28.8.08

The Reactive Politics of Evangelicalism

"All of this points to a fundamental problem with the evangelical ethos in the United States from which the emerging church movement springs. Evangelical identity, at least in the U.S. is so utterly determined by the American political imagination and the capitalist economy which grounds it, that it is unable to express or realize itself except through the political-economic architecture of America, regardless of what political subdivision it finds itself in. It is part of the fabric of evangelical identity to be beholden to a certain notion of what meaningful political existence means, namely good citizenship, responsible participation in the “public sphere” for the sake of ordering society towards the relative good. As such, any and all forms of evangelical religious practice must by definition take their bearings and derive their intelligibility from their participation in the American political apparatus which is constituted by late-capitalism."

Here.

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