Evangelical Christians - Why do I have to be an "Evangelical?"

I have been a Christian all of my life. I admit that I have not always walked with God, but I have always believed in God and I believed that Christ Jesus was my savior, I believe that that fully qualifies me to be a Christian.

At the same time, there has been and continues today a movement to remove God and Christ from all walks of life. I remember back in the 1960's the Los Angeles City Hall used to leave certain lights on over the Easter weekend, the pattern of the lights formed a cross. At that time I was ignorant of the fact that Easter was a pagan holiday and I liked seeing the cross in lights, what harm did it do?

One year as I was riding by the city hall I saw that the cross shaped lights were gone! I was told by my uncle that the ACLU sued and made Los Angeles stop displaying a cross. I was saddened by the loss but OK, what is the big deal.

At the same time, the name "Christ" was being replaced on "Christmas cards" with a big "X" as in "Merry XMas", I never liked this practice but what could I do about it?

Now, some 40 years later the insidious Anti-Christ movement has been removing the cross from all public places. Has been removing the Ten Commandments from court buildings and over the last three years or so Christmas itself has been under attack. Yes it is true. I went into J.C. Penney's two years ago and I could not get the sales clerk return my Merry Christmas. The most I could get was "you too". Guess what, I didn't do any Christmas shopping at J.C. Penney's since that time. I boycotted Best Buy (my favorite store) all through the Christmas season, I believe it is time for all Christians to take a stand. We may not want to form marches, we may not even want to write letters to the companies involved but we can withhold our "Christmas" dollars from these businesses that NEED our Christmas shopping money to continue in business.

Sorry, I went a little off topic, but not too far off topic because now and over the last 5 years the word Christian itself is starting to disappear. I believe that the rest of the world doesn't want to know anything about Christians and what better way of diminishing a people than to stop calling them by the name they are proud of. In ancient "Biblical" history, when a people was taken captive their name was changed, this expedited the process of the captives forgetting their previous identity and aided in their assimilation into a new culture.

Although Christians are not exactly captives, our collective name is being changed from simply Christian to either "Evangelical Christians" or simply "Evangelicals" leaving out the name Christian entirely.

I for one, resent this practice. I am not an "Evangelical!" I do not listen to any evangelists, I have not sworn allegiance to any evangelists, I don't even know any evangelists. I have however taken an oath to God and Jesus to be not only a Christian but to be the best Christian that I could be and to keep working on bettering myself in the teachings of Christ Jesus as much as possible.

The term "Christian" as defined in the Strong's concordance Greek dictionary as follows:

My pastor says that Christian means "Christ man", I have not been able to document this myself, but it sounds right to me.

According to "A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament" by E. W. Bullinger the word Christian is defined thusly:

Christian, (a word formed not after the Greek but after the Roman manner, denoting attachment to or adherents of Christ. Only occurs as used by others of them, not by Christians of themselves. Tacitus (A.D. 96) says (Annals xv. 44), "The vulgar call them Christians, the author or origin of this denomination, Christus, had, in the reign of Tiberius been executed by the procurator, Pontius Pilate,")

OK, if the news folks want to call snow "the white stuff" who cares, but calling Christians "Evangelicals" or even "Evangelical Christians" is, at least in my opinion nothing less than an insult and I wish they would refrain from using this term. Please, just call us Christians and keep the snappy labels for yourselves and inanimate objects.