Earlier this week, two theologically conservative Christian organizations, LifeWay Research and Ligonier Ministries, released the results of a biannual survey of American and evangelical theological views. The results are fascinating—and revealing. American evangelicals, it turns out, have a Jesus problem.
Before I explain why, let me first add a caveat. It’s hard to poll evangelicals. The term has become so laced with politics that millions of Christians identify themselves as “evangelicals” simply because they’re Republican and they’re Christian. The word has become such a tribal signifier that, in many households, evangelical Christianity is little more than a God-and-country lifestyle brand.
For example, surveys now indicate that most American evangelicals now go to church once a month or less, with 40 percent attending yearly or less. Infrequent church attendance is most assuredly not a part of traditional evangelical theology. Moreover, those evangelicals who rarely attend church disproportionately identify as Republican.
This tribal component of evangelical identity has led millions of faithful, churchgoing Christians to have understandable objections to evangelical stereotypes. If anyone can call themselves evangelical, then what does the term truly mean? How can you judge the beliefs and behavior of those inside the Church by the actions and attitudes of millions of people who rarely or never darken its doors?
In other words, definitions matter—a lot. A 2015 NPR story demonstrated just how much. It turns out that the “true” percentage of Americans who are evangelicals ranges from 35 percent if identity is based only on self-identification, to 25 percent if identity is based on denominational affiliation, to a mere 6 percent if identity is based on agreement with a series of core evangelical beliefs.
As a general matter, evangelicals fit into three broad categories. First are the self-identified evangelicals of any race or ethnicity. This group is ethnically and politically diverse (nonwhite evangelicals tend to vote Democratic).
Next are the self-identified white evangelicals. This group is religiously heterodox (ranging from biblical fundamentalists to casual Christians) but remarkably ideologically uniform. This is the core constituency of the Republican Party.
Finally there are the theological evangelicals. These are the subset of self-identified evangelicals who also agree with a set of key theological propositions. This group is what most evangelicals would call the core of the Church. These are the people who actually believe the key tenets of the Christian faith.
But do they, really?
The LifeWay-Ligonier study identified evangelicals as those people who strongly agreed with four key statements of belief:
- The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
- It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
- Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
- Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.
And yet, even this cohort struggled with basic Christian doctrine, especially regarding Jesus. For example, a majority of evangelicals agreed with the statement that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” Yet this is a flat contradiction of Christian teaching, which holds that Jesus isn’t a created being.
The first words of the Gospel of John could not be more clear. “In the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Moreover, the poll reflects that a surprisingly high percentage of evangelicals (43 percent) agree with the assertion that Jesus was a great teacher, but not God.
At the same time, the respondents were remarkably orthodox on a very specific topic—sexual morality. Most evangelicals may misunderstand who Jesus is, but 94 percent said that sex outside of traditional marriage is wrong, 91 percent said that abortion is a sin, and 67 percent disagreed with the idea that the Bible’s “condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn’t apply today.”
In other words, this was no survey of evangelical “squishes,” but rather reflects the way in which evangelicals themselves interpret their faith. Why is there so much orthodoxy on matters of sex and such profound confusion about Jesus himself? And why does it matter to anyone beyond the Church?
Spend any time in Christian circles and you’ll quickly recognize that the culture is often consumed with line-drawing. Who is truly faithful? Or, to put it another way, when millions upon millions of people claim to follow Jesus, how do we discern who are his “true” disciples and who is heretical?
For generations, American evangelicals have been taught—by word and deed—that the shortcut answer to that question lies in sexual ethics. Know where a person stands on sexual morality (so the argument goes) and you’ll know whether they’re orthodox.
Now, to be clear, I’m a traditional, orthodox evangelical. I have a traditional, orthodox evangelical sexual ethic. But I also know this—that the core of the faith is not its moral codes but rather faith in the person of Jesus Christ, and a focus on Jesus is both profoundly humbling and profoundly hopeful.
Learn who Jesus is and you immediately recognize that even if you live your life compliant with the most strict of sexual codes of conduct, you will still, inevitably, fall short in countless other arenas of life, and that a Christ who knows our inmost thoughts knows that not one single person can possibly be as sexually pure as they may present themselves.
That’s the humility. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. The hope is found in the same source as the humility—a God who is gracious, who sacrificed himself to atone for our sins. The Christian community must thus be among the most humble and most hopeful communities in the land. And that spirit does characterize countless Christians. I can name many people who know who Jesus is and embody those virtues as well as imperfect people can.
But when the Church leads with its moral code—and elevates that moral code over even the most basic understandings of Jesus Christ himself—the effect isn’t humility and hope; it’s pride and division. When the Church chooses a particular sin as its defining apostasy (why sex more than racism, or greed, or gluttony, or cruelty?), it perversely lowers the standards of holy living by narrowing the Christian moral vision.
The result is a weaker religion, one that is less demanding for the believer while granting those who uphold the narrow moral code a sense of unjustified pride. Yet pride separates Christians from each other, and separates Christians from their neighbors.
Millions of Christians are humble and hopeful. Millions are also prideful and divisive. Why? One answer is found in the LifeWay-Ligonier survey. In the quest for morality, they’ve lost sight of Jesus—but it is Jesus who truly defines the Christian faith.