Evangelicalisms-Winter-November-December-2008

ON THE VILLAGE GREEN ❘ A LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE MEDIA ❘ THE POST-EVANGELICAL OPTION

MODERN REFORMATION

Evangelicalism’s Winter?

VOLUME

17, NUMBER 7, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008, $6.00

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry

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Evangelicalism’s Winter

Managing Editor Patricia Anders Marketing Director Michele Tedrick Department Editors Mollie Z. Hemingway, Between the Times William Edgar, Borrowed Capital Starr Meade, Big Thoughts for Little Minds MR Editors, Required Reading Diana Frazier, Reviews Michael Horton, Final Thoughts Staff | Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Ashleigh Vanada, Proofreader Contributing Scholars Peter D. Anders James Bachman S. M. Baugh Gerald Bray Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson Bryan Chapell R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Adam S. Francisco W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner John Hannah Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm Hywel R. Jones Ken Jones Peter Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Keith Mathison Donald G. Matzat John Muether John Nunes Craig Parton John Piper Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul A. Craig Troxel Carl Trueman David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith William Willimon Todd Wilken Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2008 All rights reserved.

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18 To Be or Not to Be By giving evangelical identity priority over our confessional identities, have we actually contributed to the shallowness of the American evangelical movement?

by Michael Horton

35 The Evangelical Narrative: Getting Rid of the Church If we consider all Protestants— confessional and non-confessional—as having no differences, do we end up negating the Reformation?

by D. G. Hart Plus: Is Evangelical Anglicanism Dead?

41 The American “Gospel” Looking at the folk religion of health and wealth through positive thinking and speaking, the author reminds us that there is no good news in this “gospel.”

by Roger Olson

45 The Codependency of the Media and Evangelicals While an unchanging confessional church in a changing world fails to generate headlines, the media needs the “evangelicals”—and vice versa—to keep the people coming back for more.

by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway

SPECIAL SECTION 22 What is the Future of Evangelicalism?

Eleven respected Christian leaders provide insightful answers to a difficult question.

14 In Season Meditations on reading, preaching, and using Scripture.

by Matthew Kingsbury COVER COMPOSITE BY LORI COOK

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In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Between the Times page 6 Borrowed Capital page 10 | Big Thoughts for Little Minds page 12 Interview page 48 | Required Reading page 51 | Reviews page 52 | Final Thoughts page 60

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IN THIS ISSUE

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

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onfessing Protestants have an uneasy and uncertain relationship with evangelicalism. For many of us, evangelical churches have been part of our past: who hasn’t been baptized in a Southern Baptist church? Some of you reading this issue may still be working for reform within evangelical churches.

Many others, however, have left evangelicalism looking for something they believe is truer to Scripture and the earlier practices of the church (for more on this, see our interview with Michael Spencer). And yet for each of these groups, evangelicalism is an ever-present reality if for no other reason than that public perception of Christianity in America is pretty much determined by evangelicalism.

Beyond our personal reasons, the temptation for confessing Protestants to identify with evangelicalism is strong: it provides a base set of issues around which we can be identified with Christians outside our particular communions.

But over the last three years especially, that basic doctrinal union has begun to fracture. Why? Evangelicals, long tired of being identified so closely with a set of cultural and political issues, have begun looking for new issues about which to feel passionate. Some of this migration is the result of careful thinking about the implications of Jesus’ life and teaching (taking “WWJD?” way beyond marketing hype). Some of it emerges from a new generation of evangelicals who didn’t fight the same battles as their parents or grandparents, and who are dismayed by the broader culture’s stereotype of their faith and practice.

In a significant way, this individual response to evangelicalism is exactly what one expects of a movement that trumps a personal relationship to Jesus over and against churchly forms of piety and faith. Both Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton and regular contributor Darryl Hart take up this issue in their respective articles. We’re also pleased to feature Baptist theologian Roger Olson for the first time in the pages of Modern Reformation. Although Dr. Olson’s theological positions sometimes differ from those espoused in these pages, he provides a valuable insight into a particular form of evangelicalism that we should all hope fades away: the Prosperity Gospel.

Evangelicalism in its most recognizable form is a uniquely American phenomenon and heavily dependent on the media for its success: both as a partner and as a bogeyman. Journalist, regular contributor, “Between the Times” editor, and Lutheran (not necessarily in that order) Mollie Z. Hemingway helps us to understand evangelicalism’s codependent relationship with the media.

Finally, we’re honored to include reflections from eleven Christian leaders, whom we have asked to consider evangelicalism’s current state and what its future might hold. Not all of them would be comfortable with evangelicalism today, but they have had an opportunity to observe evangelicalism over several decades, and their insights provide the kind of sound wisdom evangelicals need to heed.

With this issue, we’re concluding our year-long theme, “Christless Christianity.” In 2009, we’ll take up the theme, “Christ in a Post-Christian Culture,” and work to provide you with the resources for witnessing to our Savior’s great work in this time and place.

Eric Landry Executive Editor

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NEXT ISSUES January/February 2009 Christ in a Post-Christian Culture March/April 2009 The Imitation of Christ

LETTERS your

I have a question about a reference to being born again in two statements in the article “Protestant Gnosticism Reconsidered” by Philip J. Lee (May/June 2008). Here are the statements: 1) “I especially noticed a spiritual elitism in those who separated themselves from ordinary Christians by claiming they had been ‘born again’ in a way not covered by ordinary baptism”; and 2) “Those who insist on describing themselves as born again in a fashion different from ordinary baptized Christians have become synonymous in the popular mind with the ‘real’ Christians.”

I would not claim to have been born again through ordinary baptism; I was born again when God effectually called me by his free and special grace, quickened and renewed me by the Holy Spirit, thereby enabling me to answer his call and embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. Yet when I say that, it sounds as if I am saying that I was “born again in a fashion different from ordinary baptized Christ-ians.” Aren’t all truly bornagain people born again in the same manner as I was?

Mrs. Glenn Coxe Sebastopol, California

Author’s Response The two statements Mrs. Coxe found confusing both have to do with the special claims made by “bornagain Christians.” I realize I packed a great deal into those sentences, that they were very general, and that I opened myself to the questions raised.

I’ll try to clarify those statements and to answer Mrs. Coxe’s concern.

First, I would point out that I am using “ordinary” not in the sense of unimportant or insignificant but rather in the sense of regular, unassuming, without qualification. I am referring to Christians who could be Protestant,

Catholic, or Pentecostal. In the Book of Common Prayer, they are referred to as “all people who call themselves Christians.” In this use of the word “ordinary,” such people are far from being unimportant or insignificant.

Until we have reason to think otherwise, if it is in fact possible ever to think otherwise, such people are those whom Jesus has called to be his own. They are his disciples, his blessed flock, his Body, the New Israel, the daughters and sons of the Father by adoption. They have been called through ordinary baptism to be children of grace.

And again, by “ordinary” baptism I mean water baptism ministered by a legitimate Christian church using the biblical formula: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Mrs. Coxe indicated a discrepancy between the sacrament of baptism and the effectual calling of a Christian.

However, are there really grounds for such a discrepancy? The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1648) answers Question 94, “What is Baptism?” in the following way: “Baptism is a sacrament wherein the washing of water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our engrafting into Christ, and our partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s.”

The significance and sealing afforded within the sacrament of baptism is stated even more emphatically by the Scots Confession (1560) in chapter XXI on the sacraments: “We utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted.”

In the creeds, it would seem that the sacrament of baptism incorporates the effectual calling of

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the Christian and that the Holy Spirit initiates the quickening and renewal process. My concern as expressed in the article has to do with making distinctions between Christians. Mrs. Coxe asks the question: “Aren’t all truly born-again people born again in the same manner I was?” It seems to me that any attempt to distinguish between the “truly born-again people” and the merely born again by baptism people can only be divisive and harmful to the church.

The essential point in my article is the conviction that in North American Protestantism, we have veered sharply away from the faith of the sixteenthcentury Reformers as expressed in Reformation creeds. We have placed far too much emphasis on our human response to God’s effectual calling and not nearly enough emphasis on God’s grace in calling us. The former emphasis, I am afraid, can lead to an unintended self-righteousness. The latter emphasis can only lead to thanksgiving and humble service. My thanks to Mrs. Coxe for allowing me to rethink these issues.

Philip J. Lee

As a layperson recently converted to Lutheranism from a Wesleyan background, I believe that Mr. James Bachman is mistaken in his article, “Managing Sinner/Saints” (July/ August 2008). I strongly disagree with his first “hard truth” that states, “By itself, sound theology fails to provide a platform upon which a human congregation can be built.” I believe that sound theology is the only platform upon which a congregation could and should be built. What does Mr. Bachman propose as an improvement upon sound theology?

He seems to be proposing that pastors are responsible for something he calls “congregational management.”

As a layperson, I have been unaware that pastors are concerned

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with “managing congregations” at all.

Mr. Bachman says that “congregations now look to their pastors and leaders” to replace yesterday’s social structures.

I’m not sure I can speak for others, but as for myself I sincerely hope my own pastor continues to focus on sound theology and does not become fooled that it is his task to increase our church’s numbers or supplement our social structures or “manage” us in any other way.

Mr. Bachman asserts that “in the past fifty years, sound, confessional Lutheran theology has lost most of its distinctive cultural and social practices.” It may be true that the cultural and social practices of the Lutheran congregations have changed dramatically in that time.

However, the sound, confessional Lutheran theology is still distinctive with its clear division of law and gospel, belief in consubstantiation, and views on the sacraments as means of grace, to name a few. Mr. Bachman is confusing cultural changes with theological changes.

Mr. Bachman’s second “hard truth” states, “Distinctive cultural and social practices accomplish necessary tasks that sound theology cannot accomplish by itself.” If this were true, wouldn’t the apostles and early church leaders have spent more time focusing on cultural and social practices and less time on sound theology? Isn’t sound theology the point?

Isn’t “Christ and him crucified” the rallying cry of the New Testament? I also find it curious that Mr. Bachman uses the word “accomplish.” What are we supposed to be accomplishing during church?

If a pastor preaches the law and especially the gospel clearly and if the sacraments are rightly administered, aren’t these the accomplishments that meet the goal of worship?

It seems accurate that Mr. Bachman describes today’s social scene as chaotic and unstable. And I am sure this presents pastors and church leaders with many challenges.

But does yesterday’s stable social environment really reflect a platform

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where the gospel was more effective?

Obviously, church attendance has dropped in America, but I’m not sure I’d want to return to a day when folks attended worship because of social expectations or family history or cold tradition. I’m not sure that a higher number of people in the pews can be assumed to mean that “the platform for the gospel” was more effective than it is today.

I was not around “fifty years ago” to experience the distinct Lutheran culture that was then prevalent.

But I am extremely proud to be Lutheran today and it has nothing to do with Bach, bowling, beer, or anything cultural. I am proud to be Lutheran because I believe Lutheran theology to be right on target.

Pamela M. Duttweiler Sunday School Teacher

Author’s Response Ms. Duttweiler is celebrating some very good news, which Luther expresses in his explanation of the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “The kingdom of God certainly comes by itself without our prayer.”

When she says “sound theology is the only platform upon which a congregation could and should be built,” she is speaking of this Kingdom of God that only God builds. When she hopes that her own pastor “continues to focus on sound theology,” she is rightly hoping that he will skillfully use the only tools—God’s Word and sacraments—that God has provided for bringing in the Kingdom.

In all these points I agree with Ms. Duttweiler. My topic is a different one. I’m trying to help congregational leaders see what may be needed to keep making material support available for sound theology. In his gracious forbearance, God has invited ordinary sinner/saints like me and Ms. Duttweiler to pray, as Luther suggests, that God’s Kingdom “would come to us also.” And God also commissions us to labor to provide

material support for the proclamation that brings in the Kingdom.

One time-honored way of entering into this labor is to help establish and support a human organization that we call a church or a congregation.

My annoying “hard truths” are designed to help leaders of these alltoo-human organizations analyze the dynamics at work in building and maintaining a sinner/saint institution to be a platform upon which sound theology can proclaim Christ.

An illustration from Luther’s day may illuminate the situation. Leisnig, a little town near Wittenberg, engaged Luther to help them settle a number of matters associated with the life of the believers there. We learn from the written record that the pastor’s salary in that town was paid out of various property transactions, including tolls charged for using the town’s bridge across the Freiberger Mulde River (see Luther’s Works, vol. 45, 179–87). A typical congregation needs resources for paying pastors and other staff. In this case, a law-oriented practice, the charging of tolls and rents, was used as a platform for enabling the pastor to have material support while he devoted himself “to prayer and to serving the Word” (Acts 6).

I purposely quoted Acts 6:4 in this regard because here we see the apostles themselves struggling with a distinction between assigning people the pastoral task of preaching sound theology rooted in the Word and assigning people management tasks concerned with the life of the congregation that provide the context in which pastors can devote themselves to prayer and to serving the Word.

My main message is that changing social and cultural circumstances are forcing pastors and other church leaders to learn new skills in managing the all-too-human, sinner/saint earthly institution that we call a congregation. Unless we are prepared to support the proclamation by other means, such as St. Paul’s tent-making strategy (Acts 18:3), we need to be wise as serpents concerning the

human institution we have designed to provide material support for the preaching of the Word from the pulpit and the teaching of the Word in Sunday school.

James Bachman

In the July/August issue, “Between the Times” included a brief article entitled “Lutherans with Issues.” In that article the LCMS was described as “divided between confessional Lutherans and those who embrace generic pop-culture Christianity.” I believe this is a poor way to characterize the LCMS and its members. As a Lutheran, I ascribe to the Lutheran Confessions, but I do not identify myself with groups within the synod who identify themselves as confessional. I know of no one whom I would identify as embracing a generic pop-culture Christianity, and to suggest that this is divided in such a black and white manner is overly simplistic and a rather unfair judgment passed upon those who do not match up with the additional baggage that the politically confessional groups attach to their definition of what it means to be Lutheran.

Dave Rueter Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Rancho Cucamonga, California

Just a quick response to the latest issue of Modern Reformation (September/ October 2008). Reading Carl Trueman’s article “Life: The Movie?” was very insightful. However, I would like to take the insight a step further and apply it to the seeker church.

Trueman addressed the issue of what happens in life when we value entertainment and other stuff over God. But what happens when the church adopts the same mindset?

When churches place greater value on whether they have the right music or the right programs for kids,

we create in the church a consumer and entertainment mentality that degrades or minimizes the Word of God and the cross of Christ. I know this from experience. We worship what the church can provide for us rather than the Sovereign God. Yes, entertainment-based church also trivializes the sacred, but it also conditions church-goers to find happiness and enjoyment and satisfaction in the forms of worship rather than the object of worship himself. After all, if we don’t like the music, or the kids programs, or the preacher, we just leave and look for what we want someplace else. The entertainment-based church also numbs the minds of the congregation to the real issues at hand. What is right is whether we have the right music or the right preaching style, rather than the substantive content of the Word or the right attitude in worship. This was a great article that made one think about how entertainment has affected life and the church.

As a former marketing communications executive who is now working on a Ph.D. in Puritan history and theology, I can see the nuances and effects of both modern business/consumer communications practice and “lite” theology in the church. Many times my heart aches, but I know God loves his church.

the seed of justification is implanted at baptism and flowers as one cooperates with the sacramental system of “the community” (= church)? The fact that the traditional Reformed are now offering bloated definitions of the otherwise legitimate moniker “means of grace,” incarcerating the free and sovereign grace of God in the hands of Presbyterian prelates at baptism and communion and thereby diluting the finality of Jesus’ atonement and resurrection, contributes equally to the erosion of the Faith.

If Schleiermacher uttered one truth in The Christian Faith, it is this: the big soteriological difference between Rome and Protestants is that in the former we relate to Jesus by means of the church, while in the latter we relate to the church by means of Jesus.

An unbridgeable chasm separates these perspectives.

P. Andrew Sandlin Center for Cultural Leadership Mount Hermon, California

Brett Avants St. Charles, Missouri

Kudos all the way around for Jonathan Leeman’s “Individualism’s Not the Problem—Community’s Not the Solution” (July/August 2008). The postmodernization of the evangelical church in its less-than-subtle shift from cross, resurrection, Scripture, faith, and obedience to “community” represents a loss not just of evangelical identity but also evangelical truth.

It is equally a movement toward Rome, unintentional though it may be. After all, what is Roman salvation at root but the collapse of soteriology into ecclesiology, according to which

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido CA 92027 760.480.0252 fax Letters@modernreformation.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

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Vying for Values Voters

While the Republican Party is seen as the party most friendly toward religion, the Democratic Party has made gains. Nearly four-inten Americans told Pew pollsters that the Democratic Party is generally friendly toward religion, up from just one quarter of respondents two years ago. That is still significantly less than the 52 percent who say the Republican Party is friendly to religious believers.

Because of this data and polls showing that “values voters” favor the Republican Party, Democrats spent much of 2008 on massive religious outreach. By the time the party met in Denver for its convention, religion infused many speeches and daily events. The convention even began with an official interfaith worship service.

It got off to a rocky start due to the disruption of multiple pro-life protesters and one atheist. Speakers included Bishop Charles E. Blake, presiding prelate of the Church of God in Christ, who spoke of “the moral and spiritual pain” felt by prolife Democrats like himself because of the party’s “disregard for the lives of the unborn.”

“Surely we cannot be pleased with the routine administration of millions of surgically terminated pregnancies,” he preached. “Something in us must be calling for a better way. If we do not resist at this point, at what point do we resist?”

It was an awkward and silent

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moment in a service full of, well, preaching to the choir. Only when he began denouncing other prolifers—accusing them of not caring about poverty or the plight of the inner cities—did the crowd erupt with praise.

