Recovering Evangelical

A couple years ago, my friend Jeff introduced himself at a ministry staff conference as, among other things, a “recovering Evangelical.” Now I actually have no idea if what he meant by that phrase is anything like my thoughts in this post, but those two words resonated deeply with me, and have stuck with me for two years since. I privately adopted them as my own. I believe they concisely describe how God has transformed my mind and soul during the past few years. So much so, that I included those words in my “Meet Steve” page. I’ve felt self-conscious about actually typing them and posting that page ever since. I’ve thought more than once about about deleting those two little words, but every time, I felt that they were too honest and too much a part of what this blog will be all about to remove them. However, the mere existence of those two words without further explanation has been the single thing that has kept me from widely advertising my blog during its first two months. I’ve had visions of parents and pastors and supervisors and (gulp) donors reading those words and wringing their hands and wondering if I’m losing my faith or whether they can trust me to teach their kids or (gulp) if they can continue to support our ministry. I have in fact already gotten an email asking about that phrase. What do you mean by “recovering Evangelical” anyway? The phrase may be concise, but it’s also a bit ambiguous; it’s time to expound and clarify.

To start off, let me first make a distinction between:

evangelical (with a small e) which I’ll loosely define as a broad theological perspective affirming such things as: an active creator God with whom one can have a personal relationship, the reality of sin separating people from God, God’s incarnation as Jesus, mankind’s atonement through Jesus’ death and resurrection, salvation by grace, an individual’s need for personal commitment to Christ, a call to share one’s faith with others, and a high respect (at least) for the Bible.

and

Evangelical (with a capital E) by which I mean an adjective describing a particular religious or socio-political group or institution, or all such groups and people collectively. To me, this is what’s meant when you hear on the news that “X is courting the Evangelical vote” or “75% of Evangelicals believe that X”.

I am not a recovering evangelical. My affirmation of the basic Christian creeds or, for example, my employer’s statement of faith, remains strong. I am a recovering Evangelical. What I reject is that the two sets above are identical, or that ‘e’ is completely contained within ‘E’. I don’t think that the general public gets that either, and that bothers me. (By the way, I must attribute the “big E/little e” convention to Brian McLaren from his book Generous Orthodoxy. The definitions though are my own.) Here are a few examples (not a comprehensive list) of what it practically means to me to be a recovering Evangelical, in the strictly capital E sense:

• There are many, much more important issues in our culture than gay marriage.
• Being a Christian does not entail a moral obligation to vote Republican.
• Being a Christian does not entail a moral obligation to vote Democrat either.
• “Liberal” - referring to either theology or politics - does not equal “sinful” or “wrong”.
• Working to bring about a “Christian nation” is not my highest priority, and may not be a worthy goal for Jesus’ disciples at all.
• Which adjectives are the right ones to describe the Bible - inerrant, infallible, inspired, authoritative, literal, allegorical, historical - is not something I’m interested in arguing about.
• Jesus’ teaching (and thus my following) is at least as much about bringing heaven to earth as it is about getting us to heaven.

None of these statements means that I have necessarily moved to an inferred “non-Evangelical” position on that issue. Nor does “recovering” imply that I see myself on a journey from one presumed pole, inevitably reaching the other pole. I simply mean I no longer want to assume that I, or the people I associate myself with are, as a baseline, right. “Recovering” acknowledges that I still have a tendency to do just that.

One other brief tangential observation about capital E. I’ve noticed that more and more often, when “Evangelical” is the word said, “Fundamentalist” is the word heard or understood, and that word opens up a whole ‘nother can of implications. I don’t think it’s reasonable to shun a label because of what other people think it means. I am “recovering” from what has been my own understanding of Evangelicalism, not necessarily a strict dictionary definition, nor the world’s understanding of the word. However, I do think it’s wise to be aware of the assumptions people make about certain words when we use them about ourselves. Which is why I’m writing this epic post in the first place.

But I must put an even finer shading on how I’ve been processing this issue. The very fact that it might raise a reader’s suspicion and that posting the phrase makes me feel instinctively defensive is in large part precisely what’s driven me to describe myself as a “recovering Evangelical.” I’ve grown up in a world where “Evangelical” equals “OK”. The label has served for me as a kind of stamp of approval that cuts across denominational and cultural lines. If someone or some organization or some church was “Evangelical”, it was right or acceptable or approved. If something was, I don’t know - un-Evangelical? - it was at best to be regarded warily, if not outright wrong. Learning to let go of “Evangelical” has been both freeing and scary. Ten years ago, someone suggesting that being Evangelical is something to be recovered from (like alcoholism), would have been tantamount to blasphemy to me. Though I would have never, ever said it aloud, I understood that Evangelicals were, after all, the real Christians, the most right, closest to the truth, closest to Jesus - whatever. I have come to realize more and more that some person / church / organization can be Evangelical (or in fact evangelical!) and not be very faithful to the witness of Jesus. Conversely, one might be [enter contrasting theological persuasion of your choice, maybe even a non-Christian one!] and be living very much as Jesus commanded his followers to live. To sum up this rambling paragraph, I am striving to no longer allow any ‘label’ to hold an exclusive claim on truth in my mind. Jesus is the truth.

My text editor tells me my logos count is now well over 1000, so I need to wrap this up. This essay is in many ways, my first “real post” on this blog. So if you are new here, don’t worry: I’m not usually quite this verbose.