The word Evangelical has accrued the implied synonym of Terrorist.

Now, I know that wasn’t Billy Graham’s use of the word when he started using it. But it has been interesting to me to watch those both within the church and those outside of it trying to understand this word that has become an ideology. A ‘literal’ definition of evangelical, might be gospel-ish — which may be a definition evangelicals might like to cling to and promote.

However, whenever this term is used in North American media, it seems like they were using it synonymously with something like “terrorist”. Now, at first one might say, well, those media bastards are just biased. And just dismiss such a public comparison. And to be truthful, I did this for some time. But recently, I watched two films that made me think that dismissing “the liberal media” is not a healthy option for Christians who would consider themselves somewhat gospel-ish.

The first film I saw which got me thinking about religious fundamentalism is Religulous with Bill Maher.

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Now, I did find Bill Maher completely annoying in this film. However, I did hear out his laments about what he calls “religion”. He did not just target Evangelicals, but went and targeted a wider circle of crazies. I think what the film does well, is not dismantle “religion” but instead, shows how “fundamentalism” in religion is the cause of unbelief in a society. I think you should rent the film and give it a hearing.

The second film that I saw was a documentary called Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi.

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I felt that this documentary was very well done and Ms. Pelosi was very charitable in places where she could have punched harder. In fact, the sort of synonym came out to me in the watching of this documentary as interviews took place with high level evangelicals and the language they used of war, battle cry, no fear of death, etc. It became apparent to me that these interviews ran parallel to the caricature of a muslim terrorist.

What happens when fundamentalism sees itself in the mirror? I found a very interesting interview with the atheistic fundamentalist, Richard Dawkins. It was very interesting to see both Ted Haggard and Dawkins spar off in their fundamentalist rants.

What I am not saying is that we need to up the ante and sound the drums for a return to the culture wars. As there are some who consider themselves evangelical who do so. No, what I am saying is, perhaps, gospel-ish Christians should become more gospel-ish. I don’t see the “liberal media” advancing a bias in these films. Instead, I see them holding up a mirror to the church (and the rest of the world) to reflect the kind of witness the church is (not) giving to Christ.

What these films lack are, however, a bit of diversity in the evangelical scene. Granted, the majority of evangelicals are rightly portrayed in such films, however, instead of going to Falwell’s University for interviews, these filmmakers may have found something more gospel-ish in places like Regent College in Vancouver, BC. There is a growing minority under the big tent of Evangelicalism that seeks to disconnect itself from religious fundamentalism. John Stackhouse, a professor at Regent, recently wrote an article on this very topic entitled Evangelicalsim and Fundamentalism.

So, American Evangelicals… Go watch these films and do some reflecting on them. Have the small groups in your churches watch them together so that we might begin to look more like the Jesus of the Gospels, and less like terrorists.