Examining White Evangelical Mission
Why has White evangelicalism failed to confront the sinful power dynamics of White supremacy?
For the first two posts in this series, see:
What is White Supremacy? Pt. 1
What is White Supremacy? Pt. 2
As I have written previously, I do not use the term “evangelical” to describe myself. However, as a confessionally Reformed Presbyterian, I must admit that I still swim in evangelical waters and live my ministry adjacent to the cultural structures of evangelicalism. While I have little interest in engaging in the debates of White evangelicalism and will do so very infrequently in my writing, I believe this essay is a necessary contribution to this series.
Why has White evangelicalism failed to confront the sinful power dynamics of White supremacy? I want to distinguish between this question and one my readers might want me to answer instead. That other question might be asked, “How has White evangelicalism upheld, supported, and defended White supremacy?”
These are two very different questions. The latter attributes malicious intent to leaders and structures within White evangelicalism. While I believe such malicious intent clearly exists, I do not think it applies to most adherents of distinct and prevailing White evangelical beliefs. I think most in the White evangelical camp are unaware of the origins and consequences of their ideas and have simply accepted them as true without close examination.
The answer to the above question lies in the dominant teaching regarding the church’s mission within White Evangelicalism. White evangelicals have long grappled with the relationship between evangelism and social action in society. The prevailing understanding of White evangelical mission draws a clear distinction between the organized, institutional church and the individual lives of Christians in the world. While individual Christians may engage in social issues, the organized church and its leaders are expected to focus solely on spiritual matters, which include preaching the gospel, administering the sacraments, and making converts.
The origins of this view, as it is currently articulated, can be traced back to the 19th-century conception of “the spirituality of the church” proposed by prominent theologians such as Charles Hodge and James Henley Thornwell. These men sought to provide theological justification for the institution of slavery. In their defense of that horrid practice, they argued that the church does not possess the authority to legislate on moral or civil matters; the church must not speak “where Christ has not legislated.”1
This idea has influenced several generations of White evangelical missions. It introduced the concepts of prioritization, separation, limitation, and division into our interpretation of Scripture and the church's calling. Many White evangelical churches today now tend to over-spiritualize the church’s mission, focusing on personal salvation and doctrinal teaching while neglecting social service, renewal, and works of mercy and justice.
When the church’s mission is over-spiritualized and focused solely on salvific matters, it becomes disconnected from the historical and global catholic church. Furthermore, it distances itself from the Scriptures and isolates itself from the ministry of Christ in His kingdom. Such a mission struggles to address the daily challenges most people encounter in this world. It cannot effectively confront the “rulers and authorities,” allowing them to reign with little resistance.
Explaining White Evangelical Mission
In their book What is the Mission of the Church?, Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert present one of the best-articulated defenses of a spiritual (or soteriological) church mission.2 DeYoung and Gilbert assume that the church’s mission must be primarily grounded in one passage of Scripture. It is an unusual stance for DeYoung (a Presbyterian) and Gilbert (a Reformed Baptist) to take, as they both come from traditions within covenant theology that underscore the unity of Scripture and God’s redemptive work. However, regarding the church’s mission, DeYoung and Gilbert opt to interpret Scripture like Dispensationalists, focusing on discontinuity in the redemptive narrative and God’s work in the world.
DeYoung and Gilbert analyze several passages in Scripture to explain why they cannot serve as grounds for the church’s mission. They dismiss Old Testament passages partly because they believe it is more appropriate to base missions on the New Testament rather than the Old (note how their initial assumption shapes the argument).3
The argument centers on the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20; cf. Mark 13:10; 14:9; Luke 24:44-49; Acts 1:8) as the text for defining the church’s mission. DeYoung and Gilbert therefore define mission in strictly spiritual terms, emphasizing that the church’s mission encompasses three key elements: 1) evangelism, 2) the development of believers by protecting them against doctrinal errors and grounding them in the faith, and 3) the establishment of healthy churches through gospel proclamation and sound leadership.4
This soteriological mission has also been articulated by the Reformed Baptist theologian Jonathan Leeman in his essay “Soteriological Mission: Focusing in on the Mission of Redemption.”5 Leeman’s argument draws a clear line between what he refers to as “church-as-organized-collective” and “church-as-its-members.”
