We need to take action now if we want the gospel to survive in recognizable form among those who claim to champion it most ardently.
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For the past 30 years, I’ve pushed back against the critics who’ve said Christians need to abandon the label “evangelical.” I’ve argued that we shouldn’t let political associations or cultural baggage rob us of a word with such rich theological heritage. The term has deep biblical and historical roots that predate and transcend contemporary controversies.
But even I have to admit the label I love has become nearly meaningless in our current American context. What once signified adherence to core biblical truths—the authority of Scripture, the necessity of personal conversion, the centrality of Christ’s atoning work—now functions more as a political identifier than a theological one. As historian Thomas Kidd once said, “In American pop culture parlance, ‘evangelical’ now basically means whites who consider themselves religious and who vote Republican.”
