fresh theological understanding of evangelical political groups shines new light on the ways evangelicals shape and are shaped by broader American culture.

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2020-06-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1631495747

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.