The event followed the pattern of most political interfaith gatherings, loosely following a Judeo-Christian liturgy but with the insertion of other scriptures and clergy. So instead of a procession of clergy behind a crucifix, they were led by four Native Americans beating

drums.

Rather than a reading from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the New Testament, and a Gospel—as you would hear in a liturgical Christian service—there were readings from the Torah, the Sutra Nipata, the Koran, and more from the Old Testament. No New Testament.

Huge screens displayed the gathering’s logo—vaguely reminiscent of Luther’s rose. The multilayered mandala incorporated sunbursts and geometric shapes. Throughout the liturgy, the layers were unpeeled to

Notable Quotables “Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven. To just have it planned at the same time, that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for Day One of the Republican convention, up in the Twin Cities, at the top of the Mississippi River.”

—Michael Moore on Hurricane Gustav’s expected landfall to MSNBC host Keith Olberman.

“I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition.

St. Augustine said at three months.”

—Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi explaining her abortion rights views on Meet the Press.

“We are blessed in the 21st century with crystal-clear photographs and action films of the living realities within their pregnant mothers. No one with the slightest measure of integrity or honor could fail to know what these marvelous beings manifestly, clearly, and obviously are, as they smile and wave into the world outside the womb. In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons.”

—Cardinal Egan, in response to Pelosi’s comments. Pelosi’s remarks brought rebukes from eleven prelates, including the archbishops of Washington, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also released a statement condemning and correcting her remarks.

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show a candle, a dove, the Statue of Liberty, and the earth.

Ethics and Stem Cells, Together at Last

Scientists have made another advance in stem cell research that could render moot the furious debates over the ethics of destroying embryos to harvest their stem cells.

Harvard biologists have successfully transformed one type of fully developed adult cell into another inside living mice. The scientists identified three molecular changes that completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into insulinproducing ones.

Observers hope the experiments point to a day when diseased patients could be cured by having their cells reprogrammed—rather than going through costly treatment or taking drugs.

Embryonic stem cells, obtained by destroying embryos, can be coaxed into becoming any tissue in the body.

“I see no moral problem in this basic technique. This is a ‘win-win’ situation for medicine and ethics.”

Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a leading opponent of embryonic stems cell research told the Washington Post.

The breakthrough marks the second major finding that offers hope for stem cell research that does not destroy embryos. Last year, scientists announced they had manipulated adult cells back into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. The latest breakthrough, if successfully

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transferred to humans, would avoid the step of going back to an embryonic state, making it more practical.

Yes We Can (Admit We Were Wrong) Jill Stanek, a nurse at a United Church of Christ-affiliated hospital in Illinois, was assisting with an abortion of a child who was deemed to have Down’s syndrome. Despite the induced labor abortion, the baby was born alive. No one tried to save the baby. The hospital dismissed Stanek’s concerns and the Republican Attorney General notified her that nothing illegal had occurred. A bill was proposed to rectify the apparently gray legal area. The bill would have required babies born after failed abortion attempts to be treated in the same manner as any other baby born alive. A federal version eventually passed the Senate unanimously and was signed into law. Reliable prochoice legislators Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton, for instance, voted in favor of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. There is no dispute that Sen. Barack Obama opposed the bill when he was in the Illinois state legislature in 2001, 2002, and 2003.

However, he says he opposed it because it contained language that would somehow threaten Roe v.

Wade. He says he would have supported the federal version.

It is true that there were various versions of the bill in each of the years that Obama opposed them, but the National Right to Life Committee produced documentation, including legislative documents and contemporaneous media reports, showing that the 2003 version included the language that Obama says he would have required in order to support the bill.

When CBN reporter David Brody asked Obama about the issue following the August Saddleback Civil Forum, the senator said, “I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a

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By the Numbers 50,000. Number of women who have left the church each year for the past two decades on account of female-empowering shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, according to British research. $50,000.

Amount of a grant voluntarily relinquished by Teen Challenge of Kentucky, an Assembly of God-affiliated nonprofit that fights addiction.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State had fought the grant since Teen Challenge evangelizes to addicts.

1/3. Muslim students who believe it’s acceptable to kill in the name of religion, according to researchers at the Centre for Social Cohesion. Forty percent want sharia introduced in Britain and 33 percent want sharia implemented worldwide.

70. Percent of husbands who attend church regularly that report they are very happy in their marriages, compared to 59 percent of husbands who rarely or never attend church.

60,000. Number of daily visits to the Hindu Tirumala Venkateswara Temple each day. With 19 million visitors a year, it is the world’s most visited place of worship, almost doubling the visitors to Vatican City.

50. Percent of conservatives who tell Pew researchers that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics. Four years ago, just 30 percent of conservatives said the same.

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situation where folks are lying.” The only problem was that they weren’t.

The campaign later acknowledged that the National Right to Life Committee had been right.

Gay Marriage Round-Up

On August 18, the California Supreme Court ruled that fertility doctors cannot refuse to provide a treatment based on a patient’s sexuality.

The decision was unanimous, but foes of the ruling worry that it will curtail the First Amendment rights of workers in medicine and other vocational fields.

Doctors at a fertility clinic violated a state law against discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” when they refused to inseminate a lesbian who desired to have a baby.

Though they referred her to another physician and she became pregnant and gave birth, she successfully sued.

She claimed her First Amendment rights of free exercise of religion and free speech had been violated.

The physicians had made a decision to provide in vitro fertilization only to patients who were married, although the court ruled that the discrimination wasn’t against single individuals but homosexuals. David Stevens, chief executive officer of the Christian

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Medical Association, said the decision reaches well beyond the medical profession.

“Taking away the First Amendment rights of healthcare professionals puts at risk the rights of every working American,” he said.

The decision came only three months after the same court legalized same-sex marriage. A bill to ban same-sex marriage is slated for the November ballot. Preceding voting day, 1 million Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, evangelical Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus planned to march out of their houses of worship in support of the proposition that would repeal same-sex marriage.

A Presbyterian minister who officiated a lesbian wedding in 2005 is heading for church court again, two years after charges against her were dismissed. The Rev. Janet Edwards, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor in Pittsburgh again faces possible expulsion if convicted by the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Pittsburgh Presbytery.

Previous charges were dropped on a technicality. Her accusers missed a filing deadline.

The PC(USA) permits ministers to perform same-sex union ceremonies as long as they are not equated with marriage. Edwards says the church’s positions are recommendations, rather than binding laws.

“The problem is that I come as a gay man, and I know where our church stands on the issue of samesex orientation,” Rev. Frank Wulf said in his candidacy address before the Western Jurisdictional Conference, which represents United Methodists in the western United States, Guam, and other U.S. territories in the Pacific. “And I know that the church says...a practicing self-avowed homo-sexual shall not be ordained or appointed within our church.”

Wulf noted that his candidacy created a quandary for delegates. “I

know that if, by some chance, I were ever to be elected as a bishop within this jurisdiction or any jurisdiction, that all hell would break loose,” he said.

Wulf, who didn’t reveal his sexual orientation during his 2004 candidacy, consistently placed sixth (among nineteen clergy) in balloting; he withdrew.

The Western Jurisdictional Conference did approve four statements aimed at changing denominational policies and beliefs on human sexuality. With no debate, the legislative assembly celebrated a May 15 ruling by the California Supreme Court clearing the way for gay marriages. Another ruling asked that church leaders look for “creative ways” to “be in full ministry with all who come to us” and declares an intention not to penalize clergy or churches “for being agents of this ministry in God’s name.” A third resolution challenges the church’s position that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The final resolution said that United Methodists and other Christians “have struggled to find principles for applying traditional teachings to contemporary understandings of human sexuality.”

The resolution encourages “the medical, theological and social science disciplines to combine in a determined effort to understand human sexuality more completely.”

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Short Stories Define “Devout” Fox News ran a story about former adult film star Jenna Jameson and her boyfriend of two years getting pregnant via in vitro fertilization. Before quoting her vow to stay unmarried, they described her as a “devout Catholic.”

Just as surprisingly, and perhaps more convincingly, Basic Instinct author Joe Eszterhas is now a devout Catholic, according to the Toledo Blade. The screenwriter of dark, erotic thrillers published a book, Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith, about his conversion in 2001, following his diagnosis of cancer and his concurrent need to stop drinking. He and his wife have been faithfully attending Catholic Mass ever since.

He visited a nondenominational megachurch where he heard a sensational sermon, but wrote that he felt empty afterward, missing Holy Communion and the Catholic liturgy.

“It may have been a church full of pedophiles and criminals covering up other criminals’ sins...it may have been a church riddled with hypocrisy, deceit, and corruption...but our megachurch experience taught us that we were captive Catholics,” he wrote.

Since his conversion, he says he’s turned down offers to write screenplays with sinister plots, some paying as much as $3 million.

Of Faith Healing and Fidelity Controversial faith healer Todd Bentley has agreed to refrain from public ministry for “a season” following the revelation of an inappropriate relationship with a woman who is not his wife.

Charismatic leaders say that people should have raised questions about Bentley earlier.

Known for multiple body piercing and tattoos, Bentley uses

good,

the

b ad,

violent healing techniques, claims angelic visions and practices “holy” laughter and “holy” vibrating shakes. He even claims to have raised dozens of people from the dead. One of the angels who he has said visits him in his apartment is twenty feet tall. He also claims Jesus himself appears to him.

God TV, the network that televised Bentley’s Lakeland, Florida, revival meetings, had previously told viewers that “any criticism of Todd Bentley is demonic.” The network’s hosts also warned listeners that listening to criticism would jeopardize their healings.

Charisma magazine publisher Stephen Strang criticized Bentley and his accountability partners.

“Anyone who baptizes people in the name of the Father, the Son ‘and BAM’ is playing lightly with the Holy Spirit and is bordering on blasphemy,” he said. His overseers should have seen signs before the separation, Strang wrote.

Hindu Head of Religious Life at USC Religious leader and scholar Varun Soni has been named dean of religious life at the University of Southern California, marking the first appointment of a Hindu as primary spiritual leader of an American university.

The Church of Richard Dawkins San Francisco-based artist Jonathon Keats is transforming a two-story Berkeley building into a makeshift temple for people who worship science. Called the Atheon, the building’s stained glass windows will show cosmic microwave background radiation made from NASA satellite data.

Keats even wrote a hymn— collaborating with Virginia astronomer Mark Whittle to come

and

the

ugly

in

chu r ch

n ew s

up with a canon of sounds from three hypothetical universes— called, “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?”

Pray or Pay? Prayer is the answer to every problem, Rocky Twyman, the founder of the Pray at the Pump Movement explains about his group.

Members huddle around gas pumps and ask God to lower prices, changing the lyrics of “We Shall Overcome” to “We’ll have lower gas prices.”

Twyman has prayed across the country at pumps from Baltimore to San Francisco. In one of his monologues, Jay Leno quipped: “Hey, have you heard about this group called Prayer at the Pump?

They’re a prayer group that sprang up, and they go to gas stations and they hold hands and they pray for lower gas prices. Otherwise known as the Bush energy plan.”

Twyman countered that the group is not political. “It’s better to trust in God than to trust in princes,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

The Sermon on the Multiplex Rob Seagears, senior pastor at Christ Chapel Mountaintop in suburban Washington, D.C., based his sermons this summer on the top-grossing movie from the previous weekend. He watched the movie and prayed about what to preach.

His Summer Cinema Series sought to attract those who don’t ordinarily attend church while making the experience more fun for those who do.

“We try to make church and God applicable to people’s lives,” Seagears told the Washington Post.

For his Dark Knight sermon, for instance, Seagears preached on the faith needed to endure in hard times.

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 9

BORROWED CAPITAL cul t ura l

a p olo getics

Apologetics West and East

A

ccording to Harvie Conn’s provocative book title, Christians must be committed

Islam with a view to engaging it. Still, the preto the twin values of Eternal Word, Changing Worlds. This nicely puts the vailing Western agenda is secular, bent on promoabsolutes of the one message, the one gospel, the one Bible, into conversation ting economics, seeking to advance the cause of with the changing historical and cultural contexts of the market control and trade advantage, with little interest in world we want to address. This summer we had the the lofty ideas of meaning and values. privilege of visiting two very different places and to see this It is moving, if not quite disturbing, to interact with dear dual dynamic fully apply. people who have survived Communism—the “god who First, we went to a little town outside of Budapest, failed”—but are still living under the shadow of its Hungary, called Eger. It is the seat of an extraordinary emptiness, the vestiges of “gray society,” as Vaclav Havel annual conference known as the European Leadership put it. Consider the testimony of one young man, growing Forum.1 Here gathered over three-hundred influential up under Communist Romania: trendsetters from all over the old continent, particularly Central and Eastern Europeans, to be encouraged in all Under the red banner, I knew hunger, I knew pain, areas of Christian leadership. In the morning there were a and what I experienced most of all—was fear. A number of networks, including science, business, deep, breath-taking fear that crushed your voice apologetics, Bible teachers, Christian counselors, and—the inside your ribs. You didn’t look up, you didn’t ask, one I directed—the artists’ network. In the evening were Why, you just obeyed. I knew people who worked at plenary sessions with world-class speakers. Opportunities collective farms who went to jail for holding back a abounded for mutual encouragement and biblical chicken from the monthly counts, just to feed their edification. Even Americans are appreciated in Eger, families a bit more protein. Only those who worked particularly for their experience and depth in the Christian for the Party, the State, the Securitate, would have way of life! access to foreign currency and could go to that What is clear from spending time with these European wondrous place we only heard stories about: the friends is that atheism, skepticism, and indifference are still Shop. [But the Shop] was not for people like us.2 the prevailing moods. To be sure, we see a growing interest in “spirituality,” and we hear slogans such as “believing After the liberation, things were better. But still, as he put without belonging,” meant to signify changing winds, it, before there was money but no food. Now there is food from the older pure secularization to the more religious but no money. consciousness of many young people. And there is the Doing apologetics with friends like these means growing presence of Islam in many European countries, centering on meaning and hope. Of course there will have mostly through immigrants. Thus, in the future, to be debates with the so-called “new atheists”—Richard opposition to Christian faith is as likely to be from religious Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, defenders of the quaint people as from secularists. Still, the kind of spirituality that idea that God is a “delusion” or that “God is not great.” But is touted is vague, lacking the rigor of solid doctrine and at a much deeper level, apologetics will mean telling of earnest diaconal concern. And even Islam, while getting God’s love, of his providence, and of the significance of stronger, is often more cultural than doctrinal, held by human beings made after his image. And surely, it will people anxious to find a job and a place for their children mean explaining how Christ and his church, not the inside the older, Greek, and biblical civilizations of Europe. dictator and his government, is the way forward.

Doing apologetics in Europe is much a matter of What a contrast a little later in the summer when we were privileged to travel to Indonesia, halfway around the answering questions such as: is religion not the opiate of planet! We spent most of the time in Jakarta, the capital the people, did not Darwin refute Genesis, are not city of a nation of close to 14,000 islands. There is plenty missionaries selfish colonialists in disguise, and does not of Western influence in this area, particularly in the religion lead to violence, and the like. Certainly, there is a downtown business area. But unlike Europe, we found growing interest in Muslim evangelism, and we see more Indonesia to be primarily a religious culture.3 There we people setting themselves to the task of understanding

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suffering and resurrection of Jesus. A very non-detached son of God came to be with who have no fallen humanity in order to raise his people up to eternal life. Compare Christ on the cross to the smiling Buddha and you will grasp the difference right away.

In contrast to post-Communist Europeans, Indonesians do not dispute creation, the crusades, or the uniqueness of the religious drive. They do dispute the path to beatitude.

The best apologetics, then, is the patient explanation of creation, fall, and redemption to people who have no real concept of human dignity. We learned that the sense of guilt is not nearly as prevalent as the sense of shame.

Losing honor, losing face, are much more serious conditions than transgressing a law. Of course, biblical religion diagnoses both as serious. And the cross of Christ not only remedies shame but also guilt.

In sum we have the same gospel. It is the eternal Word.

But the “changing world” of Asia versus Central Europe is important to understand if one is to be faithful to the great Petrine principle of being “always ready” to give a reason for the hope that we have (1 Pet. 3:15). When we travel across the planet, we find out just how comprehensive and powerful the gospel really is.

The best apologetics, then, is the patient explanation of creation, fall, and redemption to people real concept of human dignity. discovered an overlay of Stone Age culture, then Islam, then Hinduism and Buddhism, then Dutch colonialism, and finally a post-colonial ideology of independence, all somehow coexisting in an uneasy alliance. We met a Yali tribesman, perhaps four feet tall, a woodcarver with a strong Christian faith. His parents had been cannibals. We met a Muslim guide at the world’s largest Hindu temple in Yogyakarta. He understood the intricacies of Hinduism better than most, and perfectly described the architecture and beliefs that had inspired this huge and beautiful structure, much of it damaged by a series of earthquakes.

We interacted with a businessman who had contributed illegal money to an American political campaign, was caught, and marvelously repented.

How did these world religions follow animism and find a home in Indonesia? Through trade, many contacts were made between Indonesians and China, India, and Arabia.

Scholars interacted with the traditions from these different lands as early as the thirteenth century. Many of the ports were controlled by Muslims who in turn interacted with Hindu and Buddhist merchants. This meant that these religions came to establish a presence in the archipelago, a presence still strong today. The day we visited the extraordinary temple Borobudur, also in Yogyakarta, was the day of an annual Buddhist “synod,” a meeting of Buddhist leaders from all over the world. Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world, a huge structure full of statues, bells, murals, and steps toward the top. All along are hundreds of stupas (sacred bells). The final stupa at the summit represents the concept of Emptiness or Sunnata. Our visit coincided with the meeting of a world Buddhist “synod” reminding us of the power and presence of that world religion (mostly in its Mahayana version, which is more accessible to simple people than its more austere Theravada versions).

