I have spent my whole career in the Church trying to rescue people from the “gospel” as it is expressed by some people. I have not been alone in the effort. I have many colleagues who share the struggle..
Consider first an attempt at an accurate definition of biblical faith; then, an exploration of how American Evangelicals have distorted the genuine meaning faith into magical thinking.
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
This is the incomparable expression of the meaning of faith from the Book of Hebrews.
Genuine, biblical faith begins with FACTS. That is, it begins with a solid grounding in Creation.
Faith is born of careful listening, what the Hebrew language calls, “sh’ma”. The Hebrew prophets listen for the “Word of the Lord.” The “Word of the Lord” for the prophets is not the Bible. The Bible did not yet exist. No, no, no. The “Word of the Lord” is expressed and heard in two places: First, it is heard in Creation. The material stuff of the earth, for the Hebrew imagination, is the “Word of the Lord” expressed.
Geologists studying the fossil record were “listening” to the “Word of the Lord” in the 18th Century. Darwin in his close observation of different animals on the Galápagos Islands was listening to the “Word of the Lord.”
It would have been very appropriate that Origin of Species begins with the sentence, “Thus saith the Lord.” The reason? Prophetic utterance begins with careful listening. Today we call careful listeners, “scientists.” One listens with not only ears but eyes and hands and careful, disciplined deliberate thought as well.
Where are the prophets of today? They are the climate scientists who are listening to “the Word of the Lord” as God speaks through climate data.
The second place one listens for the “Word of the Lord” is through a careful and deliberate study of history. We see this in the Bible most clearly in what the prophets had to say about the kings of Israel and Judah.
One singular and outstanding example is the prophetic witness to the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem by Babylon. What is God doing with the people of Israel in the rape of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon?
The prophetic conclusion is that God was moved by the exploitation of the people of Israel by the rich and the corruption of the kings. “Thus saith the Lord” is in this instance the Biblical call to social and economic justice.
When this divine call is ignored by people in power, the “Word of the Lord” brings judgment. Note that the judgment is not against an individual. It is against a system of injustice that the kings and rich pressed upon the people. It is also one that the people endorsed (at least passively) by their refusal to stand up against exploitation as Jeroboam did against the grandson of King David.
So genuine faith is born of careful listening to the “Word of the Lord” expressed in creation and in history. Faith is born in careful listening, but it is only fully expressed with deliberate action.
“The assurance of things hoped for” and the “conviction of things unseen” informs choices. It influences what the person of faith DOES. What follows this definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1 is a long retelling of the history of faithful action taken by men and women out of the history of the Jewish people. Well of course it is. Faith is a born, after all, by a close listening for the “Word of the Lord” expressed in history.
So this is the genuine meaning of biblical faith. What distorts it?
It begins with the Authority Myth. The deep roots of the Authority Myth are found in ancient, pre-Christian Rome. The church became Roman when it stopped listening, “sh’ma”, and it began obeying.
In the early days of the Authority Myth, obedience was to be directed to a person linked to an office — the Pope. Following the Reformation, obedience was to be directed to a book: the Bible.
The Bible became the idolatrous object of Protestants. (This has always been the critique of the Protestant sects by Roman Catholicism.)
In the American experience, there emerged a hyper-allegiance to the Bible as interpreted preachers. The roots of this are in the erroneous theory of inerrancy developed by B.B. Warfield n the 19th Century in -- of course --America.
Americans in this tradition no longer learned how to listen (“sh’ma”) for the Word of the Lord. They were now directed to obey the authority placed over them who interpreted the meaning of the Bible for them — their local pastor. There ensued a separation from Creation and History. Faith became expressed as obedience to whatever their pastor told them.
As pioneers moved over the Appalachians, these authoritarian pastors were themselves removed from listening to Creation and History as they were unable to participate in education.
They began to condemn education as a thing of the devil. Whatever challenged their own idiosyncratic reading of the Bible (without any understanding) they condemned as demonic. Later they instituted "Bible Colleges" where they could reinforce the Authority Myth and convey a distorted understanding of faith unchallenged by the broader academic community.
So now, Evangelicals have been trained to reject as demonic the discoveries of science and to dismiss the wisdom of history.
Faith for them has become magical thinking as they have abandoned careful listening.
So today we have a racist, misogynist President who admires dictators and who aspires to naked-power wielding, and who 85% of American Evangelicals support and for whom he is God’s anointed.
Why do they believe this? Their pastors tell them so. To do otherwise is to abandon their “faith” and to, therefore, spend eternity in hell.