For an evangelical of my generation — born during World War II — there is some irony in the frequent complaints these days about how evangelicals have become too “politicized.” When I started thinking seriously about political matters in the early 1960s, a major complaint about evangelicalism — especially from more liberal theological types — was that we were not political enough. American soldiers were fighting a controversial and undeclared war in Southeast Asia, and the civil rights movement was struggling for justice. Yet evangelicals were espousing patriotism and calling for “law and order.”
The evangelicalism that nurtured me in my early years wasn’t, strictly speaking — “apolitical.