Today’s Evangelical Message on College Campuses

There have always been religious organizations on college campuses. Some were quiet and private, while others were loud and boisterous, always ready to tell others about themselves.

In the 1980s, perhaps the most visible student religious groups were evangelical. Not only were evangelical churches represented, but there was Campus Crusade for Christ, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, the Navigators and others.

The word “evangelical” comes from the Greek word “euangelion” -- meaning “good news” -- and was rendered into English as “gospel.” And, that is just what these evangelical groups do through their visibility. They have been sharing the good news -- telling others about the message of salvation that Jesus’ actions have given to all human beings. To be saved, all one had to do was to accept that Jesus had saved them.

Trying to save other people also served as a form of recruitment for evangelical campus groups. When a person was saved, they usually joined one of these religious organizations or a church. Those who did not join rarely remained in their new state of salvation, but returned to their former friends and behavior.

From the late 1960s onward, these evangelical youth groups grew and formed a vibrant part of campus life in many colleges and universities. At the same time, seeds were being sown that, today, a half-century later, are damaging the message of salvation on these campuses.

Under the leadership of Richard Nixon, who was president from 1969 to 1974, the Republican Party brought evangelicals into a new coalition, the “silent majority,” along with many Catholics, through the politicization of abortion. Evangelical and Catholic Christians, who had largely stayed out of politics prior to that time, seized on the issue of abortion’s legalization. As the Republican Party vowed to stamp it out, it gained widespread support of these religious groups.

On the flip side, abortion became a religious issue, with both evangelical and Catholic leaders and churches railing against, making it a topic of sermons and transforming it into the epitome of evil.

From that small beginning, two things happened. Evangelicals became increasingly Republican, and the message of the gospel, the good news of salvation, had to gradually give larger amounts of time to the anti-abortion message.

National polling from the late 1970s onward has measured a growing drop-off in the number of Christians and an increasing body of people unwilling to identify with Christianity. The change was slow at first but, by 2012, the percentage of Americans in this category -- what pollsters call “none of the above” or just “nones” -- had risen to just under 20 percent. Evangelicals themselves, by contrast, had fallen to 19 percent, while Protestants, for the first time in American history, dipped below 50 percent (Pew Research Center, “The Decline of Institutional Religion,” 2013).

If this analysis is correct, the change should have begun about the time that evangelicals became a key part of the Republican Party. That was the moment in which accepting salvation also meant that one had to join, not just an evangelical church but also the Republican Party. Many who were willing to accept Christ were unwilling to accept Republicanism. So, they turned their back on both.

And, the polling shows that people have been making the decision in this manner. The younger one is, the more likely one is to be a none. More than 32 percent (in 2012) of the under-30s were nones, while in the 30-50-year-old range, 21 percent were nones. It is only among the over-50s that 15 percent or fewer are nones.

And, what is the message of campus evangelical organizations today? That the current president is worthy of Christian support. That, despite his moral failings, he is the “evangelicals’ man.” They put him in the White House and continue to support him vociferously, despite his daily tweets providing new reminders of his moral ineptitude.

Even more than in the 1970s and the 1980s, the message of salvation that Jesus enjoined his followers to spread among all the world before he ascended into heaven is being drowned out by political messages. It will be interesting to discover, in the coming decades, what impact this has had on people accepting the salvation that Christianity has taught that Jesus brought.

What are the Benefits of Being Saved?

From its beginnings some 2000 years ago, Christianity has claimed that it provides something for its believers not available in any other religion. That something is salvation, a new condition for believers that has been defined in a wide variety of ways across the centuries and the continents where Christianity has grown. Usually, salvation involves a resurrection after one’s death into an eternal, heavenly existence, but how one attains salvation and the other benefits it includes has been defined in many different ways.

            In American evangelical Christianity, achieving salvation is called “getting saved,” often referred to as being “born again” through a spiritual awakening likened to a second birth. Becoming saved can be long process that takes place over months, even years, or it can be a sharp, sudden experience that happens in an instant. In either case, the conversion comprises a life-changing experience in which the convert’s new character differs significantly from the old, at least in their own mind.

            It is common to say that being saved “transforms your life,” but what does that mean specifically? On the one hand, it is clear that salvation changes “you,” the individual who becomes saved. On the other hand, it is also clear that it does not alter “life” in any significant way. Life is a series of joys and tribulations, of enjoyment and boredom, of heath and sickness. Those events continue in their unpredictable way and salvation does nothing to alter it.

