Book Review: The Other Evangelicals
The Other Evangelicals: Story of Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians – and the Movement that Pushed Them Out
by Isaac B. Sharp
Published by Eerdmans
Reviewed by Elizabeth Koning
The Other Evangelicals tells the story of the Evangelicals who had that label snatched away from them. In five chapters, focusing on the liberal, Black, progressive, feminist, and gay Evangelicals, it introduces the dissenters from within the evangelical church who asked to widen the definition of Evangelical. It presents a clear account of the last 150 years of Evangelicalism and addresses the complexity of the label. The figures are frequently inspiring and aggravating, depending on their alignment in each conflict.
The introduction frames the central question: who is a capital-E Evangelical? It is an ever shifting term Sharp calls “almost comically hard to define” (page 254) attempting to unite a disparate group. The term is debated as every new organization forms and decides who is permitted to their in-group, and the definition is rarely truly about a series of Biblical beliefs and often about whom leadership is willing to bestow approval upon.
Each chapter begins with a summary of the way the history of the group is usually told. Sharp spends the following 40 pages giving texture and names to that story. Often, their story is defined by the publications that refused to publish their work, the jobs they lost, and the Evangelicals who refused to associate with them. The mainstream Evangelicals, in turn, have often been defined as the opposition to the liberal, Black, progressive, feminist, or gay advocates. Some of these persistent objectors call themselves Evangelicals still, while others have found other homes.
The Other Evangelicals is a story of church heritage for many people. The feminists including Virginia Ramey Mollenkott who fought for their place in church leadership beyond secretarial roles paved a way for women like me, even as the Evangelical church celebrated the masculine. Though by most definitions I’m not Evangelical, the distinguishing traits of modern evangelicalism had clear impacts in churches that formed me. I see the lines from Christianity Today and Focus on the Family to me. Now I can also see my heritage from All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation and Ralph Blair’s Evangelicals Concerned organization. I hope that others will read The Other Evangelicals and trace their faith stories back to Tom Skinner, the Black Evangelical leader who came out of both the Baptist church and the Harlem Lords and then became one of the most nationally influential preachers. I hope others will see the ways the ideas of Ron Sider’s in Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger have made it into their own lives. Though these are the stories of the “losers” of the battle for the name Evangelical, they are leaders whose legacies continue.
The Other Evangelicals picks up where Jesus and John Wayne leaves off. For anyone who wants to hear what happened to those who have been rejected by Evangelicalism or wonders what Evangelicalism has been over the last 150 years, The Other Evangelicals tells that story.