Too true. But when a group—particularly a religious group—advocates bending society toward its values, it needs to live up to those values itself first.

Politically active evangelicals promise that America would be much better off if it lived by evangelical values. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. But you would think that if evangelicals truly believed what they say say, they would first live out those values and, second, offer themselves as the proof in their political pudding.

But they choose to be no different than non-evangelical America, aside from demonstrably empty rhetoric. At some point, it becomes a matter of do as I say, not as I do.

See: http://BooksAndCulture.net

Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

I personally have little interest in encouraging or discouraging evangelicals from “admitting their problems out loud.” I do, like you, think it is of great import that an evangelical scholar has called out his own, and that Christianity Today provided the forum for doing so, a sentiment I alluded to in passing in the opening sentence.

But evangelicals and fundamentalists do not deserve the same treatment (in this matter) as other religious groups, mostly because they have allowed and even encouraged their most prominent leaders to chastise the rest of the US for faling short of thier moral mark, and this time and time again. Because of the evangelical movements political aims and the moralistic rhetoric used to advance them, they deserve a firmer hand.

In addition, the absolutist claims made by evangelicals also warrant a firmer hand. Most other religious groups do not threaten nonbelievers with eternal hellfire—but evangelicalism usually does. Until it ceases this rhetorical colonialism, it will earn my contempt.

In that same article those hardcore evangelical the “bible is perfect” types were labeled as having a “biblical worldview”. This is what is says about the:

“…the small circle of people with a biblical worldview demonstrate genuinely different behavior. They are nine times more likely than all the others to avoid “adult-only” material on the Internet. They are four times more likely than other Christians to boycott objectionable companies and products and twice as likely to choose intentionally not to watch a movie specifically because of its bad content. They are three times more likely than other adults not to use tobacco products and twice as likely to volunteer time to help needy people.45 Forty-nine percent of all born-again Christians with a biblical worldview have volunteered more than an hour in the previous week to an organization serving the poor, whereas only 29 percent of born-again Christians without a biblical worldview and only 22 percent of non-born-again Christians had done so.46

In a 2000 poll Barna discovered that evangelicals are five times less likely than adults generally to report that their “career comes first.”47 And there is accumulating evidence that theologically conservative Protestant men who attend church regularly have lower rates of domestic abuse than others.

Of course we’re all free to criticize and those trying hardest to do right are “in the arena” and will no doubt draw the most criticism. Perhaps we should show a little respect though, when a group member points out the groups own flaws. So few groups have a vocal member who does this sort of thing. By using this against the group we discourage them from heeding this sort of message–or from even admitting their problems out loud in the first place.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
(Paris Sorbonne,1910)