The following originally appeared in a recent Anglican Action Weekly e-newsletter. If you would like to receive our weekly e-newsletter, register as an IRD User today.
Since my coverage of the Human Rights Campaign’s recent “Clergy Call” conference (in which prominent Evangelist Tony Campolo took part, and other evangelical leaders such as Florida pastor Joel Hunter and Christian ethicist David Gushee sent supportive statements to) I’ve gotten several puzzled queries: “How did some of these evangelical leaders come to take part in a gay/transsexual rally? We thought they were opposed to normalizing homosexual behavior and equating it with marriage. Didn’t they understand that’s the entire agenda of the Human Rights Campaign?”
It’s a good question: many of these evangelicals are familiar faces. Campolo himself spoke at the Christian college I attended, and just 10 years ago was a guest speaker at my parish. IRD Vice President of Research and Programs Alan Wisdom offered these three “stages of decline” that lead from evangelical stalwart to apologist for the Left’s cultural revolution.
Out of Place: Evangelist Tony Campolo (in blue) surrounded by religious left clergy and transsexual activists at a recent Capitol Hill rally. |
Stage 1: The Broadening Agenda
Evangelicals in this category continue their support for traditional issues, such as sanctity of life and defense of marriage. But they add in other “core” issues as being of equal value, such as environmental protection and poverty alleviation. Since scripture instructs us to steward God’s creation and spends quite a bit of time talking about the poor, it’s easy to make this step: the problem isn’t in the issue itself; it’s the jump from caring about a problem to demanding that all Christians support a specific policy solution. Caring for the poor quickly translates to mandatory support for an expansive welfare state, and environmental stewardship becomes advocacy for cap-and-trade carbon regulations. There isn’t anything biblically wrong with either of these positions, but they are positions on which one can disagree and still be a faithful Christian. “Stage one” slippery-slope evangelicals cease to be able to make that distinction. (Example: former National Association of Evangelicals Vice President of Government Affairs Richard Cizik)
Stage 2: The Subsumer
Evangelicals in this category still pay lip-service in their support for traditional issues, but now say those issues are of less importance than “the real issues”. Sanctity of life and marriage are subsumed under social welfare goals, and the issues of the present world eclipse those of eternity. Leaders in this category make statements such as “I’m pro-life, but what really matters to me is (fill in the blank)” (Example: Christian ethicist David Gushee of Mercer College). “Stage two” evangelicals allege that marriage and life issues are divisive and intractable. They think it’s better to downplay those issues in order to cooperate with their newfound leftist friends on other issues where progress can more readily be made.
Stage 3: The Apologist
Evangelicals in this final category have ceased to pay lip-service to traditional issues. Not only do they no longer push for traditional values, they now act as apologists for politicians who run in direct opposition to such beliefs. Examples include public support for politicians that favor abortion rights, claiming that their social welfare policies are truly “pro-life” and that legal restrictions on abortion are ineffective or unnecessarily divisive. Ultimately, the apologist’s “issue drift” leads to a theological drift, and the leader adopts a Universalist theology that minimizes or discounts Christ’s uniqueness. At this point, the leader is far from what “evangelical” used to mean, but may still cling to the title for political usefulness (example: Sojourners’ Jim Wallis, Episcopal priest/historian Randall Balmer)
Anglicans need to especially understand how this “slippery slope” occurs. In doing so, we can avoid many of the problems that have persisted in the Episcopal Church and prevent them from spreading throughout the Anglican Communion. If these kinds of shifts can take place amongst evangelicals, they can surely take place anywhere if unchallenged.
Many leftward traveling evangelicals probably did not intend to reach “stage three” when they entered “stage one”, however, “stage three” turned out to be their destination. For others, perhaps more prescient, the journey was more calculated. It was a “bait-and-switch” strategy: people who initially never would have agreed to align themselves with gay rights and abortion rights champions could be persuaded to “broaden their agenda” in “stage one”. They could be persuaded to subsume, without denying, their traditional Christian convictions about human life and sexuality. Later still, after having kept company with the Left on so many other issues, they could be persuaded to lend an apologetic hand in its sexual liberationist project.
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