As a collective, the church and its leaders have the narrow mission of “declaring or mediating God’s judgments, which they fulfill through gospel proclamation, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, as well as instruction.”6 As members, the church has the broad mission to “image God in everything; to live as just and righteous dominion-enjoying sons of the king.”7
Leeman strongly believes that it is vital to protect this distinction because he sees “God’s eternal wrath as the most urgent matter of all.” We must safeguard the spiritual call of salvation, as “directing people’s hearts and minds to God is the most important thing a church can do, and the singular activity around which everything else hangs” (emphasis mine).8
These authors effectively represent the views of White evangelicalism on mission. Whether grounded in Scripture or concepts about the church (ecclesiology), these arguments emphasize separation and limitation. The Great Commission must be interpreted distinctly from other mandates in Scripture, the church as an institution must be distinguished from the lives of its members in the world, and the church's mission must, therefore, be confined to spiritual, salvific matters alone.
Examining White Evangelical Mission
I admire these authors for their urgent call to evangelism and the proclamation of the gospel. However, these views have placed human limitations on the Church–constraints that Christ himself has not established.
In limited space, I want to examine how this over-spiritualized mission does not align with the historical church, is uninformed by the global catholic church, and misconstrues God’s redemptive work in Scripture.
Historically Unaligned
One challenge in studying missiology within church history is that this language is a relatively recent theological development. It is uncommon to find theologians speaking succinctly about “the mission of the church” prior to the 19thcentury. However, if we analyze church history on its own terms, we will discover that the organized church seldom restricted itself to spiritual concerns, instead responding to the needs of its time through both proclamation and demonstration.
Rodney Stark’s work on the early church serves as an invaluable resource for every Christian to include in their home libraries. Stark highlights how, despite facing significant suffering and injustice, the early church established a form of welfare state in a world that otherwise lacked social services.9 Stark summarized his findings by stating, “it was the way these [Christian] doctrines took on actual flesh, the way they directed organizational actions and individual behavior, that led to the rise of Christianity.”10
As I have demonstrated several times on my Substack, the Reformed tradition has a long legacy of attending to social matters with the resources of the organized, institutional church. As Calvin scholar W. Fred Graham concluded,
Th[is] author would insist that Calvin's social and economic teachings were clearly just as important to Calvin himself, and might just as well be used as the yardstick of Calvinist orthodoxy. Certainly they place Christ's church on the side of the poor- and in our day when the revolting poor of the world are generally found outside the church, this is a sobering thought. Will we who are rich continue to support our pastors and teachers when they march at the side of the poor?11
The limitations of White evangelical mission simply cannot be found within most major streams of church tradition and history.
Globally Misinformed
White evangelical mission has not addressed the questions raised by the global church, questions that emerge from the cries of those the world has regarded as non-persons. There is a reason this overly spiritualized mission is primarily found within White evangelical churches and institutions. If it exists in the global context or majority world, it is because it first arrived there as an export rather than emerging as an Indigenous, contextualized theology.
The Lausanne Movement is a better example of globally conversant missiology. In its original statement, signed in 1974, global Christian leaders affirmed:
The message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist. When people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom and must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world. The salvation we claim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead.12
At the 2024 Lausanne conference in Seoul, this international Christian movement once again affirmed:
Our task in mission, therefore, is not simply one of announcing a message in order to secure professions of Christian faith. Rather, our evangelistic task is to announce the message of a crucified Messiah as we live lives that accord with that message with the aim of seeing others formed in this same pattern of life. The pursuit of righteousness in our personal lives, our homes, our churches, and in the societies in which we live can no more be separated from the announcement of the gospel than being a disciple can be separated from making disciples.13
Dominant White evangelical mission in the United States is opposed to the wide agreement of the global church.
Misconstruing Scripture
Do the leaders of the church have a special calling for gospel proclamation and biblical instruction? I think it is fair to say that this applies to pastors and elders, yes. But do they not also have the responsibility of preparing their church members for “works of ministry” (Ephesians 4:11-13)? How can such preparation take place unless it is taught and modeled? Furthermore, what should we think of the role of deacons, an office the Reformed tradition has long considered essential for leading and modeling ministries of mercy and justice in the world?