            Salvation’s effects center on the individual. First, there is a spiritual transformation within oneself, described in a variety of ways: a feeling of peace, inner security, or gaining a new spiritual perspective. This inner peace may improve a person’s confidence, give them an ability to persevere in a difficult task or circumstance, or enable them to shed damaging behaviors such as substance abuse.

            Second, one develops a new relationship with God. Since God is “saving” an individual, prayer to God takes on a new meaning. Some boldly claim to “talk to God,” others humbly say they feel someone is listening. For some, the relationship carries an emotional component (they “feel” their contact with God), but others claim such experiences only rarely, if at all.

            Third, saved individuals often join a church. This provides a social benefit, a welcoming community whose members include the saved individual in their activities, become concerned with the individual, and provide a social arena for them to express their talents.

             In contrast to an individual’s personal transformation, life’s travails continue as they will. Christian believers are plagued by illness and accidents just like non-Christians. Although occasional announcements of a miraculous healing occur, especially in the Christian press, these are news because of their rarity value. They are not everyday occurrences.

            Mental illness, depression and suicide plague believers as well just like non-believers. The former head of the Texas Baptist Convention, Phil Lineberger, took his life after battling depression for years. The well-known Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church had a son stricken with mental illness from his youth who finally shot himself at age 27.

            Even though churches provide social support for marriage, being a Christian does not ensure that one will avoid adultery or divorce. Billy Graham’s grandson Tullian Tchividjian resigned his pastorship at a Florida megachurch after both he and his wife admitted to affairs, even though they had been married some 20 years. Divorce followed. Sexual abuse can happen within evangelical churches and religious organizations, just as they do in Catholic and other churches.

            And salvation does not prevent the sudden calamities of life. Christians are just a likely to die, be injured or lose their property in auto wrecks, armed robberies, shootings, earthquakes, and tornadoes.

            The point is not that Christians are particularly bad off or that being saved makes one vulnerable. Rather, salvation does not alter the random events of life, whether positive or negative. Believing in Jesus is not magical; the “living Christ,” as he is often termed, does not miraculously protect his followers from bad things happening to them. Salvation affects the saved individual and perhaps makes them more prepared to deal with such events, but it does not change the events themselves.

Morality: The Face of Public Christianity

September 30, 2015

A non-Christian who read recent newspapers to learn about Christianity might arrive at the following picture. Christianity believes that marriage is between a man and woman, so no marriage between members of the same sex. Christianity believes life begins at conception, so no abortion and no stem cell research. Christianity believes that God created the universe, so evolution should not be taught. Sexual activity belongs in marriage, so no premarital sex.

In this picture, Christianity is about actions that people should or should not do; it is about morality. What is missing from this public Christianity are the religion’s core features. Salvation, Scripture, faith and belief have disappeared from public view. How did this happen?

The story begins in the early 1500s, with the Protestant Reformation. Prior to that, the Christianity of Western Europe was Catholic and centered on community. Based on their doctrinal interpretation of Scripture, Catholicism raised a group of men out of the community to become priests. These priests then mediated between God and the people to bring salvation, forgiveness and blessings from God to the people. The church stood with individuals before God, buffering them in his majestic presence.

Starting in 1517, Martin Luther changed all that. Instead of the church standing with the individual, Luther held that individuals stood alone before God, with only their faith, based on their understanding of Scripture, alongside them.

Despite this theological change, the social reality altered surprisingly little. Individuals still lived in communities and these communities shared a single doctrinal interpretation of Scripture. Individuals did not interpret Scripture on their own, but rather followed their community’s understanding.

Often, these communities were formed around the teachings of influential theologians and leaders. Luther founded the Lutherans; John Calvin founded the Reformed Church and influenced the Puritans; and John Knox organized the Presbyterians. And these are just a few of the communities, the churches, if you will, created from the Reformation.

So, early forms of Protestantism took a similar structure to Catholicism: Each was a community that brought a common interpretation to Scripture which, in turn, led to common social norms (i.e., morality).

The Puritans brought this communally organized Christianity to America, where they established a new community that would help individuals lead moral lives in keeping with the Puritan interpretation of Scripture.

