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Real Answers™
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Copyright: © 2008 Gary Hardaway
520 words

EVANGELICALS DON'T GET ENOUGH RESPECT

By: Gary Hardaway

During Super Tuesday election coverage, the PBS News Hour focused considerable -- and justifiable – attention on the pivotal Missouri races. Due to its special demographics and voting history, Missouri is regarded as a bellwether state, a strong predictor of national trends and preferences.

For most of the night it looked like Clinton and Huckabee were going to win the prizes, but in the end, Obama and McCain eked out razor-thin victories. PBS brought in a couple of political analysts to explain the final results.

One of the experts, a professor from the St. Louis area, when commenting on Huckabee’s strong support from the state’s evangelicals, never used the word itself. Instead, these folks were “fundamentalists,” sometimes “rural fundamentalists.” An interesting word choice.

Few evangelicals call themselves “fundamentalists.” The vast majority prefer the much more biblical term, a name that conveys belief in and proclamation of the Christian Gospel. It also communicates a more positive, friendly openness to one’s neighbors, community, and surrounding culture.

In recent years Fundamentalism has come to mean fierce, narrow-minded, dogmatism and hostility toward the world. Today it is most often used to describe Al Queda, the Taliban, and Islamic terrorists. Some haughty academics and pundits actually equate the two sets of people as in “Both Islamic and Christian fundamentalists seek to impose some version of theocracy on their societies.”

One would like to believe that the commentator simply chose his word carelessly and meant no harm. Yes, that would be nice. Personally, that strains my imagination beyond its capacity. 

Suppose the professor had said, “Barack Obama did especially well among urban Negroes.”  By saying that, he could possibly lose his job.  Journalistic etiquette demands more sensitivity. For many, the word Negro evokes an era of bitter oppression and, for some, it is an actual insult. One should employ “African-American” because it is largely preferred by those who are being described. The same rule should apply to evangelicals.

In graduate school I witnessed a nasty attack on a student who wrote an article in the campus paper outlining evidence for the Resurrection of Christ.  A professor in the religion department fired off a blistering response dismissing the resurrection as “fundamentalist claptrap” rooted in “fear and backwoods superstition.”  “Such people [Bible believers] are in danger of becoming robots of those who will use them for their own economic and political ends.” 

Actually, the opposite is closer to the truth. Deliberate derogatory language toward evangelicals  inflicts unjust discrimination upon them and cuts down candidates who appeal to them. As one New York leftist put it some years ago, “They’re yahoos and rednecks and racists and Ku Kluxers and we’re not, and that’s all there is to it.”

Jesus himself taught that this sort of degradation is inevitable. In fact, he viewed it as an opportunity for divine encouragement: “God blesses you when you are mocked and persecuted and lied about because you are my followers” (Matthew 5:11, New Living Translation}. He doesn’t say what happens to the mockers and liars, but He tells us to pray for them before we all find out.

Gary Hardaway is executive director of Summit School of Ministry in Northwest Washington. He holds a Ph. D in foundations of education and is a member of the National Association of Scholars.  He has taught in universities in the USA, Lithuania and Canada. He holds a Ph. D. in foundations of education. "Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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