Evangelicalism it is

            Enough politics, already. Let's talk something that never gets our blood pressure up: religion. There, that's a topic that doesn't produce fighting.

            Sure. No squabbles there.          

            I watched a video of controversial author Rob Bell, former pastor of a megachurch in Chicago and author of a book that dispels any thoughts of hell being a real place.

            The idea he presented was the word Evangelicals had been stolen by, well, evangelicals.

            He said that during the time when the Roman Empire stretched from England to parts unknown, the word evangel was used to say the Romans were bringing good news to the lands they conquered. Now it is used for mainly Republicans for their “narrow” interpretation of what the Gospel is all about. The problem is I can find no reference on the entire Internet to support that statement. None.

            Some back ground first. 

            The word evangelical has its etymological roots in the Greek word for "gospel or "good news":, from eu- "good" and angelion "message". By the English Middle Ages the term had expanded semantically to include not only the message, but also the New Testament which contained the message, as well as more specifically the Gospels which portray the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.^[                

            Do you note that the word comes from the Greeks? Not the Romans.

            Evangelicalism, Evangelical Christianity, or Evangelical Protestantism is a worldwide, transdenominational movement within Protestant Christanity maintaining that the essence of the gospel consists in the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ’s atonement. Evangelicals believe in the centrality of the conversion or “born again experience” in receiving salvation, in the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity, and spreading the Christian message.

            That the majority if not the entirety of Evangelicals are to the right of the political spectrum is, well, because they believe in the above. Do people on the left believe those things? Some, obviously. In fact, only 13 percent of all Christians identify with the tenants of Evangelicalism, because many see the idea consistent with fundamentalism.

            Bell was objecting mainly to the Evangelical political influence in America. The problem with that is Evangelical political influence was first evident in the 1830s with movements such as the abolition of slavery and the prohibition movement, which closed saloons and taverns in state after state until it succeeded nationally in 1919.

            The Christian right is a coalition of numerous groups of traditionalist and observant church-goers of every kind: especially Catholics on issues such as birth control and abortion, mainly in the Southern Baptists, Missouri Synod Lutherans and and others. Since the early 1980s, the Christian right has been associated with several nonprofit political and issue-oriented organizations including the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

            Here’s the deal, folks. I understand (though do not agree) that the organizations listed there are very, very conservative. They get the main publicity whenever anything happens or they say something or whatever.

            But the rub is I count myself as an Evangelical and do not necessarily go in lock-step with those organizations. In that sense, I get Bell. But Bell says in the video that if the good news isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news. I agree. He says unless the good news is good news for the immigrant, the gay person, the least and the lost it isn’t good news.

            Jesus said this in quoting from Isaiah:

            “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

            The poor. Check

            The prisoner. Check

            The oppressed. Check

            But he also said in John 15: Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned.

            Good news, it seems to me, is a proclamation that though we are condemned by our own actions, the grace of God is there to set the prisoner of addiction, of sin of all kinds, of failure, of falling, of oppression and even the spiritually blind. That’s the good news.

            Everyone can come to him and accept the freely offered grace of God.

            The thing we can’t do, in politics and in religion, is try to rewrite the rule book in midstream. Jesus said what he said, loved the way he loved, and we’ve been dealing with it for a couple thousand years.

            How you read some of those things dictates where you see yourself.

            Nothing more. Nothing less.