Confessions of a Seminarian

it’s not 2008 yet, is it??

Part of the downside of the 24-hour news cycle is that what wouldn’t pass for news 10 years ago passes for news now. The air, the pages, and the Web sites have to be filled with something.

I thought of this while noticing a recent article in the New York Times about the supposed “splintering” of evangelicals as it pertains to the 2008 presidential election, and cultural issues overall. I find the article to be a mixture of accurate understanding of history, yet also an ignorance of evangelicals overall.

This ignorance of understanding evangelicals happens a lot in the media, and it’s nothing new. Other religious groups no doubt experience this as well, the attempt by various media outlets to effectively label and fit the values of people into 250 words or less. It was in 1993 that a Washington Post reporter labeled evangelicals as “poor, uneducated, and easy to command.” Other labels have not been this insipid, but labels regardless abound.

(And before you prepare to comment, I recognize that evangelicals label folks just as much as anyone else.)

Part of this challenge comes with considering evangelicals as a voting bloc. It’s an understandable how some evangelicals of yesteryear (Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, etc.) did contribute to that perception, but many more do not. A helpful article from Slate adds necessary perspective to this.

And yes, there is a shift in the priorities of younger evangelicals toward more focus on social justice and mercy issues, thankfully so. Or maybe it’s just receiving more air time, yet it’s always been there.

But then there’s the other rub: many of us read “social justice and mercy issues” and perhaps understand it as code that younger evangelicals will vote for the Democratic candidate. And if abortion and marriage are the priorities, then they’ll vote Republican.

I’m not convinced that evangelicals are “splintering” because the current crop of candidates for president doesn’t fit some pre-ordained model for how the media would consider it. Maybe we’re like everyone else on this. The election is more than one year away, and no one has made up their minds yet.

“There’s no disputing the fact that evangelicals feel burned by their ineffective intimacy with the Republican Party and are increasingly convinced that church and politics shouldn’t have such an intertwined relationship. Evangelicals young and old are not retreating or switching parties, but they’re carefully weighing their involvement and attempting to bring it into conformity with an all-encompassing commitment to their theology. It may be mincing words, but in this case, the truth of the story depends on definitions. And in that respect, the mainstream press still doesn’t get evangelicals and how to cover them without repetitive and questionable “cycle” narratives. Calling maturation a meltdown misses the mark—and the story.” (-from the Slate article)

So what do you think? What have your perceptions been? Are evangelicals cracking up, not cracking up, somewhere in the middle? Do tell.