*Originally published in Englewood Review of Books
No matter how many times I read about evangelicals, their
history, their theology and their current work, I find myself struggling to
piece it all together, to explain who they are and how they came to be. Perhaps it is because it is not a centrally
defined movement and so much of its history and faith is nebulous in that it
started in different places by different people who acted in different ways
with similar core beliefs. In the
introduction to A New Evangelical Manifesto: A Kingdom Vision for the Common Good, editor David P. Gushee offers his definition of evangelicalism as a
foundation for the essays that are to come:
In this characterization, Gushee does not explain what
evangelicals believe but rather wishes to define the movement as a wide variety
of adherents apart from the most radical sects within, usually identified as
right wing conservatives and fundamentalists.
Gushee prefaces this book by saying that it sprang out of
the work being done by the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common
Good. His hopes are that the essays
contained within would promote the principles of the mission statement of the
organization. It is too long to reprint
here, but I will include portions of it that I think are necessary to
understanding the particular stance of this group and their aims in the
collective essays.“Christians by definition are those who bear witness to our faith in Jesus Christ….one way is to offer proclamation and action concerning the moral will of God for human communities…some Christian moral witness occurs at national and international levels, where many significant challenges to human well-being are often created and addressed. Christians have no choice but to engage religious, economic, cultural, and political institutions with our best efforts to articulate and embody the love and justice of Jesus Christ for the well-being of God’s world.” (p. x)
Specifically, the NEP wishes to engage the world in these
ways:
“We
want to see Americans to choose to believe in Jesus and live as his
disciples. We see that the evangelistic and discpling work of American
Christianity has been badly damaged by a generation
of culture war-fighting-some doubt Jesus…because of Christians...We want to see
an engagement of Christians in
American public life that is loving, rather than angry; holistic, rather than narrowly focused; healing,
rather than divisive; and independent of partisanship and ideology, rather than subservient
to party or ideology. We see in many
sectors a Christian public engagement
that calls itself Christan while often damaging the work of Christ and
violating the teachings of Christ…We want
to see a Christian public witness that reflects the actual life, ministry, and teachings of the Jesus Christ
we meet in Scripture and expience in the church at its best.” (pp.x-xi)
