At a Christian revival in Dallas’ Fair Park on Saturday, the response to the biggest victory the evangelical right-wing has been handed in decades was notably dull.
And that was perfectly fine with many of the people who attended.
The event, Together ’22, was meant to appeal toward a younger, more open and progressive faction of Christian evangelism. The revival, marketed similarly to a music festival, featured not only preachers but also non-Christians as speakers and guests.
While several attendees on Saturday, the event’s second day, made their personal opposition to abortion clear, they also criticized what they perceived as a governmental overstep into peoples’ personal lives — and the use of religion to do so.
“When you look at issues like Roe vs. Wade and gay marriage, it looks like we’re trying to force our beliefs on people through legislation,” said Christian Velasquez, a 27-year-old originally from California’s Bay Area who came to the revival with family from Waxahachie. “Whenever a Christian is trying to punish someone, that is a deeply un-Christian thing to do.”
Velasquez, sitting on a skateboard in an exhibit hall, described himself as a born-again evangelical Christian. While Velasquez grew up in the church, he said he was turned off by the hypocrisy he witnessed from people he saw growing up who described themselves as Christian.
“I am someone who believes we shouldn’t be trying to legislate our morals,” he said, while criticizing the “western, white-centric” type of Christianity he believes does that. “Today, there’s a woman in Louisiana who deeply, deeply wants an abortion, but can’t get one — Jesus would be working on her heart.”
“I think if the church put one-quarter of the energy we put into fighting abortion, fighting gay marriage, or whatever, we would be dealing more with peoples’ hearts,” Velasquez added.
Ronni Schaber, 24, said she initially cringed when abortion and the decision against Roe was brought up during an event Friday.
“There was some cheering,” Schaber said. But the speech turned into a message of understanding, not condemnation, for people who need abortions.
“It went exactly how Jesus would have taken that conversation,” Schaber said. “I’m not here for the religious thing, or for the political thing. I’m here for the love of Jesus.”
Alex Khoury, a 23-year-old from West Virginia, said he thinks the younger generation of believers is more genuine than those past.
“In this generation, the people tend to be better at genuinely being Christians — people who actually care about other people,” Khoury said.
Together ‘22 was scheduled to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Explo ‘72, a “Jesus Music Festival” led by the evangelist Billy Graham that brought about 150,000 people to Dallas in what was one of the largest religious gatherings in history.
Nick Hall, the organizer of the 2022 event and leader of Pulse, an evangelical Christian organization that hosts events around the world, expected comparable numbers at this year’s event. But organizers conceded that the heat — temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Saturday — kept many people away. At most, a few thousand attended concerts in the Cotton Bowl on Saturday afternoon and workshop sessions held elsewhere around Fair Park throughout the day.
Speaking to people at a reunion of original Explo ‘72 attendees, Hall said he wasn’t discouraged by the low turnout because a number of the sessions were being streamed online.
