The Evolving Identity of American Evangelicalism ► Dr. Walter Kim

Brian Stiller: 

Hello and welcome to evangelical 360. My name is Brian Stiller, Global Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance and host of this new podcast series. On evangelical 360, I interview leaders, writers and influencers about contemporary issues which are impacting Christian life around the world. And my hope, is that it will not only be a global meeting place where faith is explored from different perspectives, but that each person listening will come away informed, encouraged, challenged and even inspired.

Joining me today is Dr Walter Kim, President of the National Association of Evangelicals in the United States. Son of Korean immigrants, with a PhD from Harvard, Dr. Kim was a pastor before taking on this role, a role not for the faint of heart! A s a community that makes up approximately 30% in America, over the past few years, evangelicals have become embroiled in a political tug of war that most of us never saw coming. What is it like living and leading within the tensions of today’s culture wars? What does the future of the Church and its gospel witness look like in the US? And whether you’re an American or someone watching from around the world, I suggest you’ll very much want to hear what Dr. Kim has to say. Thank you so much, Walter, for joining me today on evangelical 360.

I suspect most people would be surprised that the head of an evangelical association in the US is a Harvard grad. Tell me about your journey ending up as president of the NAE, the National Association of Evangelicals.

Dr. Walter Kim: 

Brian, thanks for having me on this conversation. It’s something of a meandering journey that got me to this particular place. So, I did grow up in an immigrant family. My parents moved to America from South Korea in the 60s. We did attend church, but it wasn’t by any means the central aspect of my life. So I became a Christian, actually around 13, when a local pastor was leading a youth Bible study and had invited me to participate in that summer in particular, before I started high school. So I was around 13.

I had a chance to learn more about Jesus, and it was after watching Star Wars, actually on the car ride home, when he asked me if I thought that Obi-Wan Kenobi when he gave his life so that others could escape the dust star, if that reminded me of anyone that we’ve been talking about, of course the answer was Jesus, and we pulled over into a parking lot and I prayed to receive Christ.

My journey from that point was really kind of entering into various spaces of evangelicalism that I didn’t even know to call evangelicalism.

I just had kind of come into faith in this way, and so the journey included being involved with campus ministries and pastoring churches, including a church in Canada, in Vancouver, an English ministry of a Korean-Canadian church, end ended up deciding to pursue advanced studies at Harvard in Near Eastern languages, with the thought of being a witness for Christ in secular research institutions.

But it was also during that time period that I got involved with the church and eventually came on staff of a church in downtown Boston, park Street Church, which for me, represented one of my earliest and best experiences of something of a holistic gospel that engaged the mind, the life of the heart, the proclamation of the good news of Jesus, but also the demonstration of that good news in an urban city that was very post-Christian. And it gave me this inspiration for what could happen in a church that ties things together this way in representing Jesus in word and deed. And part of the history of Park Street was its assistance in founding the National Association of Evangelicals. So it was through Park Street that I got involved as a board member of the NAE, and that involvement eventually led to this position in 2020, in January 2020.

Brian Stiller: 

Let’s start first of all with giving some definition to, in America, who is an evangelical and who makes up this body of evangelicals, their churches and individuals?

Dr. Walter Kim:

There are many rooms, I would say, in the house, a hold of evangelicalism in America. So when we think about evangelicalism we’re really thinking about a diversity of expressions denominationally diversity of expressions in institutional and ministry life. But there’s also diversity in expressions based on ethnic and racial history, black evangelicalism or the story of immigrant evangelicalism, which is increasingly becoming the story of evangelicalism in America. That adds dimensions that historically haven’t existed and, of course, there is regional differences, so different parts of the country have expressions of evangelical faith that we may sing the same worship songs and, of course, read the same Bible. But the ways that people express their faith are deeply shaped by their cultural context, and there are different cultural contexts in America.

I think the challenge exists right now is only certain strands often get highlighted because they make for a good story of conflict and contention, and there really is an inflection point that we’re experiencing right now. I’ve already alluded to the immigrant infusion of evangelicalism. That’s a phenomenon that’s very fresh and we’re still working out the implications of all of that. So these are challenging moments, of course, but they’re also dynamic moments of opportunity.

Brian Stiller:

So what holds them all together? What’s the gravitational pull?

Dr. Walter Kim: 

You know, Brian, I think there’s a theological element to it.

You know, very high view of scripture, particular ways of understanding its inspiration, desire and need for conversion to Christ, the centrality of the cross in that process and also kind of the active, again, demonstration of the gospel in our social life in addition to the proclamation.

