Straight to Jesus - Tanya Erzen

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winning and orthodoxy. After World War I, evangelical and neoevangelical groups perceived benefits in contact with outsiders and secular culture, while fundamentalists held onto an opposition to secularism and maintained a more separatist stance than other evangelicals.

      Generally, evangelicalism in America describes a vast, varied, and interactive aggregation of many different groups, like Pentecostals, charismatics, Vineyard Fellowships, Assemblies of God, and Churches of the Nazarene. Evangelicals believe that people must have an intimate relationship with Jesus and that only an individual desire to follow Jesus will suffice for salvation.11 The simple meaning of the word “evangelical” refers to the “good news” presented in the Gospels, and many modern evangelicals understand their mandate as spreading this good news and winning souls for Jesus by testifying to their own life-changing experiences. Within evangelicalism, some churches and denominations understand the Bible as infallible, true, and literal, in contrast to a liberal Protestant view that considers the Bible a product of human history and context. For instance, one of Open Door's doctrinal statements reads, “We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. It is infallible. It is inerrant in the original. It is the final authority for the Christian faith and practice.”12 However, many evangelicals do not actually read the Bible literally, believing there is metaphor and poetry in the Bible.

      The historical division between evangelicalism and fundamentalism stems from theological debates about their relationship to God and wider society. There is still discussion among historians about when fundamentalism developed as a movement and as a set of religious ideas.13 José Casanova writes that fundamentalism emerged as an anti-modernist reaction to the disestablishment of evangelicalism from liberal Protestant churches and from American public education. Fundamentalists fought battles on three fronts: liberal modernist heresies in northern congregations, Darwinism in public schools, and Catholic immigration.14 “The Fundamentals,” a series of booklets published between 1905 and 1915, helped define the tenets of fundamentalism. They defended the Bible, conservative doctrine, and the Second Coming of Jesus. However, according to Casanova, “The particular ‘fundamentals,' chosen rather arbitrarily, were not as important as the fact of proclaiming some ‘fundamentalist' tenet, some taboo boundary which could not be trespassed.”15 These publications produced a body of dogma that was distinct from the rest of Protestantism and helped to consolidate the theological position of fundamentalists.16

      Historically, popular culture cast fundamentalists as anti-modernist crusaders who advocated a separation from the world and modern society's corruption. This narrative solidified with the Scopes Trial of 1925 in which a schoolteacher, John Scopes, was fired for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school. The court battle that emerged over evolution and creation and the subsequent representations of the trial in the play and film Inherit the Wind created a definitive legacy for Scopes.17 The trial came to symbolize the triumph of science and empiricism over religion and to embody the defeat of fundamentalism.18 According to Joel Carpenter, rather than disappear after 1925, fundamentalism continued to thrive in the 1930s and 1940s, and these years were a time of significant institution building by those who defined themselves as fundamentalists and evangelicals.19 The Billy Graham Evangelistic Crusade and the National Association of Evangelicals inaugurated a new era of neoevangelism. They eschewed religious separatism by working with other religious groups and saw their mandate as influencing the wider culture around them. The 1940s and 1950s witnessed the creation of a variety of evangelical institutions, political action groups, and universities.20

      For conservative, nondenominational Protestants, many of the distinctions between fundamentalist and evangelical practices and theology have eroded. For churches like Open Door, the descriptive term “fundamentalist” or “evangelical” is less important than their particular set of beliefs and the ways they practice religion and faith as a community. They simply refer to themselves as Christians. Frank and Pastor Mike, for instance, were always reluctant to use either term to describe Open Door. “It really means sticking to fundamental beliefs, but today it means right-wing, and we're not that,” maintained Pastor Mike. “We're fundamental in our theology.” He describes his church as evangelical charismatic and agrees with the label “postdenominational.” “We're a church that always tried to go down the middle, and we got in trouble with both sides. The fundamentalists think, Why would you let gays in your church? The liberals think we're too judgmental.” He accepts the Bible as literally true but qualifies his statement, “I have to understand that the Bible has poetry, history, literature, and interpret those things, but I accept it as it stands. The Bible affects lives more dramatically when it is taken as literal truth in a literal interpretation.”

      Many men in the New Hope program grew up hearing sermons that taught homosexuality was the most horrible sin of all. At New Hope and Open Door they interpret scriptures from Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, and First Corinthians to mean that homosexuality is not God's intent, and Pastor Mike would agree. In the sermons, classes, and Bible studies at New Hope, Frank and Pastor Mike argue that the book of Genesis is proof that sex should be tied solely to procreation, that heterosexuality is mandated by God, and that the aim of sexuality is completeness, or the bringing together of the male and female. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah figures prominently in the conservative Christian debate over homosexuality.21 Using the New International Version, the New Living translation, or the New American Standard Bibles, conservative Christians traditionally read Leviticus 18:22 as an unambiguous repudiation of homosexual acts. The New International Version states, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.” New Hope's interpretation of First Corinthians includes the use of the words “sexual perverts” and states, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, not adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.” In the “Steps Out” workbook, Frank writes that the Greek words for sexual perverts are malakoi and arsenokoitai. He translates these terms as “soft” or “weak,” and by extension “effeminate,” and concludes that the words connote the passive partner in homosexual intercourse.22 In the Revised Standard and Living Bibles, these terms have been translated respectively as “homosexuals, homosexual perverts and partakers in homosexuality.” Frank acknowledges that the basis for New Hope's belief in homosexuality's sinfulness rests on the translation of a few words. However, rather than viewing these translations as the result of the bias of a particular cultural context or religious tradition, Frank believes the translation is a moot point. To him, the Bible is the word of God and is infallible regardless of human error or interpretation.

      Most of the men at New Hope read these biblical verses as the inspired word of God and refused to acknowledge cultural or historical context. There were exceptions, like Evan, a seminary graduate spending the year at New Hope. I had assumed Evan was an imposter or spy when we initially met, because his Ivy League education, Methodist background, and progressive political ideas were glaring aberrations at New Hope. His serious, lined face showed signs of time in the outdoors, and he rarely smiled or evinced the emotion of other men in the program. He had written sermons as a theology student, and he was equally well versed in biblical interpretation and postmodern theory, speaking of Judith Butler and John Calvin in the same breath. His nuanced discernment of scripture often led to clashes with Hank and disagreements over Frank's teaching style. “Many conservative Christians believe it just fell out of the sky and it's God's word, and he intended everything there to kind of speak to us in our time and place,” he told me. “There's a part of me that holds onto the view that God inspired these texts, that God was active at the moment of their creation and still speaks through them. But I haven't quite figured out how to totally balance that view with the idea that these are historical documents.” Lars, a social worker at an AIDS organization, had left New Hope after several years in the program to live as a gay man. At times, he was bitter about the conservative Christian hypocrisy around homosexuality. “I'm very confused, to be honest. I know what it says at face value. It basically says it's not favorable in God's eyes and is sin, in a nutshell; however, there are other things very conservative Christians don't follow anymore, like women not being allowed to talk or wear head coverings, so I'm left to think, if I can't take everything in the Bible at face

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