Indonesia is 87 percent Muslim, and yet many other traditional religions are alive and well. Christians represent a small percentage, but are growing remarkably. So, doing apologetics in this Eastern setting looks very different, at least in its application, from Eger, Hungary. People in these islands are profoundly and historically spiritual. It soon becomes obvious how very different the message of the gospel is from the central idea in Buddhism, which is detachment through discipline. One can easily sense the contrast by looking at the beautifully carved statues of Siddhartha, the Buddha who achieved Nirvana, completely contented and disconnected from this world, and comparing it to Jesus. The gospel of Jesus Christ challenges the notion of contentment-through-works to the core, instead setting forth the incarnation and then the

William Edgar is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

NOTES 1 You can check ELF out at http://www.euroleadership. org/.

2 See http://subversivewriter.wordpress.com/2007/12/ 28/memories-of-my-communist-childhood-growing-upunder-the-red-banner/.

3 I am using the term in its familiar acceptation.

According to Reformed theology, all people are religious, even atheists.

Speaking Of…

T

here comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling at religion (‘Man’s search for God!’) suddenly draw back.

Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing he found us?

—C. S. Lewis, Miracles N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 11

BIG THOUGHTS FOR LITTLE MINDS r e sou rces

fo r

homes

Rules of Engagement

I

sit at my computer, poised to write the final article in my series on doctrinal teaching

Jesus walk on water, ask them to get up and for children. Throughout the series, I have insisted on the importance of teaching demonstrate how they would walk: in anklesubstantive Bible doctrine, even to young children. Each article has offered how-to’s deep mud, on ice, on a hot pavement with bare that hopefully have convinced readers of the “do-ability” feet, on rocks across a stream, on a narrow board, in of the task. As I begin this final article, I feel just a bit shy knee-deep snow—on top of water. That last direction about setting out. That is because the last principle I need should elicit protests—“People can’t walk on water!”— to mention is this one: Engage the children. And the only which can lead into your story. Or call on children to way I know to engage children is to deliberately use things accomplish tasks using only one arm—button a button, they will enjoy—games, drawing, making things, and carry several things at once, put on a sock—and then tell physical activity. So this last article largely comprises of them how Jesus healed a man’s withered arm in the activities to do with children. The shyness comes from my synagogue one Sabbath morning. Young children also sense that in a magazine filled with articles of great like to handle and make things. Show them how to roll thoughts from great thinkers, this article will seem a bit stones out of Play-Doh, piling them up to make miniature out of place—but, after all, the column’s title is “Big altars and placing small sticks on top, to prepare them to Thoughts for Little Minds”! better understand a Bible story that has an altar in it.

Balance in teaching children is good, even vital. We I teach older children and with them, I find that games don’t want everything to be games and activities for are the thing. Almost any game you’ve ever played can children, however, even if it could be. How would somehow be adapted to reinforce doctrinal teaching. Use children learn that there are solemn times for quiet and the memory game idea for reinforcing definitions. One reverence if everything was always designed to be active card will have the word on it (“inerrant,” “authoritative,” and fun? How would they learn to listen to a sermon, “God-breathed,” “completed,” “unique,” etc.); mentally or maybe even literally taking notes, if they somewhere, mixed in among the face-down cards, will be never practiced sitting and listening? Still, a teacher must its definition. A child gets to keep the pair of cards when, consider her audience and its needs. Children need activity on his turn, he turns over a word and its correct definition. and involvement; God has designed them this way. To With review questions, draw the lake or the mountain or include learning activities that get children up and moving the road from the day’s story on a paper and mark it off in or that provide them with a game of some kind is to teach spaces. Then, for each correct answer, move markers in the way that they learn. When children enjoy what (boats, people, or animals from the story) forward on the they are doing—when their minds are engaged and they spaces. Divide the class into teams of X and O and allow participate willingly—learning automatically takes place. them to mark on a tic-tac-toe grid only when they answer As I talk with people who love Reformed doctrine and a question correctly. Design your own Jeopardy! review by who work with children, I hear the same frustration dividing questions from a unit of lessons into topics and voiced time and again—that most materials for children assigning point values to the questions. At each turn, a either offer solid doctrinal content, Reformed in child chooses the topic and the point value he desires as perspective, or age-appropriate content that children enjoy you work through the review. Since review, repetition, and understand. Why must it be that way? Ideas that are and drill are such effective ways to reinforce learning, most surprisingly simple can turn doctrinal teaching into lessons for children would do well to include a game of something children will enjoy. The only real catch for the some sort to go back over material learned in earlier teacher is that it may take time to adapt game and activity lessons, adding the new lesson’s content as well. ideas to doctrinal teaching. But it can be done.

Actually memorizing something—a Bible verse or a Here are some examples of ideas for engaging children catechism answer—requires a great deal of repetition of in the important business of learning doctrinal truth. course. To make the repetition into a game, call on those Younger children need physical activity. To prepare them children to say the verse who like cats better than dogs; to sit and listen and to prepare them for increased then call on those who would rather go swimming than understanding of the disciples’ surprise when they saw sledding; then those who prefer math to reading; then

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doctrine to children in ways that engage them.

As I work with children of we will want to invest time in finding ways to present all ages, I see a discouraging trend in biblical knowledge rich doctrine to children in ways that engage them. and in doctrinal I am understanding. those who had cereal for breakfast; those who are wearing continually surprised by what children from Christian something red; those who like broccoli, and so on. families do not know. Parents and churches need a fresh Another way to increase the appeal of memorizing is to cut commitment to deliberate, purposeful systematic teaching up paper with the memory work on it so children can race of sound doctrine to children. Children can master—and to put it together again, continually trying to better their even understand—profound doctrinal truths if we use last time. methodologies suited to how they learn. This series has Many children enjoy drawing and they can participate suggested several. By way of review, here they are one in the lesson you are teaching by illustrating assigned more time. Define terms. Don’t assume a child knows what subjects. For instance, in a lesson on God’s attribute of a doctrinal or biblical term means; give her a clear omnipotence, students take turns drawing on the board definition that uses words and ideas she knows. Repeat for others to guess those things that display power: the constantly. Repeat the main points of past lessons and build sun, an earthquake, lightning, a lion, death, an angel, the on them as you teach new lessons. Use charts, drills, and ocean, a horse, a king. After each item is correctly guessed, review games to repeat, repeat, repeat what they have the group reads a Bible passage describing God’s power as already learned. The only way to guarantee that a thought being greater than that particular powerful thing. In will be remembered is to repeat it to the point of overkill! another lesson, teaching that God is Spirit, you might Move from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Use what the child discuss anthropomorphisms, those allusions in Scripture to knows well to explain a new idea. Use illustrations, but man-like characteristics, to explain God. Children take keep them simple and uncluttered so they clarify rather turns drawing human body parts for others to guess: an than distract from the point you are making. When eye, an ear, a face, an arm, a hand. After each drawing, making use of the rich treasury of Bible stories, keep the the group reads a passage referring to God’s eyes, ears, and main point central. What does the story teach about God so on, and discusses what is actually meant by it—not that and his purposes of redemption? Be sure to use the Bible itself God has physical eyes but that he is aware of all that with your children. Teach them how to use it and give them happens anywhere; not that God has physical ears but that ample opportunities to practice. And, finally, use what he knows our prayer requests and answers them. engages children—games, art, physical activity—when you teach You can engage children in the material you are about and reinforce doctrine. to teach by introducing it with a true or false quiz. Give Little minds, while they’re still little, need to be filled children a list of ten statements about your topic and ask with big thoughts; and we cannot fill those little minds them to decide whether each statement is true or false. On unless we are willing to invest time and effort in a lesson about angels, for instance, statements might communicating those big thoughts in a way they can be include: angels have bodies and spirits like we do, only received. To repeat the quotation from Charles Spurgeon with wings; angels are the spirits of good people who have with which this series began: “It needs our best wits, our died; angels can do anything; angels serve God; angels most industrious studies, our most earnest thoughts, our have always existed; the word “angel” means ripest powers, to teach our little ones.” “messenger”; and so forth. Once children have completed the quiz, go back and show, using Scripture, which Starr Meade is author of Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: statements are true and which are false and why. Having Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism (P&R, already interacted with the concepts, children are curious 2000). to know what you are going to tell them.

These are only a few examples of ways to engage children with the material you teach. It will take time to NOTE consider your topic and work out ways to present it that Quotation from Come, Ye Children: A Book for Parents and will get and keep children’s interest. It would be easier just Teachers on the Christian Training of Children, by C. H. to tell the important concepts to the children and expect Spurgeon (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications; no date of them to receive and appreciate them because they are publication or copyright given). such wonderful truths. Or it would be easier to compromise on the content and go with some of the less substantive but more child-friendly lessons on the market.

But if both doctrine and children are important to us, we will want to invest time in finding ways to present rich

If both doctrine and children are important to us,

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 13

Setting Up the Sheep for Heresy How the Sufficiency of Scripture Is Undermined by Learned Preaching

by Matthew W. Kingsbury For reasons too complex (and tedious) to detail here, I have been thinking lately about the twin phenomena of evangelical homosexuality and egalitarianism.1 For the uninitiated, these novel doctrines attempt to maintain the essentials of the Christian faith, such as salvation through Christ and biblical authority, while at the same time denying historic teachings of the church. The former says homosexuality is not a sin, and the latter calls male headship in the home and the church a sin.

I call these movements “twins” because they tend to use Scripture in similar ways. Again and again in the literature advocating one or the other position, I read something like the following: “Yes, this passage appears to teach male headship/the sinfulness of homosexuality. But if you look at the Hebrew/Greek, you will see that this word ‘x’ really

means ‘y.’ Also, in Ephesian/Canaanite society, cultic male prostitution/male chauvinism was common. This passage deals with that specific situation and must not be applied arbitrarily to our modern culture, which is quite different.

The real application of this passage is that Christians should be nice to each other/not sleep around.” In other words, the text in the original language, interpreted in its cultural and historical context, teaches something quite different from what one might conclude when reading one’s English translation. The layperson must depend upon the expert and cannot interact critically with his or her conclusions.

To my ears, this type of teaching sounds eerily familiar.

In fact, I imagine anyone who has sat under evangelical preaching recognizes it. We regularly hear seminarytrained pastors say from the pulpit, “The Greek word for ‘love’ Paul uses here is ‘agape,’ which means more than just ‘love.’ It In Season: Meditations on means a completely selfless, Reading, Preaching, and totally committed covenantal love! That really spoke to the Using Scripture people in Corinth, a center of What role does the Bible play in your life? Is it a resource for commerce where the culture was daily wisdom, a self-help manual extraordinaire, a doctrinal greedy and selfish.” Over the repository? Perhaps it doesn’t have a regular role in your life years, believers learn much more because these other uses (and abuses) of Scripture have is going on in a text than they overtaken its true purpose. Throughout this year, we have could ever get from studying their English Bibles. For many been featuring “In Season: Meditations on reading, preaching, Christians, it’s not a good sermon and using Scripture.” Articles have been written by various unless the preacher tells them people (the laity, professional theologians, and ministers); and something they never could have each has been unique (a sermon, a hermeneutic, thoughts on gotten on their own. application, and even concerns about the misuse of Scripture).

It seems to me, however, this is We want to continue the conversation on our website, so feel instead the mark of a bad sermon, free to e-mail us at letters@modernreformation.org with your and perhaps a very bad sermon. thoughts after reading this final installment of “In Season.”

In saying this, I should note I happen to be a seminary-trained pastor who translates from the

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original language every text I preach and wrestles regularly with the difficulty of making complex texts understandable to my congregation. With the rest of my Presbyterian tradition, I put a great premium on an educated clergy. But as a Presbyterian elder, I am also sworn to uphold the Westminster Confession of Faith, which teaches, “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may obtain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”2 That is, while some points of doctrine may be a bit tricky, those things that every believer must know are so plainly set forth in the Bible that anybody willing to put in the effort should be able to figure them out.3 In other words, the Scriptures are sufficient; the Bible is, in itself, enough to teach one how to be a Christian.

Preaching does more than proclaim the truths of Scripture; it models how those truths are discovered. When pastors throw around Greek and Hebrew week after week, their congregations learn they cannot “obtain to a sufficient understanding” of even the most basic things of Scripture unless they’ve studied dead languages and ancient history.

“Lovingkindness” makes perfect sense to even the smallest child, but we’ve got to say “chesed.” This evangelical tendency to speak in dead tongues, found all too frequently in Presbyterian and Reformed pulpits as well,4 tells “the unlearned” the Word of God is not clear to them, and thereby undermines their trust in the Bibles in their hands.

If this happens with such a simple and essential biblical concept as love, we can hardly have good hopes for other teachings of the faith. Male headship and the sinfulness of homosexuality are hardly obscure points of doctrine; they’re both right in Genesis 1! But when scholars explain 1 Corinthians 11 doesn’t mean what it says, the average Christian is unequipped to provide a response. He may scratch his head and say, “I can’t see that in the passage,” but he’s learned that very fact proves the novel interpretation is true. By telling listeners to believe the text teaches a doctrine without equipping them to find it there for themselves, standard learned evangelical preaching sets up the sheep to embrace heresy. We should not be surprised many evangelical Christians now accept egalitarianism as a matter of course. Will homosexuality soon follow?

“Greek-speak” in the pulpit is only a symptom, not the disease itself. To suggest a practice so common, and so apparently trivial, leads to gross heresy may seem an overreaction.5 But this manner of preaching betrays a more fundamental problem, which in my view is pervasive throughout Reformed churches today: namely, Gnosticism.

A few months ago, Modern Reformation readers were reintroduced to Philip J. Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics.6 Lee compellingly argues that Gnosticism, which can be defined simply as believing one is saved by possessing secret knowledge of God,7 has become the default religion

of both evangelical and liberal churches. One defining characteristic of Gnosticism is elitism, believing one’s self or group to be superior to others.8 A moment’s reflection will make the connection clear: after all, if I know more than you do, doesn’t that necessarily make me smarter and better than you?

In Reformed circles, a pilgrimage narrative such as this one is extremely common: “Once I was an unbeliever, then I got saved through an evangelical ministry, and then I read some books and went to some conferences, and now I am Reformed.” To be Reformed, then, is not a matter of church membership, but to have attained to a higher level of knowledge and insight than have the commoners in evangelical and fundamentalist circles. While those people may be saved from their sins, they have not yet ascended to the elite heights that we possessors of greater knowledge have reached.

Here, then, is the appeal of muttered syllables that can only be nonsensical to the vast majority of congregants who hear them. Like the Latin Mass, these intonations declare to the congregation that the preacher has gone through the steps necessary to acquire a higher knowledge of God than they have. They can be assured that if they also mutter these syllables and ascribe to them the meaning they have been assigned by the preacher, they will, like him, possess higher knowledge. While one might have no interest in a Latin Mass, since one couldn’t understand a word of it, one might be drawn to a preacher who promises access to secret knowledge locked away in the original Greek and Hebrew words of Scripture.

Note that, in this scenario, the congregant is utterly dependent on the preacher for his knowledge of the Bible.

The congregant has not gone to seminary and couldn’t tell the difference between a Greek word and a Hebrew word, let alone define either. He must put his faith in the words of the preacher rather than the words of the sermon’s text.

If “good” preaching has taught him unquestioning acceptance of the minister’s doctrine, what defenses will he have against a bad, or even heretical, preacher?

I’ve no doubt whatsoever that egalitarianism and “evangelical” homosexuality are heretical twistings of the plain meaning of Scripture. But you see, I believe the Bible actually has a plain meaning.9 If you’ve been taught there is no “plain meaning” of the Scriptures, and that its meaning can be discovered only through the mediation of a preacher, then you will have no resources with which to differentiate between heresy and orthodoxy, between false knowledge and true knowledge. It will all sound alike: secret knowledge accessible only through a priest who has already mastered it.

The problem, then, is only partially ministers who want to show off their educations. Instead, it is the Gnostic conviction one may attain to higher status within the Christian community by the acquisition of knowledge. Too many come to services each Sunday not to worship but to hear “the real deal,” the latest doctrine that is different from what all those second-class Christians in their not-asN O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 15

enlightened-as-us congregations believe. They want to hear those meaningless Greek and Hebrew syllables that give them imaginary insight into the text. Accordingly, they are puffed up instead of being driven down to their knees in adoration of the God who speaks to them so plainly and convictingly in the Bible.

Gnostic elitism is one of the greatest enemies of the gospel: For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Cor. 1:17–25) Biblical preaching proclaims the cross. The cross is great foolishness because it proclaims God did not remain on high, where he belongs, and wait for us to gather enough knowledge to climb (or think) our way up to him. The cross proclaims God came down and got himself killed in our place because we would never ever ever get smart enough or good enough to walk into his presence otherwise. The cross proclaims faith in Christ’s work is the only way to be saved, which means the acquisition of greater or secret knowledge is useless as a means to salvation. The cross, then, proclaims what everyone, including Christians, knows to be just plain foolishness.

Of course, although we don’t like to admit it, to be a Christian is to forswear all secret knowledge and all elitism: But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (1 Cor. 1:27–29) We are nothing. I am nothing. You are nothing. And nothing we do will ever make us anything. We are, we have being, only because we are in Christ, who alone is glory and honor. And that’s the message found in the 1 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

original Greek.

When he wrote in 1987, Philip J. Lee was reluctant to identify what we might now call “reformational” churches as Gnostic. In 2008, however, our elitism and fascination with secret knowledge betray us as being as thoroughly Gnostic as any other heretical movement in church history.

