News & Nuggets - July 2009

The Good Ship Evangelicalism

Difficulty Level: Intermediate Believer

The Scuttling of the Good Ship Evangelicalism.

Of late, it has been in vogue to speak of the much anticipated death of evangelicalism.  While some of these predictions are premature and more wistful than real, there has been an overt effort to scuttle the Good Ship Evangelicalism.  Our purpose is not to point fingers or seek to assign blame, but rather to provide occasion for soul searching, as we observe the death struggles of this sixty or seventy year old movement.  

1. To begin, we remind ourselves that Christ’s church, though pummeled into obscurity, will never fail or be destroyed. 

We have the iron clad word of our Lord Himself, who asserted that He would build His church and the gates of hell itself would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18).  As believers, we expect and welcome the sufferings associated with the servant Christ (Isaiah 42:4), and we do not fear the extinction of His church.

However, we should be far more exercised over the troubles which we have brought upon ourselves, because we have contributed much to our own difficulties.  To understand exactly what is currently happening to evangelicalism, we must look briefly at its origins.

Technically, the evangelicalism which we know today should properly be named Neo Evangelicalism.  This new evangelicalism rose in the 1940s and became a dominant force by the end of the 1960s.  In fact, its success was so pervasive, that the Neo Evangelicals simply dropped the name neo and presumed to speak for all evangelicals.

2. What we now call evangelicalism was the product of a Reformed based rebellion against the fundamental, dispensational doctrine of separation. 

Reformed evangelical leaders such as Carl F. Henry and Harold Ockenga were quick to address the insensitivity of fundamentalists and Dispensationalists[i].  According to them, their negative views of coming prophetic events and refusal to engage in social action provided sufficient cause to scuttle The Good Ship Fundamentalism. As a result of those initial volleys, their mantra spread cross-denominationally like a brush fire and anyone daring to espouse the title fundamentalist was deemed cold and legalistic. This is not to say that either fundamentalism or Dispensationalism were pronounced dead, but it is to say that they sustained great losses as victims of this onslaught.   Only recently, when a former Dallas Theological Seminary president was asked whether the term Dispensationalism would disappear, he replied that it may, and perhaps it should.[ii]

While the excesses of some fundamentalists and dispensationalists were easily documented, it was also a fact that the principles of separation and the prophetic mindset they valued were the direct result of literal interpretation of the Bible. Simply stated, fundamentalists held that light and darkness can have no fellowship (2 Cor. 6:14). Evangelism and worship, for example, are the property of born again believers. The more those lines are blurred, the more obfuscated the gospel becomes.

Keep in mind that fundamentalists were never dismissed on the basis of sound biblical exposition; they were rejected, instead, on the basis of cultural irrelevance.

This left the Neo Evangelicals on the horns of a dilemma.  While rejecting a literal, biblical approach to separation, they had to convince the world that they still believed in the inspiration of the scriptures they were restating.

In order to solve this difficulty, evangelicals fell back to a defense of biblical inerrancy, a much more loosely defined term which allows for some fudging on verbal plenary inspiration.  That, however, is content for another discussion.

3. Herein lies the current irony: Evangelicalism has been poisoned by its own medicine. 

It is fast becoming the victim of its own rejection of absolutism and desire for cultural acceptance.  We are not asserting that evangelicals are void of absolutes.  Rather, in their process of determining which absolutes they would embrace, they chose the shifting sands of cultural relevance.  Now, in their passionate desire to adjust, evangelicals are fast scuttling their own ship.  Why is this happening?

The culture has now changed dramatically.  What made the evangelical relevant to the modernist culture of the last century has now made the same evangelical irrelevant to the postmodern mind (a mentality which goes even further in rejecting absolutes).  While the substance of this modernist / postmodernist controversy requires too much ink for this short article, we point to just a few religious overtones.  Mega churches are out.  Authoritative declarations at any level are out.  Experience and stories, drama and music are in.   Most importantly, hierarchal and analytical reasoning have been trashed in favor of more affective and holistic thought and expression which must be nonlinear at all costs.  

Now, we’ve just encountered a lot of exotic terms which boil down to the same conclusion: the Bible is even more culturally irrelevant than it has ever been!  And, herein nests the evangelical problem.  If the evangelical is to remain relevant he must re-invent himself one more time, or he will become as irrelevant as his estranged brother, the fundamentalist.  And, reinvent himself, he will.

4. How will our evangelical friend appear after he undergoes his cultural makeover?  For the present, he will present himself as an emergent.

One the one hand, he will share the Postmodern passion for deconstructing hierarchy and authority.  On the other hand, he will placate his conscience because he is, once again, relevant.  In the final analysis, his gospel will become even more indistinguishable, and his message less unique.

In the words of Michael Patton, “If Joel Osteen, R.C. Sproul, Benny Hinn, Chuck Swindoll, Oral Roberts, J.P. Moreland, T.D. Jakes, Jimmy Carter, Billy Graham, Brian McLaren, Pat Robertson, and John Piper all distinguish themselves as evangelicals, then we must admit that the designation both means everything and nothing at the same time.”[iii]

And, dear reader, we have only begun to change into the costume of the emergent.  It’s time to return to biblical absolutes and the clear reminder that our gospel will always be offensive to our culture.  In fact, its power lies in that very fact.  Are you culturally relevant or biblically authentic?  We invite you to take your stand with those who embrace the whole counsel of God completely and interpret his Word with childlike simplicity.

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?  And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."  2 Corinthians 6:14-16


[i] Dispensationalism and fundamentalism share a common commitment to interpret God’s Word literally. The Dispensationalist, however, is committed to an absolutely literal hermeneutic in all of the disciplines of theology.

[ii] As cited by http://www.biblicist.org/bible/progress.shtml.  Chuck Swindoll, originally from Christianity Today,  October 1993.2003.

[iii] http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2007/10/24/can-i-just-start-a-new-tradition/#more-451

 

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