Lucado, Trump, "Evangelicals" and the 2016 Election

Photo Credit: http://www.christianitytoday.com/

An earlier post provided a brief overview  of Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism.   This new book demonstrates how Max Lucado, Rick Warren, and Joel Osteen have been leading advocates of a hyper-sentimental gospel that has been widely accepted by a large number of religious consumers.   I'll showcase more of the highlights of Homespun Gospel in future articles.

Today's post is devoted to Lucado, Trump, Evangelicals and the 2016 Election (if nothing else consider my 10 takeaways at the conclusion of this article).

What spurred me on to write today's post?  I decided to write this article after I saw how many Christians reposted a "Anti-Trump" blog article written by Pastor Max Lucado.  In the past two months I have never read more critical pieces of a Republican candidate written by conservative and/or Christian authors.  In a follow up interview "America's Pastor"said that he does not normally inject politics into his pastoral ministry.  Lucado noted that "I don’t even put a candidate’s bumper sticker on my car. People don’t attend church to hear my views on a presidential candidate."

Though I do not agree with Lucado's theology on a number of points, (or his philosophy of ministry- see Homespun Gospel), I think his default position on politics and the pulpit is wise.  The centrality of Christ, the gospel, and the core doctrines of Scripture can be unintentionally eclipsed when Christian preachers become political commentators on Sunday morning instead of 'mouthpieces' of God (to use the language of 1 Peter 4:10).   Having said that, if a cultural/political issue is addressed in the Scriptures, the man of God (2 Tim. 2:15) should faithfully communicate God's position on X, Y, or Z (Acts 20:27-35).  (Examples include: the sacredness of life (at conception), God's view of marriage, gender, and human sexuality, a theology of work in relation to welfare, the role of government, the sinfulness of racism and genuine bigotry, etc).

If a minister of the gospel decides to address a controversial, hot-topic issue from the pulpit (such as race relations and the police, the Ferguson riots, social justice, immigration, Israel, welfare and poverty, gender equality, Roe vs. Wade, SCOTUS, etc) they must be very careful to not read their personal opinions into the inspired Text.  If your pastor says, "This is heaven's perspective on such and such" you better be certain that his finger is pointing to a book, chapter, and verse AND that he is rightly interpreting the true meaning of Holy Scripture (Phil Johnson recently called out brother Thabiti Anyabwile for this very thing- see Against Mission Drift).  Over the years, many errors and half-truths have been propagated from American pulpits (often times unknowingly).

So why did "America's Pastor" post an public article that was critical of Donald Trump (the current front-runner of the Republican party)?  

The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism (Lucado, Warren, Osteen)

In order to understand what is going on in the church today and in effort to critique what is often lacking (Scripturally speaking), it is quite helpful to understand the major 'players'.  Few Christian authors and pastors have yielded more influence on the church than Max Lucado, Rick Warren, and Joel Osteen.  All three of these celebrity pastors are quoted extensively in a helpful new book titled, Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism.  

In this book Todd Brenneman "shows how evangelicals use tropes of God as father, human beings as children, and nostalgia for an imagined idyllic home life to provide alternate sources of social authority, intended to help evangelicals survive a culture that is philosophically at odds with conservative Christianity."

Brenneman divides Homespun Gospel into four penetrating chapters.  The chapter titles alone give the reader some idea of what he or she is going to hear as they make their way through this helpful book.  1) God's in the Business of Giving Mulligans: Sentimentality and Therapeutic Culture.  2) You Are Special:  The Anti-Intellectualism of Sentimental Evangelicalism.  3) New York Times Best-Selling Author" Christian Media and the Marketing of Sentiment.  4) America Looks Up:  Sentimentality, Politics, and American Evangelicalism.