Fired Up: Christians Respond to 'Year of the Evangelical Woman' Prediction

Evangelical women debate the term "evangelical" and the merits of continuing its use or not.

from CBNNews.com http://ift.tt/2BR03a8

A Liberty University professor who predicted that 2018 will be "the year of the Evangelical Woman" and called on believers to "take the label back" may not get her wish.

Dr. Karen Swallow Prior, an English professor and research fellow at the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, says she's been moved by the empowerment of women in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and others this year, as well as the growing hostility towards the term "evangelical." 

She told CBN News that she believes the word has a rich historical legacy and would like to see it reframed. "Many people associate evangelical with simply these past several years and don't realize the long history that it has beginning in England and the role that evangelicals played in abolitionism in both England and America," she explained.

Earlier this week Prior tweeted "I predict that 2018 will be the Year of the Evangelical Woman. Let's take the label back..."

Prior said she defines evangelicalism based on the work of historian David Bebbington who emphasizes belief in the centrality of the Bible, the cross, the necessity of new birth, evangelism and social action.

But women of color in particular have been pushing back on Prior's desire to revive the term, noting its association not only with current politics but also racism. 

Dr. Ekemini Uwan, a theologian and writer tweeted, "the way forward with the term is to cast it into the pit of hell from whence it came and wholeheartedly embrace the label 'Christian which is what the saints worldwide are dying for."

Jasmyne Jones responded to the debate on Twitter saying "unfortunately the cultural connotation of the term has further marginalized women of color. We would be hard-pressed to find any women of color in the West who would identify themselves as evangelical solely because of the pain that cultural evangelical has caused our community."

Prior believes the centuries of history surrounding the term is a good reason to continue using the term tweeting at one point, "if 'evangelical' was good enough for John and Charles Wesley as well as British abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and Hannah More, it's good enough for me." 

Yet she told CBN News that she's considering the responses of minorities who've experienced pain and abuse from self-professed evangelicals. "I'm listening to those who find it a stumbling block and if that's the case it's certainly not the hill I want to die on," she explained.

"What I want to do is to hear those voices and to make that theological framework which I believe in so much better apply to all people in the way the Gospel does apply to all those people," she said.

Prior said she is encouraged by the number of men in the church who've been listening to the sexual abuse stories of women in the church. "That is what has really encouraged me and prompted the tweet," she explained, "men want to hear from the perspective of women in evangelicalism."