These days, here in America, the “political/religious right” has hijacked the word “evangelical” in a way that distorts, if not perverts its meaning–as least when you read the Bible.
If this “spin” may promote a particular political posture, it is nonetheless devious, if not deceitful. It exploits both a biblically illiterate culture and a secular media.
Let me explain.
Our English words–“evangelical” or “evangelism” or “evangelistic”–they all come from the same Greek word in the New Testament: euaggelion. Which is translated “gospel.” It means “good news.”
As in, for example, the first verse of the Gospel of Mark: “The beginning of the gospel (euaggelion) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
Mark is the earliest, most primitive and primary source among the four Gospels in the New Testament. In fact, an elementary comparison of Matthew and Luke with Mark reveals that the latter two Gospels–Matthew and Luke–how both are dependent upon the Mark Gospel for most of the material they contain. That’s why those first three Gospels are called the “Synoptics.”
If Matthew and Luke contain stories and incidents involving Jesus that are not found in Mark, there is essentially nothing concerning the “Jesus story” (the “gospel,” euaggalion) in Mark that is not found in Matthew and/or Luke.
What the “political/religious right” has exploited a biblically illiterate culture and a secular media these days into calling “evangelical”–it should be more precisely termed “fundamentalist.”
In Christian history, “fundamentalism” is a modern phenomenon. It emerged in the 19th to early 20th century in reaction to several characteristics of “modernity.” None more threatening (to some) than the Darwinian “theory of evolution.” Or for that matter, the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud.
Just as threatening to those who still today are Christian “fundamentalists” has been what is considered a “critical” study of the Bible. For example: that Moses didn’t author the Pentateuch (the first five books in the Old Testament); that much in that portion of scripture was, not unlike the prophecy of Daniel, written later than the circumstances to which it may literally refer; that if the development of the Psalter (ancient Israel’s hymnal) may have flourished during the reign of Israel’s heroic King David, it is not likely that he authored most, if any of the Psalms; that the prophecy of Isaiah was actually composed in at least three different historical periods.
Or in the New Testament, for example, what I just explained concerning the Gospels: how even the earliest, that of Mark, was written at least half-a-century after Jesus’ literal earthly life; so that what we know of Jesus is, at best, second-hand, a “faithful witness” on the part of his followers remembering what they had been led to consider most important (cf. John 20:30-31 and 21:25); that certain Letters of Paul comprise, instead, the primary sources in the New Testament, even while some letters traditionally ascribed to Paul were not necessarily written by him. And, of course, today one reads, even in popular discourse, how when the canon of the New Testament was formed in the 4th century, there were also spurious “Gnostic Gospels” which existed at the time, but were excluded as definitive Christian truth.
“Fundamentalists” (of the Christian variety) claim to read and heed the Bible “literally”–at least selectively. Here’s the most obvious example.
The Roman Catholic Church holds to the doctrine of “transubstantiation”: that the bread and wine in the eucharist are the “literal” body and blood of Jesus. This is, of course, not a conviction shared by most, if any Protestant “fundamentalists” who interpret those elements, rather, as “symbolic.”
Not to mention, such scandalous statements of Jesus about “cutting off your hand” or “plucking out your eye” if it “causes you to sin” (Mark 9). Much less, the radical notion of “loving one’s enemy” (Matthew 5), or “selling all of one’s possessions” in order to “give [the proceeds] to the poor” (Luke 18). Show me a Christian “fundamentalist” who claims to interpret–much less practice–those incendiary statements of Jesus “literally,” and I’ll show you the biblical definition of a hypocrite.
In case you haven’t noticed, the unholy alliance of the “political/religious right” here in America today is just as “selective” regarding which particular hot-button social issues it is so stridently obsessed with.
These include: opposition to the “teaching of evolution” in the science classrooms of our nation’s public schools; opposition to legalized “reproductive freedom/responsibility”; opposition to “LGBT civil rights”; opposition to the “separation of church and state” (as in the First Amendment to our nation’s Constitution); opposition to public education.
These particular “obsessions” have been reduced by the “political/religious right” to a moralistic agenda exclusive of other important moral, much less ethical considerations. In fact, expressions of at least Christian ethics that the Bible pays as much, if not more attention to.
Such as “economic inequity” (Luke 3:11)–“re-distribution”?–“usury” (Exodus 22: 25-27), “ecological concerns” (Leviticus 25), “immigration reform” (Ezekiel 47: 21-23) or “sexism” (Galatians 3: 28).
After all, we’re talking here about “fundamentalists”–people who, ironically, claim to read (interpret and practice) the Bible “literally.”
Most “fundamentalists” are also “dispensationalists.” As in the popular Left Behind novels. Their emphasis is more on believing that God’s purpose is to “destroy” the world than on a way of loving meant to “redeem” it. “Dispensationalists” even claim to “know” (or at least have a pretty good idea of) when the world is going to “end.” Unlike Jesus–as for reading the Bible “literally”–who claimed, at least on his part, quite otherwise (Mark 13).
Unfortunately, “dispensationalism” has had a tragic influence on American “foreign policy” regarding the Middle East as it is propagated these days by the “political/religious right.”
It’s understandable why the “political/religious right” would prefer–for political purposes–being called “evangelicals” rather than “fundamentalists.” The label “evangelical” is less pejorative. It hardly conjures up such a frightening image of “Muslim fundamentalists” perpetrating a kind of violence these days that has become so intimidating.
Except “fundamentalism”–whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim–it has more to do with “temperament” than with “theology.” In fact, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that whatever penultimate “hope for the world” there may be in our time: how it will have as much to do with (hopefully enough) sensible, sane Muslims, wherever, who are no more “fundamentalist” in how they interpret the Qur’an than their (just as hopefully enough) fellow Jews and Christians are in interpreting the Bible.
Because “fundamentalists”–whatever their “monotheistic religion”; I even know some “secular fundamentalists”–because, despite outward appearances, “fundamentatlists” are so “insecure” and therefore have such a “need” to be “right” (utterly and absolutely), the kind of “faith” they espouse ends up, ironically, being something quite other than “faithful.”
Such “irony”–at least for a Christian–it appears to be reflected most tragically in how a biblically illiterate culture and a secular media have allowed the “political/religious right” these days to distort (if not pervert) the most important word in the Bible: “evangelical” (“gospel,” euaggelion, “good news”).
