How Did Evangelicalism and Tolerance Become Incompatible?

Over the weekend, I was reading a column in the February issue of the magazine Drug Discovery News when I came across  a question which led me to write this article . On page 10 of the magazine, Prof. Peter T. Kissinger, CEO of Prosolia and Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University, asked “How can one be tolerant and evangelical simultaneously”? At first, I thought the question was superfluous and misplaced because I have never thought of evangelicalism and tolerance be to irreconcilable. In fact, I thought of evangelical as the most tolerant among Christian denominations because of their zeal to bring outsiders into the folk. When I was a student at the University of Ghana a few years ago, it was cool to be called an evangelical. The Ghana Fellowship of Evangelical Students (GHAFES) was the organization you would want to be part of to be considered hot and up-to-date. In those days, I thought Evangelicalism was the direct opposite of fundamentalism. Evangelicals were the type of Christians who did not want to appear intolerant or closed-minded.

In the West, especially in the United States, an evangelical is not the most welcome of Christians in some places and Prof. Kissinger’s question got me thinking about this situation. Again, I remember when I was a graduate student at the University of Florida, Gainesville, a friend of mine once suggested the name of the student group Graduate Evangelical Fellowship (GEF) be changed to Graduate Christian Fellowship (GCF) in order to attract newcomers because of the negative connotation the term ‘Evangelical’ carries on campus. I didn’t understand it then, because I had just come from the University of Ghana where being an ‘Evangelical’ was sexy. So when did evangelicalism become synonymous to extreme fundamentalism? The latter is surely taking over the concept of old-time common sense evangelicalism and growing rather surprisingly fast. And it scares me because whatever originates in the US eventually becomes a global fashion and supplants venerable time-honored systems, especially in parts of Africa and other places where sophistication to sift the good from the bad is less than adequate.

Several reasons can be attributed to the deteriorating image of the term ‘Evangelical’ and discussing each of these is surely beyond the scope of this article. I will rather briefly touch on the intrusion of ‘extreme fundamentalism’, often cloaked in the garments of evangelicalism, into politics. As I have written before, politics mixed with religion is always explosive, and can be very destructive. Those of you who follow US politics will have no problem understanding why “Evangelical” carries such a negative stereotype. When media persons and politicians with hazardous and extreme views on important issues of the day are collectively classified as ‘Evangelicals’, then where is the coolness in being an Evangelical? In a society where being adamantly intolerant is equated to being evangelical, defining everything absolutely  based only on one’s views is a perfect description of an evangelical, and giving a simplistic answer to the most complicated question of society is described as the classic evangelical way, we have come just too far.

Why do I care about this? I’m not worried about who calls himself or herself an evangelical. People have the right to call themselves whatever they want. I am afraid of the impact on vulnerable societies, especially those from where I come from. In November of last year, one Ugandan MP, with financial and other support from a fundamentalist Christian organization in the US, proposed the death penalty for suspected gay people.  I mean the death penalty, not jail time. Again, the Prime Minister of Kenya, on Nov 29, 2010, declared a national crackdown on homosexuals and called upon the police to arrest and jail anyone suspected to be a homosexual. It is not the desire to fight what these people see as unhealthy intrusion of western lifestyles that bothers me. What I am afraid of, and you should be worried about also, is when a group from a powerful country such as the US, is allowed to use their financial power and politicians influences to dictate legislation in other countries by bribing gullible politicians. This cannot be labeled Evangelicalism; it is extreme right-wing fundamentalism which should be condemned by all Christians.

Malaria kills a child every 30 seconds, and I think what ‘evangelicals’ need to ask is “What Would Jesus Do?