[Note: This is one post in a series on David Gushee’s book After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity. The aim of these posts is to help you start conversations with people in your community. Invite someone to read this book with you and discuss it together. You don’t need to agree with each other or the author to benefit from doing this type of activity.]
Chapter 1: Evangelicalism: Cutting Loose from an Invented Community
Gushee starts his book with a quick history of the evangelical movement (He acknowledges his provocative summary and hopes to persuade the reader to accept his interpretation of the movement’s history.)
According to Gushee, the American evangelicalism movement starts in the World War II era. He suggests that a diverse group of Christians all came together to combat perceived problems with Roman Catholicism, liberal Protestantism, and fundamentalist Christianity. He writes, “My core claim is that the modern American evangelicalism that so many of us are now abandoning was a brilliant social construction, an invented religious identity, that over decades yielded something like an actual religious community.”
By claiming that evangelicalism is a relatively new movement in Christian history, Gushee wants to challenge evangelicals to see themselves in a larger light. At the same time, he encourages people who are discontent with evangelicalism to recognize that they are not abandoning the Church (with a big C) by abandoning evangelicalism.
According to his analysis, Evangelicalism’s roots in fundamentalist movements ultimately led towards the movement’s problems. Additionally, he suggests that this led to a disastrous conflation between evangelicals and political movements in the United States. Specifically, he suggests that the Evangelical movement has naturally become associated with Republicanism because of its historic development,
Gushee closes his chapter with. a powerful reminder that because the Evangelical Christian witness is a damaged representation of the Gospel it is doing great harm to many people in our culture.
Intriguing Quote
“This move (political identification) may have provided a welcome shared identity and purpose for most white US evangelicals, but it shattered the earlier big-tent coalition, at least insofar as it had included many nonwhite and politically progressive evangelicals. It also deeply compromised the religious identity and mission of evangelical Christianity. Incidentally, it has also erased any meaningful distinction between evangelicalism and fundamentalism; at least on the political front, that distinction has collapsed” (Gushee, 24)
“If that one available version of the faith, the version that we offer them, is corrupted, then our people may naturally conclude that they had better flee before church itself damages their one and only soul” (Gushee, 27).
Conversation Starters
What is Evangelicalism and where did it come from?
Why do you think evangelicalism is so closely identified with the Republican party? What are. the potential pros and cons of this reality?
How does the church reflect Jesus? What prevents us from doing so?