Must we warn people to flee the wrath that is to come? Yes (Matthew 3:7; 2 Thess 1:8-9)! But aren’t we also meant to tell people about the coming King who will restore all things (Ephesians 1:20-21), who even now commands us to demonstrate peace and reconciliation to the sinful powers of this world (Ephesians 3:10), and who has prepared good works for us now that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10, Titus 2:14)? I think so.
In their reading of Luke 4:16-21, DeYoung and Gilbert explain that since we never see Jesus setting literal prisoners free, he must also not be referencing the literal poor, blind, and oppressed in his Nazareth declaration. They are unwilling to interpret the passage in light of Jesus’ affirmations regarding the literal poor and oppressed (Luke 7:22-23), nor can they consider its historical context in the Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25), which had concrete material and economic consequence. By reducing Jesus’ teaching to spiritual matters, they introduce a God who changes His mind–a God who once cared for the economic and material realities of His people but now primarily focuses on their spiritual needs.
Yet God does not change his mind (Numbers 23:19). Instead of recognizing how Jesus adds spiritual realities to concrete earthly ones, DeYoung and Gilbert reduce and alter the internal unity of Scripture between the Old and New Testaments. Ironically, this reduction will inevitably lead to a failure in discipleship, as Jesus clearly taught that we are his disciples if we do what he said (Luke 8:15, 21). This includes obedience to economic realities (Matthew 23:23) and all matters of social justice (Matthew 25:31-46).
An over-spiritualized White evangelical mission hinders our ability to read Scripture effectively and disconnects us from Christ's ministry in the world.
The Effects of White Evangelical Mission
Where does White evangelical mission leave us? With a charge to go into the world, proclaiming a message of salvation from sin while leaving the material world relatively intact. White evangelical mission simply does not understand that the soul stands little chance in environments built for your destruction.
Intentionally or not, White evangelical mission does not confront the sinful power dynamics of racism, Whiteness, White Supremacy, and every other form of injustice in our world. It is not designed to. White evangelicalism can rarely be found within diverse urban communities that experience these realities of prejudice and injustice every day.
By limiting itself to spiritual matters, White evangelicalism has reinforced cultural boundaries. It has become so preoccupied with maintaining these boundaries that it has turned inward on itself. It has relied on power and polarization in its quest for cultural dominance. It has cut itself off from the ministry of Christ and the wisdom of His global and historic church.
There is a reason why we must still call it White evangelicalism.
Because it is.
We will not find answers to White Supremacy in White evangelical mission. Instead, as Orlando Costas argued, we must commit to missions in its “comprehensive task, affecting both the inner life and outreach of the church, with evangelistic, educational, administrative, ethical, diaconal and liturgical dimensions.”14
We need a mission that is informed by the kingdom of God.
See Sean Michael Lucas, “Owning Our Past: The Spirituality of the Church in History, Failure, and Hope,” Reformed Faith & Practice, accessed November 22, 2023, https://journal.rts.edu/article/owning-our-past-the-spirituality-of-the-church-in-history-failure-and-hope/.
Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011).
DeYoung and Gilbert, 41-42.
DeYoung and Gilbert, 62.
Jonathan Leeman, “Soteriological Mission: Focusing in on the Mission of Redemption” in Four View’s on the Church’s Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 17-45.
Leeman, 29.
Leeman, 26.
Leeman, 30-31.
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco, VA: Harper, 2007), 83-84.
Stark, 211.
W. Fred Graham, W. Fred Graham, The Constructive Revolutionary: John Calvin & His Socio-Economic Impact (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1978), 76.
The Lausanne Covenant, https://lausanne.org/statement/lausanne-covenant#christian-social-responsibility.
The Seoul Statement of the Fourth Lausanne Congress, https://lausanne.org/statement/the-seoul-statement.
Orlando E. Costas, The Integrity of Mission (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1979), xiii.
It's not a good look to omit the word "everything" from the great commission. As in, "baptize them and teach them to obey everything I have commanded."
It's also just about spitting distance from Marcion.
This is a very useful corrective to a common teaching in evangelical circles, which is "we are correcting the church to be more purely spiritual because the liberals are the ones who invented the social gospel, which adulterated the gospel, so we're recovering the purity of it."
The slavery apologetic connection is much more influential than people realize. I myself was shocked when I began to research the insidiousness of the lost cause myth in our national history. I'd taken many of that myth's planks for granted, but the lost cause thinking contributes significantly to the dynamic you describe.