It will probably never cease to seem ironic to me the extent to which conservative Evangelicals engage in historical revisionism on topics like the Bible and inerrancy, atonement, faith, science, abortion, and countless others.
I distinctly recall how much emphasis was placed by the Evangelicals around me, when I was in that context, on getting back to authentic Christianity in contrast with the many counterfeits on offer. Yet those who study the early Christian movement with the tools relevant to the task, i.e. historians and other scholars of antiquity, are largely ignored if not adamantly rejected. With hindsight it is clear why. Historical research will challenge the depiction of the past, the “Golden Age,” that is used as an authority and motivation. It is an imagined past that conservative Evangelicalism seeks to recover, and its authority for doing so is an equally-imaginary Bible.
Conservative Christianity made the word “cult” famous as a negative epithet they placed on all sorts of religious communities and ideas. Yet the sectarianism, the insistence that one not trust mainstream sources of knowledge (now most visible in how conservative Christian Republicans talk about “mainstream media” by which they mean every news outlet around the world saying things they don’t want to believe and refuse to accept) are all characteristics of these supposedly anti-cult Christians. The truth is that they were never opposed to being a cult per se, but only to all the other cults that are wrong, unlike them. What I’ve come to realize is that “getting back to the Bible,” “Bible-believing Christians,” and emphasis on the “fundamentals of the faith” are all marketing slogans. Advertising may be true or false, obviously.
In this case, the “clear teaching of scripture” and “historic Christian faith” that are pointed to are a construction from a patchwork of biblical texts that are pushed into the service of an ideology that often, on the one hand, ignores many things that are given much more attention in the Bible, and on the other hand, emphasizes things that the Bible pays little or no attention to.
About The Author
Harrison Okafor
editor
Judith is a believer, a lover of Christ and a Gospel freak person. A passionate gospel blogger and press writer. I work with GospelHitsNaija.net Media, no 1 Gospel music platform.
