We think of tragedies that have happened recently, attacks, and life of many citizens, we pray you would protect a life i pray that those of us who know you would live godly lives. I pray we would do that for your glory. We pray now that you would bless this discussion tonight that we might learn something that would make us more effective citizens. We ask this in christs name, amen. Before i introduce this evenings panelist, i want to take a few minutes and set the context and purpose for tonights discussion its my opinion that believers or evangelicals should engage in political activity on the basis of their faith commitments. I hold this opinion for a couple reasons opinion scripture assumes that a follower of christ will seek opportunities for influence. Its just one example, god instructs his people who are in exile to seek the peace or welfare of the city where ive caused you to be carried away as captives. And pray unto the lord for it. The peace or welfare there of shall you have peace. Its natural for evangelicals to seek opportunities to influence both people and social institution, including government, because we see that in scripture. Second, evangelicals engage in political activity as an outgrowth of their faith because faith is not simply part of a christians life but its central to his or her identity as a person. Evangelicals see themselves as citizens of two kingdoms, an earthly one and a heavenly one. We have responsibilities we render unto ceasar the things that are ceasars and seek those things which are above. As we carry out responsibilities in this earthly kingdom, we do so as followers of christ. The involvement of evangelicals in american politics should could come as no surprise. Knowing, however, the most appropriate ways to carry out this call to influence and to participate in our represented democracy is not always straightforward. Sadly, evangelicals have not always exercised this responsibility and wisdom, and in meekness. Sometimes were so enamored with the political power of this world that we become, in the words of cal thomas and ed dobson, blinded by might. In an era where evangelicals are increasingly pressured to keep their faith to their private life christians must understand how to carry out their civic responsibilities in meekness and wisdom. Its my hope that tonights forum will accomplish two ends. First, i hope your understanding of how evangelicals have engaged in the american experiment of selfgovernment will be expanded. And i hope well glean lessons from the missteps that are instructive for our lives today. Our format tonight is simple. After i introduce our panelists, ill ask them questions, and following those questions, well take time to answer some from the audience. If youre interested in asking a question, be sure you get a card from one of our volunteers, if youve not already done that. If you dont have one, maybe you can slip your hand up quickly. One of our volunteers who are here tonight can get you one of those cards. Tonight we have the privilege of hearing from four distinguished panelists, each bringing a unique perspective to our topic. Let me introduce each one of them to you. First of all carl abrams, who is on your far left. I dont mean anything political by that. I can assure you. Dr. Carl abrams, professor of modern and european history. Dr. Abrams is frequently sought by the media as an expert on religion and American Culture. Hes the author of two books selling the oldtime religion american fundamentalists and mass culture in 1920 and 1940 and conservative restraints, North Carolina and the new deal. Dr. Abrams holds three degrees in history. A b. A. From Bob Jones University, an m. A. From the North CarolinaState University and a ph. D. From the university of maryland. In addition, he studied in paris and harvard vinity school. Dr. Jim guth who is on your far right is the william r. Ken an junior Political Science. He served as fuhrmans chair as the chair of the Political Science department. He initiated an Intern Program which has sent over 1,000 students to washington. As a specialist in american politics, he assessed the impact of religion on the electoral process and Public Policy in the clinton, bush and obama administrations. Dr. Guth holds a bachelor of science from the university of wisconsin and a ph. D. From harvard, university. And then in our center left we have dr. Tom mack, who joins our Forum Tonight from cedarville university, where he is the assistant Vice President of academics, professor of history and director of cedarvilles honors program. He teaches courses in United States history and world view integration. His Research Area is 19th century america, especially the political history of the American Civil War and the guilded age. He was selected to attend the American History seminar on the guilded age sponsored by the guilded lariman institute of history and the council of independent colleges hosted by stanford university. His Research Includes the role of ohio and its politicians in National Politics during the 19th century. Dr. Mack holds a b. A. From cedarville university. An m. A. From cleveland State University, and ph. D. From the university of akron. And finally, centerright, kellan funk. Hes a ph. D. His area of focus is 19th century american legal institutions. Both practice and theory, the development of a legal profession, the debates over the codification of the common law and the intersection of american law and american christianity. He recently assumed the position of law clerk for chief judge Lee Rosenthal at the u. S. District court for the Southern District of texas. Hes received legal history fellowships from yale law school, the hearst institute. The American Society for legal history, and also received a religious history fellowship from the center for the study of religion at princeton university. Mr. Funk holds a b. A. From bju and a j. D. From yale law school. Would you please welcome our panelists for tonights discussion. [ applause ] were going to begin tonight with a simple question, i thinkd definitions are important. Im going to direct this question to kellen and ask him to define what an evangelical is. How would you distinguish evangelicals from other religious groups . Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for the question, and hopefully well have about two minutes after ive answered it to have the rest of the panel. It does seem like a simple question. A good question to define the term were going to be talking about for this panel. It is also a cruel question. Historians debate rather furiously what evangelical means and who that label applies to. Part of the reason for that is the word evangelical means and who it applies to. Part of that is because the word evangelical didnt have much meaning until the 20th century. But clearly the evangelicals of the 20th century had their roots going back further. There were movements and groups in the 18th and 19th centuries known by all sorts of names, piotious, as new lights, new divinity, lots of new revivalists. Which had all different personalities and theologyists and aims and thinking about reform and politics. Clearly, there were emphasis and strands and things held in common among these groups. Historians debate whether the term evangelicalism is appropriate for these groups. So one historian named david bebington has offered four emphasis that mark what an evangelical is. And these criteria, nobody agrees with, everyone disagrees over whether these are actual emphasis, whether all four go together or there should be more than four. Probably other panelists will want to disagree with it. But because everyone talks about it, its a convenient benchmark to start with. So the four qualities that mark an evangelical. The first is as he calls it, biblicism. A high regard for the authority and sufficiency of the bible. The second he calls centrism. Which is a fancy way of saying the cross. And the theology of the atonement is central to evangelical identity. The third is conversion. The emphasis that individuals ought to be choosing belief and obedience in the gospel. The fourth category is activism. It means especially that the belief and conversion ought to change a persons life. And that a person ought to be active in changing their life, because they have converted and believe the gospel. These are the four emphasis that and a person ought to be active in changing their life because they have converted and believe the gospel. So these are the four emphasis on evangelical and i should emphasize that they are these a supposed to be the things that are at the center of evangelical identity as opposed to what a lot of 19th century historians would call liturgocals o or catholicism the way that survivalists did and are more interested in the sacramental life of the church and gathering around the sacraments of raising up families in the church and not so much going out and doing the sort of soul winning that the evangelicals have talked about. So let me sort of sketch a timeline of the 19th century to now, which will let me fill in a little bit more of this definition and then hopefully that sets the stage for us. Basically, in the 19th century, when youre thinking about evangelical involvement in politics, you find the people that historians would call evangelicals basically on every side of every issue on every side of every Political Party, maybe, maybe there are arguable emphasis that well get to. And there are evangelicals that support reforms and some that oppose the reforms. There are evangelicals that are antislavery and evangelicals that defend the institution of slavery. There are evangelicals that are democrats and republicans and progressives and populists and the whole parties that went through the 19th century. But there are certain generalizations that you can make and those generalizations run along the dominational lines where baptist evangelicals along with the catholics almost always reliably vote democratic into the late 19th century century d into, while a lot of methodist and presbyterian evangelicals, calvinists, kon calvinists, congregationallists and others vote for the whig party and later are involved in the Republican Party after the demise of the whigs. Thats a very different story from what happens in the 20th century. In the 20th century it is no longer that you can sort of divide evangelicals along denominational lines and sort of figure out whos politically active where and who is voting for whom. After the rise of liberal theology and the fundamentalists modernist controversy, after the fundamentalist movement gets started it is attracting people across the denominational boundaries. So that, for instance, a methodist fundamentalist could found a school with a lot of presbyterian fundamentalists on staff and a lot of baptist fundamentalists attending as students. What happens through anyone know the school im talking about . What happens through this fundamentalist movement is people realize that very often they have more in common with other fundamentalists across the denominational divide than they have with people in their own denomination. So a fundamentalist methodist has a lot more in common with a fundamentalist baptist than necessarily with a liberal methodist that is in his or her own denomination. Over the course of the 20th century what starts to happen is this same coalescence that crosses denominational boundaries culturally and socially with the different movements also starts to happen politically, where conservative evangelicals all sort of start to gather on one side of the political spectrum in a way that hadnt at all been true of evangelicals in the 19th century. This is this thesis is broadly referred to as the restructuring of american religion, which was coined by socialologists at princeton. That briefly leads me to define one more distinction, hopefully the stage has been set. What is the difference between a fundamentalist and an evangelical for purposeless of this discussion. The historian of american religion, george