- An evangelist defends her faith;
- Mahler’s 3rd.
Two pieces about an evangelist who is defending her ‘culture.’ Reading them now. What is she defending exactly? That could not apply to any religion?
First, from the evangelist herself.
Washington Post, Bonnie Kristian, 4 Sept 2026: I’m an evangelical. My faith isn’t ‘a cancer.’, subtitled “The stereotypes don’t line up with reality.”
Earlier this year, a viral clip passed through my social media feed. It came once, twice and finally, the third time, I watched progressive podcaster Jennifer Welch talk straight to camera, her voice filled with disdain as she declared the faith of millions of American evangelicals “a cancer.”
“These are the worst people in our country,” she said.
Welch has hosted just about every national Democrat — up to Barack Obama — on her show. And she isn’t alone in her distaste for evangelicals. Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California governor Gavin Newsom, has claimed that evangelicals are “pulling us back as a country to a time and a place where we don’t deserve to be.” A headline in New York magazine states that America has a “White evangelical problem.”
I’m an evangelical woman and a frequent critic of President Donald Trump. I don’t believe evangelicals are above reproach. But legitimate criticism of their political choices has shaded into something darker: contempt for an entire group of Americans.
She cites historical examples (H.L. Mencken) and many more current ones. But is there a defense in here somewhere for being an evangelical? Being committed to an irrational faith? Which would, she doesn’t mention, impose their beliefs on the American public at large? No. Her defense is that evangelicals are mostly nice people.
According to a study conducted by the American Bible Society in conjunction with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, of the religious demographics surveyed, evangelicals lead both in the average amount donated and in the percentage of people donating money — not just to churches, but to religious and nonreligious charities.
Those numbers match my experience over a lifetime in evangelicalism. Evangelical churches and communities are not perfect, but they are good, full of people sincerely seeking to love God, study Scripture and bring you a casserole.
She concludes,
Like other religious bigotries, animus toward evangelicals harms the civic friendship on which democracy depends. Like their Muslim, Jewish and secular neighbors, evangelicals don’t deserve broad-brush dismissals. They’re people with whom you may have grave disagreements, but they’re also people capable of extending grace — and receiving it in turn. Evangelicals are people you can have a country with, people not deserving of scorn.
Until evangelicals try to pass their religious scruples into law, to ban abortion, demonize trans people and homosexuals, deny and suppress science, and support a president who is destroying the country. Does she not realize this?
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Another take, from a journalist.
Vox, Christian Paz, today: An evangelical explains what people get wrong about her faith, subtitled “A new book from writer Bonnie Kristian argues that evangelicalism has been ‘monstered.’ What aren’t we getting right?”
(Faith: a commitment to believing things that are not objectively true. Which other people are supposed to respect.)
Paz begins,
When the Donald Trump era is over — however that ends — I feel comfortable saying that at least one thing will be certain: He’ll still have the overwhelming support of evangelical Christians in the United States.
Even today, with the president’s popularity at near-record lows, you’d be hard-pressed to find a religious denomination or ethnic group more supportive of Trump and his MAGA movement than American evangelicals, something that’s been true in polling and election results over the last decade. And that’s all lent itself to the perception in popular media, elite spaces, and the greater non-evangelical world of Christians that this movement is full of bigoted, Trump-worshipping hypocrites.
Well, yes. That’s how it appears. Why am I and so many others wrong?
Yet Bonnie Kristian, a deputy editor at Christianity Today and a fellow at the foreign policy think tank Defense Priorities, says that perspective gets it all wrong. It’s a caricature those outside the evangelical movement have made the mistake of accepting as truth, and in the process, they conflate the loud, Trump-supporting, white evangelical voting bloc with the entire evangelical faith tradition.
The result is a “monstering” of normal people who hold deep and earnest beliefs about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the importance of the Bible, and spreading the gospel. They may vote for Trump, and they typically favor Republicans, but Kristian argues the reason they vote that way is often more complex than supporting every policy, or even most policies, associated with those candidates.
This is not helping. I think they’re delusional in having a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ, a mythical figure, and in error about the importance of the Bible, which was written by many people, ignorant by our standards, many thousands of years ago.
She expands on all this in a new book out this week — In Defense of Evangelicalism — in which she rebuts five popular attacks levied against the evangelical movement in the US: that it is insincere, advances evil, is hypocritical, imposes itself on others, and seeks political control. It’s an impressive intellectual undertaking, and an informative education for those of us who grew up outside of the evangelical tradition.
The rest is an interview. Maybe I’ll read it later.
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Tonight’s music.
Another great video showing the conductor and orchestra and chorus. This is one of the more extravagant Mahler symphonies, long, with a soloist, and a boys’ choir who stands up there for an hour and a half and only sings for about five minutes. Still, the music is glorious. And I especially like the moment, about 1:03 in, in which the music depicts some grand epiphany. I’ve always thought about this as depicting the Gate to Valhalla opening, as in some Maxfield Parrish painting.
