New Year, New Labels

In thinking about the last year, I’ve struggled to place myself theologically. I am raised Protestant, became a Christian through the efforts of evangelistic movements like Campus Crusade for Christ and InterVarsity, have learned much from my experiences in Calvary Chapel (at the “Mothership” in Costa Mesa), and have bounced around in churches for a bit, but essentially staying always in churches that feel theologically comfortable. (I don’t expect any church’s doctrine to be a complete parallel to my own; I just like the essentials to be in alignment with me: who is God, who is Jesus, who is Holy Spirit, what is the nature of humanity, what is the nature of the church, what is the rollup to all things, and what is the nature of our relationship and obedience to Jesus?

I believe in the great confessions and the great creeds. I believe in the great catechisms and I believe in the universal church. While I do not disparage the other main branches of Christian faith and practice (the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox), I just feel like it “fit” in the Protestant tradition, so I have aligned only with Protestant churches.

But—

There is just an enormous gulf now between me and the “Evangelical” brand of Protestantism. (Not every Protestant church is “Evangelical,” by the way—which is a Venn diagram I’m only slightly interested in seeing.)

My concerns involve the collapse of the Evangelical style of Protestantism I learned in my teens and twenties from the various churches I attended (mixing week by week, sometimes mixing on the same day), and the current state of Evangelicalism, which is nearly completely aligned with the Republican Party in the United States and the demands of the current president* of the United States.

You can find elsewhere my concerns about the Republican Party and the current president*. I won’t list them here. While no party and no president is perfect, something about this malign conjunction has caused my fellow brothers and sisters to fall into a disastrous political and religious environment. Their voices dominate the American conversation, and dominate the world’s conversation: what Christianity is, is represented by white men demanding that we give more power to the current president* to enact our “beliefs” and to “make America great again.”

I’ve not lost my faith. I believe all the things I’ve always believed (though my beliefs do shift slightly over time as I meditate upon the meaning of my beliefs). I still consider the church qua church to be the instrument God uses to declare and display his glory to the world so that the world can come to a knowledge of God. The Good News—the Evangel—is still true: God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

I just cannot align anymore with the “Evangelical” world. In my opinion it’s hopelessly stained. And by “hopeless” I mean “cannot be returned to its unsullied sense and will no longer be positively useful.”

To be an “Evangelical” at this point is to declare unity with the Republican Party and the current president* of the United States.

I cannot do that, and my previous silence about the label as it applies to me means that I have been assenting to this.

 

So I’m taking a break from the label.

My beliefs are still the same.

But I’m abandoning the label “Evangelical.”

Instead, I am going to simply use the more useful, more neutral term “Confessional Reformed.” I believe in the great dogmas of the confessions and creeds and catechisms. I believe in the ideals of the Reformed faith: reformed and ever-reforming. I believe in the validity of truth as expressed in the Evangel.

I’m just no longer going to ally myself to a label that is all-but-in-name a branch of a political party and a tool of a political leader.

What does this mean for you, if you care? Mostly likely little or nothing. No one else has to change their label. No one else needs to believe or say what I believe and say. If you remain with your label, that is fine. If you change labels, that is fine as well.

I’m just saying, as a modest man (with plenty to be modest about!), that I need to do this. To allude to a much, much greater man with much, much MUCH greater importance and influence: hier steh’ ich; ich kann nicht anders.