Revealing Details: Why I'm Still an Evangelical (Part One: Intro)

If I am a follower of Jesus (I consider myself to be.), does any other labeling matter?

Yes, actually. Here’s why.

All Christian traditions and denominations have occurred due to dialogue (becoming debate, and diatribe, and disastrous divisiveness in too many cases). And dialogue is a good thing. It can help us know, for example, why Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians differ on one particular issue (organizational decision-making) when they agree on so much else. In short, words mean things. On that topic, I’m particularly fond of Helen Keller’s exclamation (from Chapter Four of The Story of My Life), “Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me.”

My hope is that by exploring the name by which my spiritual tradition is called you may find some “new thought” that makes your world “quiver with life,” even if you wholeheartedly disagree with my insistence on using a name that has been so abused in recent history. Do note, please, that I distinguish myself as theologically-Evangelical, as opposed to (and definitely opposed to) those who misuse “Evangelical” as a collective noun for adherents to their socio-political agenda. I apologize for any confusing resulting from “my people” not having defended our trade-mark more vigorously. But even if others use the term for all sorts of wrong things, the right word for me is (theologically-) Evangelical. I’ll explore why that is in the next post. For now…

About the images: Clearly there are a few “revealing details” here, but Morgan and Charlotte’s storyline is all about revealing to ourselves what we may suspect, but haven’t quite identified as being true about ourselves and our circumstances. For the whole storyline, look us up on the Crooked Container site. The link is available here: https://linktr.ee/SubversiveVisions