In recent years, your GetReligionistas have had quite a few discussions of the following question: Should today’s Newsweek continue to be treated as the important newsmagazine that it once was?
Hear me out. I know that Newsweek contains some interesting and provocative commentary pieces and, every now and then, the magazine publishes an interesting essay on a news topic that appears to have been written by someone in the newsroom.
The day-by-day norm, however, appears to consist of quick-hit pieces based on the work of others, often showing signs of work by inexperienced interns. Some of these online pieces can be considered “aggregation” pointing readers to other sources of news and information.
Please don’t read that as an automatic put-down. GetReligion publishes its share of “think pieces” that introduce readers to articles we have seen linked to religion news. The goal is to write a worthy intro and then show readers bites of the article — clearly identifying the source — that lets them see key insights or information. At the end, we encourage folks to “read it all,” with a URL to the source.
The problem, to be blunt, is when there is evidence that the journalists doing this work have little or no understanding of the material they are “writing about.” Consider this overture in a Newsweek piece with this headline: “52 Percent of Americans Say Jesus Isn't God but Was a Great Teacher, Survey Says.”
A slight majority of American adults say Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more during his lifetime, which several Christian leaders say is evidence today's faithful are "drifting away" from traditional evangelist teachings.
As earlier reported by The Christian Post, the 2020 survey conducted by Ligonier Ministries, a Florida-based Reform Church nonprofit, found 52 percent of U.S. adults say they believe Jesus Christ is not God — a belief that contradicts traditional teachings of the Bible through the Christian church, which state Jesus was both man and God.
Nearly one-third of evangelicals in the survey agreed that Jesus isn't God, compared to 65 percent who said "Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God."
Where to begin?
How about this post by Deacon Steven D. Greydanus, the veteran film critic at DecentFilms.com who also has been ordained as permanent Catholic deacon.
That’s spot on.
There is, at the moment, an all-to-common, and inaccurate, belief in many newsrooms that “evangelists” are the only remaining large body of traditional Christians in the world — as opposed to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions (along with Global South Anglicans).
Thus, any statement of ancient Christian teachings is automatically linked to those backward “white evangelicals” who are, of course, especially newsworthy because They Just Love Donald Trump.
As for this article’s treatment of the Ligonier study itself, it’s interesting — but points to this always crucial question: Are we talking about self-identified “evangelicals,” alone, or are we talking about believers who spend quite a bit of their time in worship services and other forms of Christian discipleship? Some of these “evangelicals” may have as little understanding of the meaning that theological label as they do the basics in Nicene Creed Christianity.
Add that polling issue to this: The ongoing debate about whether “evangelical” has a clear definition in modern American religious life. Is this a doctrinal term? A cultural term, only? A de facto political term?
With that in mind, let me note, once again, this chunk of an “On Religion” column I wrote several years ago with this headline: “Yes, ‘evangelical’ is a religious term. No, honest. You can look it up in history books.”
All of this confusion wouldn't surprise Billy Graham.
During a 1987 interview, I asked him to define "evangelical." Graham said he wasn't sure what the word means, since it has "become blurred. ... You go all the way from the extreme fundamentalists to the extreme liberals and, somewhere in between, there are the evangelicals." In the end, he added, one man's "evangelical" is another's "fundamentalist."
Based on his experiences with Christians around the world, Graham said it was important to keep trying to link this term with doctrinal orthodoxy. Thus, he defined an "evangelical" as someone who believes all the doctrines in the ancient Apostles Creed. Graham stressed the centrality of the resurrection and the belief that salvation is through Jesus, alone.
Notice that Graham was talking about continuing debates about how to define the doctrinal core of evangelicalism as a movement.
The takeaway there is clear: Doctrine is important.
Thus, the Newsweek team was writing about a serious issue that deserved attention. Later in the article there is this flash of valid and interesting material:
New Testament scholar and author Bart Ehrman has highlighted the historical aspect of how Jesus' perception among Christians affects the faith overall: "If Jesus had not been declared God by his followers, his followers would have remained a sect within Judaism — a small, Jewish sect," wrote Ehrman, author of How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.
But Ligonier Ministries, which helped conduct the survey alongside LifeWay Research, sees it different: "If Jesus' claim to be God is false, then He was either delusional or deceptive, but He could not have been a great teacher," the nonprofit wrote in a statement last week.