Discussion of the concept of an emerging evangelical center (or some other label for an alternative to the Christian Right) has taken off in recent months — indeed, in recent weeks. Hardly a day goes by without some news article or opinion piece addressing the concept and its implications. Inevitably, these discussions of an emerging evangelical center are also evoking attacks, denunciations and misunderstandings. I guess that's how you know you're getting somewhere, when the attacks come.
In this column, I want to explore the deeper wellsprings of the concept to which several of us are now attaching the imperfect label “centrist evangelicalism.” These wellsprings are far more important than the label and certainly more important than the ideological categories of left, center and right. Not everyone would identify the wellsprings in the same way, but here are my top three:
• A consistent pro-life ethic. Beginning in the 1980s, Catholic and some evangelical thinkers began writing and talking about a consistent pro-life ethic. The idea is that because every human being is made in the image of God and sacred in God's sight, every human life is immeasurably valuable to God and must be treated as immeasurably valuable by the rest of us. This requires every possible effort to protect humans from premature death, to respect human dignity wherever it is threatened, and to so act as to advance human flourishing wherever possible. The responsibility for these efforts rests with all humans and extends to governmental actions and public policies.
What makes an ethic “consistently pro-life” is its commitment to view and to treat every human life this way — “from womb to tomb,” as was often said. This requires concern and action in relation to every threat to human survival, every challenge to human dignity and every undermining of human dignity. It certainly requires efforts to reverse the social institutionalization of abortion. But it also requires efforts to reverse the social institutionalization of mass death in war, environmental degradation, AIDS and hunger. Passionate commitment to a wide range of “pro-life” concerns is precisely one characteristic of the evangelical center. It also brings centrist evangelicalism into close proximity with the best expressions of Catholic social teaching and opens the possibility of a powerfully centrist Catholic-evangelical alliance in American public life.
• A kingdom ethic. In 2003, Glen Stassen and I published Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context with Intervarsity Press. Our goal in writing the book was to base an entire approach to Christian ethics on a primary commitment to Jesus Christ. As we sought to write an academic ethics text “as if Jesus mattered” (our original title), we discovered the centrality of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom, or reign, of God. Tracing Jesus' kingdom teaching and ministry back to their Old Testament sources, we concluded that when Jesus celebrated the dawning of the kingdom in his own ministry, he meant specific things, such as: the coming of peace, justice, deliverance, healing and renewed community, all accompanied by joy and the vivid experience of God's presence.
In unpacking Jesus' life and teachings with reference to these seven categories, we ended up with a Jesus who offered a comprehensive pro-life, pro-justice, pro-poor, pro-community, pro-healing vision that amounts to the renewal of the entire human experience on this suffering planet. That indeed would be the reign of God, the healing of the world. We argued that Christians should be defined as Christ-followers who enjoy the amazing privilege of participating in the advance of God's reign until Jesus returns. Christians do not work the kingdom into existence, and its fulfillment awaits Christ's return. But nothing that we do that wins victories for God's reign now is ever wasted, and every such victory is a sign of God's grace and the reality of God's reign.
It is not hard to see that passionate evangelical commitment to directly addressing a number of arenas of human suffering flows from such a kingdom ethic. I describe it as characteristic of the emerging evangelical center.
• A Barmen ethic. A mark of centrist evangelicalism as I define it is a resolute commitment to the political independence of the church as it seeks to follow Jesus Christ her Lord. One source of this commitment is deep immersion in study of the Nazi era, agonized encounter with the Holocaust, and close attention to figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller and Karl Barth.
When the Confessing Church gathered in Barmen, Germany, in 1934 and issued its Barmen Declaration under the leadership of Karl Barth, participating members of the Protestant community in Germany said a collective “No” to the corruption of the church by Nazism and the Nazi regime. Their declaration was not perfect. But it was a stark statement of Christian resistance to a disastrous alien politic that was threatening the church's soul and would soon very nearly destroy the Jews as a people.
It has seemed, to some of us at least, that one of the great dangers in recent evangelical Christian politics has been the cozy relationship between official church leaders and political parties and their leaders. The “church” has gained access at the expense of integrity and has gained worldly influence at the expense of missional clarity. Barmen stands for a Christ-following, biblically serious, theologically grounded church that knows how to resist the seductions of the powers and principalities of the world.
So, for those who are looking for a clearer definition of so-called “centrist evangelicalism,” here it is: Rooted in the Bible, centered in Jesus Christ, clear about the church's unique mission, and pursuing God's reign, centrist evangelicals are attempting to advance a consistent pro-life ethic into every reachable zone of human suffering.
David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. His article is distributed by ABP.
