Quick To Listen

Though one can argue that evangelical religion has been in crisis from the beginning, starting in November 2016 and the election of Donald Trump, it exploded afresh. Not only did the nation wake up to discover a chasm dividing in the country, so did evangelicals--especially when it became clear that white evangelicals voted for and then supported the new president, depending on the poll, in the range of 75 to 81 percent. The evangelical left was shocked and horrified by this, and the evangelical right was mystified by their outrage. Many Black, Asian, and Hispanic evangelicals—if they still identified with the term at all--looked at white evangelicals left and right and just shook their heads, wondering if either side really got it. We now have a cacophony of voices shouting at one another, and much of the shouting is about two questions: “So, what is an evangelical Christian anyway?” And more to the point, “Does it even matter?” To help explore those questions, we invited Thomas Kidd, the Vardaman Distinguis