Will the real evangelicals please stand up? A religious history of identity negotiation, Isaac Sharp’s The Other Evangelicals: A Story of Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians and the Movement That Pushed Them Out examines American evangelicalism and the effort to define its culture, meaning, and character. Sharp’s central argument is that no evangelical monolith exists in American Christianity. Rather, evangelicalism is a contested site of competing organizations, personalities, and schismatic tensions in search of a coherent identity. Sharp first unpacks historical studies on evangelicalism, addressing the rise of evangelical Christian demographics as a unique American phenomenon. Sharp then provides the most distinctive feature of the book: its exploration of the less-amplified voices in the history of evangelicalism: Blacks, progressives, feminists, and gays/lesbians.
Sharp traces public discourses on evangelicalism to landmark studies from religious historians. This scholarship contextualized American evangelicalism by linking it to 20th century Christian fundamentalism. Among these historians, there was never consensus on whose interpretation of evangelical history or orthodoxy was acceptable. As the debate(s) spread into Christian periodicals such as Christianity Today during the late 1970s and early 1980s, editorial boards and clergy experienced a similar hermeneutical impasse. For many American evangelicals, belief in the Virgin Birth, infallibility of scripture, and bodily resurrection of Jesus was key to one’s evangelical street cred. Sharp notes that these categories were increasingly contested theological and political issues. Turning to the work of D.G. Hart and the deconstructive approach to the interpretation of American evangelicalism, Sharp ultimately shifts his attention to post-World War II evangelical leaders’ role in constructing a “religious identity that was effective at rallying conservative Protestants beneath the evangelical banner” (26)—creating the evangelical vanguard.
In this sense, an insider/outsider matrix grounds American evangelicalism’s prominence. For marginalized evangelicals, this framework has been central to how “capital E-evangelicals” judged who was conservative enough to merit inclusion into the fold as a real evangelical (29). Sharp’s chapter on liberal evangelicals focuses on the institutional work done by organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and evangelical seminaries such as Fuller Theological Seminary to recruit faculty, clergy, and Christian leaders who carved a middle path between the fundamentalism of the early 20th century and liberal progressivism (41). Liberal evangelicals had to contend with this exclusivism due to their embrace of modern thinking—particularly biblical criticism, historicism, and scientific reasoning.
Sharp’s attention to Black evangelicals spotlights White, American Christianity as a colonial project impacting Black social mobility and inclusion. Despite theological similarities between Black and White evangelicals, racism has been a dividing line between both demographics (77). The extent to which Black evangelicals were accepted in larger, White denominational structures was driven by their adoption of the cultural mores and social conventions of White Christians, particularly conservative views on race relations. Organizations like the National Association of Black Evangelicals were comprised of leaders who were trained in the seminaries and theologies that espoused White evangelical worldviews (92). Many Black evangelicals, such as William H. Bentley, William E. Pannell, and Tom Skinner, became disillusioned because of White evangelical impotence in addressing racism, which they believed was central to the church’s relevance and the capacity to recruit new Black evangelical converts. In response to this disillusionment, Black evangelicals have worked to embrace an “unashamedly Black and self-consciously evangelical” identity (110) that does not embrace racial and cultural erasure, but that upholds evangelical theological consistency.
For the gatekeepers of evangelicalism, feminist, gay, and lesbian demographics represent threats to the Christian, patriarchal-nuclear-family-oriented social order. Evangelical feminists have long worked to reverse the tides in this realm by proffering liberationist, progressive interpretations of scripture—namely those pertaining to “biblical” femininity and masculinity, and the doctrine of female submission. The consciousness of evangelical feminists parallels that of the women’s liberation movement, highlighted by, for example, the publication of All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation (Word Publishing, 1974), which spurned new debates regarding women’s authority and questioned narrow interpretations of biblical gender roles (180).
Evangelical feminism also raised questions about sexual identity formation—making them valuable allies to gay and lesbian Christians who felt a sense of connection to evangelical culture but were demonized as perverse outcasts. Sharp illustrates that there were pro-gray evangelicals, though marginal, within the evangelical fold. Early examples on this score include Ralph Blair and Evangelicals Concerned (EC), which he founded in 1975 to help evangelical communities better understand and offer ministerial support to its gay and lesbian members (213). Over time, however, the isolation gays and lesbians experienced, given the paucity of organizations like EC, prompted many to turn to “ex-gay” ministries and therapies, or to leave the church altogether. The prospect of a unified evangelical consensus on homosexuality remains elusive, and there are multiple perspectives on the issue within the current movement, including those who 1) hold to the idea that homosexual lifestyles are incompatible with scripture; 2) insist that homosexuality should be addressed charitably but with the hope that homosexuals can be delivered from its grasp; 3) advocate radical acceptance and neighborliness toward persons of all sexual orientations as made in God’s image.
Sharp concludes this book by raising questions about an “identity crisis” facing contemporary American evangelicals post-2016. Because of American evangelicals’ alignment with Donald Trump, coupled with fumbling social issues pertaining to race, sexuality, economics, and nationalism, they must now reflect upon whether the utility and meaning of “evangelical” as a description of their faith and theology is even apt. What evangelicals are left with, Sharp suggests, is a movement with multiple iterative branches struggling to ground itself in the face of varied and competing terms and definitions. In short, evangelicalism’s democratization, like any participatory cultural movement, makes dialogical conflict a constant. Given the unlikelihood that discerning evangelical voices of the present will relinquish their stake in shifting the trajectory of evangelical community-making and church-building, the contemporary story of evangelicalism in America echoes that of the stories that have come before:
Some might stay and fight for change. Others may give up the ghost and shake the dust from their sandals. Those who leave may face a lonely road, but those who stay will face an uphill battle that grows steeper by the day. But whether they stay or go, whether they push to expand what it can mean to be an evangelical or wash their hands of the word, they won’t be the first (272).
Darrius D. Hills is an associate professor of religious studies at Grinnell College.
Darrius Hills
Date Of Review:
January 25, 2024
