Understanding Evangelicals

“If you want a friend in Washington,” said Harry Truman, “get a dog.” Hyperbole, to be sure, but a half century later Washington, more so than New York, impresses me as a place of intense rivalries and strategic, even tactical, friendships. Not, of course, that there are not much deeper friendships, but little escapes the influence of the dominant, indeed only, business of the place, which is politics. It was not a good thing when, twenty or more years ago, intellectuals and writers, notably from New York, began to gravitate toward Washington, everyone finding a niche and cause to serve in the ceaseless networking anchored in think tanks and government office. And yet, in the same world there are places where partisan fervor is tempered by a serious engagement with ideas. One such place is the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), now headed by Ed Whelan. (To the charge that my having served on the board for many years makes me biased, I respond that it only informs my appreciation.) Among the good things EPPC does is hold “center conversations” that bring together bright people of diverse biases to discuss questions of mutual interest. This comment is occasioned by a recent center conversation, “Understanding American Evangelicals.”

Here, for instance, is Mark Noll, the distinguished historian at Wheaton College, on different ways of answering the question “How many evangelicals are there in America?” Noll answers:

Like the meaning of ‘evangelical,’ the question of how many evangelicals there are depends on how the concept is used. A redoubtable team of political scientists—John Green, Jim Guth, Bud Kellstedt, and Corwin Smidt—has concluded that about 25 percent of the adult American population is associated with the mostly white Protestant churches and movements that have historically been known as evangelical. Of that number, about two-thirds (or roughly 16 percent of the total population) are actively involved in their congregations. These political scientists argue that, for any correlation with social views or political behavior, the fact of activity is much more important than mere identification.

But the bigger picture is considerably more complicated. If we use as the standard the four identifying markers of evangelical Christianity defined by David Bebbington (conversion, the Bible, activism in evangelism, and the cross of Christ), then a very substantial number of African Americans (perhaps five to six percent of the national population) also look like evangelicals. In addition, a very substantial number of individuals associated with the mainline Protestant churches (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal) also affirm all four of the characteristic evangelical markers, as do a substantial number of Roman Catholics. Taken together, there are probably about as many Catholics, black Protestants, and mainline Protestants who tell survey researchers they embrace the four evangelical characteristics as there are adherents to the conservative Protestant denominations. This would suggest, then, that about 30 percent of American adults practice a religion that looks more or less evangelical.

Alan Cooperman of the Washington Post suspects that we are witnessing in contemporary America “the most philo-Semitic Christianity in history.” To which Noll responds: “One might say there’s a fault line running through the evangelical world. On one side are those who feel that the nation of Israel is vital to the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. On the other are those who think that whatever was promised of good to Israel is now being fulfilled through the work of Christ in the Church. But even those people would recognize a special category for the Jewish people. And I think this has been one of the reasons for the offense given by evangelicals to some Jews: it’s not just that Jews are included among those who are to be evangelized, but that they are singled out, as it were, as the prime target of evangelization—albeit with philo-Semitic feeling.”

David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that it has been fifteen years since Pat Robertson ran for President. Some years from now “will he be regarded as someone who has been less on God’s errand than on a fool’s errand?” Noll: “The short answer is that Pat Robertson will disappear from history when his TV program goes off the air. His significance is to have embodied the politicization of a part of the evangelical world that had not been politicized before. The point about the evangelical world’s mostly monopartisan politics not matching its internal religious diversity is important. The people that Robertson brought in had been outsiders religiously, if not politically. And the coalition that took place politically on the right did bequeath more unity—albeit unity of a partisan political character—than had ever existed in the religiously variegated evangelical community.”

Many observers have noted that evangelical Protestants are a great deal more variegated, also politically, than the stereotypes allow or their leaders admit. If the frontal assault issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, were taken out of play, evangelicals might be spread across the liberal-conservative spectrum in about the same proportions as the general population. But that is a gigantic If. Abortion is the key. The Roe v Wade decision of 1973 is, one can reasonably argue, the most important event in American politics in the past three decades. More than any other factor, it has shaped present political alignments. That is a reali