Rob Schenck, "Costly Grace:" The Conversion of an "Evangelical" Activist

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio's award-winning "Fresh Air," yesterday talked to Rev. Rob Schenck about his new memoir, "Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister's Rediscovery of Faith, Hope, and Love."  Schenck reflected on what he calls his three conversions: from Judaism to Christianity, from a Christian missionary to an "Evangelical" activist, and from a Reagan "Evangelical" to a minister of the inclusive grace of Christ.

Schenck talked about his 25 years in the most militant and violent wing of "Evangelicism."  His beliefs and actions at that period were, he said, a result of his embrace of  "...what I now call Ronald Reagan Republican Religion, which is distinctly different from Christianity, and, over time, became very narrow and very contemptuous of other people - and very self-righteous, very self-affirming at the expense of others. And I spent a long time there."

Schenck's view of today's "Evangelical" movement deserves to be quoted in full:

[Political involvement] "...has compromised our spiritual and moral integrity. In fact, I entitled my chapter on Donald Trump 'Donald Trump and the Moral Collapse of American Evangelicalism.' I think it's a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump. And I think it may lead to the demise of American evangelicalism as we have known it. But my hopeful thought in that - that as the phoenix arises out of the ashes, so a new evangelicalism will emerge mostly led by a new, younger generation of evangelicals that are truer to the faith that is at the center of evangelicalism."

The mp3 of that interview at https://www.npr.org/2018/07/11/628000131/once-militantly-anti-abortion-evangelical-minister-now-lives-with-regret is "temporarily unavailable."  A transcript of Schenck's interview can be read at: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=628000131.