WORDS CHANGE MEANING and in the age of mass media, that change is generally for the worse. If you know the meaning of a word and hear it used to mean something else, it can drive you nuts before you give in, at least to the experience of hearing it used badly. I can't make my mouth pronounce a word in a context I know it doesn't fit. "Misnomer" comes to mind because I heard that clip of Kevin McCarthy* in one of his slap backs at Matt Gaetz. That kind of thing is especially popular among the post-literate, college-credentialed who want to sound impressive and don't realize to anyone who knows words, they're just showing how ignorant they are. I used to notice that, especially, in magazine writing out of New York City, that a word would become the scribbler's word of the season and it would start appearing, generally badly used, from one magazine to another, from one scribbler to another. It's what I started to call "scribbleage" back in the 1970s. Now they do that on Twitter and in instant online typelege.
The word "Christian" is certainly among the most abused of all words, which has, at times, led to me giving it up as a self-identifier because easily most of those who use it mean something entirely different from someone who tries to follow Jesus. That's true of many self-identified Christians, almost certainly most of them, these days. That's not a surprise, Jesus warned against something like that was coming in the Gospels.
An associated word that has been stretched and distorted out of all meaning is "evangelical" though a lot of that comes from it never having been a term of clarity either when used by self-identified evangelicals, evangelicals so identified by denomination or by those who use it either neutrally or as is so necessary these days, as a term for what a conscientious person trying to follow Jesus would reject. The problem is that there are many who identify as evangelical or who belong to a church identified as evangelical who negate that meaning of the word. Many "evangelicals" support the most radical part of the Gospel, the Epistles, the Law and the Prophets, which is, in terms of American life and politics, father left than the far left. Many of such evangelicals are politically on the left, especially among but not exclusively evangelicals Of Color. "White evangelical" doesn't help much as a means of identifying a real and coherent group because though a majority, clearly, have little to do with the Gospel and its requirements, there are a sizable number of white People who identify as evangelicals who are as radical as their fellow radical evangelicals.
The term is probably even less helpful than coming up with a coherent, homogeneous identity for white Catholics, though a large percentage of them poll as non-Christian as white evangelicals and many of the most public ones, including many priests, bishops and Cardinals are as bad as the worst of their Protestant allies. At least you can identify "white Catholics" as belonging to the same Church.
I think it would be a really good idea if Protestants who are "evangelical" and at the same kind really try to follow the radical egalitarian-economic justice of Jesus, Moses, et al would do the Protestant thing and divide themselves from what "evangelical" has come to mean, strongly, publicly and effectively, as so many Southern Baptists have done in the past fifty years.
I don't think it's possible for us to avoid a big old-fashioned religious fight and I don't think Christianity is well served by a comity that is both false and dodges the real issues of so many "Christians" who reject Jesus, the Gospel, the Epistles, etc. Young People who grew up outside of any church or who were brought up in an "evangelical" cult don't know much about the Gospel of Jesus or much of anything else, especially in those cults who specialize in turning Revelation into an action comic and a fascist tract. Something which figures highly in the "Christian" zionist movement which has promoted Israeli fascism and fanaticism, even among Jews who should know better than to trust them.
I have said recently that I don't think Catholicism is going to avoid that schism that Pope Francis has tried to avoid, pointing out that there is an unofficial one as "ex-Catholic" is polling as one of the biggest denominations in the country. I think Protestantism can't avoid something similar and the cult of niceness at all costs is destroying Christianity for the present generation.
* I think when I go underground I'll ditch my surname if for no other reason than that he uses it.
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