There are legitimate reasons to question evangelical identity just now. For many people, myself included, it’s difficult to fathom voting for Donald Trump in such an alarming proportion.
Two recent books attempt to do evaluate evangelical identity in relationship with contemporary culture. One in the first person as a memoir and the other in a collection of essays.
In what is becoming something of a bromide for evangelicalism’s cultured despisers David Gushee–newly installed president of the American Academy of Religion–proclaimed last week that support for Donald Trump, “…has shattered whatever survives of the witness of white evangelicals in American culture” (Publisher’s Weekly, November 22, 2017). Whether our witness is shattered or simply impaired I’ll let you decide.
This from the author of the recently-released Still Christian: Following Jesus Out of American Evangelicalism (Westminster/John Knox) which chronicles his principled departure from evangelicalism and which takes aim at those who disagree with him in regard to theological concerns, especially matters of sexuality.
These moves are the latest iterations of Gushee’s confrontation with evangelicalism, which has some of the characteristics of the white hot anger of a spurned lover about it.
Heresies left are hated most.
Jeff Gissing 