But Luther’s dictum of the individual alone still rang out. When Roger Williams interpreted Scripture for himself in the 1630s, the Massachusetts Puritans expelled him. Williams believed in a radical understanding of Luther’s dictum: The church should be separate from the government so that the church could not use government powers to enforce doctrine and interpretation on individuals.

Williams’ idea become the foundation of America’s religious freedom. By the 1680s, variety was the religious flavor of the era. Formulations of Christian beliefs, called catechisms, proliferated. Puritan preacher Increase Mather thought that “over 500” different catechisms were circulating at the time. Over the next century or more, European immigrants brought in new Protestant denominations and Americans created their own.

By the 1800s, Christians realized all this religious freedom fragmented Christianity and interfered with its ability to accomplish the great deeds needed. So, they banded together into non-denominational organizations to take on moral projects. To accomplish this unity, they overlooked doctrinal features that divided them.

Thus, the great ethical movements of the century were founded: anti-slavery, temperance, women’s suffrage, and missionary projects to evangelize both foreign peoples and the USA’s “unchurched” masses. By the mid-20th century, new non-denominational groups joined with those of a more secular bent in the civil rights and women’s rights movements. The lessons of these movements was that, if the divided Christian populace overlooked matters of doctrine and Scripture interpretation, they could unify on moral issues.

Toward the end of the 20th century, a new alliance of Christians was formed. Since the great moral concerns of slavery and personal civil rights had been resolved (more or less), these groups took up new ones. Thus, the “right to life” movement, for example, took up the cause of the unborn. This brought together an alliance of conservative Protestants, Catholics and Mormons, who were able to overlook their differences on doctrine and Scripture, to unite on what they saw as a great moral concern.

Thus, morality is the great religious unifier, where different religious groups can agree. They may arrive at those moral positions through different doctrinal interpretations of Scripture, even from different versions of Scripture. But, to strengthen their unity, they ignore those differences. The public unity of Christianity, as apparent in American news coverage, comes from morality rather than doctrine.

Are Corporations Believers?

When Mitt Romney uttered the now famous phrase, “Corporations are people, too” back in 2011, he merely stated a fact. The American legal system classifies corporations as “persons” for the purposes of many laws, such as owning property, bringing a legal suit or being sued. This status does not extend to all laws and rights, however -- a corporation cannot vote in an election or get married, for instance.

The Supreme Court of the United States has just decided it will hear a case to determine whether corporations should be considered legal persons for the purposes of the free “exercise of religion,” according to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The case concerns the company Hobby Lobby, owned by David Green and his family, whose religious convictions have impelled them to request an exemption from the portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), often called Obamacare, that requires the company to provide a health care insurance policy for its employees that includes certain kinds of birth control to which they are religiously opposed.

This case from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals pits two claimed rights against each other. Does Hobby Lobby have the right not to pay for health procedures that violate its religious beliefs? Or, do the company’s employees have a right to the same health-care benefits enjoyed by other U.S. citizens?

Look at the first question in the previous paragraph. It does not make sense. Can a corporation have “religious beliefs?” Can it “exercise” religion? Not really. A corporation cannot attain salvation. It cannot be given eternal life, whether in heaven or in hell. It cannot pray, take communion or even join a church. If a corporation were Buddhist, could it achieve enlightenment? The mere idea is absurd.

To be sure, a company’s owners, board members and even employees can do those things. They can “associate” or even “incorporate,” to use the legal terminology, and do them together or help other people do them. But the corporate entity itself does not “exercise” religion in these ways.

The 10th Circuit argued that the corporation exercised religious belief by proselytizing: “purchasing hundreds of newspaper ads to ‘know Jesus as Lord and Savior.’” This logic is hard to follow. A company cannot be saved and it cannot achieve eternal life, but it exercises religion because it advertises? Sounds more like sales than proselytization.

A more accurate way to characterize the interaction of corporations and religion is that they are a tool. Companies are property that can be used for their owners’ purposes. Hobby Lobby, the company, was used as a tool to design and pay for advertisements. Should a tool be given the ability to deny American citizens their right to equal health care?

Well, perhaps. American law has long understood that property rights give an owner power over other persons. People are free to associate with whomever they wish, as long as they do not do it on someone else’s land. Rights of free speech and freedom to assemble that citizens exercise at the courthouse or in a downtown public park, for example, can be restricted in a shopping mall if the owners object.

In a similar vein, then, if the owners of Hobby Lobby object to certain kinds of health care procedures, on deep and sincere religious grounds, they should be able to use their property rights in the corporation to deny their employees access to those procedures. Right?

