What's In A Name?

In one of our Sunday school classes we're going over an Evangelical Declaration Against Torture.

When I've mentioned that to people, they've often said it's a weird topic for a Sunday school class. Maybe. But we seem to be enjoying it. As much as one can enjoy the topic of torture and not be hellbound, I suppose.

In any case, we're not just looking at it to say "agree" or "disagree" or to come away from it and be able to conclude "torture bad." I guess that's part of it, but as much as is possible in a 45 minute, once a week class, we're also looking at it to sharpen the edges of our understanding, to see how this particular document sees the world, and to know how something we call the Word confronts that sense of the world- our sense of the world.

So that's that. So far so good.

A couple of times in I've wondered how to approach a certain issue, especially as it reflects our place in creating a sense of "the world". For example, in discussing the history of human rights I wondered how pointed to make the document's veiled reference to the evangelical objection to gay people's audacious claims that they be seen as people with the rights we would say that being human includes. How do I address that we're able to include a blastocyst in our understanding of humanness but not "a gay"?

I kept it veiled. I'm a sell out.

But one thing that could not remain easily hidden was the dearth of positive participation by evangelicals in the creation of contemporary understandings of human rights language. Drag.

It would be a happily spinable absence if it was a matter of evangelicals wishing to remain in some critical position to those Modern conceptions of self and humanity, but this was not the case- and it would be very difficult to say it was. The truth is, in recent history, evangelicals have largely been on the wrong side of most issues.

The document itself attempts a funny reconstruction of history by identifying the wonderful role Christians have played in developing a particular conception of human rights; it identifies a history of participation by groups that are not a part of contemporary evangelicalism. Ignore for a moment that when we want to construct a history of any Western concept we can say Christianity had a role in it, for good or ill; that's not the issue here. I mean it speaks of the role Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Deists, Natural Law Philosophers, and 17th c. English nonconformists had in developing a sense of human rights but doesn't acknowledge that evangelicals, either didn't exist at the time or were on the other side of the fence from these groups, often making sure the gatekeeper didn't let the others in. So to say we (as evangelicals) are a part of that train is a bit disingenuous.

I would add a big "EXCEPT" though. Evangelicals did, because of their understanding of Christianity, participate in some of the English speaking world's most progressive movements for a brief part of history. It's worth mentioning that before the Civil War and the advent of inerrancy statements evangelicals were unequivocally hippies.

But now? Ugh.

Anyway, in class we had to address that we are not the heirs of Martin Luther King Jr. or those who fought alongside him, but instead we (and I still say "we") took up the cause of those who fought against him- who wanted the negroes to take it easy, to know that God is in charge, who said, "Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children." (Google it.) We were not part of that great human rights tradition- not as evangelicals anyway. I guess we could be as Quakers, but we're Evangelical Quakers. Actually, we're not even that. We're Evangelical Friends. Evangelical Friends Church Southwest.

We made ourselves contradictory. When I say "we" I mean that group in that classroom who wants to understand themselves as Quakers and evangelicals.

It's strange for a Quaker to be that. We want to carry the torch for abolition, pacifism, workers' communes, Civil Rights, and advocating the bombing of North Vietnamese water supplies.

I'm of the mind that the the two can't go together. I'm of the mind that it was a mistake to want to be called Evangelical Friends.

That happened. I mean, there was a moment in time when a group known as Southwest Yearly Meeting had to decide about being called Evangelical. And know we are.

I've talked to people who participated in that move who say it was a matter of clarifying that these particular Quakers were professing Christians. When they said "Evangelical" they meant Christian- I suppose one can make that claim. In the same way, I can claim that our church is led by presbyters so we're presbyterian.

I'm sorry if saying we're presbyterian causes confusion for anyone out there. When we use a term it means precisely what we want it to mean, nothing more nothing less. So we're Glendora Friends Presbyterian Church.

I suppose we do have the ability to use words any way we wish- but the sense we're trying to make depends on the sense a word can make. So we can say we're "Evangelical" because we love Jesus and preach the Gospel and that's all we mean by that, but unfortunately, that's not all that's meant by that.

It's a mixed bag. Depending on whom you ask, you might hear the label wasn't at all tied to the broader American understanding of "evangelical." So even though it meant Reagan, the Moral Majority, Hal Lindsey, and a Southern Christianity it didn't necessarily mean Reagan, the Moral Majority, Hal Lindsey, and a Southern Christianity. Even though that's the direction these Friends were moving, the label didn't mean, that's the direction these Friends were moving.

Fine. It doesn't mean that. Just like I don't mean we're Presbyterian when I say we're presbyterian. Just like I didn't call you "stupid," I said what you did was stupid. (You have to have siblings for that to make sense.)

It's also unfortunate that we couldn't have said, "I suppose it's not always clear what is meant by Quaker, but perhaps you will know us by our fruit, perhaps you may know we are Christians by the way we love each other and demonstrate this love to the world."

But who does that?

Well, in recent history, it hasn't been evangelicals.


So it's all garbage. No. It's not. I hope, in the truest sense of the word, I hope that maybe we can mean and be evangelical in a way that is wholly foreign to us. Maybe we can be evangelical in the way our Sunday school class is kinda' evangelical, in the same way the declaration is essenatially evangelical, the way the gospel itself is evangelical. It's that strange point of divinity that confronts who we think we are.

We could mean that. We just have to show that that's the case.

And I Think I'm Going to be Recorded?
Irresistible Bliss- Soul Coughing