This is a column from Chelsen Vicari, a young evangelical columnist who is making quite a name for herself.
“It feels like a betrayal from every side,” might be how blogger Rachel Held Evans’ sums up last week’s World Vision fiasco over same-sex marriage, but it doesn’t exactly convey the mixed feelings of most evangelicals.
In her recent entry on CNN Belief Blog, “How Evangelicals Won a Culture War and Lost a Generation,” Evans paints conservative evangelical men and women as uncompassionate by lamenting over “misaligned evangelical priorities” and our “leaving thousands of needy children without financial support.” The major flaw in her argument is that conservative evangelicals’ reactions were not due to a “disdain” for the LGBTQ people or an abandonment of the needy. It was the result of heavy-hearted commitments to God’s Word.
The chaos all started when World Vision embraced same-sex marriage within their employment policy, subsequently recognizing their “mistake” and recommitted to uphold biblical sexual morality. It was the organizations reversal that promoted Evans’ blog, in which she launched several inflated accusations against her conservative brothers and sisters in Christ.
On her notorious Twitter page, Evans declared that she is leaving evangelicalism because World Vision’s reversal was “uniquely evangelical.” In her attempt to flee what she assumes to be bigoted discrimination, Evans overlooks the important fact that evangelicalism is more than skinny jeans and potluck lunches.
Built in the wake of the decline of America’s mainline denominations, evangelicalism grew as it committed to uphold the authority of Scripture. In his book The Young Evangelicals, author Richard Quededeaux identifies three key characteristics of evangelicalism: (1) Evangelicals identify the full authority of Scriptures in all matters of faith and practice; (2) Evangelicals pursue a personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior; and (3) Evangelicals understand the urgency of seeking the conversion of sinful men and women to Christ.
Despite admitting that the series of events motivated her to leaving evangelicalism, Evans asserts that World Vision’s flip-flop “is not an issue of orthodoxy. But when we begin using child sponsorships as bargaining tools in our debates, we’ve lost the way of Jesus.” Actually, World Vision is the perfect illustration of the un-attachable orthodox tradition of evangelicalism.
Read the remainder of this article here.
Note: Rachel Held Evans has said she is “rethinking” such a move and has posted a response on her blog.
