Aila Boyd
aboyd@mainstreetnewspapers.com
As part of its 2022 Bishop Crumley Lecture Series, Roanoke College hosted Dr. Walter Kim on Tuesday, Oct. 11 to speak about whether evangelicals are a political movement.
The event description from the college noted that Gallup polling indicates that 122 million Americans are evangelicals.
Kim is the president of the National Association of Evangelicals.
The association defines evangelicals as those who take the Bible seriously and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. “The term ‘evangelical comes from the Greek word euangelion meaning ‘the good news’ or the ‘gospel.” Thus, the evangelical faith focuses on the ‘good news’ of salvation brought to sinners by Jesus Christ,” the association’s website states.
The association is comprised of 40 different denominations. “They range from those who are Apostles, to Presbyterian, Baptist, Brethren, Methodist, Mennonites—as you can tell a vast range of denominational traditions,” he said.
“What it means to be evangelical has denominational complexity to it, but it also has a regional complexity to it. I think it’s better to talk about evangelicalisms than it is to talk about evangelicals. We’re really talking about a phenomenon that not only has various denominational strains to it, we have regional expressions,” he said.
As an evangelical Asian American man, Kim said he represents the “complexity of our moment”
The speech was given in the Wortmann Ballroom of the Colket Center.
