Are Evangelicals Broken in Our Breaking World?
While we navigate through the ongoing COVID19 health crisis, evangelical Christians are also facing a different type of emergency. There are many of us debating on what to do with a label that has defined our Christian identity. Should we abandon the tent seemingly on the verge of collapse? Stay and rebuild? Reform? What is the next step?
It would be too simplistic to blame this crisis of identity on the events of 2016 because, like all seminal moments in a crisis, they happened in a broader context. It is easy to attack the low hanging fruit of evangelical pastors that turned their allegiance from religion to politics, from humble servant to power, and from Jesus as their mediator to one of their making. Reality may seem like a satirical SNL skit, but this insanity didn't materialize from thin air. No, this is simply a symptom of a more substantial problem.
Evangelicalism holds that Christianity is engaged in a desperate philosophical struggle with the outside world. They are usually the last ones at the table (if they come at all) to ecumenical efforts. Evangelicalism has long contained an undercurrent advocating a retreat from cultural engagement while many inspire full-blown cultural hostility. Don't misunderstand, Christianity is a struggle. However, evangelicals are increasingly framing this struggle not against spiritual powers, but against the flesh and blood of our neighbours. Evangelicals have become largely suspicious of our culture's move towards inclusivity. Without realizing it, evangelicals have developed an almost split social perception–one very acute and one very tone-deaf. Acute in the sense that an inclusive movement tends to flatten society and create exclusion. Yet tone-deaf in the sense that its movement has moved towards extreme theological hegemony. Our ability to listen and learn has become severely compromised through a series of confrontations and retreats.
Of particular interest now is how this confrontation and retreat created a unique distance with science. Parrell to the scientific explosion of the past two centuries ran an almost equal explosion of historical criticism of holy scripture. Operating from a strictly modern epistemology of certainty (one they ironically shared with those they critiqued), evangelicals largely abandoned the academy to establish their own seminaries and colleges. The thinking was clear: if the Bible was under attack, we would create institutions that produced students dedicated to defending scripture. We would train up godly men (and sometimes women) to serve the church and prevent the science of historical-criticism from robbing scripture of its potency. Some of my education runs along these two dividing lines historically. Both my undergraduate and Master's degree were completed at institutions once opposed to one another. Obviously, I believe in these institutions, but the result has been both an anemia of evangelical expertise in the sciences and an overall belief that science is a mechanism to undermine scripture.
As the scientific worldview emerged as a powerhouse of 20th-century culture and into the present day, evangelicalism's hostility towards culture enveloped a general mistrust of science. We became singularly focused, mostly ignorant of scientific developments, and misapplied the scope of the Bible's vocation. We have become so isolated from culture that a basic functional knowledge of science seems beyond our grasp. For example, evangelicals tend to point out the changing nature of scientific claims as a critical faultline of the scientific method, leaving scientists scratching their heads, wondering why we don't seem to understand that is science and exactly why science is so important. There is a reason why its difficult to convince evangelicals climate change is serious.
With evangelicals largely ignoring science as a discipline, all that remains to do during a public health crisis is to apply the framework we know best to the situation we are in. The Bible does apply. But instead of allowing it to shape our mission, encourage those struggling, and paint a picture of Hope in times of despair, many evangelicals are attempting to specifically understand a viral medical outbreak using a framework that it never intended to explain. That can be dangerous. It's why patients in hospitals and people in grief must put up such statements as "everything happens for a reason," or, "God must be judging you." Like our modern ancestors before us, we are convinced that everything must have an answer and that answer must be found in scripture. We are facing theological questions, but we are also facing scientific ones. If we are honest with ourselves, within the evangelical ethos science is a second-rate discipline. We have a decision to make, are we going to let science do what God intended?
Theology as a "discipline" was never meant to compete with science. In fact, a university degree in the history of higher learning once entailed learning a wide variety of subjects. That the scientific field is dominated by the non-theologically minded is in part a world of our own making. I can't help but wonder if evangelicals are currently uniquely unqualified to be engaging at the level of science during this crisis. However, one thing seems very possible. God, in His grace, may use science to bring about victory over this virus. My worry is that evangelicals will resist that science from our place of isolation and hubris. If we do, evangelicalism may become the next victim of COVID19 and our future may already be out of our hands.
