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Part One: Introduction
Bibliography
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“Evangelical” has become one of the most controversial words of the twenty-first century. Urban Dictionary is a website that allows for a variety of people to create their own unique significations of words. I think this site illustrates the crystallized connotations the term evangelical invokes in everyday culture. For example:
Definition 1: “christians who like to argue and force their ideas of religion on others. Sometimes resulting in violence and always voice raising.”
Definition 2: “A sect of Christianity that is full of mindless, brainwashed followers who spend their entire life in misery when they aren’t spreading the gospel. The whole sect is full of middle class/rich white folks who want to go to church to be entertained by crying, hysterical preachers and find new prejudices to be in support of. They believe that their religion is the only way of life and refuse to accept any other ways. There is no ‘conversation’ with evangelicals… they only convert. BEWARE.” (Urban Dictionary, 2006).
John Buckeridge of Britain’s Christianity Magazine echoes this sentiment in an editorial where he states,
…Evangelical is increasingly shorthand for: right-wing US politics, an arrogant loud mouth who refuses to listen to other people’s opinions, men in grey suits who attempt to crowbar authorized version scripture verses into every situation, or ‘happy-clappy’ simpletons who gullibly swallow whatever their tub thumping minister tells them to believe. Large parts of the British media seem happy to paint evangelicals into that stereotype. Today in the UK ‘evangelical is often linked with the ultimate 21st century swearword ‘fundamentalist’. The result is the name ‘evangelical’ which years ago, may have smelt of roses – now has the aroma of the manure that fertilizes the bush (Buckeridge, 2006)
He calls this ‘the e-word’ – obviously playing on the controversies of ‘the n-word’ in African American discourse on racial stereotyping. As an evangelical myself, I would have to somewhat agree that we unfortunately often confirm this perception with our attitudes and actions – it has to come from somewhere! – but at what point does this perception shift from type to stereotype? At what point does this profile essentialize evangelicals.
Historically, evangelicalism has been defined by ‘essentials’ – for example, accepting Jesus as savior (sola christi); and belief in the authority of the bible (sola scriptura). However, there is a great deal of contention within evangelicalism beyond these commonalities. Donald Dayton and
Robert Johnston argue:
Defining evangelicalism has become one of the biggest problems in American religious historiography. At best, ‘evangelicalism’ is a diverse movement which at times seems to have more dividing it than uniting it. In fact, some observers find it nearly impossible to speak of evangelicalism as a single entity and prefer to see it in terms of its constituent parts. Timothy Smith speaks for many scholars when he calls evangelicalism a mosaic or even a kaleidoscope (Dayton & Johnston, 2001, 12).
In this definition, evangelical identities are being defined on the basis of their difference as opposed to their similarities. I find two major factors have contributed to articulating these differences:
First, practical- and theoretical- theological and cultural disagreement which range the gamut from church practices to political ideologies. A clear illustration of this is the emerging movement known as ‘post-evangelicals’ (Tomlinson, 2003; Clapp, 2000) which seeks to articulate evangelicalism in postmodern culture by differentiating it from modern, foundationalist expressions.
Second, the accelerated growth of multicultural and global expressions of Christianity (Sanneh, 2003; Escobar, 2003; Brouwer, 1996). Philip Jenkins predicts that by 2050, only one out of five Christians will be non-latino and white, and that the most rapid growth is taking place in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Jenkins, 2003). The second urban dictionary definition (described above) of “evangelical” being “middle class/rich white folks” doesn’t really fit this well documented reality. It represents only a very small portion of this multiple- cultural, theological, socio-economic grouping known as evangelical.
So why do most people conceive of evangelicals according to this stereotype? Why does such a homogenized view of this group exist when an increasing amount of evangelicals embrace their heterogeneous identities? Cultural theorist, Douglas Kellner has identified a critical point about the role of media in identity construction:
Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Kellner, 2003).
Just to clarify, I am not suggesting a deterministic model of media – assuming that the media has determined who evangelicals are, but rather I am suggesting that popular media culture plays a significant role in shaping and suggesting the popular idea of who evangelicals are through the representational choices that are made in popular media programs and products.
Go to part 3 - Representation: Constructing the Mythology of the Evangelical
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