Violet Voices

An Angry Evangelical Speaks

by Meredith Efken

I haven’t posted anything in a week. It’s strictly been because I just haven’t had the heart. Frankly, this whole thing with Ted Haggard made me so angry that I didn’t trust myself anywhere near my blog until I calmed down a bit.

I’m not mad so much at Haggard, except for his refusal to be honest and candid about his marital unfaithfulness and drug use. If he was truly sorry and wanting to change (aka “repentant”), then he would have ‘fessed up. The fact that he is dragging his feet on it makes me angry.

But what angers me the most is something beyond just this one person. I’m angry that the evangelical community has created a culture that sets up sexual immorality, and especially homosexuality, as the ultimate sin. I’m angry that our leaders–with our support and encouragement–have made things like gay marriage such a key battle that we destroyed any opportunities to reach out to the gay community and build friendships and open honest communication with them. And then when one of our own is struggling with his sexual identity, he had no safe place to turn, no network of support.

Yes, he made rotten decisions. Yes, he lied. But the evangelical community contributed by setting up a system that places leaders on an impossibly high pedestal where they are isolated from their congregations, where admitting sexual struggles will ruin their careers, where the appearance of having it all together is paramount.

This past week, I’ve wondered…how many other evangelical leaders are in their own private hell, living a double life, battling all by themselves against things in their lives that would ruin them if revealed? How many other families are hurting beneath their Jesus-loves-me smiles?

A friend of mine made the observation that we need to stop making celebrities out of our pastors. I think she’s right. Shepherding a church was never supposed to be a multi-million dollar industry with lights, cameras, and 6-figure advances on book deals.

It was never supposed to turn into political activism. Pastoring is supposed to be a process of encouraging a group of people to walk with Jesus, to love Him. It’s supposed to be a service to the people, something done behind the scenes, in humility and gentleness.

When we force our precious pastors to become Hollywood stars, we set them up for failure because we remove them from the security of being accountable to their own community. We place before them every single temptation that this world has to offer–wealth, power, influence, admiration, and fame–and then expect them to resist those temptations almost completely on their own. And when they fall, we fire them and tell them they need counseling.

That’s why I’m angry. And deeply embarrassed for our evangelical culture. We have lost so much credibility with the rest of the world. It’s hypocrisy of the worst kind. We have become what we claim to stand against. I’m not talking about anti-gay marriage pastors being outed as homosexuals–though that’s the most obvious example at the moment.

I’m talking about what the entire culture has become (at least the part of the culture on display for the rest of the world to observe):  instead of humble servants, we’ve become wealthy, uncompassionate masters who spend much more money on our own gratification and pet projects than we do on offering justice to the oppressed. Instead of being subjects of the Kingdom of God, we have courted the political powers of this world. Instead of being the mouthpieces of God’s gentle, abiding wisdom, we’ve spouted shrill, sometimes hateful, foolishness.

What happened to Ted Haggard is only the latest symptom of a systemic problem. As the evangelical community, we need to sit down, shut up, and spend some time in deep, somber self-reflection. We could use some long-term repentence–as a community. We need to examine our own community and find our way back to what it means to follow Jesus before we say another word to the world beyond our own church doors.

So, I’m sorry I didn’t post last week. This is why. Even though I’m angry at evangelical-dom right now, I love my Christian community very, very much. And I know that individually, there are many evangelicals loving and serving Jesus. There are many about whom Jesus would say, “I’m so proud of you!” But we still have to look at our culture as a whole, at the overall direction of the evangelical community, and accept responsibility for what we’ve allowed it to become. And we must work for change, starting with repentence. It’s got to be a change that begins in the heart.

And since I’m the one ranting here, I’ll go first. I’m sorry. I repent for having blindly supported a system that doesn’t represent what I believe it means to follow Jesus. I repent for not speaking up sooner, for going along in order to not rock the boat. I repent for having, in the past, agreed with many of the excesses and majoring-on-the-minors that our evangelical leadership has engaged in. For being ignorant and apathetic about the wrongs being committed in the name of Jesus and in the name of Christianity. I repent of not caring. I have contributed to the problem, and I am sorry. I must change. Lord, please forgive me for the part I have played in this whole mess.

Please, God, help us to change. Help us be truly more like you, because we fall so short. We need You so much.

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Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: Women's Voices .  Email This Post