A.J. Nolte on the Shifting Dynamics between Islamism and Evangelicals

The Evangelical Emphasis on the Bible as a ‘Central Organizing Principle’ and Its Practice of Proselytizing Clash with Islam

A.J. Nolte, Regent University professor and director of its Institute for Israel Studies, spoke to a June 30 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:

Evangelicalism is cross-denominational movement within Protestant Christianity. Its strongly emphasizes the Bible and evangelism and expresses a “desire for [a] personal relationship with God.” Comprising 25 percent of the U.S. population, evangelicals are mainly found among white Christians in the U.S. However, there is a growing segment in the Hispanic Latino community, and also within Asian and African-American communities.

Evangelicals see their co-religionists in the global south directly affected by the spread of “global Islamic extremism” in those regions.

Worldwide, the numbers of evangelical Christians, “particularly those with the charismatic background” who “believe in the presence of miraculous spiritual gifts in the present day,” have grown over the past half century at a rapid rate in the global south. The demographic shift is a transition from “a European and American center to a center that’s in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia.” This transition is significant for evangelicals who see their co-religionists in the global south directly affected by the spread of “global Islamic extremism” in those regions.

Historically, “theological flashpoints” between evangelicals and Islam emerged decades prior to 9/11. The evangelical emphasis on the Bible as a “central organizing principle” and its practice of proselytizing clashed with Islam, itself a proselytizing religion that makes conversion to other faiths a capital offense. Another flashpoint is traditional evangelical support for the state of Israel—a key characteristic of the faith centering on the idea that “the restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is part of God’s redemptive work in history.” Islamists opposed to this theology try to counter it by making an “Islamo-Christian argument” to minimize the “DNA from the Jewish Hebrew Bible in Christianity” and claim that both Christianity and Islam worship the same God, despite the distinct theological differences between the Christian and Islamic conceptions of a deity.

Evangelical support for Israel, as well as the persecution of Christians under Muslim rule, have resulted in “fractious” relations, with evangelicals exhibiting a “high degree of wariness and hostility” towards Islamic extremism.

Although “the core DNA” of evangelicals inoculates them against Islamist revisionism, there are some American evangelical institutions that have not been immune to the secular trend of critical theory that has swept many campuses. Those influenced by the “woke” trend have as a result adopted a “different perception of Islamic extremism.”

Susceptible evangelicals are defenseless against the left because they themselves do not have a sufficient understanding of their own history, much less of Islam.

A basic assumption of “woke” ideology is that Christians are white and therefore oppressors “in the same way that they take for granted that Jews are white and Jews are oppressors.” Although woke ideology “is ignorant of and incurious about” Christianity’s history, the ideology is “extremely Eurocentric. It is extremely centered on American racial paradigms and experiences” with its focus on “white Western European Christians.” Susceptible evangelicals are defenseless against the left because they themselves do not have a sufficient understanding of their own history, much less of Islam. Addressing the spiritual pressures from Western secular societies and Islamist spin requires “more evangelicals that are thoroughly trained in an objective understanding of Islam,” which can be difficult to attain because of the tenor of most Middle East studies programs today.

Islamists cannily portray Islam as an “anti-colonial religion” to put evangelicals who support Israel and beleaguered Christian communities on the defensive by framing evangelical support of both causes as “colonialist.” The claim that Islam is an anti-colonial religion and Christianity a colonial religion is false on two counts. First, historically, many evangelical missionaries were critical of colonial government policies that abused native populations and prohibited proselytizing. Second, whether accusations of colonialism are credible depends on the start date of colonialism. For most of Christian history in the Middle East, Christians lived as subjects “under Islamic empires.” These empires colonized previously Christian lands and determined the fate of their non-Muslim subjects by their usefulness and ultimate submission to Muslim rule.

The “complicated dynamics” in Christian-Muslim conflicts globally are playing out in those few evangelical schools that have succumbed to cultural pressure and, in essence, erased their own history. “It also puts Islam in a unique position vis-à-vis this binary that we’ve seen so often from critical theory of being the oppressed religion.” The schools that fall prey to this pressure either remain neutral or avoid the topic altogether. For the most part, however, evangelicals are resistant to Islamist efforts to “put evangelicals on the back foot.”

For the most part, evangelicals are resistant to Islamist efforts to “put evangelicals on the back foot.”

The overall outcome of the geographic shift of evangelicalism from the U.S. to the global south will sensitize American evangelicals in the “global north” to the lack of religious freedom for their co-religionists in Muslim majority countries. Moreover, there is a lack of knowledge among U.S. evangelicals regarding the strength of global southern churches’ “strong biblical” attitude towards supporting Israel. The global south, “much more theologically conservative” than most white evangelical Americans, is firmly opposed to changing traditional church teachings about marriage, sexuality, and the family.

Forecasting the effect of the geographical shift over the next decade or two, “growing evangelical Pentecostal charismatic movements” in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, [and] parts of Asia” will want their governments to reflect their values. In turn, this may lead to shifts in those countries’ relationship with Israel toward a more supportive stance regarding the Jewish state.

Marilyn Stern is communications coordinator at the Middle East Forum. She has written articles on national security topics for Front Page Magazine, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, and Small Wars Journal.
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