Anita Kellogg

Evangelicalism as a Political Movement

U.S. Politics

Podcast of the week. Rough Translation: What Would Jesus Drive?

For a long time, I have wanted to write about podcast episodes I enjoy. I am finally getting around to it. Who knows, maybe I can even make it a regular thing.

Many, myself included, have wondered why Evangelicals are so devoted to Trump, given that his personal actions are the embodiment of the immorality—infidelity, womanizing, and demeaning sexual language—that they recently warned was destroying America. Why are they politically energized about ending legal abortions but defend the Trump administration’s human rights abuses towards immigrants? This seems to go tag heuer monaco caw2110 fc6177 mens 39mm black baton dial crocodile black band against the core Christian teaching is about welcoming and loving the stranger. These questions are less puzzling when one understands that Evangelicalism is every bit a political movement as  it is religious.

The episode describes when Evangelicals seemed on the brink of embracing the environmental movement. Christians are taught that God made humans are stewards of the earth, which obligates them to take care of the planet.

“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Genesis 1:28

Conservatives in the Republican Party were concerned that this would loosen the tight link between the party and the Christian Right. Although Republican Party originated much of the tenets of the environmentalism, it now labels these principals as far-left liberal values. For example, my father often teases my sister he thought she would grow up to become the liberal (as opposed to me). This is solely based on a Baterias 18650 childhood event when my sister asked for a t-shirt with a panda on the front. The liberal horror was that the t-shirt was made by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

This is made explicit in a letter from 25 Christian Right leaders, who warned that the advocacy around climate change is “contributing to a growing confusion about the very term evangelical.” They explain how the defining of Evangelical “should mean being conservative in politics, in economics and in biblical morality.”

This quote is a key reason I found the whole episode enlightening on the politics of Evangelicals, and I highly recommend it.

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