This is the wrong legal analogy.

A better one comes from tax law. Citizens may disagree with actions of the government. When the United States declares war, for instance, those opposed to the war might wish to disassociate themselves from it by refusing to pay taxes, or at least the percentage of their taxes that would pay for the war. This approach, however morally justified, has been declared illegal. So, if people cannot pick and choose which taxes they pay, then corporations should not be able to pick and choose which health care procedures they will insure.

In pilgrim Massachusetts, the Puritan fathers thought their religious beliefs permitted them to define the rights of the people in the colony. When the Bill of Rights was adopted, the United States rejected that position. If the Puritans should not have restricted people’s rights, why should a corporation?

Fixing Broken Societies: Religion and Purification

Christianity teaches that when an individual’s life seems wrong, when he or she is overwhelmed with “sin,” salvation can fix that wrongness. Salvation provides a solution that puts the individual right with God.

But salvation does not work when the wrongness is society-wide. At times of social upheaval and stress, when the world in which people live no longer operates the way it should, when a government no longer does its job, then society as a whole needs saving. How does Christianity, or any other religion, accomplish that?

Religions frequently strive to fix a broken society through purification. If the society is under stress from war, famine, unrest or other disruption, then religions often attempt to purify it. If in salvation an individual turns his or her heart solely toward God, then, in purification, the people of a city, country or nation turn their collective heart toward the divine and follow his/her/its instructions.

If everyone takes part, purification results in communal unity. Everyone is oriented in a common direction, is led by the same leaders and follows them toward a solution to the social trauma. This works well in a society with a single religion.

When God made a covenant with the ancient Israelites, for example, He required them to follow His laws for organizing Israelite society and worship. He took a carrot-and-stick approach. When the Hebrews obeyed God, according to Deuteronomy 28, He blessed them with agricultural abundance and protected them from their enemies. When they disobeyed, He cursed them with famine, war and foreign oppression.

But, frequently, groups of people do not join in purification’s social reorientation because they belong to a different religion. This causes a second stage of purification to take place -- namely, the purge of people who do not participate.

This purge can take a variety of forms, but its goal is always the same: to make invisible the people who do not belong to the dominant religion and who do not participate in the community’s religious reorientation. Violence is often used to kill people or to frighten them into leaving the country, or at least going underground.

The Arab Spring succeeded in eliminating several dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, but it has been less successful in setting up new governments. Egypt seems to be in a continual state of upheaval because its people overthrew two leaders in succession, a dictator and a democrat, and are now under military rule.

So, it should not surprise us that the Sunni Muslim majority is attacking the religious minorities in the country in an attempt to purify its society. Just last week, members of the Muslim Brotherhood killed three people at a Christian wedding in a drive-by shooting. Since last’s summer’s overthrow of President Muhamed Morsi, a Muslim, Egypt’s Coptic Christians have come under persistent persecution with the burning of churches and the killing of leaders and other individuals.

In Syria’s civil war, persecution and massacres of both Christians and members of the Islamic Alawite sect take place regularly. Indeed, one reason for President’s Assad’s persistence is that he is an Alawite and fears his small religious group will be destroyed should the majority Sunni population win.

And don't forget Sunni persecution of Shiites in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and other countries.

Christianity, likewise, has been involved in social purification at times of upheaval. In its early centuries, pagans routinely blamed Christians for famines and other social stresses. After Christianity became the Roman Empire’s dominant religion, Christians returned the favor, ultimately eliminating all pagan religions. The Church also persecuted members of different Christian heresies.

During the Crusades, Christian men, on their way to the Middle East, frequently attacked Jewish communities in Europe. Why, they thought, should we travel to the Middle East to eliminate “infidels” when they are right here at home? Such pogroms continued through the centuries and finally led to the secular Nazi campaign of social purification during World War II, called the Holocaust.

Is there a way to avoid such social purification? To date, only the United States and countries organized on similar lines have escaped it. Their common characteristics include: an open civil society that welcomes members of all religions; free speech and a free press; and a secular government hospitable to all religions (including non-religion), but favors none. It is not just the export of democracy that is important, but the formation of a society that is open to differences in religious belief and their expression.

Flesher is director of UW's Religious Studies Program. Past columns and more information about the program can be found on the web at www.uwyo.edu/RelStds.