Welcome back to Part 8 of A History of Incompatibility. In this series, we explore the development of Christian beliefs around human sexuality, particularly as it relates to present church schisms over LGBTQ inclusion. If you are just now joining the story, I recommend going back and starting at Part 1.
This week, we find ourselves in post-World War II Jim Crow America. I am intentionally drawing predominantly white characters in the pages of this week’s comic to signify a significant push in American society to unify the country around the American dream for white families. At the same time the word “homosexual” was first used in an English translation of the Bible (see last week’s story), white Americans were vacating diverse areas to create all white suburban communities (with all white suburban churches and schools). Americans were trained to fear the Communist “other,” which pushed Western society to deepen its standards for “normalcy.” Anyone considered subversive to these standards was a threat to America. Senator Joseph McCarthy added fuel to the fire through smear campaigns to out potential Communist spies. Gay and lesbian people were easy targets because they were largely unrecognizable as different to the public eye. McCarthy claimed that “queers” were more susceptible to communism because the Soviets could blackmail them and make them do their bidding. The Lavender Scare refers to a period beginning in the 1940’s and lasting through the 1960’s where police and agents intentionally targeted homosexuals working in the government and military, publicly outed them, and rendered them unemployable. A man who seemed to feminine or a woman who seemed to masculine could be accused of homosexuality, even if they were straight. Standards of femininity and masculinity were being enforced through a culture of fear. It was not unusual for police to print names and addresses of accused homosexuals in the newspapers.
Christianity in the West had become increasingly separated, not by denominations per say, but by a divide in biblical interpretation. Mainline Protestants had largely accepted biblical criticism, and saw the Bible as deeply grounded in the context of its time and place (the ancient Near East). As Protestant Liberalism was paving ways for the Bible to speak into the modern context, Fundamentalists reacted by insisting on the “infallibility” or “inerrancy” of the Bible. Western society largely looked down on Fundamentalist Christians as anti-intellectual, separatist, and militantly strict. The 1939 merger of The Methodist Episcopal Church with the MEC, South is one example of a denomination forming without addressing these two opposing schools of thought in biblical interpretation. In the 1940’s, a “new evangelical” movement arose, re-branding Christian Fundamentalists into a more palatable and socially acceptable form of Christianity, a middle way, if you will, between Fundamentalists and Liberals. This movement centered around the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Institute, Youth for Christ, and Christianity Today. The new evangelical could uphold Biblical inerrancy without being anti-intellectual, and could challenge Liberal progressivism by emphasizing evangelical conversion of individuals as the key to lasting social reform. The massive success of Billy Graham legitimized the new evangelical movement and created a demographic of Christians broader than their differentiated denominations.
The evangelical impulse began with the Protestant Reformation and really took off with the Great Awakening through John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards. Since the new evangelical movement began in the 1940’s, it has been difficult to define what makes one an evangelical. It is typically categorized as Christians who emphasize personal conversion through a “born again” experience, viewing the Bible as the primary source of authority, centrality of the cross (particularly substitutionary atonement, Christ died in my place), and actively proselytizing. Most fundamentalists are evangelicals, but not all evangelicals are fundamentalists. If you want to read more about the rise of New Evangelicalism, read here. This article here does a good job explaining differences between evangelicals and fundamentalists. I would also recommend reading The National Association of Evangelicals website to get an idea of how they define themselves.
Join us next week as we explore the implications of these developments on church, politics and sexuality. Click here for Part 9.