The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind

[Aaron Blumer]

Mark_Smith…

first sentence is about the Capitol riot. What was evangelical about a bunch of knuckleheads planning to raid the capitol with tactical gear? Were you there? Was any seminary endorsers of it? Was any pastor of relevance? Did they since out of the hymnal? Pray? So what was evangelical other than the media and anti-Trumpers can attack the event goers and evangleicals at the same time for convenience?

Suggest reading the article to see the relationship between the rally and evangelicalism. But if that’s too much work…

There are many more where those came from.

Properly speaking, I would call this “American folk-religion” rather than “evangelicalism” as such. But the term has become largely meaningless now anyway, having been re-appropriated as a socio-demographic marker, as others above have noted.
Important as well to draw attention to the fact that of the individuals arrested and taken in the riot incident, the various write-ups have not highlighted a strong evangelical identity. The silence here is extremely telling.

Properly speaking, I would call this “American folk-religion” rather than “evangelicalism” as such. But the term has become largely meaningless now anyway, having been re-appropriated as a socio-demographic marker, as others above have noted.

Important as well to draw attention to the fact that of the individuals arrested and taken in the riot incident, the various write-ups have not highlighted a strong evangelical identity. The silence here is extremely telling.

What you call American Folk Religion is probably more the Charismatic/Pentecostal arm of evangelicalism. We often forget that 49% of evangelicals in America claim to be Charismatic/Pentecostal (Barna, 2008). In the past decade, there has been an explosion of growth with Kingdom Now or Kingdom Dominion Theology among the Charismatics and Pentecostals in America (e.g. Bethel) who believe that God is calling the church to yield themselves to the authority of God’s apostles and prophets and take back control from Satan the kingdoms of this world, which are all the social institutions,-“kingdom” of education, the “kingdom” of science, the “kingdom” of the arts, the “kingdom of politics,” etc. The late Dr. Peter Wagner explained that part of its influence can be traced back to Rushdoony, Kuyper, and Calvin. With many Charismatics and Pentecostals believing that Trump’s presidency would lead to the dominion of social institutions within America, and with so many “prophets” that have been prophesying about a worldwide revival because of Trump, we can see where a large segment of the “wasting of the evangelical mind” comes from. What’s even worse, I have Baptist and Bible church fundamentalist/conservative evangelical friends that frequently quote articles or click-bait media that come from this heretical arm of evangelicalism (those who embrace kingdom/dominion theology) when they attempt to fight the keyboard social media culture war on Facebook and Twitter. Charismatic/Pentecostal Dominion Theology (which I would argue makes up a large segment of Christian Nationalism) applied to Social Ethics is a very serious threat to biblical Christianity.

[TylerR]

I have no idea what you’re talking about. I shall bow out of this conversation.

For those who are interested, the books I noted above are helpful context to understand what’s happening today.

The point Tyler is the people who raided the Capitol on Jan 6 were not deacons at the local First Southern Baptist church. They were, by and large, kooks! Period. End of sentence.

[Mark_Smith]

The point Tyler is the people who raided the Capitol on Jan 6 were not deacons at the local First Southern Baptist church. They were, by and large, kooks! Period. End of sentence.

Invoking Christianity in support of one’s political views is hardly just an American pastime. In the 1933 propaganda film “Der Sieg des Glaubens” (The Victory of Faith) made about the National Socialist rally of 1933 in Germany, what’s interesting to me is not all the railing against communism and other enemies, the parades and displays of strength, the veneration and almost worship on one man, etc., in short everything you’d expect from what happened back then. No, the interesting (and most shocking) thing for me is that in the middle of one of the political rallies, they stopped to sing “We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing” with almost an exact German translation of the English words to that hymn. They sang it in as reverent a fashion as you would see in a church. Somehow, they thought that God would look favorably on what they were doing.

The fact that some people today do the same thing is not new, nor does it mean that Christianity or Evangelicalism has irreversibly been turned into something else. It means that people can be deceived, and I would agree with Mark that most of the people you saw at the January 6th rally were NOT representing Christianity, but to the extent they were invoking it, it was their own twisted views of it.