“Evangelical” in American cultural usage right now is a term that is full of landmines. Michael Gerson, an evangelical writer, is a voice that calls out the challenges often. In a current column with the Washington Post, he reminds readers of what true evangelicals used to be like:

If evangelicals were to consult their past, they would find that their times of greatest positive influence — in late-18th-century and early-19th-century Britain, or mid-19th-century America — came when they were truest to their religious calling. It was not when they acted like another political interest group. The advocates of abolition, prison reform, humane treatment of the mentally disabled and women’s rights were known as malcontents in the cause of human dignity.

More of his column is HERE.

If there is anything I wish to keep about my identity as “evangelical”, it is to be a malcontent in the cause of human dignity.