The problem is not merely an unhelpful rhetorical habit. It is, rather, a sneaking suspicion on the part of preacher and parishioner that the gospel is insufficient and can be added to by our knowledge, as though the Father will say to only a few on the Last Day, “Well done, smart and well-read servant; you have learned enough theology to be promoted to a seat of honor over the rest of the rabble.” The problem is that we’re a bunch of Gnostics.

We confessional Protestants properly ground ourselves in the Reformation and have for a slogan, “Reformed and always reforming.” Biblical reformation begins with the heart, and each must search his own.

Pastors should lead the way. Like all other believers, we are a prideful lot. We easily fall prey to the temptation to show off, to impress those under our care, and be served by their admiration instead of serving by bringing them into the riches of God’s Word.

Brothers, I own a couple lexicons myself, and “love” means….

Well, it means “love.” As with every other word in any language, its use in a particular phrase is conditioned as much by context as etymology. Teach your people how to read that context, and they’ll be able to understand the words of Scripture even when you’re not around. That, after all, is a significant component of our job.

To be clear, I believe the original languages have a place in the regular life of the congregation, as do theological and confessional jargon. That place is in Bible studies, where there’s opportunity to use exegetical tools thoughtfully and carefully, and where people may respond, ask questions, and make sure they themselves can explain what the study leader is teaching. We must repent of the urge to show off on Sunday mornings. From the pulpit we must plainly declare God’s Word, and though we might occasionally have to make reference to the original languages to settle a dispute among the translations, we should do so in a way that honors our spiritual fathers of the Protestant Reformation who died to bring the people Bibles in their own languages. If we do not, why should they have given their bodies over to the flames of martyrdom?

I am as wary as any of the dangers of the “just-me-andmy-Bible” mentality, which denies any authority other than my own personal interpretation of Scripture. At the same time, we should all be wary of teaching people, explicitly or implicitly, that they cannot tell the difference between heresy and orthodoxy and must depend on expert opinions. Ironically, the individualist and the preacher-dependent will end up in exactly the same place.

Since experts will always disagree among themselves, each shall simply choose the one whose opinion most appeals

doctrine through sound preaching. See Westminster Shorter Catechism #88-90. and find ourselves renewed, in heart and life, by the 4 As a Presbyterian, my ecclesiastical experiences are Spirit of Christ who speaks through it to the learned mostly with this Reformational tradition; I can’t say and unlearned alike. whether Lutherans or Episcopalians have the same problem.

5 to him or her.

As it did to one of my former seminary professors Thus, pastors must teach their people how to interpret when I mentioned to him this essay’s theme.

6 their English Bibles properly. This happens in Bible studies Modern Reformation vol. 17.3, May/June 2008.

7 and, perhaps with greater impact, in the way exegesis is As opposed to faith in the salvation provided by God modeled from the pulpit. Only in that way will Christ’s through the cross of Christ. Philip J. Lee, Against the sheep be guarded against the twin dangers of Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford University Press, individualistic interpretation and heretical teaching.

1987), 4, 20.

8 We will do just about anything to hold onto our idols, Lee, 10–11.

9 and the greatest one of all is our own vanity. I’ve known As defined by the Westminster Confession of Faith 1.7, more than one Christian ensnared by egalitarianism or quoted above.

10 “evangelical” homosexuality.10 It’s easy to buy into these Here I’m thinking of followers, not leaders. There are movements because they remove the necessity of genuine Christians who have become ensnared in some repentance and entire submission to God’s will: I get to be pretty heinous sin, and as long as they are willing to accept who I want to be in just the way I want to be, and God the authority of Scripture, they should be lovingly wouldn’t dare tell me otherwise. Preachers regularly confronted with its claims and promises. However, most commit this same sin of self-exaltation. They strive to leaders and scholars of these movements are educated and justify their salaries by demonstrating they have mastered thoughtful people, and cannot for very long maintain the Bible, and thereby win adherents. The teaching they diametrically opposed beliefs (such as a holy God alongside offer their followers is the Bible’s secret knowledge, which sexual immorality). As the rhetoric of Jimmy Creech and can in turn make them members of the theological elite as Mel White (advocates for homosexual marriage in the well. In the process of becoming masters, we forget we are church, etc.) demonstrates, these eventually and called to submit as faithful servants of the true Master. inevitably jettison the historic Christian faith, along with Sadly, Reformed parishioners and pastors often are any recognition of the Bible’s authority. most easily identified by an absence of Christlike humility.

Accordingly, we all must turn anew to God’s Word. We preachers must not think we teach knowledge, but rather understand we are commissioned to proclaim Christ and him crucified from every Scripture. We Christians all must submit ourselves to the Bible and find ourselves renewed, in heart and life, by the Spirit of Christ who speaks e pastors are being killed by the professionalizing through it to the learned and unlearned alike. We may forget, for a time, that the Scriptures originally were of the pastoral ministry. The mentality of the written in Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, but we shall hear professional is not the mentality of the prophet. It is not the much more clearly the voice of our Lord and Savior through them. mentality of the slave of Christ. Professionalism has

We Christians all must submit ourselves to the Bible

Speaking Of…

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nothing to do with the essence and heart of the Christian Matthew W. Kingsbury (M.Div, Westminster Theological Seminary in California) is the pastor of Park Hill Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Denver, Colorado.

ministry. The more professional we long to be, the more spiritual death we will leave in our wake. For there is no professional childlikeness (Matt. 18:3); there is no

NOTES 1 Also known as “evangelical feminism.”

2 Chapter 1, paragraph 7.

3 Through “a due use of the ordinary means,” which in the Westminster Standards includes prayer, faithful participation in the sacraments, and learning about biblical

professional tenderheartedness (Eph. 4:32); there is no professional panting after God (Ps. 42:1).

—John Piper Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

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EVANGELICALISM’S WINTER?

To Be or Not To Be The Uneasy Relationship between Reformed Christianity and American Evangelicalism

by Michael Horton

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hope that non-Reformed readers will indulge me in a consideration of the relationship of our tradition to the movement known today as American evangelicalism.

After all, I think that much of what I have to say here will apply to other traditions. In Reformed and Presbyterian quarters today, as in other traditions, a range of views can be discerned with respect to our relation to the evangelical movement. One person disavows, another accepts only with qualifications, and another unreservedly wears the evangelical label either in general approval of the movement’s direction or with a determination to “take it back” to a moment in the past when it supposedly described people who think as we do. However, at least American evangelicalism has always been a diverse movement, especially since the first Great Awakening. Through pietism and then the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening, the character of evangelicalism was shaped as much by criticism and rejection of the Reformation’s legacy as by its abiding influence. I will not attempt another definition of evangelicalism; others have done that with greater skill.

Thinking aloud, my focus is on whether by giving evangelical identity priority over our confessional and churchly identities we have actually contributed to the shallowness of the evangelical movement more generally.

From Embrace to Ambivalence or centuries, members of Reformed and Presbyterian churches have thought of themselves as belonging primarily to a movement of catholic Christianity that was reformed in the sixteenth century through the ministry of such pastors as Martin Luther, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, and John Knox. Luther’s followers first called themselves “evangelicals” (from “evangel,” meaning gospel), and the term became virtually identical with adherence to the key tenets of the magisterial Reformers, in distinction from Rome and Anabaptism.

From this reservoir of faith and practice, these churches played a central role in the modern missions movement, which brought together believers from a host of different denominations. The roots of the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical agencies lie in these interdenominational missionary efforts. Eventually, as many of the churches—including Reformed and Presbyterian—became less faithful and, in fact, were embroiled in controversy over the basic doctrines of Christianity, believers from a host of different churches found their commonality in what came to be called the evangelical essentials. It was not a coincidence that the most vigorously evangelical in doctrine were the most vigorously evangelistic in practice. Find the most missions-minded members in these denominations and you would find those most committed to the authority of Scripture, salvation by grace alone in Christ alone, the deity and humanity of Christ in one person, his substitutionary death for sinners, justification, the new birth, and Christ’s second coming.

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Somewhere along the way, however, the evangel became increasingly separated from evangelism; the message became subservient to the methods. Today, it is taken for granted by many that those most concerned about doctrine are least interested in reaching the lost (or, as they are now called, the “unchurched”). We are frequently challenged to choose between being traditional or missional, usually with little definition offered for either.

Where the earlier evangelical consensus coalesced simultaneously around getting the gospel right and getting it out, increasingly today the coalition is defined by its style (“contemporary” versus “traditional”), its politics (“compassionate conservatism” or the more recent rediscovery of revivalism’s progressivist roots), and its “rock-star” leaders, than for its convictions about God, humanity, sin, salvation, the purpose of history, and the last judgment.

To put it all far too simply, the Second Great Awakening, especially the ministry of revivalist Charles G. Finney, represented what can only be called America’s Counter-Reformation. Going beyond Rome’s CounterReformation in the direction of Pelagianism, Finney denied original sin, the substitutionary atonement, justification, and the supernatural character of the new birth; and he created a system of faith and practice tailormade for a self-reliant nation. Evangelicalism—which is to say, at least in late eighteenth-century American Protestantism—was the engine for innovations. In doctrine, it served modernity’s preference for faith in human nature and progress. In worship, it transformed Word-and-sacrament ministry into entertainment and social reform, creating the first star-system in the culture of celebrity. In public life, it confused the Kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world and imagined that Christ’s reign could be made visible by the moral, social, and political activity of the saints. There was little room for anything weighty to tie the movement down, to discipline its entrepreneurial celebrities, or to question its “revivals” apart from their often short-lived publicity.

I know this cursory summary focuses one-sidedly on the weaknesses, ignoring the genuine advances that occurred in the wake of revivalism. In my view, however, it is a net loss. Much of contemporary evangelicalism has its roots in Finney’s legacy and behind it, pietism, which for all of its benefits nevertheless already began to shift the weight of Christian witness from the triune God and his saving work in Christ to the self and its inner experience.

“Extremes meet,” noted Princeton’s B. B. Warfield toward the end of the nineteenth century. “Pietist and Rationalist have ever hunted in couples and dragged down their quarry together. They may differ as to why they deem theology mere lumber, and would not have the prospective minister waste his time in acquiring it.

The one loves God so much, the other loves him so little, that he does not care to know him.”1 Warfield’s Dutch colleague Herman Bavinck observed, “Powerful movements, like those that Pietism had called forth in N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 19

The ambivalence expressed by Warfield cannot help but be felt today by those who are convinced of the persistent truth and vitality of the catholic faith as it

which is not believed by Evangelicals,” and yet “nothing which is not believed… by the adherents of the Church of Rome, for example.”

There is nothing about justification by faith in this creed. And that means that all the gains obtained in that great religious movement which we call the Reformation are cast out of the window…. There is nothing about the atonement in the blood of Christ in this creed. And that means that the whole gain of the long mediaeval search after truth is thrown summarily aside….There is nothing about sin and grace in this creed….We need not confess our sins anymore; we need not recognize the existence of such a thing. We need believe in the Holy Spirit only ‘as guide and comforter’—do not the Rationalists do the same? And this means that all the gain the whole world has reaped from the great Augustinian conflict goes out of the window with the rest….It is just as true that the gains of the still earlier debates which occupied the first age of the Church’s life, through which we attained to the understanding of the fundamental truths of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ are discarded by this creed also. There is no Trinity in this creed; no Deity of Christ—or of the Holy Spirit.3

is expressed in the confessions and catechisms of the Reformation.

Germany and Methodism had unleashed in England and America, all had in common that they shifted the center of gravity from the object of religion to the subject.

Theology followed this track in the systems produced by Kant, Schleiermacher, and their schools.”2 The educated wing of pietistic Protestantism in America tended to become assimilated to modernism, while its fundamentalist wing provided an ever-fresh crop of cynical and disillusioned young people to find the former a more attractive option. Yet modernists like Harry Emerson Fosdick and fundamentalists like Bob Jones, Sr., could recall Finney and his legacy with fondness.

Consequently, even orthodox Protestants in Europe always viewed evangelicalism as a uniquely British and American phenomenon, generally characterized as “Methodist.” Even in the United States, Presbyterian and Reformed churches had an ambivalent relationship to evangelicalism. On one hand, theologians like Warfield and Hodge understood the label “evangelical” as referring to the substance of catholic Christianity reformed and refined in the Reformation. Naturally, this made them closer allies with confessional Lutherans and Anglicans than with heirs of Finney, but the mainline Presbyterian Church itself was divided in the nineteenth century between Old School and New School bodies over revivalism. In many ways, evangelicalism more generally has struggled with this schizophrenic heritage of Reformation and Counter-Reformation influences.

Churchmen like Warfield and Hodge regarded themselves as evangelicals in this Reformation sense and struggled to bring American Protestantism into line with this definition. They were also staunchly committed to and personally involved with the vast missionary endeavors of their denomination at home and abroad, bringing them into constant fellowship and cooperation with other evangelicals.

An Evangelical Creed? evertheless, Warfield was already beginning to see that the tension between competing visions of evangelical identity was making it more difficult to remain an unqualified supporter of the cause. In 1920, a “plan of union for evangelical churches” was put forward and Warfield evaluated the “creed” of this plan as it was being studied by Presbyterians. Warfield observed that the new confession being proposed “contains nothing

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Where justification through faith is the heart of the evangel, how can “evangelicals” omit it from their common confession? “Is this the kind of creed which twentieth-century Presbyterianism will find sufficient as a basis for co-operation in evangelistic activities? Then it can get along in its evangelistic activities without the gospel.

For it is precisely the gospel that this creed neglects altogether.” Warfield concludes, “Fellowship is a good word, and a great duty. But our fellowship, according to Paul, must be in ‘the furtherance of the gospel.’”4 Protestantism without the Reformation t the end of his lecture tour in the United States, Dietrich Bonhoeffer characterized American religion as “Protestantism without the Reformation.” Although the influence of the Reformation in American’s religious history has been profound (especially prior to the mid-nineteenth century), and remains a counterweight to the dominance of the revivalist heritage, Bonhoeffer’s diagnosis seems justified:

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God has granted American Christianity no Reformation. He has given it strong revivalist preachers, churchmen and theologians, but no Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ by the Word of God….American theology and the

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American church as a whole have never been able to understand the meaning of ‘criticism’ by the Word of God and all that signifies. Right to the last they do not understand that God’s ‘criticism’ touches even religion, the Christianity of the church and the sanctification of Christians, and that God has founded his church beyond religion and beyond ethics….In American theology, Christianity is still essentially religion and ethics….Because of this the person and work of Christ must, for theology, sink into the background and in the long run remain misunderstood, because it is not recognized as the sole ground of radical judgment and radical forgiveness.5 I realize that not all such “creeds” are as minimalistic as the one evaluated by Warfield. Nor has American Christianity been without its own defenders of the faith.

In its “Statement of Faith,” the National Association of Evangelicals affirms the Trinity, the deity of Christ, “the vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood,” and the necessity of a supernatural rebirth. There is, however, no mention of justification—the article of a standing or falling church—and the only conviction concerning the church is belief in “the spiritual unity of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Baptism and the Supper are not even mentioned.

A more fulsome declaration has come recently from the authors and signatories of an “Evangelical Manifesto,” which insists that evangelicalism, grounded in the Reformation heritage “should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.” Specifically, the manifesto affirms Christ’s divinity and humanity in the incarnation as the only way of salvation, Christ’s death and life as the ground of our acceptance before God, and that we are “credited with the righteousness of Christ,” which we receive “solely by grace through faith.” It also affirms the new birth as a gift of grace and the authority of Scripture.

At the same time, not that long ago, respected evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders crafted and signed a series of consensus statements that affirmed agreement in the gospel while admitting differences over justification and the role of merit in our salvation. Increasingly, even in evangelical scholarship, justification is often treated as a secondary matter of refinement rather than the heart of the Good News that defines evangelical identity and mission. The ambivalence expressed by Warfield cannot help but be felt today by those who are convinced of the persistent truth and vitality of the catholic faith as it is expressed in the confessions and catechisms of the Reformation.

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“mere Christianity”—the hallway where people meet and where non-Christians can hear Christ’s central claims. We were not meant to live on the village green or in the hallway, however, but in the homes and rooms.

Evangelicalism is most useful as a meeting place, but disastrous for anyone who tries to make it a home. For a home, we need a church.

According to the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggert, evangelicalism includes in its theological spectrum everyone from R. C. Sproul to Benny Hinn. Increasingly, I believe that the real vitality—the long-term progress—of the gospel in our time will not come from broad movements, including an evangelicalism defined more by the hegemony of its politics and sociology than by the unity of its faith and practice. Rather, I expect it to come from many churches, most of them relatively small and unheralded, which consistently confess—in preaching and sacrament, in catechesis and fellowship, in singing and liturgy, in outreach and diaconal care—that gospel that alone remains “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16).

After all, it was not to movements, parachurch agencies, and coalitions that Jesus pledged his support. Rather, he promised, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will never prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). ■

Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido).

WORKS CITED 1 B. B. Warfield, “Our Seminary Curriculum,” in Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield—I, ed. John E. Meeter (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1970), 371.

2 Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Vol 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 556.

3 B. B. Warfield, “In Behalf of Evangelical Religion,” in Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield—I, 386.

4 Warfield, “In Behalf of Evangelical Religion,” 387.

5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Protestantism without the Reformation,” in No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures and Notes, 1928–1936, ed. Edwin H. Robertson, trans. Edwin H. Robertson and John Bowden (London: Collins, 1965), 92–118.

A Village Green have argued that evangelicalism is like a village green, where people, leaving their homes and stores, come to mix and mingle. Or, as C. S. Lewis suggested, it is

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SPECIAL SECTION

What is the Future of Evangelicalism?

