This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

A lot of words these days don’t mean what they used to mean.

Think only of the word “gay.”  Today and for a number of years, it has been used to refer to homosexual individuals.  Before, it simply meant “happy.”

But, there is a word that has been perverted beyond all levels.  It is the word “evangelical.”

Here is what the word means according to the dictionary:

“Evangelicals take the Bible seriously and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  The term ‘evangelical’ comes from the Greek word euangelion, meaning ‘the good news’ or the ‘gospel.’  Thus, the evangelical faith focuses on the ‘good news’ of salvation brought to sinners by Jesus Christ.”

However, these days, the word “evangelical” has come to mean something far different, at least as it is used in the media.   

It becomes something perverted, often by Donald Trump and his ilk who have co-opted the word to convey that “white evangelicals” favor Trump for president. 

Writing in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago, Thomas S. Kidd, professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, made this point in the following way:

“The 2024 presidential campaign began in earnest on Monday, with the Iowa caucuses.  On the religion front, this means a new round of reports by journalists, pollsters, and scholars about how ‘evangelicals’ support Donald Trump.

“But who exactly are these evangelicals?  It’s difficult to know.  Some self-identified evangelical voters don’t even attend church.  Many in the media seem to define ‘evangelicals’ as white Republicans who consider themselves religious.  Such a definition, in both a spiritual and a historical sense, is ludicrous.”

Kidd goes on to say that “evangelical” is an ancient Biblical term, derived from the Greek euangelion, translated as “gospel’ or ‘good news,’ as I wrote above.   By the 17th century, he said, the word typically meant Protestant, as opposed to Catholic.

He goes on:

“But the evangelical movement emerged in recognizable form during the 1730s and ’40s, when the ‘First Great Awakening’ convulsed Europe and the American colonies.  Untold numbers of people in those revivals professed to have been ‘born again,’ or converted to new faith in Jesus.

“That phrase – ‘born again’ — used by Jesus in the Gospel of John, refers to the signature belief and experience of evangelicals.  To be born again is to acknowledge oneself as a sinner and put one’s faith in the Lord for salvation.  This is the good news:  Christ died to rescue sinners.”

Kidd asks how the term “evangelical” became more of a political and demographic label than a religious one?   How did adherence to the Republican Party become a more essential mark of being an evangelical than churchgoing?  

Then, he answers his own question.

“If you search for ‘evangelicals’ in the news, the leading stories are almost always political.  Over time, the coverage of conservative Christian voters and the work of groups such as Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority gave average Americans — especially non-churchgoers — the impression that ‘evangelical’ was basically a political term.

“When white evangelicals firmly aligned with Ronald Reagan’s GOP in 1980, drawn by his staunch anti-communism and pro-life commitments, the evangelical-Republican fusion strengthened.”

And, with the following, Kidd concludes:

“Still, journalists regularly report on non-churchgoing white voters who say they are evangelicals.  These folks are among the most devoted Trump supporters, in Iowa and across the country.  To those who apply the term in a narrowly political and ethnic way, we might ask if they, or the ‘evangelical’ voters they query and write about, know what the word means.

“They might bear in mind, too, that the vast majority of the world’s real evangelical Christians have never voted for Trump.”

My conclusion:  I am among those real Christians who know what the word “evangelical” really means.  And, further, I have never voted for Trump and never will.

I hope the word “evangelical” can come back into accurate use, but, given politics these days, I am not holding my breath.