A Lover’s Quarrel With The Evangelical Church

For most of my Christian life, I have considered myself an evangelical. From the time I made a public profession of faith in Christ at age fourteen and for most of my adult life until now, “evangelical” was a label I gladly wore. The word evangelical was one I liked because it seemed to transcend secular politics and religious denominations. I could claim kin with other evangelicals in denominations different from my own. I could disagree with someone about welfare reform or tax laws, but we could agree on the power of “Christ and him crucified” to save a lost and dying world, a world that includes you and me.

And being something of an amateur linguist, as most writers congenitally are, I appreciated its etymology. The word evangelical came into common usage only recently (in the twentieth century) and suggests the proclamation of the good news of Jesus. The word angel, which means “messenger,” is at the very heart of the word, and at the very heart of my own vision for my life, as both a writer and a Christian. I wanted to be a messenger of good news.

So I thoroughly immersed myself in the evangelical movement. From street evangelism to small-group Bible studies to Promise Keepers, I did it all. In college at the University of Georgia in the 1970s, I had a Sunday morning program on the campus radio station where I played Larry Norman, Randy Stonehill, and Phil Keaggy. I may have been the first disc jockey in North America—certainly among the first—to play an Amy Grant song on the broadcast airwaves. I began to see Christian media, radio and television in particular, as a way to infiltrate and ultimately subjugate the secularist mindset that I believed had overtaken the country. And I wanted to be a part of that process. Read the rest HERE