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Sometimes I even feel equivocal about claiming the evangelical label. For, theologically, I am right in line with the evangelical mainstream, but what people want to know when they ask me whether or not I’m an evangelical is rarely theology. What they want to know is whether I vote for Pat Robertson, listen to Amy Grant, and believe the Earth is only five thousand years old. In fact, I’ve never voted for Pat Robertson, I prefer Mary Chapin Carpenter, and I think Darwin might have been on to something.

So, when one of my gin-swilling, scratchy-jazz listening Columbia comrades asks me the e-question, my impulse is to temporize, to hem and haw, to split hairs and explain that my theological orientation is certainly evangelical, but culturally, intellectually, and politically, I am much more sophisticated than his stereotype of evangelism. I’m too insecure and worried about how I’m being perceived to risk correcting my interlocutor’s presuppositions – by pointing out, for example, that 38 percent of Democrats in America are born-again Christians, never mind suggesting that not all Republicans or home-schoolers are numskulls. I simply want to correct his impressions of me, No, no, I’m not on of them. I’m one of you. I believe Jesus Christ is Lord, but I also wear fishnet stockings a drink single malt Scotch.

– from Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner.