Evangelical History

[Kire]

Evangelical History

David Hempton’s Methodism: Empire of the Spirit
(Yale, 2005)

The turn of the millennium may not have brought on the Apocalypse, or a Y2K global computer crash. But the first five years of the 21st century have witnessed what, to many of us, seems equivalent: an apparently sudden preponderance of evangelical Christianity in startling places. Evangelicals are everywhere: on the fifteenth floor of the Empire State Building (as the New Yorker reported just a few weeks ago of the evangelical King’s College); joining forces with the likes of Rabbi Eckstein (according to the New York Times Magazine); trying to run ads for a controversial new Bible translation in venues like Rolling Stone (which refused) and the Onion (which did not); meriting the cover shot and an entire photo essay in a February issue of Time. And so many of them seem to be in influential positions: the Time essay, titled “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America,” features glossy shots of a host of believers whose footsteps echo through the halls of Capitol Hill and the White House: the Grahams, father and son; the LaHayes; Michael Gerson; Rick Warren; Rick Santorum.

Stories of Democrats courting allies like Jim Wallis (founder and editor of the Christian magazine Sojourners) circulated widely in the months leading up to the second inauguration of George W. Bush; the aforementioned Time also ran a picture of Hillary Clinton gazing skyward like a raptured Saint Catherine alongside a story about the Democratic party’s quest for a more soulful identity. Evangelical ideology appears to be making its influence known in areas as diverse as environmental policy (as Bill Moyers wrote in the New York Review of Books recently), American approaches toward combating HIV/AIDS in Africa, the current administration’s self-described “crusade” against Islamic extremists, and, most visibly, in the halls of the White House, where our President is an avowed born-again Methodist, saved from his earlier godless tendencies, who surrounds himself with religious advisors who support his conviction of his own rectitude.

Poor Thomas Jefferson. It hasn’t been the best decade for his spotless liberal sainthood in terms of slavery, or presidential conduct, or behavior toward his political opponents.

More: http://www.nplusonemag.com/methodism.html