But there’s not simply theological positions that compose evangelicalism. I think there’s a certain posture to it as well, and certainly from the NAE in its inception in the 1940s it was trying to navigate a different posture from this fundamentalist approach that viewed society and culture as very antagonistic, and that posture is one in which I think is as essential to the identity of evangelicalism as the theological positions, and that’s a posture of engagement, imperfectly lived out, of course, but I would say that is a very distinct position, portion of what it means to be an evangelical and that is a deep desire to engage with culture. But I said, there’s not just this very clear circle in which you are either in or out of evangelicalism, and so that means that there are elements even within evangelicalism that would hold the kind of posture of engagement differently.

Brian Stiller: 

Walter, you came into the role as president of the NAE at a particular social, political moment, and we’re in the midst of that now. How is it surviving within the turmoil and the storms of today’s social, religious, political moment?

Dr. Walter Kim: 

You know, there is very much a case that America is going through quite significant political and cultural upheavals. There’s turmoil in many, many ways, level of political polarization, the lack of social cohesion that we have historically had in many of our communities. These are all coming into collision with technological changes, the rise of social media and its impact on how we relate to one another or don’t relate to one another or relate poorly to one another. I mean, these are all factors that are really quite challenging. But I want to take a step back and say you know, the good news of Jesus has always been the good news and it’s still the good news of Jesus and there are millions of people in thousands of communities across the country that are doing good work and I would say that the NA seeks to continue to find that expression. So you know, 40 different denominations, scores of different Christian ministries and institutions engaged in very powerful work throughout the country, whether it’s in community development or being involved in reconciliation work, peacemaking work that still exists. The NAE also has a chaplaincy program that is, for the American context, one of the largest endorsing agencies of Protestant chaplains. That’s very compelling work, front lines work, whether it’s in front lines of the military or law enforcement or, increasingly, marketplace ministry. These chaplains are serving as the presence of Jesus in often very post-Christian or non-Christian settings. That’s the work of the NAE. Word of Relief is the humanitarian arm of the NAE, serving vulnerable communities globally in this demonstration of the gospel and word and deed, but also within the states, providing legal services for immigrants, strengthening communities in its desire to become multi-ethnic in its engagement with the various immigrant communities. But we’re also one of the official refugee resettlement agencies of our country, and think about the witness of that here. An evangelical organization, world Relief, is entrusted by the government to do good work of refugee resettlement because of the good reputation that has been gained by the NAE.

We also engage in public policy work. We’re very clear about not endorsing candidates, but we are expressive of the place of faith in the public square and seeking to give voice to a more comprehensive vision of the gospel. It includes a comprehensive ethic of life, but it also includes creation, care. It includes human rights for all. It includes racial reconciliation, strengthening of families and marriages, peacemaking, the reduction of violence. We believe that the gospel impacts every aspect of life, and so we don’t want to be beholden to a political party or a political platform, because they can never encompass the breadth and beauty of the good news of jesus christ. And so there’s a way in which we should be pastoral to all and prophetic to all, because we are just an unusual, peculiar people, as 1 Peter would call us, as the people of God.

Brian Stiller:

I’m sure that various groups in the media are looking to you for commentary on what evangelicals are saying on this issue, or in this community, or with this politician. In the midst of a time when the word evangelical is being used by so many people to their advantage, how do you go about responding, or do you not respond? Do you just keep your head down and hope that this storm will blow over?

Dr. Walter Kim: 

I think one of the weaknesses of evangelicalism, certainly as expressed in many forms of evangelicalism in the US, is we’re very strong in the kind of the popular and pietistic aspects of faith, personal conversion to Jesus, deep devotional life. We are not as strong as developing our public theology, our public discipleship. So, in other words, we have very robust understanding of what to do in helping someone strengthen their personal prayer life or strengthen their marriage. But what is the place of marriage in society? What is the role of the church with poverty alleviation in society? How do we function in our relationship in a pluralistic society to a secular government? We don’t have robust discipleship on this issue. So in the absence of that discipleship, politics has filled the vacuum.

The short-term issue is yes, we do engage on these issues, make it clear that the NAE is not in the business of endorsing political candidates, but we are engaging with public policy issues.

