Thank God I'm Not an Evangelical

Let me start with a confession. I have no clue what an Evangelical is. If you asked me to define the term I'd struggle. I think they are conservative, but not fundamentalist. But a lot of them are fundamentalists. I think they are pro-Republican. Many are Calvinist, but I don't think all of them are. They believe in the Bible, but I'm not sure if they are all Young Earth Creationists. Beyond that, I don't know what to add.

I've been thinking about Evangelicals lately (as in "Who are these people?") because of all the buzz about Rob Bell's book Love Wins. A lot of that conversation has centered on a tweet John Piper sent out saying "Farewell Rob Bell" after some people leaked that Bell was going to espouse universalism in the book. (Which, by the way, he didn't. To my eye, and many others, it seems like Bell just worked out the theology of C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.)

When I heard about the Piper tweet my first thought was, "Who the hell is John Piper? And why does everyone care what he thinks?" And to be honest, I'm still not sure. I now know a bit more about who Piper is, but I'm still not sure why anyone cares.

My best guess is that Piper is influential in "Evangelicalism." Which isn't really a church or a denomination but, it appears to me, is really an interconnected web of publishing houses, conferences, universities, advocacy groups, and organizations that are associated with a variety of, generally conservative, churches. In short, "Evangelicalism" is a set of cultural power centers with a variety of gatekeeping power brokers. Piper, it seems, is a kind of power broker. If he, or someone like him, is okay with you you can get your books published, you can speak at conferences, you can hold positions in various organizations, and can be generally recognized as a "player" in conservative Christian circles.

That, as best I can tell, is "Evangelicalism." So I guess the worry about the Bell/Piper incident was that Piper would use his influence with the various other power brokers and shut Bell out. Which, I guess, means Bell won't get invited to stuff? And if that happens there is talk that "Evangelicalism" will split.

I guess I'm having trouble getting my head around this because I come from a church movement that is congregational rather than denominational in structure. Each congregation in the Churches of Christ is free and autonomous. We talk a lot to each other, and there are conservative and progressive streams in our movement, but at the end of the day the only people I have to worry about are my brothers and sisters at the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, TX. My church, my tradition, and my denomination begins and ends with that family. Our problems and battles are very local. We just have, and fight with, each other.

So when I hear that Rob Bell is the pastor of the Mars Hill church I just think to myself, why should he or Mars Hill give a flip about what John Piper has to say? Or anyone else for that matter? See, that's how I've been trained to see things. I've been raised to think of church as a local phenomenon.

In short, there are many days when I'm very grateful for my religious heritage. I love the Churches of Christ. More precisely, I love my Highland family.

So as you might imagine, as I've looked on during the whole Rob Bell dust up, I've said to myself over and over:

Thank God I'm not an Evangelical.