Christianity Today has posted an interesting editorial, Save the E-Word: Let’s improve the public perception of evangelicalism.

In it, the author notes:

the American public’s understanding of evangelicals on the whole has rarely been more misshapen. “The public perception is that we are mean and negative,” commented “Mr. Southern Baptist” Jimmy Draper to the Boston Globe last year. The recently retired president of Lifeway Christian Resources was referring to the unsuccessful Southern Baptist boycott of Disney. But many evangelicals feel their movement has been tarred unfairly with the same “mean and negative” brush.

Several misperceptions are distorting the meaning of the word evangelical, including:

1. We are defined in the media by what we are against.

2. We are associated, in the public’s mind, with extreme fundamentalism.

3. We are linked by evangelicalism’s critics with the secular political agenda of the hard-right.