Official chides Christian right
Moral Majority called aberration
SOUTH HAMILTON -- Evangelical Protestants, despite enjoying increasing cultural influence as a result of their perceived electoral clout, have sometimes ''lost their perspective" by paying too little attention to social concerns such as the environment and poverty, leading evangelicals said yesterday.
A top official of the National Association of Evangelicals told reporters gathered at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary that the Moral Majority, a 1980s political movement dominated by Christian conservatives, was ''an aberration and a regrettable one at that," even though it drew evangelicals into the political process, because the organization was ''fatally flawed by a hubris that made the movement condescending and more than a bit judgmental."
''The Moral Majority lacked a servant heart of Christ born out of humility and compassion for a fallen humanity," said the official, Robert Wenz, who is vice president of national ministries for the National Association of Evangelicals.
''Instead, it was all about making America a nice place for Christians to live. This is not the kind of social involvement that we need or that evangelicals espouse."
Instead, Wenz cited as a positive sign what he described as ''a reemergence of the evangelical church in the inner city" with programs addressing substance abuse, parenting, and ''healing ministries of all kinds." He said those churches have emerged at a time when many of the more visible evangelical churches, the so-called megachurches, have located in suburban areas.
Wenz spoke at the first of a series of courses that evangelicals, basking in attention following polls suggesting that moral values played a role in President Bush's reelection, are holding in an effort to explain the influential religious movement to news reporters. Organizers plan similar sessions at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., next month, and then at seminaries in Dallas and Los Angeles.
Wenz said it is important for evangelicals to be clear that they have no allegiance to the Republican Party and that the GOP owes them nothing. In an interview, he said evangelicals, for example, are increasingly concerned about environmental issues, not an issue traditionally associated with the Republican Party.
''Global warming is a reality and is not a bunch of liberal hype," Wenz said in an interview.
John Jefferson Davis, a professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at Gordon-Conwell, said, ''The Democratic Party is now saying, 'We've got to recover moral language,' but I would also like to see a Republican Party whose Christian component has a more holistic understanding of moral values. . . .
''Evangelicals are diverse in their concerns for moral values, abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research, but also an important part of tradition says matters of race, poverty, and the environment are, or should be, part of our ethic."
The scholars defined evangelical Protestants as those who believe that Scripture is authoritative and that salvation comes only through Jesus. They said it has become difficult to count evangelicals in the United States, but various measures have estimated that from 44 million to 126 million of roughly 300 million Americans can be described as evangelical.
Scholars who study black and Hispanic evangelicals in the United States said that both groups remain far more politically liberal than white evangelicals and that the leadership of evangelical Protestant organizations in the United States has often failed to recognize the economic and social justice concerns of nonwhite evangelicals.
Rodney L. Cooper, a professor of discipleship and leadership at Gordon-Conwell, said he was admitted to Dallas Theological Seminary as an African-American student after years in which that seminary had refused to admit black students. And even today, he said, ''there are very few African-Americans in the top evangelical seminaries."
He also said that white evangelicals have tended to focus on ''private salvation," rather than the concerns of the broader community. By contrast, he said, African-American Protestants, whom he described as almost universally evangelical in their theology, ''believe salvation is not only for the sweet by and by, but also for the nasty now and now."
Eldin Villafane, a professor of social ethics at Gordon-Conwell, offered a similar critique, saying that even though Hispanic leaders in Boston have assisted white evangelicals on such matters as battling same-sex marriage and abortion, the efforts have not been reciprocated when it comes to registering voters or fighting poverty.
''There are divisions on justice issues," he said. ''Your social location impacts you ideologically."
Wenz acknowledged a rift between black and white evangelicals, which he attributed to the failure of white evangelicals to support the civil rights movement that began in the late 1950s. As a result, he said, black evangelicals formed their own organization, the National Black Evangelical Association, and many black religious leaders avoid the word evangelical.
''The total lack of evangelicals in the civil rights movement continues to be an embarrassing failure from which we have not fully recovered," Wenz said.
''The lack of involvement in the civil rights movement meant that evangelicals surrendered that role to mainline churches. We should have been in Birmingham, but we were not."
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com. 