Iliff School of Theology University of Denver The Journal of RELIGION, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS A GRADUATE STUDENT PUBLICATION BY STUDENTS OF THE JOINT DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES The Civil Rights Legacy and the New Monastics: Shifting Identities among American Evangelicals in the Post-Civil Rights Era Author(s): Michael Clawson Source: The Journal of Religion, Identity, & Politics, August 2012 Stable URL: http://ripjournal.org/2012/the-civil-rights-legacy-and-the-new-monastics-shifting-identities- among-american-evangelicals-in-the-post-civil-rights-era/ Copyright 2012, The Author. All reserved. Published electronically by the Journal of Religion, Identity, and Politics on behalf of the Author. The Civil Rights Legacy and the New Monastics: Shifting Identities among American Evangelicals in the Post-Civil Rights Era By Michael Clawson Baylor University, Department of Religion Since its beginnings in the early 1940s, the neo-evangelical movement has undergone significant shifts in its religious and social identity within American culture, in part because of its interactions with the black Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 60s. Led by evangelist Billy Graham and theologian Carl F. H. Henry, among others, neo-evangelicalism (now simply called evangelicalism) was an attempt by some conservative Protestants to move past the cultural disengagement of their fundamentalist forebears while still holding on to fundamentalist theological commitments (Henry 1947). Because of this new openness to cultural engagement, it is not surprising that some white evangelicals found themselves influenced by the Civil Rights movement. And while mainstream white evangelicals during the height of the Civil Rights era were highly ambivalent towards the political dimensions of the black freedom struggle, other, typically younger evangelicals, were less hesitant about getting caught up in the passions of the movement and its aftermath. This branch, which recently has been dubbed “the prophetic evangelicals” (Benson, Berry, and Heltzel 2012; Heltzel 2008), was inspired by the example of the Civil Rights movement to become more politically active in support of a wider range of political causes: gender equality, economic justice, environmental care, anti-war activism and pro-active peacemaking, racial reconciliation, and other pressing social issues. Because of this influence, I will argue that prophetic evangelicalism constitutes an ongoing legacy for the Civil Rights movement among the second generation of evangelical leadership. It is now over four decades since the first emergence of prophetic evangelicals, and a new younger generation of prophetic evangelicals has now come of age. Typically referred to as the 1 new monastic movement, this “third generation” of evangelical leaders are continuing the Civil Rights legacy in innovative ways as they are influenced by its remaining leaders and by the ideals articulated by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others from the black prophetic tradition. In this way, the Civil Rights movement continues to influence the shifting identities of white American evangelicals, playing a direct and decisive role in the formation of specific groups of young, prophetic evangelicals like the new monastics, who themselves are also influencing the broader evangelical community. Though some scholarly works have dealt with the mainstream evangelical response to the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s (Evans 2009) and others with the influence of Civil Rights on prophetic evangelicalism in the 1970s (Swartz 2008; Heltzel 2009), this paper will extend the narrative beyond these groups to the contemporary new monastic movement through an analysis of recent writings and interviews with several of its key leaders. It will demonstrate that the influence of the black freedom struggle on evangelicalism was not limited to the 1960s and 1970s but continues among younger evangelicals in the twenty-first century. This paper will not claim that the social concerns of earlier neo-evangelicals were in all instances more limited or more conservative, or, conversely, that the more socially prophetic agenda of new monastics is wholeheartedly embraced by all evangelicals today. As in any large movement, neo- evangelicalism is diverse and holds within it many disparate voices. The concern of this paper is simply to show that within this diversity, the prophetic legacy of the black freedom struggle has been one important strand which continues to wield a significant influence into the first decades of the twenty-first century. 2 White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement To fully appreciate the changes to evangelical identity with respect to race, civil rights, and issues of social justice over the past half-century, it is important to understand where the movement began. The neo-evangelical movement coalesced in the post-war years of the 1940s as a new generation of fundamentalist leadership began distancing itself from the attitudes of hostility towards secular culture held by their forebears. They instead called for both critical and constructive engagement by theological conservatives within the broader society. The landmark statement of the new evangelical mindset was theologian Carl F. H. Henry’s short book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, which “exploded like a bombshell in the fundamentalist camp” (Grenz and Olson 1992, 287). There Henry reaffirmed the biblical inerrantist and supernaturalist doctrines of fundamentalism while at the same time calling for a move beyond the separatism, anti-intellectualism, and cultural isolationism he perceived among fundamentalists (Henry 1947). He especially emphasized the need for deeper engagement by evangelical Christians with the great social evils of the day, among which he included “aggressive warfare, racial hatred and intolerance, the liquor traffic, and exploitation of labor or management,” though his specific suggestions on how, exactly, evangelicals ought to engage with such issues or for which particular solutions they ought to advocate was left vague (17). Despite this call, evangelicals like Henry remained ambivalent about the legislative demands of the Civil Rights movement and proved reluctant to voice support for that movement’s methods of direct action and civil agitation (however nonviolent). While decrying racism, Henry insisted that a socially engaged evangelicalism would not endorse specific political organizations or legislative agendas, but would instead preach “divinely disclosed ethical principles” which must then be put into practice by spiritually regenerate individuals 3 (Henry 1957). While not rejecting the necessity of social reform, Henry saw such reform as being rooted first and foremost in the “the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit” in the lives of individuals. “Christian social action,” Henry declared, “condones no social solutions in which personal acceptance of Jesus as Savior is an optional consideration.” Only through such personal redemption could social change occur (Henry 1964, 76-81; 1947, 45). In this way, the evangelical commitment to the primacy of evangelistic proclamation and individual conversion was maintained. This emphasis on personal salvation over social legislation also fit conveniently with Henry’s preference for political libertarianism. According to Henry, government’s role was to provide for just laws and social order, not to coerce compassion or show favor to particular groups or individuals (Henry 1966, 8-10). His solution to the problem of racial discrimination was instead simply to encourage Christian individuals to show neighborly love towards persons of color (Henry 1965). That Henry’s attitudes towards race and the Civil Rights struggle were representative of a much broader cross-section of evangelical Christianity can be demonstrated by the coverage of racial issues and the Civil Rights movement in Christianity Today magazine, the foremost news journal of the evangelical movement, during Henry’s tenure as editor from 1956-1968. Throughout the whole of the Civil Rights movement, the magazine gave very little coverage to race issues—fewer than two articles per year on average according to one count (Emerson and Smith 2000, 46; Fairbanks 1989, 34-41; Toulouse 1993, 246). By most accounts, Henry himself actually pushed for more coverage of race and the Civil Rights struggle but was under pressure by wealthy financiers and other conservative editorial advisors of the magazine not to speak out too critically against segregation (Henry 1986, 144-58, 182-83; Heltzel 2009, 83-84; Tapia 1997). According to one researcher, who surveyed the magazine’s entire coverage of racial 4 issues during the period, when Christianity Today did give attention to the issue, editorials often waffled between support for segregation and hesitant opposition to it. While frequently calling for Christians to eliminate racial biases and cease discriminating against blacks in their personal lives, the magazine also typically criticized the confrontational tactics of the Civil Rights movement and advocated for what the editors considered to be a “moderate” position of voluntary segregation, thus placing themselves in opposition to the goals of both the Civil Rights leaders and ardent supporters of Jim Crow (Evans 2009, 263-69). A 1957 article by E. Earl Ellis, for instance, while acknowledging that injustices were often present under segregation, also argued that segregation was