Evangelical Community

A good number of the IRD’s friends and supporters, staff, and board members would consider themselves to be evangelicals. Some are members of explicitly evangelical denominations. Others belong to independent evangelical churches. Still others are in the oldline Protestant denominations, which historically have had a large evangelical element.

Regardless of their church affiliation, evangelicals in the IRD share a high view of the authority of the Scriptures, the atoning work of Christ as sole Savior of the world, and the call for all to trust and declare that saving Gospel. And they understand that in saying “yes” to the Gospel, the church must say “no” to any political agenda that might be substituted for the Gospel.

The IRD has a long history of working cooperatively with various evangelical groups. Some IRD staff and board members have held office in the National Association of Evangelicals, and the two organizations have co-sponsored events related to religious liberty and other common concerns. Likewise, IRD leaders have been involved in activities of the World Evangelical Alliance. Our website regularly transmits prayer letters from the WEA’s Religious Liberty Commission. Through the Association for Church Renewal, the IRD makes common cause with more than 30 evangelical renewal groups in U.S. and Canadian oldline denominations.

The IRD also follows and comments on the work of politically-oriented parachurch groups such as Sojourners. We commend evangelical organizations when they encourage Christians to use their political influence on behalf of a broad agenda serving the common good. We criticize them when they seek to attach the name of the Church to prudential political judgments that are not mandated by Scripture and not supported by most evangelical church members. In this respect, the IRD is today fighting some of the same battles in the evangelical community that it has long fought within the oldline denominations.