Again, it can range from creation care issues. Cleaning up air pollution in urban settings because of its impacts on the unborn connects the issue of creation care to the issue of pro-life racial justice. Historically, white evangelicalism has a very checkered and, I think, lamentable history of engagement on this issue and that’s raising up new kinds of conversations about the application of the gospel to historic social issues that impact different communities, and so it can include what does it mean that Native American communities need access to clean water? Include what does it mean that Native American communities need access to clean water, that historically they have been disadvantaged, and how can the church be involved with this? But the longer-term issue is we got into these problems because we don’t have a robust public theology undergirded and applied by robust public discipleship, and the longer-term issue needs to be addressed so that these problems of politics, entering into the vacuum of discipleship, won’t keep on recurring in our context again and again in future years.

Brian Stiller:

So, responding to that, how do you go about in building a public theology?

Dr. Walter Kim: 

I think, in general, people learn in a different way. They have an experience that demands education afterwards. I mean, this is how all humans learned, way before we were able to read. As toddlers we experienced the world and once we experienced the world, ouch, if I touch that, that hurts. Then the explanation makes sense. I think we’re in a moment where, as we create these corporate experiences, it raises up questions that demand answers, require us to answer. I’ll give you a very specific example.

So this past year we hosted an event at the Legacy Museum, which is a museum in Alabama that captures the history of slavery to mass incarceration in America, of slavery to mass incarceration in America. We hosted these leaders that came together from different ethnic backgrounds, racial backgrounds, life experiences, and I distinctly remember one particular group that an African-American Christian leader had heard stories of a forebear who had been lynched but never knew. Was that actually true? These stories that I hear around the dinner table about a great-grandfather that had been lynched. When he turned the corner he saw the name of his county that he had come from, and then he looked down the list and saw the name of his great-grandfather. It was an overwhelming experience, I’m telling you.

Everyone in that group that traveled with him had an experience in which the tears of sorrow and lament and maybe even outrage of compassion raised all sorts of questions. Does Jesus have something to say about this? Where was the gospel in this moment? How could Christians believe what they believed and justify what they justified? That experience created the conditions to say we need a public theology and we just don’t need it in our white papers, in our books. We need it in our churches, in our campuses, we need it in our small groups, a discipleship that addresses these deep issues. So one of the things that I think can be very powerful in all our contexts is what are the sets of experiences that bring people together from different venues and vantage points of life, that produce a common need, a common empathy and common set of questions that ask us to return to the scriptures, return to Jesus and say Lord, we need a framework, we need a response, and we believe that we can discover it in Christ and through the scriptures.

Brian Stiller:

In looking at the church in America, within the evangelical community, it’s more horizontal. It’s not a vertical structure as would be, say, the Catholic Church or the Orthodox or even the old line Protestants. So, given that you have this horizontal structure, how do you foster unity in such a world?

Dr. Walter Kim: 

Yeah, Brian, that’s the golden question that needs to be answered, right? I think one of the things that becomes apparent to me is that trust becomes the currency of greatest importance. You know, when you have a hierarchical structure and you can rely on power. In other words, someone at the top just makes a decision and it’s going to be followed by others. You don’t have that in evangelicalism. That’s both its challenge, but it’s also part of its strength. That means evangelicalism can constantly be reinvented.

It is essentially entrepreneurial, it’s populist, it’s always looking for new ways of exploring the gospel. Hence the rise of megachurches or different types of ministry. It actually reflects a spirit-led in its best moment entrepreneurialism. That is a strength that I would wish not to give up, even though it brings with it inherent challenges. So what does it mean to pull this together? We could sit and lament, or you could accept and embrace that.

There’s a strength in that and that is a moment of opportunity that, if we can couple that with trust, building relationships being present with different communities, that’s one of the, I think, the largest portion of my work showing up to different communities who have not had evangelical leaders show up to their community before, or to open conversations, not by saying I up to their community before. Or to open conversations not by saying I have something to tell you, but opening up conversations and saying I have something to learn from you, not to give up on the fact that we have convictions. But part of our convictions need to include the humble recognition that God is at work in different spaces and we need to be attuned to that and learn from that. So I venture to say that the NAE is increasingly looking like not just what America as a whole looks like, but what the vision of Revelation 7 tells us the kingdom of God will look like 7 tells us, the kingdom of God will look like Walter.

Brian Stiller: 

I know that the media paint with a very wide brush, but for many of us who are observers both in America and globally, it seems that so much of the people who would call themselves evangelical supplant the very teachings and words of Jesus. In that kind of world, how do you make known the gospel, as Jesus articulated it?