marzden, humerusly defines a fundamentalist as an evangelical who is angry about something, which he means it humorously, but it is a helpful definition in that it points to the fact that fundamentalists are if youre thinking through the historical label of evangelicalism, those four emphases i mentioned, it is basically a sub set of evangelicalism that has this added point of militancy. That he were dedicated to taking a stand for the gospel for those four emphases and willing to sund sunder ties, and also with other evangelicals who were not sunderring ties with the liberal theologians. So the term evangelicalism comes into actual history around the 1950s when a few people like billy graham and carl henry, the editor of christianity today, and they were using the term evangelical to sort of distance themselves from that militancy point. Sometimes people refer to it as new evangelicalism. I dont know that that title is very helpful or has any meaning because really evangelicalism and fundamentalism are both new in the 1950s and significantly in the same way that theyre also very old in the 1950s in significant ways. So what happens from that point onward is these different groups, fundamentalists and evangelicals, often use those labels to make sure you know that theyre not the other one, even though they all share those four emphases that i mentioned of what historically marks evangelicals. Now, to bring the story up to today, the political media and political pollsters have no kind of patience for this nuance, right . So there is no breakdown in polls between how fundamentalists vote and evangelicals vote and where pentecostal pentecostals fit on that scale. Evangelical today is often used to describe politically conservative christianity of any kind, and often that term is used interchangeably to talk about evangelicals, to talk about fundamentalists, even to talk about conservative roman catholics who in the 19th se century would not at all fit the category as historians use it. So a very long and meandering way to say ive not given you a precise definition because history does not give us a precise definition, but i think thats part of the helpfulness and usefulness of starting with a panel on the past and having these panelists here to think through what the change over time is, where the emphases are and why they matter to what is going on right now. Thank you again for inviting me. Im looking forward to hearing from the other panelists. As i said, what seems to be a simple question about just defining what an evangelical is, when you look at it from a Historical Perspective it is a little bit complicated. Kellen in his answer invited some discussion on this, so i want to throw out this next question perhaps to the entire panel, whoever might want to jump on it. I think kellen suggested his answer to the question, but when did evangelicals become recognized as a Political Force or as a Political Movement historically in the United States . We point to a particular time when either historians or political scientists have said that evangelicals should be recognized as some sort of a Political Force or some sort of a Political Movement. Anybody . I would just add sort of a working definition to simplify what kellen just laid out for us. For fundamentalists in the 1920s and 30s they had a very simple way as well of communicating what they meant, and they would talk about believing in supernatural christianity. That very quickly got to what they were really all about, which would include what kellen just elaborated on. One other thing that they would add, some of them i dont agree with them, but some would add premillennialism would be, and there was a big debate between is militants the answer or premillennialism, is that what the other were about. So there were shorthand words that were used. To get to your question, i would argue that and i was surprised by this. It is a very odd source to start with, but alexi de toqueville, when he came to america in the 1830s and went back and wrote his book, one of the biggest impressions he had about america was the importance of religion that he saw in americans. And the way he elaborated on it was in a very positive way, that religion and he called it as it was translated traditional religion, which suggests maybe evangelicalism hes not using that word obviously, but traditional religion, and it made americans less selfish. It made me more civicminded. It neutralized individualism. It made them better citizens across the board. So for someone, a foreigner to come to america and recognize that theres something traditional and different, maybe the 1830s is a little early, but he saw something even if americans were not conscious of that identity. He was aware of it apparently for them. When you think about what is going on politically, this is he was here during the jacksonian presidency, and despite that he still thought some very positive things about religion. So youre adding more precisely to what kellen said, that an evangelical would be somebody who believes in the supernatural, the new birth specifically, contrasted perhaps with somebody of a mainline christian denomination, that thats a distinguishing characteristic of an evangelical. Tom, i want to point the next question to you. Were going to trace this a bit historically now, and toms expertise as i mentioned in the introduction is in 19th century u. S. History. So how did evangelicals of the 19th century involve themselves in politics, and what were perhaps some of the significant social or political issues that were important to them, programs even some of the key figures that were involved . So theres a lot that i could talk about. I want to focus in on the doctrine that dr. Abrams raised which is the 1820s, 30s and 40s. In that time we see the second great awakening as historians refer tot. I want to talk about the theological roots of the second great awakening, which is many and varied. Some historians have argued tlas a link going all the way back to the first