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Holy Week resources and reflections

Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics

by Jonathan Dudley
New York: Crown Publishers. 208 pages

reviewed by JOHN BUSH

Jonathan Dudley is a young man on a mission, and in “Broken Words” he makes a significant contribution to fulfilling it.

In a popular style he provides a primer on how the conservative evangelical movement gained political influence and shaped much discussion of doctrine over the last several decades. Not content to be merely descriptive, Dudley offers suggestions for a new direction in evangelical action. Having grown up in a solidly conservative and evangelical extended family, he expresses obvious affection for an essentially evangelical outlook while deploring how the movement has been co-opted by far-right politics, irresponsible pseudo-science and fundamentalist theology.

The book takes the movement on in straightforward and informed terms, focusing on what he calls its “big four” issues: abortion, homosexuality, anti- environmentalism and creationism. He says, “This book is about the Bible, biology, and boundaries. It is my personal look [at] science and scripture that have assumed a central importance in defining the evangelical community.”

His outlook, while informed by his evangelical background, is also shaped by his undergraduate and graduate studies at Calvin College, Yale Divinity School and Johns Hopkins Medical School. He also is a serious student of the Bible, but insists that “the Bible’s meaning is not simply lying in its pages waiting to be discovered, but rather occurs at the intersection of scripture, theology and culture.”

Dudley devotes a chapter to each of the four hot-button issues, and in each case marshals his presentation around Scripture, history, doctrine and science, while reaching a conclusion that is at variance with the predominating conservative evangelical outlook. He is particularly concerned with the degree with which the predominant viewpoint consistently elevates a conservative political agenda above other considerations. He lays bare in very accessible language the contradictions and inconsistencies at the core of this agenda.

At the same time, the book’s tone is conversational, not combative, and Dudley’s arguments are presented with an obvious appreciation for the people and institutions that have shaped his life. Still, he is clear about ways in which politics has driven the practice and exposition of the faith rather than a clear-eyed exposition of the faith driving a political methodology.

In the concluding chapter, Dudley lays out a framework for a new generation of evangelical political activists who believe in evolution, support the environmental movement, are moderate on abortion, support gay marriage and who, in the process, are faithful to orthodox Christianity. This, he says at the end of the book, “would be an evangelical Christianity worth believing in. It hasn’t existed for a long time now. But it might exist again someday — hopefully soon.”

JOHN BUSH is a retired minister member of North Alabama Presbytery and currently is interim pastor at Fellowship Church, Huntsville, Ala. He is author, editor or contributor to six books, including “Interchurch Families,” published by Westminster John Knox.26

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