Evangelicals are too liberal. Who knew?

That’s the assertion of Andrew T. Walker in an article in “World” magazine titled, “It’s OK to be a Christian Conservative.” I had to look twice to see that I was reading the title correctly, but there it is.

To be clear, I don’t need Walker’s permission to be anything, but the premise of his argument is that evangelicals have drifted too far to the left in recent decades. Really?

Walker, by his account not yet forty years old, claims to remember an “air of rebellion” among evangelicals “resisting the supposedly troglodyte and rigid form of conservative Christianity linked with the Religious Right.” I recall no such rebellion, but let’s allow him to make his case.

Walker claims the drift from conservatism was born of a conviction that “a less-partisan Christianity would be more successful at evangelizing unbelievers.” Citing a recent Pew Religious Landscape study, Walker contends that conservative political convictions are more conducive to evangelism. “If one identifies as Christian,” he writes in characterizing the report, “there is a far higher likelihood that one has what is ‘conservative’ politics in our context.”

Walker, an associate professor of Christian ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, appears to have stumbled over the classic logical fallacy of mistaking correlation with causation. But let’s give him more rope.

Therefore, “It is really OK to be a politically conservative Christian and not be embarrassed about it,” he concludes. “Just own it.”

Walker goes on to say that “the bogeymen of the Religious Right were virtually correct in all their concerns.”

I have my doubts about this, but I’m willing to hold judgment in abeyance until I ask a few questions. The first and overriding question I pose in all seriousness and with Christian charity is: What are you smoking?

In what universe—political, moral or common sense—have white evangelicals drifted too far to the left in the past several decades?

Here are some specific queries:

• As you know, Jesus summoned his followers to care for “the least of these” and suggested that a rich man might encounter some difficulty at the pearly gates. Would you care to speculate on the percentage of white evangelicals who spoke out against the massive tax cuts that favored the wealthy at the expense of those less fortunate during the Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump administrations?
• For reasons that still escape me, the condemnation of torture during the George W. Bush administration was considered “liberal.” Could you direct me to those “liberal” evangelical organizations that condemned the use of torture?
• As I’m sure you know, the Religious Right, the political mobilization of white evangelicals that you so valorize, traces its origins in the 1970s to the defense of racial segregation at places like Bob Jones University and Jerry Falwell’s Lynchburg Christian Academy. How would a defense of that position work as an opening gambit for evangelism, especially with people of color? Yes, I support the right of evangelical institutions to engage in racial discrimination while receiving public subsidies in the form of tax exemption, and by the way, have you heard of the “Four Spiritual Laws”?
• More than four out of five white evangelicals supported Donald Trump in each of the three previous presidential elections. I grant that Trump is not a true ideological conservative; he’s not true anything, as nearly as I can tell, and his sole ideology is the endless gratification of his ego. Nevertheless, how can white evangelicals’ overwhelming rejection of Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris be interpreted as a drift away from conservatism?
• While we’re on the subject of race, can you provide me the names of evangelicals who expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement following the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery or others?  Do the names of any leaders of the Religious Right, who you claim “were virtually correct in all of their concerns,” appear on that list?
• The same question applies to evangelical responses to school shootings in Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde or any one of hundreds of other mass shootings. Would I be incorrect to say that “leftist” evangelicals have failed to carry the day on the issue of gun safety?

My memory of the last several decades may be faulty, but a quick dive into evangelical history might be instructive here.

Evangelicals in the nineteenth century embraced many positions that would be considered “liberal” on today’s political spectrum: prison reform, peace crusades, public education, women’s equality, and even gun control. That didn’t seem to diminish their success in evangelism. 

Charles Grandison Finney, by any measure the most important and influential evangelical of the nineteenth century, excoriated greed and free-market capitalism. He suggested that “Christian businessman” was an oxymoron because capitalism elevated avarice over altruism. That’s hardly a conservative view; yet Finney was arguably the most effective evangelist of the antebellum period.

Walker, who concludes his essay by writing, “Maybe we should not apologize for being conservative Christians after all,” has every right to rationalize the juxtaposition of evangelical faith with conservative politics. “Just own it,” as he says, but he must also own the inconsistencies between the Religious Right and both the teachings of Jesus and the history of American evangelicalism.

Yes, evangelicals have been guilty of many excesses over the last half-century or so. Sadly, political liberalism is not one of them.