As the articles in this issue of Modern Reformation suggest, evangelicalism is experiencing a change in seasons: former evangelical statesmen are passing from the scene, new evangelicals don't seem to rally around the same issues and ideas as their forefathers, and it's increasingly difficult (if it was ever really possible) to identify clearly what an evangelical is. If you have any warm feelings at all about evangelicalism, you want some answers: Where is evangelicalism going? Who better to turn to for answers than the individuals whose lives and work helped create and shape evangelicalism.

Modern Reformation is honored to include the reflections of these evangelical leaders, pastors, and scholars as we seek to understand our own time and the future of the evangelical expression of Christianity.

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Timothy George W. Robert Godfrey John A. Huffman, Jr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. David Neff Roger Nicole Robert M. Norris J. I. Packer Lawrence R. Rast, Jr. David F. Wells Paul F. M. Zahl

EVANGELICALISM

by Timothy George

Evangelicalism is a renewal movement within the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. As such, it claims as its own the trinitarian and christological dogmas of the early church, not because they are ancient or endorsed by the teaching office of this or that denomination, but because they are necessarily implied by how the Bible presents God’s revelation of himself in the history of Israel and Israel’s messiah, Jesus the Lord. These teachings were also basic to the ecclesial and spiritual renewal in the churches of the West in the sixteenth century, generally known as the Reformation. Evangelicals are Reformational Christians, claiming as their own the material and formal principles of this movement: the normative authority of Holy Scripture and justification by faith alone. Evangelicalism since the Reformation has also been decisively shaped by the great awakenings of the eighteenth century, the worldwide missionary movement that grew out of it, and stirrings of the Spirit that continue to this day including, but not limited to, puritanism, pietism, and Pentecostalism.

I am frequently involved in conversations like this one and hear a lot of moaning about the declining fortunes of the evangelical movement. I know the diagnosis well and have described it myself: doctrinal indifference, transcendence-starved worship, cultural captivity, superficial spirituality, preaching about the Bible but not from it, etc. These are all symptoms of a deeper malaise. It is an open question whether evangelicalism at the end of the twenty-first century (if Jesus tarries that long) will have anything of the cultural cache or public influence it is said to have now, at least in parts of the United States.

But it is well to remember that Jesus did not say, “Upon this rock, I will build my evangelical empire.” He promised prevailing power to his church. Insofar as evangelicals remain gospel-people and Bible-people, God will continue to use them, I believe, as instruments of renewal and blessing for the entire Body of Christ. This side of heaven, as T. S. Eliot put it, “the church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.”

In 1899, D. L. Moody died in Northfield, Massachusetts.

A chorus of disconsolation arose around the Christian world: “Who will lead us now? Who will replace D. L. Moody?” Little did they suspect that the sovereign Lord had ordained the birth and calling of Billy Graham, the son of a dairy farmer, who has preached the gospel to more persons that any human being in history. Nor could they have imagined that God would speak to a shattered Chuck Colson in an Alabama jail and through him launch a ministry to prisoners and their families that is now chartered in 114 countries around the world.

How dare we be disheartened, especially when we consider the extraordinary things God is doing in Africa, Latin America, South Korea, and the former (consider that, the former!) Soviet Union. The shape of evangelicalism in the future will be, even more than it is

today, transnational, transdenominational, even transconfessional in a way that stresses the “mereness” of Christianity without necessarily dumbing it down or bleaching it out, though such dangers are real and require vigilance always. Evangelical identity is not a prize to be grasped tightly in the fist like a hand grenade about to go off. It is a freely received gift to be shared freely and, like the offer of the gospel itself, promiscuously. “Come unto me,” the Master said, “all of you” (Matt. 11:28).

Some conservatives do not like the word “evangelical” because it has become too broad, too bland. Some progressives do not like it either because it is too stodgy, too restrictive. I think it is a word worth keeping, but not worth dying for. Luther did not want his followers to be called Lutherans. Even though I am a Reformed Baptist (in the tradition of John Bunyan and Charles Spurgeon), I do not think the label “Calvinist” would please the reformer of Geneva.

Christianity Today identifies itself as “a magazine of evangelical conviction,” and the adjective means something. It signals a commitment to historic Christian orthodoxy, to the Bible, God’s totally truthful written Word, and to Jesus Christ, the one and only Savior, and his lordship over every area of life. What I like about the word “evangelical” is that it points ad fontes, to the sources of our faith in the Holy Scriptures at the heart of which is Jesus Christ and his gospel.

I am a Christian, a Protestant, an evangelical, and a Southern Baptist. All of those commitments are important to me, but so is their ordering. Born amidst slavery and segregation, the SBC is now committed to racial reconciliation as well as world evangelization and biblical theology. We have special gifts to share with our brothers and sisters in Christ (including Roman Catholic believers who know and serve Jesus), and much to receive from them.

Southern Baptists have sometimes been better talkers than listeners. We have not always acknowledged our need for others nor have we heeded the dangers of denominational prosperity. I hope that such hubris and disconnection are more markers of our past than of our future. The old patterns of isolation and Baptist braggadocio will not serve the cause of Christ in a world like ours. If there is a future for the SBC, it will be an evangelical future—a commitment to cooperation without compromise, and a passion for sharing the love of Jesus with everyone everywhere. In this way, the SBC too can serve the renewal of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. ■

Dr. Timothy George is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and a senior editor of Christianity Today.

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On Evangelicalism by W. To anticipate the future of evangelicalism we must reflect on its history. Many evangelicals have been inclined to deny that evangelicalism has much of a history or that it is a unique religious tradition. They prefer to see themselves as simply adhering to biblical religion. But American evangelicalism has a history. It is grounded in the Great Awakening and the Wesleyan revivals of the eighteenth century stressing the religious experience of conversion to new life as the heart of the true religion taught in the Bible.

This evangelical movement has had remarkable success.

Until the first part of the twentieth century a large majority of Protestants in America thought of themselves as evangelicals. As the church historian Sydney Ahlstrom put it: “Revivalism became a steady feature of advancing Protestantism throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth. But the antebellum period was the great time of evangelical triumph. These were the days above all when the ‘Evangelical United Front’ took up the manifold causes of moral renewal, missionary advance, and humanitarian reform—with revival preaching almost always leading the way.”1 Yet for all the success and strengths of evangelicalism, it always suffered from being a reductionistic form of religion. In the eagerness of evangelicals to promote revival and evangelism, many traditional concerns of Christianity (such as predestination, original sin, the nature of grace, the relation and significance of justification and sanctification, sacraments, ministry, worship, and ecclesiology) were marginalized or eliminated from the evangelical core.

The church, however, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

Evangelicals often found themselves adding to their religious core rather eccentric concerns. Charles Finney embraced the notion of Christian perfection. D. L. Moody promoted a fascination with prophecy and premillennialism. Some embraced a variety of social issues from abolitionism to prohibition. Others came to focus on the extraordinary work of the Spirit. Still others were challenged to accommodate their faith to the emerging intellectual challenges of the late nineteenth century. All of these supplements to the evangelical core strained evangelical unity, but especially the last point would bring evangelicals to a deep divide.

In the late nineteenth century, higher criticism of the Bible and evolution began to challenge standard elements of orthodox Christian teaching. By the early twentieth century, that unity began to rupture. Between 1910 and 1915, twelve volumes of scholarly essays defending the traditional Protestant understanding of the authority and character of the Bible and other basic doctrines were published under the general title, The Fundamentals. These essays were moderate in tone and did not have a great impact at the time they were published. But they did 2 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Robert Godfrey provide a label around which conservative evangelicals increasingly rallied: fundamentalists.

By the 1920s, theological differences between conservative evangelicals and progressive evangelicals had become so great that the conservatives began to abandon the word “evangelical” because they felt it no longer had a clear meaning. Increasingly, the two sides of evangelicalism became known as the “fundamentalists” and the “modernists” or “liberals.”

In the 1940s, Carl Henry and some other somewhat moderate fundamentalists began to feel that the label “fundamentalist” had too many negative connotations.

They began to resurrect the older term “evangelical” and call themselves the “new evangelicals.” They adhered to the core doctrines of the old evangelicalism (and fundamentalism), but sought to be less antagonistic and isolated than the fundamentalism of the 1930s.

This new evangelicalism took institutional form in agencies like Fuller Seminary, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the periodical Christianity Today, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Evangelical Theological Society. These agencies did a great deal to rehabilitate revivalist conservative Protestantism as vital popular religion with intellectual respectability and to make it again a potent force in American culture.

The high point of the new evangelicalism’s accomplishments was the International Council for Biblical Inerrancy established in the 1970s. This agency provided a popular and scholarly defense of the evangelical doctrine of the Bible’s inerrancy and made a significant contribution to articulating and buttressing this vital doctrine.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the reductionist weakness of evangelicalism again clearly manifested itself. Evangelicals supplemented their religion with contemporary music and contemporary worship.

Opposition to abortion and political lobbying became the leading social concerns. And again intellectual challenges arose, such as open theism, the new perspective on Paul, and the authority of Scripture.

In the early twenty-first century, “evangelicalism” has again become a word with almost no meaning. The range of religious convictions held by “evangelicals” has become absurdly wide. Unlike the situation in the 1920s, however, there seems to be little prospect of a great evangelical divide. As long as evangelicals can convince themselves that they are promoting conversion and have a significant cultural impact on America, they seem largely content with their theological contradictions.

As a church historian, I recognize that millions of Americans continue to identify themselves as evangelicals and that the evangelical movement is still doing much that is good. But as a Reformed minister, I believe we need to recognize that evangelicalism is an inherently unstable (continued on page 25)

The Future of Evangelicalism The future of evangelicalism, in my estimation writing as a pastor, involves two important functions: (1) the preservation of the gospel; and (2) living, not just proclaiming, that gospel.

First, as evangelicals, we must make every effort to maintain what is the historic biblical essence of the Christian faith theologically. We live in a consumer era. When I was ordained to gospel ministry in the early 1960s, faithfulness to the faith once delivered to the saints was often evaluated on the basis of what sacrifices a person was willing to make in the avoidance of compromise with theological modernism. Today, in this era of evangelical triumphalism, the criteria tend to be more quantitative than qualitative, with the measurements of success being those of membership size, attendance, and budget. These kinds of consumer pressures encourage a theological amnesia in which we reorient our message to the felt needs of the seeker rather than to a biblical understanding of the Person and work of Jesus Christ and the training of a biblically literate laity. The minimization of the importance of theological seminary education, replacing it with leaders trained within the local congregation, inevitably leads to some degree of cloning the idiosyncratic. The knowledge of church history, theology, and biblical studies is an absolute prerequisite for strong evangelical leadership that is knowledgeable in a way that avoids destructive accommodation to, at the least, the theological fads of the day and, at the worst, heresies that strip us of what is important, threatening the very theological foundations of what we believe. What carefully trained theological liberals do intentionally through the deconstruction and reconstruction of biblical texts using a carefully selected hermeneutic paradigm is inadvertently happening simultaneously by sincere evangelical pastors and lay leaders who so desire to speak a relevant message but end up almost unconsciously compromising that message to the spirit of the times. And perhaps just as dangerous is an instinctive reaction to this tendency that resists such creeping heterodoxy with a rigid partisan fundamentalist approach to doctrine. This can replace the general spirit of a broad evangelicalism that embraces all who hold high the historic doctrines of the faith with a brittle partisan emphasis on particular doctrinal formulizations that deny the very mystery present in any biblical endeavor to adequately define the nature of God and God’s workings throughout human history. Even as our vulnerability to theological amnesia can water down the essence of the faith, accommodating it to culture, such severe partisanship can produce fragmentation among brothers and sisters who really deserve the privilege of expressing the uniqueness of their spiritual giftedness under the large umbrella of an historic evangelical faith.

Second, as evangelicals, we must be careful that we do not just proclaim that historic gospel, but that we live it out

by John A. Huffman, Jr.

in our individual and corporate lives. Sadly, recent research shows little difference in the lifestyles of those who claim to be evangelical Christians from those who would make no such profession. In many ways, we American evangelicals have not known how to handle our “success.”

The biblical mandate that we claim to follow urges us not only to have the right theology but to live it out in our daily lives. Although none of us should claim perfection and all of us are called to lives of daily repentance, we need a greater emphasis existentially on the doctrine of sanctification. We are called to live humble, transformed by the Holy Spirit, Christ-like lives. We dare not minimize our own individual orientations toward sin and particular sins toward which we are tempted, while we are quick to point out the sins of others. We need to be especially careful that we do not redefine what sin is just because a younger generation is coming along that minimizes some of the sins we have historically warned against. Instead, we need to be sensitive to ways in which they point out our hypocrisy, double standards, and minimization of certain justice matters clearly spoken to in Scripture, while at the same time not jettisoning our attention to those sins more personal in nature.

I’m convinced that the future of evangelicalism is bright to the extent that we faithfully preserve the gospel in all the richness of its content and endeavor to graciously live lives that not only proclaim that gospel, but flesh it out in attitude and action. Anything less than this could make its future quite precarious. ■

Dr. John A. Huffman, Jr., is co-pastor and head of staff of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church (PC USA) in Newport Beach, California.

(continued from page 24) form of religion, especially because of its reductionism.

What Christians need today is a form of religion that embraces the fullness of the biblical revelation.

Here is my big finish: Let us stop worrying about saving evangelicalism. That cannot be done. Let us rather promote confessional Reformed religion, which has the strengths of evangelicalism at its best—and so much more. ■

Dr. W. Robert Godfrey is president and professor of church history at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido, California.

Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 387.

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Reflections by R. Albert Mohler Jr. The identity crisis of modern evangelicalism defies description. What can we say of a movement (it is a movement?) that has been struggling with an identity crisis for its entire existence? In Victorian England, “evangelical” was used by Charles Spurgeon and others (both within and without the Church of England) to refer to those who stood for the gospel. Even then, there was such value in the word that those of a more liberal persuasion attempted to use it as well. In the United States, the situation was very much the same. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the paragon of Protestant liberalism and the modernist movement, claimed the term for himself and denied that anyone had the right to deny the word to him or those like him. As Spurgeon remarked, “It is mere cant to cry, ‘We are evangelical; we are evangelical’ and yet decline to say what evangelical means.” We cannot say that we were not warned.

When the founders of the “new evangelicalism” coalesced in the 1940s, they chose to reclaim the same contested word in order to define their own movement as a way between liberal Protestant and separatist fundamentalism. They faced trouble from the start.

Now, over a half-century after that movement began, the identity crisis is more acute than ever. There is something inherently unstable about a movement that must define itself in every conversation. Six decades ago, figures such as Carl F. H. Henry and Harold Ockenga attempted to brand the new evangelicalism through flagship centers of influence such as Christianity Today and the National Association of Evangelicals. Institutions such as Wheaton College (Illinois) were seemingly glad to trade the label “fundamentalist” for a kinder and gentler branding. Yet, what the marketers call “brand clarity” did not last long.

The secular world seems to have discovered evangelicals about 1976, when Jimmy Carter became the public face of evangelicalism. When reporters asked what that word meant, they were referred to Billy Graham. Enough said? National newsmagazines declared the “Year of the Evangelical,” and reporters were dispatched to exotic assignments like “Jesus People” gatherings and the newly identified “megachurches.”

In the 1980s, evangelicals were observed as a newly awakened political force, and politicians want to count everything. Their finding was that, indeed, there were a lot of evangelicals. Where had these people been hiding?

Now, the landscape branded “evangelical” seems to cover a huge spectrum of institutions, churches, movements, and theological proposals. Once again, the label seems to be claimed by any Protestant who resists being identified as either a liberal Protestant or a fundamentalist.

At times, it seems that contemporary evangelicalism represents nothing so much as Gertrude Stein’s iconic remark about Burbank, California: “There is no there, there.”

In truth, there may be less there there than ever before. For good reason, the movement lacks the unifying institutions of hierarchy and magisterium. There is no evangelical Vatican, 2 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

no “God Box” on Riverside Drive, no patriarch in Dallas. We are a movement without “brand clarity.”

The branding metaphor is especially apt as a good many self-styled evangelicals are more concerned with marketing than with clarity about core beliefs. Given the inclusiveness of the movement, the boundaries are fuzzy at best and are constantly renegotiated. Since there is no central institution maintaining control over evangelical identity, there is no clear center and few clear boundaries.

Statements of evangelical conviction tend to be innocuous—more about minimal description than about bold declaration. The theological statement of the Evangelical Theological Society, for example, is so minimal that some traditional Roman Catholics claim they could sign it in good faith. A recent “Evangelical Manifesto” defined the movement in terms congenial to other traditions. When TIME magazine recently listed the most influential evangelicals, the magazine listed at least two Roman Catholics.

So, would prudence then dictate that the term be abandoned? There is no longer a Whig Party in the United States. Perhaps “evangelicalism” should join that term in the history books.

There is only one vexing problem with that proposal, and it is the same problem that confronted the evangelicals of Victorian England and the new evangelicals in the United States—there is no good replacement for the word.

We are stuck with it because there is the enduring problem of a two-party system in American Protestantism.

Whatever the terms of preference, there are liberal and conservative visions of Christianity that are, as J. Gresham Machen argued long ago, actually two rival religions.

What many of us mean by the term is that we are not liberal Protestants, not separatist fundamentalists, not Roman Catholics, not Eastern Orthodox, and not a quasiChristian sect. That isn’t much, but it’s what we remain when the vocabulary is depleted.

Now, the evangelical movement includes seekersensitive megachurches, Emergent and emerging churches, charismatics, confessional Protestants, and any number of other variants. The “brand” has enough cultural cache and utility that virtually everyone claims a purchase on it.

In my view, the term is of limited, but undeniably real, usefulness. Most of us will find some other descriptor of greater importance. For confessional believers, being Presbyterian, Baptist, or Lutheran, for example, is more important by far than being identified as “evangelical.”