Dr. Walter Kim: 

I think the articulation that we would pursue at the NAE is the one that Jesus himself presented in his own inaugural speech, so to say, in Luke, chapter 4, when Jesus entered into the synagogue at Nazareth and found the place in the book of Isaiah and read it. The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoner, sight for the blind, release for the captives, the year of the Lord’s favor. What we seek to pursue is this kind of comprehensive gospel that touches on all aspects of life, and I also think this is how Jesus started and how did Jesus end his public ministry? In John, chapter 7, when he could have prayed any prayer as his final prayer for his people, his disciples, before he was crucified the next day. What did he pray? He prayed for the unity of his disciples, because in that there is unity with the triune God and there is the unity of witness and power and purpose.

So Jesus’ start and Jesus’ end for me shapes the DNA of what we seek to do at the NAE. We want to love those who are our brothers and sisters. We want to engage across these differences, provide unified, humble presence or, as James puts it, be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger, because human anger doesn’t accomplish the righteousness of God. There is kind of this built-in sense that those who would honor Scripture are counseled by Scripture to have the kind of humility, the ability to pray for our enemies, to bless those who persecute us and to distinctly present an alternative to the hyper-politicized and partisan view that would traffic in anger and in fear and that is what we believe not to be the way of Christ.

Given we are a part of this larger Christian world, living in a fraction of every aspect of life and the ability to forgive those who oppose us, the humility that points to the fact that our confidence is not in the kingdoms of this world. But ultimately we believe that God will restore all things, make a new heavens and new earth, and that there’s an assurance that comes with being a part of that. That comprehensive gospel was life-changing for the witness of the church in its early years. The Roman Empire, those within the empire, recognized that followers of Jesus were different in how they cared for strangers, orphans, widows. Absolutely transformative. The work of missions throughout the world often was because hospitals, schools, orphanages were coupled with the proclamation of the good news of Jesus. That same comprehensive gospel has its impact now. Is that just pie in the sky? Is that just about history? No, it’s present.

I had a researcher from a major US university, secular university, reach out to me and say she was working on a comprehensive study on those civic institutions that are working for the common good throughout America. And this researcher reached out to me because she said you know, the data is leading me to the conclusion that of all the aspects and institutions of society that are working for the common good in local communities, christians, and evangelicals in particular, are at the forefront of this. Why is no one writing about this? These are not the people that I’m reading in the op-eds. These are people who are doing real good and blessing others in the name of Jesus. I think if we can strengthen that kind from the increasingly politicized and partisan conflict entrepreneurs and to refocus to on strengthening this gospel witness that we have that is transformative, then I think we have an opportunity here of recapturing and reframing the good news of Jesus, and increasingly, immigrant churches are a part of it. You know, I used to be a pastor in Boston.

Boston is one of the most post-Christian parts of America. When the American Bible Society and Barna did their annual studies on the state of the Bible, boston in the 100 metropolitan areas of the country, would often rank at the very, very bottom of Bible engagement one of the least Bible-engaged parts of our country all throughout the 2010s. And yet in this part that was post-Christian the number of churches in what was often viewed as the graveyard of churches the number of active churches in Boston from 1965 to 2015 doubled. The number of churches doubled. Most of them were immigrant evangelical churches.

That was a quiet revival that is unfolding, unfolding and no one was writing about it. They were writing about how New England and Boston was post-Christian. There’s a story that in God’s newspaper is being written about even if it’s not in our contemporary newspapers, and I’m eager to have that story front and center that God is still at work in communities with a comprehensive gospel and word and deed, and that we are right now in America encountering an inflection point. That, I think, is one of the most exciting moments for the church in America, an opportunity to find the global church infusing fresh vitality to the church in America.

Brian Stiller: 

Walter, thank you so much for honoring us with your presence, helping us better understand the evangelical church in America and getting to know you as president of the NAE. Blessings on your ministry and your life. Thanks again for being with us today on evangelical 360.

Dr. Walter Kim:

Thanks, Brian, what a delight to be with you.

Brian Stiller: 

Thanks so much for joining us today. If you have found this valuable, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a like. We would appreciate it if you would share it with your friends and colleagues as well. You’ll find links in the show notes of this episode for anything we’ve discussed today. If you haven’t signed up yet to receive my free Dispatches from the Global Village, it’s an opportunity to join me and meet leaders in many different countries around the world. It’s also a wonderful way to stay in touch with upcoming episodes and guests. Just go to brianstiller.com. Thank you for listening. Until next time.

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