Gospel, Culture, and Power in the Evangelical Moment - Part 1

Introducing the Question

John Schmalzbauer’s Wall Street Journal (Oct 18 2007) review of Michael Lindsay’s new book Faith in the Halls of Power notes the significance of evangelical upward mobility. He writes: “… [A] funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. Buoyed by the upward mobility of postwar America, a critical mass of evangelicals made it into the elite.”

Once referred to as the “gaping primates of the upland valley,” (by H. L. Menken), evangelicals are now represented in leadership of government, the academy, and business. Lindsay’s book features two former presidents, one hundred executives, some two-dozen high-level government officials, and a dozen filmmakers and actors. Peter Gomes, chaplain of Harvard University, notes that there are more evangelicals at Harvard now than at anytime since the seventeenth century.

In response to this, some have warned of a looming theocracy. Lindsay notes that he found little evidence to support this concern. Why? Lindsay (and Schmalzbauer) note that this evangelical elite is not monolithic: there is a plurality of political and cultural views. In fact, notes Lindsay, many elite evangelicals distance themselves from the populist evangelicalism of the likes of Joel Osteen and other television preachers.

This “cosmopolitan evangelicalism” (Lindsay’s term) represents an evangelical theology informed and influenced by higher education and higher culture. If there is any risk, notes Lindsay, it is to the internal coherence of the evangelical movement. There is, to put it bluntly, a growing class divide within evangelicalism. Despite the growing differences within evangelicalism, a divergence that has produced some nasty battles, Lindsay’s book seems to have an optimistic tone. Evangelicals, it seems, are successfully engaging our culture in helpful and productive ways in various spheres.

Less optimistic is Charles Marsh’s analysis of evangelical political influence in Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity (Oxford 2007). Fundamental to Marsh’s reflections is the simple question: have evangelicals compromised the Gospel in order to attain political power in contemporary America?

A broader question arises both for Marsh and for Lindsay: does the attainment of culturally influential positions necessitate an abrogation or corruption of the centerpiece of the evangelical movement—the Gospel? The latter of these questions is abstractly answerable in the negative. The former questions, however, requires a theological interaction with the events of what Marsh calls “the evangelical moment,” the years 2000-2006. In short, Marsh claims that the evangelical moment was the result of a profound corruption of the classical Gospel message.

In a series of posts, I will be interacting with Marsh’s book chapter by chapter. My first post, probably next week, will interact with Marsh’s introduction of his project in his chapter, “On Being a Christian after Bush.” Thereafter I will be tracing the trajectory of Marsh’s argument interacting with it as I go. My goal will be to understand Marsh’s work and to seek to engage it critically from an evangelical perspective. Beyond understanding Marsh’s work, perhaps the discussion that ensues will be helpful in reflecting upon cultural engagement by evangelical Christians.