Still, when asked about evangelical identity, I know that I have a stake in this. It is a term we cannot live with and cannot live without. And that, in truth, is the case with the movement, such as it is, as much as with the word. ■

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Who Leads the Evangelical Tango? by David Neff In 1949, a cautious pastor reluctantly invited a spirited young evangelist to hold a New Year’s Eve revival service in Boston’s Mechanics Hall. No one expected much to come from it, but urged on by Charles E. Fuller and Allen Emery, the well-established pastor Harold John Ockenga arranged for 31-year-old Billy Graham to speak at the 6,000-seat public hall and then to preach for another eight days at the Park Street Church. Everyone was astonished when crowds filled the hall and hundreds were turned away.

The suspicious Ockenga was converted that night—not to Christ, but from skepticism to a conviction that a productive partnership was to be had with the rough-hewn evangelist. That alliance bore much fruit, including Gordon-Conwell Seminary and Christianity Today magazine.

These two men symbolized something fundamental about the emerging neo-evangelical movement: It was to be a partnership between church and parachurch. That partnership turned out to be a tricky tango in which it was never clear who was supposed to lead. For the most part, the evangelical movement of the last six decades has been dominated by parachurch leadership. In the process, parachurch expertise, flair, and flash have unwittingly made many pastors believe they are untalented and that local ministry is dull.

Parachurch dominance should not surprise us. A pastor’s calling is first and foremost local, while parachurch organizations often begin with grand and global visions.

Youth for Christ provided the perfect soil in which Graham grew his global vision. Park Street Church had a bigger vision than many congregations, eager to influence New England for Christ, but it was still firmly planted on the border of Boston Common, and it would fail in its mission if it did not have an impact on its city.

Nevertheless, some pastors and their churches are called to become leaders on a regional, national, or global scale. Despite their differing gifts, entrepreneurial pastors like Donald Grey Barnhouse, John R. W. Stott, Bill Hybels, and (even) Jerry Falwell were all able to nurture institutions with national and international impact.

As I consider the future of this movement I inhabit, I believe it is time for pastor and congregation, rather than parachurch leadership, once again to take a more prominent role.

One signal of the movement’s ripeness for church-based leadership is the way Rick Warren has been hailed as the new Billy Graham. He is the most visible pastor in America, even though he doesn’t have a television show. His first goal was to be a stable pastor, staying in one congregation for forty years. His first big book was not addressed to a general audience, but was written to encourage pastors to focus on the fundamentals of the church’s calling. He was beloved of thousands of pastors long before he was exposed to a broad public. When he expanded his ministry into areas of social concern like poverty and HIV/AIDS, he built

his strategy on pairing well-resourced American churches with sister churches in needy contexts.

TIME’s David Van Biema proposed Warren as the next Billy Graham, although he focused on Graham’s role as pastor to the nation and its political leaders. Warren now exerts such influence across the evangelical movement that he is set to take on the Graham-like responsibility of lending or withholding blessing from new directions and initiatives.

Another signal of our ripeness for church-based leadership is Tim Keller’s emergence on the national scene.

Keller has had a long, faithful, and effective ministry in Manhattan, and did not really aspire to be a national figure. He majored on the majors and paid attention to the cultural milieu in which his church ministered. But he has now begun to take on a more public role as a shaper of evangelicalism because pastors across the country want him to share his understandings of local church ministry.

Now the national newsmagazines take note when he speaks, and The Wall Street Journal has recognized his apologetic writing as the most successful of the C. S. Lewis wannabes.

Somewhere far distant on the ecclesiastical spectrum from Warren and Keller is the “conversation” called emerging or Emergent. Amidst all the ferment, hype, and postmodern mystification, there is a clear commitment to the recovery of what it means to be the church.

Parachurch institutionalism has been off-putting to a lot of postmoderns. But the idea of living out the mission of God in community is the lodestar of the movement. Its leadership is pastoral and its fundamental expression is in the life of local church communities.

With this resurgent emphasis on church, why do we need parachurch partners? Because churches and pastors are generalists who need to be resourced by specialists.

When Rick Warren first proposed his church-to-church “P.E.A.C.E. Plan,” he spoke as if doing development work in Africa was a simple matter of mobilizing the resources and connecting the people. This disturbed World Vision President Rich Stearns, who exclaimed to the Christianity Today editors, “Relief and development work is rocket science!” Warren has since learned that lesson. Even Saddleback needs parachurch skills and vision.

Nevertheless, in the evangelical dance, the church is starting to lead again. Let us bless God for it. ■

David Neff is editor-in-chief and editorial vice president of the Christianity Today media group.

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A Personal History by Roger R. Nicole In the 1840s, my grandfather’s grandfather was part of a movement to accentuate evangelicalism in Geneva, Switzerland. My grandfather, a Greek professor at the Geneva University, also favored this movement over the state church. My father, Rev. Albert Nicole (1873–1966), sensing God’s call to the pulpit, studied in the evangelical seminary founded by Louis Gaussen and J. Merle d’Aubigne. My father went on to minister in evangelical churches in France, Germany, and Switzerland, becoming a well-known evangelical minister.

In 1915, I was born in Geneva; and as soon as I was capable to read, I received a New Testament and soon afterward joined the International Youth League for Reading the Scriptures. Before going to seminary, I gave special study to the inspiration and the sovereign decision of God and to the Gospel of John and to Acts.

In 1935, I took the course of Bible study in the Institut Biblique of Nogent/Marne, and in 1937 received the M.A. in classical studies from the Sorbonne. In 1938, I went to the United States to study theology in a “school of faith” (Gordon Divinity School, which later became Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) instead of a “school of doubt,” graduating in 1943 with a Th.D and later completing a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Two years after I became professor of evangelical theology at Gordon Divinity School in 1946, I prepared a statement of Evangelical Faith for Gordon and soon after became one of the founding members (I am now the last surviving one) of the Foundation of the Evangelical Theological Society. Years later, between 1978 and 1988, I was a member of the International Committee on the Inerrancy of Scripture, issuing in a carefully detailed statement on the nature of biblical inerrancy. I also produced written statements on biblical inspiration and on the atonement, many of which were republished in my collected writings, Standing Forth (Christian Focus, 2002). Finally, between 2002 and 2007, I was the major prosecutor in the discussion of the question whether “open theism” was compatible with biblical inerrancy.

Given my long evangelical history, here are some thoughts I would like to share: • Do not embrace any modification of the strong expression of the ETS rule as supported by the Chicago Statement of 1978. This statement has served the ETS well and has permitted the rallying of sound evangelical forces against dangerous non-evangelical views.

• Over the past fifty years, many evangelical apologetics have been characterized by a hostile attitude and a strident tone. Neither of those is necessary, or even effective, in the maintenance or defense of the Christian truth.

• In attempting to evaluate why I was unsuccessful in my argument, I realized I was succeeding in winning a debate and failing in the process to keep some friends that I had. Thus, for the thirtieth anniversary of my occupation of the chair of dogmatics at GordonConwell, I prepared questions I needed to keep in mind in order to be more congenial to those with whom I disagreed: “Polemical Theology or How to Deal with Those with Whom We Disagree” has now been published in at least three different journals and can also be found in Standing Forth.

• Evangelicals have too often chosen to deal with those who differ from them with personal hostility. The result has been meager success in the acceptance by others of their evangelical stance. In view of the remarkable growth and acceptance of the evangelical position as a possible option, it is time to concentrate on the winning over of heretofore disagreeing people rather than to make their position unacceptable. If we have a welcoming and winsome method for encouraging the acceptance of the biblical nature of our viewpoint, it is likely we will have better success of convincing them. ■

Dr. Roger R. Nicole is professor of theology (emeritus) at Reformed Theological Seminary.

Speaking Of…

I

t would be superficial simply to say that Evangelical theology as practiced by the coming generation is becoming more liberal. Yet the evidence is suggestive of a common trend, one in which the theological tradition is conforming in its own unique way to the cognitive and normative assumptions of modern culture.

—James Davison Hunter Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation

S

heer pragmatism is probably the predominant North American philosophy; do whatever works. But what we find out in the long run is that sometimes what works isn’t necessarily good or true. And we have to think these things through in order to determine the pitfalls of evangelism....If you come to Christ through sheer pragmatism, there will always be somebody around the corner who can pragmatically give you something better.

—Ravi Zacharias, Modern Reformation interview

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Have I Any Future As An Evangelical? by Robert M. Norris My spiritual and theological history and that of my congregation is “evangelical,” a designation we knew was derived from the Greek word for the “gospel” or “good news” of Jesus Christ. Evangelicals were “gospel people,” committed to simple New Testament Christianity and to the central tenets of apostolic faith, rather than to later ecclesiastical additions. While I have not changed in my theological convictions, what is now understood by “evangelical” has changed.

Once, evangelicals were able to identify themselves as those who enjoyed a personal saving relationship with Jesus Christ and who held the central tenets of the Christian faith. They understood that there was one God in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who was revealed as gracious by taking the initiative in salvation and the outworking of his plan for the world, without which a sinful humanity was powerless, condemned, and lost.

This God had revealed himself in objective truth, his Word in the Old and New Testaments, which was therefore the final authority in all matters of faith and practice, and which took precedence over reason, tradition, ecclesiastical authority, and individual experience. The uniqueness of Jesus Christ was understood to be fully God and fully man. He was sinless, and his life was lived in perfect obedience to the will of God. His death on the cross was seen to be penal in that he absorbed the just judgment of God against sin, and substitutionary because Jesus freely substituted himself in the place of sinners, securing by his condemnation their release. Dying a real death, he experienced a real physical resurrection. His return to the Father was a prelude to his eventual return in judgment to separate believers from unbelievers, and rewarding faith in Christ with eternal life in heaven and unbelievers with spiritual death in hell.

Gratitude for the cross of Christ, which was the Godappointed means of salvation from sin, resulted in a passionate commitment to proclaim the gospel of Christ as the only means of salvation for men and women.

Even though there was a recognized diversity among theologians and churches about particular doctrinal issues of the Christian faith, these affirmations provided a framework for understanding essential truth and offered a basis of cooperation for gospel ministry that crossed confessional and denominational bounds.

Over the last decades, the term “evangelical” has undergone a change in meaning, describing now an organic group of movements and religious traditions and denoting a style more than describing a common set of beliefs. The “evangelical movement” has become a broad term embracing a “big tent” diversity of traditions in which any Christian who professes a relationship to Jesus Christ may lay claim to the title.

This transformation has been accomplished largely by the development of institutions and organizations that

have been directly responsible for giving “evangelicals” a conscious sense of belonging to a movement that has sought to gain a voice in the wider forums of ecclesiastical and national life.

Their strategy for increased visibility and influence has been achieved at the expense of theological integrity.

“Evangelicalism” has grown in size and influence but now includes some who deny the reality of hell or dispute the legitimacy of penal substitution, and some who question the assertion that faith in Christ is the only way to gain salvation. The very uniqueness of Christ and the necessity of the gospel thus are abandoned or imperiled.

Identification with ministries whose theology and practices reduce the gospel can only lead to confusion.

When the message of the gospel is distorted or lost, then Christ is dishonored. Examples of ministries that distort include those offering humanist self-help therapies and those offering false “health and wealth” promises. Others deny significant Christian truths or redefine Christian truth in humanistic ways.

At the same time, “evangelicalism” has gained increased influence as it adopted an activist political agenda. It has established its own institution for political advocacy on moral issues such as anti-abortion policies, defining of marriage, and other social policies that are important to consistent biblical Christianity. However, the movement has been reshaped by these involvements making “evangelicalism” less theological and more institutional, and accepting for “evangelicalism” the status of being one “wing” of the church as the price to be paid for “a seat at the table” of ecclesiastical and political influence.

When the church confesses Jesus Christ as her Lord, acknowledges the final authority of the Scripture in regulating her life, and preaches the gospel as the only means appointed for the salvation of souls, she is not a “wing” of the church but the very church itself that dares not be content to throw away its birthright as members of an eternal kingdom in order to gain influence in a kingdom that is passing.

Any utilitarian value of being associated as an “evangelical” today is greatly outweighed by the disadvantages of being associated with subversive and deviant theology for the sake of political gains. With Francis Schaeffer we must ask, “What is the use of evangelicalism seeming to get larger and larger in number if significant numbers of those under the name of ‘evangelical’ no longer hold to that which makes evangelicalism evangelical?” ■

Dr. Robert M. Norris is senior pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Evangelicalism Now by J. I. Packer Evangelicalism: Just what is that? Because it is a complex reality that different people conceive in different ways and because the area round its edges, so to speak, in which details determine whether a person calls a view evangelical or not is so broad, I need to state my own definition before starting my discussion. So here goes.

Evangelicalism is a form of historic Christianity, embracing both belief (faith) and behavior (life), which has three controlling features. First, it is Bible-based, in the sense that Holy Scripture, received as revelation from God, shapes and resources it. Second, it is mainstream, in the sense of being trinitarian, incarnational, redemptive, and Christ-centered throughout, according to the historic creeds and Reformational confessions. Third, it is doxological, in the sense of valuing and requiring orthodoxy of faith, holiness of life, church health through ongoing repentance, reformation and renewal, evangelism and church planting by all possible means, and energetic worship, individual and corporate, all for the glory of God. Thus defined, evangelicalism appears as an ideal of which many professed evangelicals fall short, and one to which Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant liberals do not fully assent, since they all believe that evangelicalism’s biblical methodology is significantly flawed.

Within the evangelical ranks there is variety, substantive as well as stylistic. Confessional Calvinists and Lutherans, Arminian Methodists, charismatics and Pentecostals (excluding the anti-trinitarian United Pentecostals), Baptists and Salvationists, are all evangelicals of sorts.

Statistics do not show everything, but they tell us something. Here, they tell us that evangelicalism worldwide expanded enormously during the twentieth century. Very roughly: of the world’s two-billion-plus professing Christians today, one-billion-plus are Roman Catholics, over a quarter of a billion are Eastern Orthodox, and getting on for half a billion are some kind of evangelicals, most of this growth (from under twenty million when the twentieth century opened) being Pentecostal in character. In the Old West, as we may call it (North America, Britain, Australasia), the overall numbers of professing Christians have shrunk, but evangelical numbers have grown, steadily if not spectacularly. Evangelical scholars, publishing houses, literature, both popular and academic, learned societies, seminaries, and educational institutes abound today, and evangelical schools are full while liberal schools stand half empty. And though evangelical evangelism goes slowly in the Old West, there are parts of Africa and Asia where it races ahead like wildfire.

Against these upbeat facts must however be set a debit balance.

It has often been said that Christianity in North America is 3,000 miles wide and half an inch deep. Something similar is true, by all accounts, in Africa and Asia, and (I can testify to this) in Britain also. Worshippers in evangelical churches, 3 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

from the very young to the very old, and particularly the youth and the twenty- and thirty-somethings, know far less about the Bible and the faith than one would hope and than they themselves need to know for holy living. This is because the teaching mode of Christian communication is out of fashion, and all the emphasis in sermons and small groups is laid on experience in its various aspects. The result is a pietist form of piety, ardent and emotional, in which realizing the reality of fellowship with the Father and the Son is central while living one’s life with Spirit-given wisdom and discernment is neglected both as a topic and as a task. In the Western world in particular, where Christianity is marginalized and secular culture dismisses it as an ideological has-been, where daily we rub shoulders with persons of other faiths and of no faith, and where within the older Protestant churches tolerating the intolerable is advocated as a requirement of justice, versions of Christianity that care more for experiences of life than for principles of truth will neither strengthen churches nor glorify God. The well-being of Christianity worldwide for this twenty-first century directly depends, I am convinced, on the recovery of what has historically been called catechesis—that is, the ministry of systematically teaching people in and coming into our churches the sinew-truths that Christians live by, and the faithful, practical, consistent way for Christians to live by them. During the past three centuries, catechesis as defined has shrunk, even in evangelical churches, from an all-age project to instruction for children and in some cases has vanished altogether. As one who for half a century has been attempting an essentially catechetical ministry by voice and pen, I long for the day when in all our churches systematic catechesis will come back into its own.

As an Anglican minister, I glow as I recall the timehonored Anglican dictum: “There are three priorities in pastoral ministry: the first is, teach; the second is, teach; and the third is, teach.” And I long that out of Anglicanism’s current inner upheaval may come the needed squeezing out of liberal leadership in the Old West and a wholesale realignment in the evangelical mainstream path that the Anglican Reformers long ago defined for us. It is idle at the time of writing to speculate; one can only pray and hope. But I cannot get it out of my mind that if Anglicanism—which has in its heritage such catechetical pioneers as Alexander Nowell, the pioneer Puritans and the Carolines, John Wesley, Hannah More, Henry Martyn, J. C. Ryle, and catechetical Bible expositor John Stott—can recover its sense of direction, it might under God become, catechetically speaking, the leader of the pack. Well, we shall have to wait and see. ■

Dr. J. I. Packer is the Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Adrift in a Sea of Individual Faiths: American Evangelicalism in the Early Twenty-first Century

by Lawrence R. Rast, Jr. In his influential study, Awash in a Sea of Faith, Jon Butler argued that at its inception as a nation the United States was characterized by a variety of articulations of the Christian faith and that only with the coming of the Early National Period and the emergence of American evangelicalism did America find a more unified voice on what it believed biblical Christianity is.1 In this short piece, however, I would like to challenge Butler and ask if evangelicalism’s emergence may have simply traded one sea for another, moving from being awash in a myriad of understandings of the Christian faith to a plethora of individual Christian experiences of faith.

