Lots of Americans don’t like Evangelicals, especially in the academy. That is sad, since much of the dislike is based on falsehoods and irrational prejudice.
Some people cannot disagree without hate. Thank goodness that the millions of Evangelicals in the United States can see their deeply held beliefs mocked without reacting with the violence so common to many communities.
However, prejudice carries a social cost and ignorant views of Evangelicals harm the nation, including Evangelicals.
Some Evangelical students develop the self-loathing or defensiveness that can provide cover for a member of a group that is disliked.
Most people who are not Protestant Evangelicals know these folk for their support for traditional marriage and the culture of life. If you like those things (as most Americans do), that is a good thing, but if you dislike traditional marriage and think experimenting on humanity is a good thing, then Evangelicals raise your blood pressure.
Media stereotypes do not help. The millions of Evangelicals are invisible in entertainment or the subject of ridicule when mentioned.
Much of the media does not understand religion of any kind and so provides a microphone to Evangelical “leaders” based more on accessibility (access to the studio and a willingness to drop everything when they call) than on actual influence. Even books that claim to describe the sub-culture focus on the bizarre or distasteful elements.
Before forming a view on this huge sub-culture, let me suggest five things to know about it, before developing a prejudice. Having worked within in it for over a decade, I feel qualified to make a few generalizations.
First, Evangelicals are not just white, despite media perceptions.
Theologically conservative black and Hispanic leaders are even more invisible in major media than people of color usually are. The tiny far-left United Church of Christ is not mainstream in the Christian African-American or Christian Hispanic community, but its extremist leaders are getting away with characterizing an attack on their theological oddities as an attack on all Christians of color.
African-American Pentecostalism (not quite the same thing as Evangelicalism) is just one example of the millions of invisible traditional Christians of color.
Second, Evangelicals (in general) hate anti-Semitism.
They are not pro-Israel and opposed to anti-Semite behavior just because they have a “Left Behind” theology (whatever that is).
An Evangelical commonplace of my childhood was the belief that any nation that attacked the Jewish people was doomed to divine disfavor because they had “touched the apple of God’s eye.” Sermons with anecdotes centered on cultivating a love for the Jewish people (not based on eschatology) were and are common.
Evangelical churches may be some of the last places where Jews are described as “God’s chosen people” without a trace of irony.
Third, Evangelical culture values education highly.
Evangelicals run (without tax payer support) a pre-school through graduate school education system that improves every year. Much of it is already first rate. Most liberal Christian educational institutions are hi-jacked from Evangelicals who then go on to establish new ones since they love learning.
Evangelicals love books and ideas. You can make a career lecturing Evangelical lay people on theological and non-theological topics. Hundreds of thousands of Evangelicals spend large amounts of time getting up to speed on different cultural issues.
Fourth, Evangelicals help the poor.
From the Salvation Army to the rescue mission movement, Evangelicals have a long history of helping the poor. The next time you read that some Evangelical “leader” his discovered that “churches should help the poor” try an experiment my Dad proposed to me in the 1970’s. Call a local Evangelical church and say that you face a financial disaster. You have hungry kids. Without even saying that you are a Christian (and even if you are not), many will send a deacon (or some such church officer) out to see if he can and should help.
I have personally seen Evangelical communities pay the rent and feed very difficult people without asking for anything in return.
Finally, conversion to Evangelical Christianity has saved many people from destruction in the here and now. That is a good thing whatever your view of the afterlife.
Most of our popular vices require elite money and status to hide the destruction they cause. Evangelicals help hundreds of thousands with severe personal problems become productive citizens. I know of people who have gone from jail and drug problems to university honors degrees and productive careers with the help of Evangelical piety and the selfless work of Evangelical ministries.
Someone from Hollywood once told me that writers in movies disliked Evangelicals because they seemed so happy . . . so fake. Of course, since many studies show that very religious people like Evangelicals are happier, perhaps it is not being fake that bothers writers, but happiness. Relative Evangelical happiness stands as a condemnation of lifestyle choices that are legal, but unwise. You have the right to too much Jack Daniels if you can afford it, but it is not the fault of Evangelical Christians when you suffer a hangover.
And finally, it is also true that Evangelicals support traditional families, though they struggle like everyone else in our culture to make them work in a hostile environment. Because they love human life, an unborn child is safer if she has devoutly Evangelical parents. Non-Evangelical Christians should remember that without Evangelicals these causes would have been lost long ago. If there was a “rapture” that took only Protestant Evangelicals, then a solid core of tax paying, military joining, hard working citizens would vanish.
Is there any doubt that those of us “left behind” would live in a worse nation?