On Evangelicals Shaping Society

The Patheos website has posted an interview with Rice University Sociologist Michael Lindsay entitled "New Ways of Shaping Society" as part of its examination of the "Future of Evangelicalism." Lindsay thinks evangelicals need to learn how to work with people who have different religious convictions:

I don't think evangelicals can continue to practice the rhetoric that they are an embattled minority group, because they are not. It's a successful rhetorical strategy, but it's empirically invalid. Evangelicals are significant players on the national stage, and they are not some marginalized group that sits on the sidelines of American culture. That said, they will have to do more to build bridges and alliances with non-evangelicals than they have done in the past. The only way that they will actually bring about social change is through alliances and coalitions on particular issues. At the same time, my hope is that they will retain their distinctive evangelistic fervor, which has served them well over the last hundred years.

As far as building bridges and alliances, one way in which the Religious Right has been criticized, and now the Religious Left is open to critique, is for becoming overly implicated with a political party, or becoming apologists for the party in general and not just on the points that led you to form the alliance in the first place. Those who have allied with the Right or with the Left can, when that party is in power, become court prophets who merely tell the king whatever the king wants to hear. So how do you form coalitions in particular issues without becoming so beholden to the party that you lose the ability to speak prophetically over against it?

We have to establish a deep relational network that can withstand tension and disagreement. Evangelicals have not been very good at building relational bridges, meaning personal friendships with those in leadership positions who are outside the evangelical community. This is where there is a real possibility of improvement in the days ahead.

In my opinion, the only way evangelicals will be able to relate with people of other convictions is for them to develop a genuine sense of humility. The evangelical quest for certainty of belief leads to arrogance among those who think they have found it and hostility toward those who decline to share the same religio-politico-moral perspective.