Eagle-eyed readers and listeners to some of my words of the past decade have noted that I talk about the three-legs of the Christian faith in the United States: Catholics, Protestants, and Christian Evangelicals, and they all ask the same thing: why do you repeat Christian when talking about Evangelicals? The reason is very simple. Christian Evangelicals represent only about 10% of USAmericans claiming to be evangelical. In other words, 90% of evangelicals in our country are anything BUT Christian.

I see four evangelical spheres in our nation, all claiming to be Christian, but most failing to qualify by even the barest minimum standards. The four spheres are Political Evangelicals (~35%), Zealot Evangelicals (~30%), Economic Evangelicals (~25%), and Christian Evangelicals (~10%). I developed these descriptive spheres a decade ago to answer the frequent question I was asked, “How could anyone calling themselves Christian possibly support and vote for Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda? While I fully understand people vote for a variety of reasons and many people vote for one or two issues that matter most to them, it was surprising to many that those claiming a more conservative, biblical, and moralistic Christianity could overlook so much, going so far as to defend racism, misogyny, violence, wealth inequality, hate rhetoric, exceptionalism, environmental devastation, contempt for the military, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, oligarchy, lawlessness, aggression against the poor, the immigrant, the marginalized, and LGBTQIA+ persons, and a host of other scriptural violations. Here is how I made sense of it.

Political Evangelicals – Question: are you a Republican who is a Christian or a Christian who is a Republican? You may see no difference, but the subtlety should not be lost. Political evangelicals are guided first and foremost by the political agenda, moral code, the core values, and the governing principles of the party. (This could be said equally of Democrats, but the dominant party affiliation of evangelicals in this country align with the Republican party. Google it.) Political evangelicals guiding values come from their party, not the Bible, especially the teachings of Jesus. The Bible is carefully sifted through the filter of partisan politics, mostly coming from the Old Testament rather than the New, from a superficial reading of English paraphrases and translations of the Bible rather than integral Biblical study and theological scholarship. It is simpler to manipulate what the Bible says instead of what the Bible means. Political evangelicals could care less what the Bible means as long as they can find words, phrases and concepts that support and validate their political position. Evangelicalism in its purest form is about the sharing of God’s love, grace, and hope. Political evangelicalism is primarily about power and empire building. Political evangelicals more closely resemble citizens of the Roman Empire that oppressed Christians rather than citizens of the Kingdom of God. Political evangelicals have labelled the teachings of Jesus as socialist, liberal, Marxist, weak, and un-American, all the while claiming that he is their Lord and Savior. Political evangelicals are not interested in history or context. They see the Bible as a contemporary source of information from which they can define/redefine what it means to be a person of faith.

Zealot Evangelicals – Once again, function follows form for a great number of believers who believe that their ends justify any and all means. Faith is not a tool for building God’s kingdom of peace on earth, but a weapon of personal and mass destruction that justifies any amount of prejudice, hatred, violence, and ignorance. Zealot evangelicals are Biblical prospectors, panning through the pages for nuggets that support a divisive and toxic interpretation, discarding the remainder of God’s holy Word as dirt not worth considering. Most fundamentalist Christians fall into this sphere. Zealot evangelicals see nothing wrong with settling disagreements with guns, riots, raids, bombings, and death threats. They feel they do so in the name of Christ, protecting Christian values that this country was founded upon. Christian nationalism is the outward and visible sign of Zealot evangelicalism. People taking to the streets with guns and weapons during times of civil unrest are fruits of Zealot evangelicalism. Xenophobia is the unholy spirit of Zealot evangelicals, producing distrust, unrest, fear, and a sense of superiority resulting in racism, sexism, anti-immigration, narrow-minded and twisted support of a weird version of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, and an irrational anti-government populism. Zealot evangelicals love the idea of Jesus, as long as they don’t have to follow Jesus’ teachings, live by Jesus’ values, read the Bible for guidance, or change their individual entitled thinking. The Beatitudes, the Great Commission, the Great Commandment, and the Judgment of the Nations have absolutely no impact or value for Zealot evangelicals.

Economic Evangelicals – God blesses the good, punishes the bad, and could care less about wealth inequality. The Bible of Economic evangelicals is only about twenty pages long, all carefully cultivated and curated passages proclaiming that God wants us all to be rich, comfortable, blessed, healthy, and popular. Wealth, health, and power are nothing more or less than God’s stamp of approval on our life and witness. Economic evangelicals have no responsibility to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the oppressed, and the abused because they are only receiving what they deserve. If God didn’t want people to be poor, they wouldn’t be poor, so the rich are absolved of any and all obligation to share their wealth. And obviously, God approves of any acts or behaviors of the well-to-do that gains them more blessing and benefit. God loves the rich and wants them to have as much as they can possibly gain. Our God is a God of wealth, of power, of prestige, of dominance. God grants the Economic evangelical the right and honor of dictating the rules to everyone else. The Golden Rule is “he who has the gold makes the rules,” and the he here is intentional. An analysis of Economic evangelicals who adopt and embrace a prosperity gospel indicates that white males comprise an approximate 83-87% market share of the leadership and membership of this bastardization of the Christian faith.

Christian Evangelicals – Believe it or not, there are conservative, “Bible-believing,” right-wing, traditional Christians who actually believe Jesus wants us to feed the hungry, care for the sick, provide for the poor, and extend mercy and justice to all. They believe that immigrants are beloved children of God. They don’t want children to live in fear of being gunned down at school. They think that God actually loves gay and lesbian people. They see life as a gift given to all by the God who is love. They don’t believe it is God’s will that every child should be born, especially when they will face a life of poverty, abuse, disability, violence, and struggle. They believe that women are as valuable as men. They admit that there is such a thing as racism and that it is bad. They are as offended as liberals when Jesus’ core teachings are dismissed as “woke.” They want a world that proves God’s will can be done on earth as it is in heaven. They fill their spiritual toolkit with the necessary items such as mercy, compassion, kindness, humility, grace, forgiveness and tolerance that allow them to make peace. They actually love Jesus and Paul and the other authors of scripture that teach us that the body of Christ exists to produce the fruit of God’s Holy Spirit. They work really hard to discern, discover, understand, and live the will of God. These are the Christian evangelicals.

You may feel that I am being harsh, unkind, biased, and judgmental in my assessments and definitions. I admit, you may be right. But this is how I have been able to make sense of the fracturing and fragmenting of the Christian faith in the United States (and in The United Methodist Church) over the past decade. I would love for you to share your opinions and perspectives about what I put down here. I have no illusions that my view is the “right” view or the “best” view, but for me it is a viewpoint that makes a lot of sense. And I would be remiss if I did not close with one more acknowledgement. While this assesses the thinking and perspective of individuals in our culture, it is really as systems issue. We could not have gotten to this place of division and distortion without poor leadership at all levels of the church. People are being taught to think and believe as they do. Worldviews do not form in a vacuum; those of us who preach and teach must bear the responsibility of framing the teachings of God in Christ as we do. Where the good news is distorted, disgraced, or disemboweled, God have mercy. Forgive us.