I Have My Work Cut Out for Me!

For much of my career (ordained #PCUSA, Jan. 1970), I've been aware of the great divide in this nation: Ecumenical Protestantism, Progressive Judaism and Liberal Catholicism on one side, and on the other side, Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism.

For lots of reasons, I suppose, I've always reached out to Evangelicals and Fundamentalists - no big deal, I'm sure - like a cup o'coffee or a hamburger and some conversation. I wanted to be a bridge builder.

Can't say that it ever worked! Generally, they believed I wasn't even a Christian, or, at best, a very poor one. Though I've never thought of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists as "not Christian," though I was never comfortable with their "conversionist" theology, me being a "covenantal" thinker, with infant baptism as the liturgical cornerstone illustrating God's sovereignty in these matters. Many a time, I was told they would be praying for me, and on a number of occasions, I asked them not to pray, since their prayer was mostly a call to God to change me into their own image - hardly a prayer of love, and surely not a prayer for learning together about God's greatness.

Anyway, the divide has only grown wider ... what was at one time a silence between the two sides has now escalated into a shouting match, as Evangelicals find themselves on the losing side of the Marriage Equality question.

Evangelicals certainly have had their day in the sun, you might say, ever since Ronald Reagan learned how to play them to his political advantage, and there was a time when they felt on top of the heap, and crowed ever day, with books and sermons, that Ecumenical Protestantism was on its last legs, and there would be a new Evangelical America free of abortion, without Marriage Equality, with Bibles and prayers in the schools along with creationist curriculum.

Well, that certainly didn't come to pass, and now the sun seems to be shifting a bit, with Evangelicals now confused, because it seems that their god is no longer working things out as had been expected. And all of this is turning into a deep and violent anger.

The current state of affairs is very disheartening. I don't even know any longer how to talk to an Evangelical ... whatever we might have had in common 30 years ago now seems to have evaporated.

Evangelicals, led by the Huckabees and Santorums, have hardened in their thinking and politics in light of Marriage Equality - because what they truly what is a theocracy, not a democracy. Sadly, much of this Evangelical fervor now is tangled up in Southern Nullification, old-line racism, State's Rights, misogyny, and guns.

FOX News has chimed in on this, too, with full voice, and GOP candidates have joined the fray, all trying to out-Bible one another, yacking endlessly about "religious freedom" and the rights of believers to "practice their faith."

It's a first-class mess, and I have no idea how to deal with it, other than to be what I am - and to articulate my vision as clearly and compassionately as I can, and do so with passion, too, not laying down in front of the Evangelical freight train, but countering it with clear and incisive theology and ethics.

I have my work cut out for me.