American evangelicalism’s explosive first growth during America’s Second Great Awakening forced the historic churches to come to grips with its claims. Radically democratized and responsive to its hearers, it soon challenged all of the historic faith traditions (most of which had their roots in the Reformation) as it argued for a new order for American Christianity.2 By the latter half of the twentieth century, however, evangelicalism had its second growth and once again challenged the American churches with its successes. More recently, the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) has begun to experience what one might call an “evangelical shift,” as evangelical seminaries have begun to outdistance their “mainline” counterparts. Seemingly more healthy in terms of their resources (students and money!), evangelically inclined schools are beginning to make their voice heard in the ATS. However, evangelical involvement in formal theological education has not always been the norm. Early on, it trumpeted the fact that most of its preachers had little or no formal seminary education. Further, evangelicals have at times relished the fact that they have clearly cut themselves off from the historic churches. While Protestants have always been good at this (the response to Philip Schaff’s brilliant The Principle of Protestantism was a heresy charge), evangelicals have at times taken this to the extreme.3 To put it another way, evangelicalism may be becoming the victim of its own sense of historylessness, which could lead to an aimless drifting on the American religious scene. As elder statesmen pass away and institutions shift with the times, the lack of the anchor of a sense of history and confession has put American evangelicalism into a state of flux perhaps as significant as that faced by the liberal churches a century ago.

Where Butler saw America “awash in a sea of faith,” present-day evangelicalism, which lacks a deep and abiding sense of a living tradition (though by no means authoritative in the Roman Catholic sense), seems adrift in a sea of individual faiths that are radically personal and

individualistic in nature. The fides qua creditor (the personal faith that apprehends the merits of Christ) has so trumped the fides quae creditor (the historic Christian faith that is believed) that the latter is largely unknown and sometimes simply ignored. This radical individualism and sense of historylessness manifests itself perhaps most clearly in the lack of a formal confessional tradition within the evangelical movement.

And lacking this anchor, evangelicalism has democratized to the point of making individualizing confession to the point of meaninglessness.

“How can you question my faith? It works for me,” and so on. The faith experience of the individual becomes absolutely authoritative.4 My own faith tradition, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (founded in 1847), has had a tension-filled experience with American evangelicalism. While it adapted some evangelical methods and strategies for reaching those apart from the church and it applauded a number of evangelicalism’s points,5 it simultaneously criticized evangelical theology severely for what it believed were departures from the historic faith—the fides quae creditur. However, with the fundamentalist/modernist controversy and the emergence of a reorganized evangelicalism in the post-World War II era, some in Missouri moved closer to evangelicalism. Walter A. Maier, the famous and influential Lutheran Hour speaker not only preached a sermon titled, “You, Too, Should be a Fundamentalist,” he also frequently challenged his hearers to “accept” Christ’s “offer” of salvation.

Like all American churches, by the middle of the twentieth century Missouri faced the question of the nature and authority of Scripture and they covered the spectrum on the question. Some moved toward positions more in harmony with Higher Biblical Criticism. Others echoed an evangelical emphasis on the inerrancy of the Bible. When many of the former left the synod in the mid70s, the more evangelically inclined group found itself beginning to struggle with questions over exactly what Missouri’s relationship to evangelicalism should be. Some argued for the use of “evangelical style” while retaining “Lutheran substance.” Others backed away from earlier alliances. Clergy often divided over questions of the role of the historic Lutheran confessions in defining not only doctrine but practice.

In this respect, Missouri mirrors the fragmentation of evangelicalism itself. Questions over biblical character and authority, the role that the historic confessions play in forming identity, the use of culturally relevant forms of worship, the extent to which theological agreement is achievable and even desirable, and others, continue to N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 31

characterize Missouri conversations internally as well as externally. It is no secret that a significant number of Missouri pastors have joined the Eastern Orthodox Church; not as glamorous perhaps, but just as significant, a number of Missouri pastors and laypeople seem to be more comfortable with like-minded and like-practicing evangelicals. Missouri is still not sure how to deal with this reality.

So what does the future hold for evangelicalism? I am convinced that until it comes to grips with the question of authority, history, and, above all, its relationship to the confessional tradition of the Reformation, I believe it will continue to struggle with questions of identity and its response to contemporary culture. Lacking an historic, confessional connection to the church in its historic and confessional fullness, evangelicalism may continue to be adrift in a sea of individual faiths. ■

Dr. Lawrence R. Rast, Jr., is academic dean and professor of historical theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

2 By the latter part of the nineteenth century, though, that first growth had withered in some ways as evangelicalism tempered its message and institutionalized itself. On this point, see Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers, 2005).

3 What Michael Horton has noted about the emerging church movement is as true of evangelicalism at its worst moments (“Better Homes and Gardens,” in The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives, ed. Leonard Sweet [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003], 114): “In fact, a good mark of being ‘pressed into the world way of thinking’ rather than being ‘transformed by the renewing of [our] mind’ (Rom. 12:2) is that we think of ourselves (and our generation) more highly than we ought (v. 3).”

4 Perhaps the most egregious example of this was Joel Osteen’s failure to confess Christ without reservation during his interview on Larry King Live, 20 June 2005 (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0506/20/lkl.0 1.html, cited 15 August 2008): KING: What if you’re Jewish or Muslim, you don’t accept Christ at all?

OSTEEN: You know, I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know....

KING: If you believe you have to believe in Christ?

They’re wrong, aren’t they?

OSTEEN: Well, I don’t know if I believe they’re wrong. I believe here’s what the Bible teaches and from the Christian faith this is what I believe. But I just think that only God will judge a person’s heart. I spent a lot of time in India with my father. I don’t know all about their religion.

But I know they love God. And I don’t know. I’ve seen 1

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their sincerity. So I don’t know. I know for me, and what the Bible teaches, I want to have a relationship with Jesus.

5 For example, an emphasis on a meaningful relationship with Christ, rather than a mere membership mentality; an aggressive stress on speaking about that faith and sharing it with others, a stress on the veracity of the Word of God, and others.

Speaking Of…

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he fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is not inadequate technique, insufficient organization, or antiquated music, and those who want to squander the church's resources bandaging these scratches will do nothing to staunch the flow of blood that is spilling from its true wounds. The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests inconsequentially upon the church.

His truth is too distant, his grace is too ordinary, his judgment is too benign, his gospel is too easy, and his Christ is too common.

—David Wells God in the Wasteland

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored; Christ the everlasting Lord; Late in time, behold Him come, Offspring of a virgin’s womb.

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail th’ incarnate Deity, Pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.

Come, Desire of nations, come, Fix in us Thy humble home; Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed, Bruise in us the serpent’s head.

Now display Thy saving power, Ruined nature now restore; Now in mystic union join Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface, Stamp Thine image in its place: Second Adam from above, Reinstate us in Thy love.

Let us Thee, though lost, regain, Thee, the Life, the inner man: O, to all Thyself impart, Formed in each believing heart.

—Charles Wesley, "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing"

Time to Clean House, Time to Dream Dreams

by David F. Wells The Evangelical Manifesto, issued in May of this year and signed by many evangelical leaders, gives a diagnosis of the movement which is true, clear, pungent, and with which I wholeheartedly agree.

It speaks of evangelicalism’s internal “confusions” and of evangelicals as being “in dire need of reformation and renewal.” Why is this? It is because biblical truth has been replaced by “therapeutic techniques, worship by entertainment, discipleship with growth in human potential, church growth with business entrepreneurialism.” The result is a kind of culturally perverted Christianity in which “we ourselves are often atheists unawares, secularists in practice who live in a world without windows to the supernatural, and often carry on our Christian lives in a manner that has little operational need for God.” As if that were not enough, evangelicals, who loudly proclaim the doctrine of sin, are nevertheless turning a blind eye to their own sins and failings.

I applaud the honesty of this diagnosis. But may I ask an awkward question? During the last two decades, as I have been writing about this gathering storm, there have not been very many others who have expressed the same concerns. Where, I ask, have our leaders been?

Twenty or twenty-five years ago, the Manifesto’s call for “reformation and renewal” might have made some sense and might have gained some traction. Today, though, it looks more like an earnest attempt to close the barn door long after the horse has disappeared.

By that I do not mean that nothing of worth remains in the evangelical world! Of course, there are churches that are flourishing in good and biblical ways, there are believers living authentic Christian lives, missionaries doing work in sometimes heroic ways, and a new wave of younger Christian believers is emerging, so to speak, who are really searching for the real thing and are disgusted by the very failures that the Manifesto describes.

Unfortunately, though, much of what the Manifesto sees as wrong is now so thoroughly institutionalized, so much of it is a part of the warp and woof of evangelical believing, so much of it unashamedly practiced by the leaders, both pastoral and institutional, who should be about addressing what is wrong that no “business as usual” kinds of repentance are going to work. The truth is that there are now so many vested interests involved in preserving the failing evangelical status quo, there is so much cultural habit entailed, so many private ambitions at work, so much muddied thinking and emptied-out spirituality now fills its churches that any call to change these attitudes and habits without a matching call to address their causes behind them is bound to fall on deaf ears.

This story of postwar evangelicalism, however, is not at all unusual. Ebb and flow, expansion and decline, failure

and renewal, have marked biblical believing in all ages and it is what we are seeing today. The early postwar years, the 1950s and early 1960s, saw the emergence of the movement that, despite undoubted mistakes and misjudgments, nevertheless built a sound biblical basis for the faith, undertook a massive publication effort in producing Bible translations and commentaries for this foundation, and began an energetic, evangelistic outreach.

It is no small tribute, backhanded though it is, that half of American adults today claim to be born again. Being born again has won grudging cultural acceptance even as the culture itself has been given more than a grudging acceptance in the evangelical world!

It was in the 1970s and 1980s, however, that a different kind of leader emerged—no longer the pastoral/ theologians of the earlier period, but the CEO/entrepreneurs of the increasingly organizational and institutionalized period in the movement life that had grown out of these earlier years. The gathering strength in organization, wealth, and numbers that has continued to this day has, it turns out, been matched by a gathering decline in Christian authenticity—as Barna has been assiduously documenting—and by the evisceration of any serious meaning to the word evangelical. Who would have imagined, for example, that in 2008, according to the recent Pew study, 57% of evangelicals would say that eternal life can be found in many other religions? Had the biblical writers thought that, we would have no Bible today.

Evangelical is an honorable word with a history that at times has been magnificent. But today, it has been debauched by a mass of empty born-again professions, by fallen leaders, and by theological corruption. It is time, I believe, to respect what the word once meant by no longer using it of ourselves, at least for a generation. Let us put our own house in order before we think again of ourselves as being evangelicals.

Much of this mammoth world of believing, with its entrenched leaders, will resist reform to its dying day, but let the reform-minded, let those who really care about Christian truth, begin to network together, to work around the existing structures where necessary and with them where possible, to bring about a new day. A new day is possible and I am optimistic in thinking that we will yet see the current evangelical ebbing followed by a new reforming flow and our moment of failure by a fresh and invigorating renewal that may, in time, require new forms for its life and expression. ■

Dr. David F. Wells is Distinguished Research Professor at GordonConwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

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The Future of Evangelicalism by Paul F. M. Zahl For cultural reasons and perhaps some providential ones, evangelicalism as a movement is in current eclipse.

Numbers are down, certainly in the parishes I know, even the very large ones. I know this as fact, notwithstanding a few nice exceptions, because I spent the last three years criss-crossing the United States as dean/president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, the evangelical seminary located in Pittsburgh. Sunday after Sunday, I visited churches that were one quarter to half full. Most unsettling were churches where committed evangelical rectors had raised large sums of money to build new sanctuaries or Christian education centers, which were under-populated on Sunday mornings. To be sure, the Episcopal Church has suffered from high-profile “culture wars.” But my friends who are evangelicals in other denominations report that culture wars in their settings have brought decreasing attendance almost across the board. We are told that even “megachurches” are down about 15% in numbers, again with exceptions.

The reputation that evangelicals—and I count myself as one—have earned as being “intolerant” and “exclusive,” and especially homophobic, seems to have stuck. Many people are convinced that we draw lines and build walls, where they are looking rather for open doors and open minds. The documentary on the homosexual culture wars within U.S. Christianity, entitled “The Bible Tells Me So,” is achieving a wide hearing and when you see it, if you are a conservative in faith and morals, you have got to wince. I believe that evangelicals have lost the great culture war of the 1990s and early 2000s, and that we are in a shadowy time of defeat and regrouping.

For myself, regrouping means a period of trying to understand what went wrong. We inherited and then took on a “conflict structure” in Christian experience that was ill suited for times when religious conflict is the opposite of what most people want or say they want, especially seekers. Just at a time when the culture was looking for a word of peace and “a little tenderness”—just when just about everybody was asking, “What’s so funny about a little peace, love, and understanding?”—we appeared to give them the opposite. We appeared to give them...we did give them! I gave them, if I may say it personally, the odium theologicum of the Thirty Years War. Our inner divisions, anchored in the passing and extremely contentious issues of the day, paraded to the world the antipode of “what the world needs now.” Notice this use of pop-song “standards”—Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe, with Otis Redding. The popular tunes of life call for the opposite of what the church has offered. I am myself convicted by the very songs I love.

I believe the answer to our problems is a return to the core of God’s grace, the “Old, Old Story of Jesus and His Love,” deepened by the Reformation insight of grace in 3 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

relation to law— though I no longer want to use too much historical language. But Luther especially saw into Paul’s teaching and Christ’s living with diagnostic brilliant freshness. Luther was, to quote Kierkegaard, a “patient of great importance for Europe.” In other words, Luther’s grace/law receptor was finely and highly tuned. It gave him a diagnostic allergy to law in its many forms. I wish he were here today. We need people again who are allergic to law as the preached word and go, rather, to the enabling word of Christ’s grace, and not just to outsiders but especially to the law-burdened Christian communities we have failed to strengthen and sustain. If I have a “recipe” for these times, it is the gospel of Christ’s grace for Christians.

My own denomination, the Episcopal Church, has a pretty hardened relationship with evangelicals. There are few of us left here. And the many who fled the Episcopal Church have gone into vastly differing havens.

Interestingly, many former evangelicals who were Episcopalians have become Roman Catholics. And the old stalwarts of English Anglican evangelicalism, whose names were world famous and who leavened the evangelical “lump” from Lahore to Vancouver to Mombasa, are undone by the collapse and multiple splitting of traditional Anglicanism. Anglicanism, as such, which was often a kind of “wax nose”—which is to say, it was whatever you projected upon it, whether “high” or “low,” right or left—has little to gain now from evangelicalism, and vice versa, because the curtain has come down on both sides of the relationship. I mean that Anglicanism and evangelicalism are both in collapse.

The word “evangelical” is still a good one, if it means justification by grace through faith. It is still a good word if by it is meant the love of God for sinners, or what Jack Kerouac in a poetic vein called “consanguine partiality/ devoid of conditions, free.” I still seek, still seek, to tell the Old, Old Story, which means in practice this: judgment kills, love makes alive. I realize that such a formula is quite “reduced” and could use a lot of enhancement; but we are going to have to begin again, our almost Sisyphean evangelical task now, by putting the core of Christ in simple, simple epigrams. Let’s sponsor an evangelical Haiku contest! The prize?: A complete set of the Weimar Edition of the works of Luther. ■

Dr. Paul F. M. Zahl is rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

EVANGELICALISM’S WINTER?

THE EVANGELICAL NARRATIVE Getting Rid of the Church

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ere is a story the American press completely missed: Rick Warren, the highly successful pastor of Saddleback Church and the author of the bestsellers, Purpose Driven Church (1995) and Purpose Driven Life (2002), ministers the Bible in ways at odds with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). Saddleback does not baptize infants. It does not have an evening Sunday service. Warren does not even mention Sabbathobservance as part of a purpose-driven life. Warren and his church officers do not subscribe to the Westminster Standards, nor do they affirm the eternal decree or predestination. In fact, almost nothing that goes on at Saddleback could be construed as Presbyterian or Reformed. Dog bites man. Shocking!

Or is it? The reason journalists have failed to report on this breach within contemporary Protestantism, aside from the OPC’s obscurity, is that no one expects Warren or Saddleback to conform to the faith and practice of a Reformed communion. Warren is a Southern Baptist and Saddleback, if it has any ecclesiastical affiliation, is connected to the Southern Baptist Convention. To expect Warren to be a conservative Presbyterian is to apply a standard that is arbitrary.

Indeed, to imagine that Warren should conform to Reformed teaching is a truly shocking idea. For one, it’s a free country and American Christians practice their faith in a variety of ways that are often antagonistic to other

believers. For another, Warren is successful in ways that the OPC obviously is not. And for one more reason, the standard for evaluating Warren is evangelicalism, not Reformed Protestantism. Presbyterians may belong to evangelicalism, but clearly evangelicals don’t belong to Presbyterianism.

Yet, when journalists employ the word evangelical they generally lump Warren with the ecclesiastical heirs of J. Gresham Machen. The term evangelical assumes that Warren and Orthodox Presbyterians are the same on everything that matters. If this is true, why would Warren not be invited to preach in an Orthodox Presbyterian congregation (or an OP minister asked to preach at Saddleback)? Why would sessions of Orthodox Presbyterian congregations refuse to recommend Saddleback to members when vacationing at Disneyland? And why is Saddleback not in fellowship with any of the communions in the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council? So if Warren and Orthodox Presbyterians are of the same religious identity, why don’t journalists ever take these differences into account in their reporting? If they can tell the difference between social and fiscal conservatives in the GOP, or between fast food and slow food, why not the differences among Protestants outside the mainline denominations?

Journalists don’t take these differences seriously because

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D. G. HART

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very few conservative Protestants do. The latter have learned a story of evangelicalism that denies the importance of distinctions among Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, the megachurched, and Emergents.

