There’s an ever-increasing catalog of books critiquing evangelical Christians, many written by people who once called themselves evangelical. The popular narrative, propagated by cultural elites and magnified in mainstream media, is that evangelicals are hypocritical, insincere, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, controlling, Trump-idolizing, power-hungry, hyperpolitical, white-nationalist threats to democracy who need to be contained and silenced. Based on these critiques, it’s often hard to tell what evangelicalism is or why anyone would defend it.
Bonnie Kristian takes on the critics in In Defense of Evangelicalism: A Response to Its Cultured Despisers. Kristian, deputy editor at Christianity Today, offers David Bebbington’s quadrilateral as a helpful definition, then argues that evangelicalism is worth defending because it’s “good.” She writes, “Its enthusiasm is its strength. Its core emphases––conversionism, activism, Bible, cross––are right, needful, and complementary to the emphases of other branches of the church” (139).
Along the way, Kristian engages with popular criticisms from writers like Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, Beth Allison Barr, Tim Alberta, Anthea Butler, and Jemar Tisby.
Kristian’s book is encouraging because it counters a common narrative and because it skillfully and graciously engages with evangelicalism’s critics.
How To Engage the Critics Faithfully
As she defends evangelicals with her crisp, often humorous writing style, Kristian takes a firm but winsome approach. In doing so, she models four key steps for engaging with critics.
1. Read carefully.
We must understand critics’ arguments to consider their merits. However, we should also read critics with discernment to identify unfounded allegations, unwarranted conclusions, and logical fallacies.
In numerous cases, Kristian shows how critics tend to hold evangelicalism to a standard they don’t require of other groups or even themselves. For example, Du Mez accused conservative evangelicals of being Islamophobic for viewing Islam as a threat immediately after 9/11, but in the same book praised then candidate Barack Obama for denouncing “the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam” in a speech (31). This double standard fallacy is an example of using unequal weights and measures (Prov. 20:10).
Additionally, as Kristian demonstrates, many of evangelicalism’s critics participate in the nutpicking fallacy, where they find examples on the fringe of the movement to characterize as normative. Greg Locke is a Tennessee pastor who has garnered disproportionate media attention for stoking controversy, trafficking in QAnon conspiracy theories, participating in the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, divorcing his wife, and marrying his administrative assistant, yet Tim Alberta argues that evangelicals like Locke aren’t outliers but are “increasingly typical” (58) of evangelicalism. However, when most evangelicals attend their churches this Sunday, they’ll find nothing like Locke.
2. Avoid tribalism.
Evangelicals can learn important lessons from their critics if they resist the impulse to defend the indefensible. We mustn’t ignore the sexual and financial scandals, unaccountable pastors, racial disharmony, and political idolatry in our midst. And evangelicals can be just as guilty as their critics when it comes to using double standards, especially in election years.
Evangelicals can learn important lessons from their critics if they resist the impulse to defend the indefensible.
But these problems aren’t due to evangelicals being too evangelical. The problem springs from evangelicals not being evangelical enough. “Whatever else we do,” writes Kristian, “we must live up to the evangelical name, and any credible criticism will point us to this same reform: Be more serious. . . . Be more evangelical, not less” (143, emphasis original).
3. Pursue objectivity.
Defending evangelicalism sometimes means affirming the truth about people we disagree with. For example, though Kristian is an egalitarian, she defends the Southern Baptist Convention, which is majority complementarian, against the charge that complementarianism fosters sexual abuse in its churches.
Of course, even one case of sexual abuse is too many and thus “too common,” but when the data is carefully examined, it suggests that “abuse in this sprawling complementarian denomination, though too common, is also uncommon” (45). Instead of joining the critics in unfair critiques of fellow evangelicals, we must come to their defense even when we disagree with them on second- or third-order issues.
4. Appeal to the gospel.
No argument about evangelicalism is worth winning if we lose our gospel centrality. Kristian reminds readers that “the core claim of this movement is that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst’” (143).
The gospel unites a diverse group of people from every nation, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background as evangelicals. If we lose the gospel as the core element of our identity, nothing in evangelicalism is worth defending.
Neighborly Defense
Kristian is an egalitarian, pacifist, Anglican editor for a flagship evangelical publication living in a purple state in the North. I’m a complementarian, just-war theorist, nondenominational pastor of a local evangelical church living in a red state of the Deep South. I have a full gun safe; she probably doesn’t. I’m a Calvinist; she probably isn’t. We disagree with each other on important matters.
But we both love the Bible. We both define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. We both think that biological men have no place in women’s spas even if they identify as women. We both believe God’s justice and mercy met at the cross. And both of us had evangelical upbringings that we can review with feelings of both gratitude and cringe. I’m happy to recommend her book as a valuable resource and join my sister in Christ in defending evangelicalism from its cultured despisers. She has put a valuable tool in our hands.
My main concern with In Defense of Evangelicalism reflects my overall concern with evangelicalism itself. How big is our tent? Should we be more theologically discriminating? Thankfully, Kristian notes that charismatic and Pentecostal movements such as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and its Seven Mountain Mandate (7MM) have some points of contact with evangelicalism but on “the measure of more or less evangelical, most churches in this movement are somewhat less” (122).
No argument about evangelicalism is worth winning if we lose our gospel centrality.
But even the Bebbington quadrilateral is subject to a wide range of interpretation. My preference would be to make something like the five solas of the Reformation a bare minimum doctrinal standard, since evangelicalism’s historical roots are in the Reformation and the First Great Awakening.
Kristian is aware of the doctrinal “fuzziness” inherent in evangelicalism and she intentionally, perhaps wisely, limits the scope of her book to theological summary statements typical of evangelicals (xxviii). For example, each of us “must be rescued by Christ, ransomed from captivity to sin, redeemed from the power of death and the devil by a God who loved us enough to die for us while we made ourselves enemies” (143). I can sign on to that statement, but so could a devout Roman Catholic. And that’s part of the problem.
In Defense of Evangelicalism succeeds in what it intends to do. It’s a solid defense of evangelicalism against its cultured despisers. And hopefully it’ll also arouse evangelicals to remember and recover just what it is we’re defending.
The Gospel Coalition