The perspective yielded by standard histories of evangelicalism is that conservative Protestantism is one big happy tent under which the likes of Warren, Tim Keller, Pat Robertson, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Al Mohler, Ravi Zacharias, Charles Stanley, Chuck Swindoll, Tony Perkins, and George W. Bush, or Martin Luther, Richard Hooker, Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, and Francis Asbury all convene for fellowship and support.

History Has Consequences hen did evangelicalism begin? One answer is that evangelicalism as a distinct expression of Protestantism started after World War II through the efforts of leaders such as Billy Graham and Carl Henry. But over the last thirty years, religious historians have demonstrated a longer history for evangelicalism than one that starts, say, in 1949, the year of Graham’s Los Angeles crusade that gave him national celebrity. Some trace American evangelicalism’s roots back to the First Great Awakening of the 1740s when through the preaching, travels, and writings of evangelists such as George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, conversion and revivalism became the norm conservative Protestantism. Other historians go back even farther to seventeenth-century Puritanism and the sixteenthcentury Reformation when Protestants rejected the rites and ceremonies of Roman Catholicism to recover the good news of the gospel. After all, Lutherans, the original Protestants, identified themselves as evangelical because of the conviction that they had recovered the good news (e.g., evangelion) of salvation by faith alone.

Attributing the origin of evangelicalism to either the eighteenth or the sixteenth centuries turns out to be crucial for understanding contemporary Protestants. If evangelicals go back to 1517, Lutherans, Reformed, and Southern Baptists are as much evangelicals as the megachurches, the Emergents, and the Pentecostals.

Because none of these Western Christians are in fellowship with the pope, they are necessarily Protestant and therefore implicated in the Reformation’s rejection of Rome’s teaching on salvation. But if evangelicalism began with the revivals of the eighteenth century, then the Protestants who stress conversion and holy living—as opposed to church membership and attending the means of grace—started a new kind of Protestantism. In other words, if evangelicalism “began” after Protestantism began, then evangelical Protestantism represents something different from the original faith of the Reformers, and Billy Graham is not an organic and logical successor to John Calvin.

To regard evangelicalism as a new and different version of Protestantism is not as crazy as it seems, as if only keepers of the flame for Calvin and Lutheran want to

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avoid being confused with Joel Osteen and Bill Hybels.

Mark Noll, as respected a church historian as exists on the North American part of the planet, has argued that evangelicalism started later than the Reformation and that George Whitefield captured its chief impulse when explaining his own ministry. Despite being ordained as an Anglican priest, Whitefield said, “It was best to preach the new birth, and the power of godliness, and not to insist so much on the form: for people would never be brought to one mind as to that; nor did Jesus Christ ever intend it.”1 For Whitefield, the importance of the new birth trumped the claims of his ordination. For subsequent evangelicals, the individual convert’s experience matters more than baptism, small group prayer more than corporate worship, the simple teachings of the Bible more than creeds, and the fellowship of the Spirit more than church membership.

Noll has also commented on the significance of this reorientation of Protestant devotion. As much as Puritan New England may have fertilized the soil from which revivalism sprang, evangelicalism broke significantly even with Puritan understandings of the church and Christian life in ways that point to the differences between evangelicalism and historic Protestantism. Noll writes: Although Puritans stood against Catholic and Anglican formalism, salvation for the Puritans was still mediated by institutions—family, church, even the covenanted society; in evangelicalism (at least in American forms), salvation was in principle unmediated except by the written Word of God. Puritans protested against nominal ecclesiastical life, but they still treated institutions of church and society as given; American evangelicals created their own communities, at first ecclesiastical, then voluntary. Puritans accepted authority from designated leaders; American evangelicals looked to authority from charismatic, self-selected leaders.

Puritans fenced in enthusiasm with formal learning, respect for confessions, and deference to traditional interpretations of Scripture; American evangelicals fenced in enthusiasm with self-selected leaders, individualistic Bible-reading, local grassroots organizations, and intuitively persuasive reason.2 In other words, the evangelical faith to which revivals gave birth upset the structure, order, and ministry that the Protestant Reformers believed God had delegated to the church.

Regarding evangelicalism as new and different makes perfect sense of what happened in the early eighteenth century. Before the First Great Awakening, Protestantism was overwhelmingly churchly; that is, the forms, teachings, liturgies, and polities of the state churches defined the faith and practice of Protestants. The main branches of Protestantism were known by their ecclesiastical expression: Lutheran, Reformed (or Presbyterian), and Anglican. The only Protestants outside these corporate bodies were the

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Anabaptists—radical Reformers who renounced the state and the church’s entanglement with the sword as the source of the church’s corruption. Before revivalism, parachurch ministry, entrepreneurial evangelists, and quiet-times were inconceivable. To be a Protestant was to be a member of a church, and to grow in grace meant attending diligently to the weekly ministry of the church, through preaching, the sacraments, Lord’s Day observance, catechesis, and the oversight of church officers.

But with the rise of evangelicalism came the decline of this historic form of Protestantism. In Whitefield’s words, “the new birth” and “the power of godliness” counted more than church forms. The thrust of an informal, experiential, and individualistic Protestantism was to make faith and devotion independent of the church, Word, and sacrament. The old churches, according to revivalists, encouraged Christians merely to go through the motions.

Those older churches produced nominal Christians who lacked intense and assuring experiences of their genuine faith. Nominal Christians only went to church, but converted believers did much more. These extraecclesiastical acts of evangelical devotion—such as small group fellowship, witnessing, and the renunciation of worldly activities—demonstrated genuine faith. Participation in the work of the institutional church was insufficient for the truly saved.

John Williamson Nevin, a nineteenth-century theologian, saw as well as any American has before or since the differences between the old and new forms of Protestantism. Nevin’s own experience as an undergraduate at Union College was decisive. He had been reared in the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian tradition of a churchly faith.

This devotion was premised “on the idea of covenant family religion, church membership by God’s holy act in baptism, and following this a regular catechetical training of the young, with direct reference to their coming to the Lord’s table.” Such Protestant faith was churchly, according to Nevin, “as holding the Church in her visible character to be the medium of salvation for her baptized children, in the sense of that memorable declaration of Calvin (Institutes 4.1.4), where, speaking of her title, Mother, he says: ‘There is no other entrance into life, save as she may conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us from her breasts, and embrace us in her loving care to the end.’”3 But what Nevin experienced during a college revival was that the godly efforts of his minister and parents were beside the point. He wrote that “one of the first lessons inculcated on me indirectly by this unchurchly system, was that all this must pass for nothing, and that I must learn to look upon myself as an outcast from the family and kingdom of God, before I could come to be in either in the right way.” Revivals, he explains, were “based throughout on the principle, that regeneration and conversion lay outside of the Church, had nothing to do with baptism and Christian education, required rather a looking away from all this as more a bar than a help to the process, and were to be sought only in the way of magical

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illapse or stroke from the Spirit of God.”4 This contrast between the churchly system of Word, sacrament, and catechesis and the revivalistic scheme of the born-again experience was precisely the difference between the new and old forms of Protestantism.

Getting the history of evangelicalism correct is not simply an academic matter. Bound up with the question of evangelicalism’s origins is the question of the church.

Was Protestantism originally a form of Christianity indifferent to church membership and correct forms of doctrine, liturgy, and polity? Was the Reformation a revival? Or was it an effort to reform the forms of Western Christianity to make them conform to Scripture so that the church would minister faithfully to members who depended on the means of grace for salvation and growth in grace? If Protestantism was originally evangelical in the Whitefieldean sense, then lumping J. Gresham Machen and Charles Stanley together makes sense because the difference between Presbyterians and Southern Baptists is unimportant. But if Protestantism was originally churchly, if creeds, polity, and worship were decisive in being a Christian, then saying Presbyterians and Southern Baptists are the same because both are evangelical is a repudiation of the Reformation.

Putting the Church Back in Fellowship or many evangelicals, a construction of Protestant identity based on belonging to the church and depending on her ministry is unnecessarily sectarian and even unbiblical. This objection, as already argued, assumes what it does not prove; namely, that the practices and teachings of Lutherans, Reformed, and Episcopalians are not as important as the common, sincere, and heartfelt convictions of a Whitefield, Tennant, or Wesley, or that revivalism is more biblical than the ministry of Word and sacrament. And yet, the evangelical objection to churchly Protestantism is closer to liberal Protestantism than few conservative Protestants care to consider or admit. As provocative as this charge may seem, it actually accounts for patterns in twentiethcentury American Protestantism.

Between 1870 and 1920, the largest Protestant denominations in the United States strove to cooperate in a variety of organizations that would create greater Christian unity and strengthen the Protestant character of American society. The culmination of these efforts came in 1908 with the formation of the Federal Council of Churches, although in 1920 those same churches considered an even closer form of cooperation, an organic union that would have turned these denominations into one megadenomination (the United Church of Canada is an example).

The leaders of these ecumenical efforts were not liberal, but many were supportive of the American tradition of revivalism and soul winning. Still, these ecumenical efforts turned out to be a major factor in the fundamentalist controversy. Fundamentalists opposed church union because they saw cardinal doctrines of the faith—like

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inerrancy and the Virgin Birth—being sacrificed for the Social Gospel. Other conservative Protestants opposed church union not simply because of their belief in the infallibility of the Bible or the deity of Christ, but because cooperation meant giving up particular aspects of being Lutheran or Reformed. J. Gresham Machen in the Northern Presbyterian Church, Missouri Synod Lutherans, and Christian Reformed were examples of denominational conservatives who resisted having their church identity swallowed up in a generic and cooperative Protestantism.

Interestingly enough, a similar dynamic played out in the 1940s when the word evangelical as we now use it was coined. In 1942, progressive fundamentalists wanted to see if they could unite all conservative Protestants in a single organization that would stand for the true faith as opposed to the mainline churches’ Federal Council. The National Association of Evangelicals was the result of these efforts and, like the Federal Council, the NAE was also indifferent to the specific features of being Lutheran, Wesleyan, Reformed, or Baptist. It drew up a list of nine essential doctrines as the basis for membership. Granted, its list was longer than the Federal Council’s one doctrine, Christ is Lord; but the NAE was no more sensitive to the features and traditions of historic Protestantism than was the Federal Council. Just as denominational conservatives from the 1920s opposed church union, so conservative Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Reformed refused to join the NAE. Their reason was that they could not cooperate with other Protestants outside their tradition in the ministry of the Word, nor was the NAE a sufficient vehicle for fellowship across denominational lines.

These examples of American Protestant ecumenism reveal two approaches to Christian fellowship and membership: one rooted in the churchly Protestantism of the Reformation; and the other stemming from evangelicalism’s indifference to the church. For the former, the old Protestants, fellowship extends to those of like faith and practice as defined by the creeds, worship, and church polity of a particular Protestant tradition. For the new Protestants or evangelicals, fellowship extends to anyone who has a personal relationship with Jesus. This is why, by the way, evangelical identity today increasingly applies even to Roman Catholics and members of liberal Protestant denominations. Next to having Jesus in your heart, church membership does not matter. The evangelical paradigm does not consider that church membership may in fact be a chief indication of one’s relationship to Jesus Christ, such as the way the Westminster Confession of Faith asserts not of the invisible but the visible church that it “is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (25.2).

Some might still object that using denominational characteristics to define Christian fellowship needlessly undermines the fellowship that evangelicals already enjoy as precisely that unity for which Christ prayed. This objection assumes that evangelicalism actually provides a 3 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

more basic Christian identity and form of fellowship than a denomination or congregation.

This objection ignores that no greater form of fellowship exists for Christians than at the Lord’s Supper. There, believers experience and embody not only their communion with Christ but also with other believers. And yet, as warm and fuzzy as this sounds, the Lord’s Supper is inherently a churchly enterprise, one that can be administered only by an ordained minister, takes place in a worship service, and conforms to the creeds and worship directories of a specific denomination. Furthermore, to participate in the Supper at most conservative congregations one needs to be a baptized member of a church that preaches the gospel (i.e., a well-disciplined Communion).

The problem with the Lord’s Supper for new Protestants is that more expansive forms of fellowship exist than for Communion. An American Protestant can be on the mailing list of a popular television preacher, subscribe to an evangelical magazine, attend a parachurch campus ministry, identify with a pollster as a born-again Christian, participate regularly on an evangelical blog, or go to a contemporary Christian music concert. Without the big tent of evangelicalism, Protestants are a disjointed, fractious, and diverse group with little chance of influence or being noticed. Consequently, many conservative Protestants prefer the feeling of fellowship that comes from belonging to communities other than the church. Even though a great vagueness holds these parachurch organizations and ministries together, the size of evangelicalism appears to make up for the generality. Misery loves company.

All the while, American Protestants are neglecting through church membership and fellowship at the Lord’s Table the most profound, mysterious, and efficacious form of belonging available to believers this side of the marriage feast of the Lamb. ■

D. G. Hart is the author most recently of (with John Muether) Seeking a Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism (P&R Publishing), and of A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State (Ivan R. Dee). He is an elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

WORKS CITED 1 Whitefield, quoted in Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Whitefield, Edwards, and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 15.

2 Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 173–74.

3 John Williamson Nevin, My Own Life: The Early Years (1871; Lancaster, Pa.: Historical Society of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, 1964), 2–3.

4 Nevin, 8–9.

Is Evangelical Anglicanism Dead?

By Donald P. Richmond During my initial ordination interview for postulants, I was foolish enough to tell the absolute truth about my beliefs. Without hesitation, I proclaimed my evangelical leanings and my primary assessor was not at all pleased.

“A dying movement!” he snarled. With these words—or so I thought—my hopes for “Holy Orders” were destroyed along with ordination in the Anglican1 Communion.

My assessor’s snide comment raises important questions, in spite of his ill-informed prejudices. Is evangelicalism dying or dead? More specifically, is it dying or dead within Anglicanism? This last question is most difficult to answer because with this other questions must be asked. Who can legitimately lay claim to Anglicanism?

What constitutes evangelicalism? How shall fidelity to evangelical Anglicanism be assessed? These are hard and painful questions within our Communion.

Who can legitimately lay claim to being genuinely Anglican: the sixteenth-century reformers; those who embrace Hooker’s foundational principles; the Catholic party of Andrewes, Laud, and Ferrar; the Methodists; the Oxford Movement; the Common Cause Network of conservatives; the “progressives” of our current crisis?

What really is Anglicanism in the midst of so many competing (and, sometimes, complementary) theologies?

A rather broad but functional definition may be required in the midst of such diversity: Anglicans are genuine Christians who have inherited the priorities, principles, and practices of the English Reformation and have embraced the primacy of Holy Scripture as the final arbiter of faith and practice, the priority of the Book of Common Prayer as expressed through its Sacraments, Rites, and Ceremonies, and who understand the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion as being far more than Historic Documents.2 The recent Global Anglican Fellowship Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem makes similar assertions, albeit in far more detail.3 This definition is broad enough to allow for diversity while specific enough to maintain orthodoxy.

The definition of “evangelical” may be as elusive, if not more so, than Anglican. Various attempts have been made, including one by this author where the definition is entirely determined by a detailed examination of the word from its biblical origin through to its twentiethcentury understanding. For the purpose of this article, however, Bishop J. C. Ryle’s understanding and interpretation might be most useful. He emphasizes five elements of evangelical belief: • “The absolute supremacy” of the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice, the only test of truth, the

only rule of controversy; • The corruption of human nature by sin; • The centrality of the Atonement of Christ; • [An] experimental [i.e., experiential] knowledge of Christ crucified…to be applied by the inward work of the Holy Spirit; and • The requirement of a serious holy life.4 As both an evangelical and an Anglican, it is expected that Bishop Ryle will have some helpful insights. Moreover, the spoken and unspoken inferences to the solas cannot be missed.

How shall fidelity to evangelical Anglicanism be assessed? It must be determined by the history that formed it and by the very documents that have come to define and defend it. With our Bible, the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), and the Articles of Religion (AOR) as “givens,” each of Ryle’s points must be briefly examined.

Article VI of the AOR refers to “the sufficiency of Holy Scripture for salvation.” This was the untarnished perspective of the sixteenth-century English reformers. As such, Anglicans, specifically evangelical Anglicans, cannot (as one canon told me) believe anything they want. There is structure and substance to orthodox Anglican belief.

This structure and substance are found in Holy Scripture and in our BCP—of which about 75 percent is almost entirely Scripture. Many members of ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada have abandoned the centrality of Scripture. Many believe and behave as they wish, as long as they (in their own estimation) do not offend either the feeling of unity or some ill-defined sense of love. They sacrifice orthodoxy on the questionable altar of catholicity.

For these people, it is far better to abandon orthodoxy than it is to abandon “fellowship.” Anglicans, true Anglicans, are not Unitarians with robes, rituals, and a prayer book.

Unfortunately, many people in ECUSA with whom I have become familiar really resemble Unitarians more than orthodox Anglicans.

Another nonnegotiable for evangelical Anglicans is that human beings have been corrupted by the Fall. This concept follows the best of Calvin’s theology (as well as the Bible!) and is stated in Article IX of the AOR, “Of Original or Birth Sin,” which according to the Article places every person under “God’s wrath and damnation.”

In today’s world, these sound like harsh words. Harsh or not, they are also honest words. As both a priest (presbyter) and as a professional counselor, I can without hesitation state that these are important words for people to hear. Sin and death are real.

Unfortunately, except for those who are orthodox Anglicans, the concept of sin has been lost. Although Anglicans of all stripes continue to confess their sins in N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 39

corporate worship, many have little understanding of what sin is. This does not apply only to the gay issue, but also to a multitude of other attitudes and actions that are conveniently ignored. By abandoning biblical belief, many have abandoned moral behaviors.

Bishop Ryle now turns to the critical issue of the atonement of Christ. In short, from what has been stated above, if you have a problem (sin) you need a solution (salvation) through the appropriate means (Christ the only Savior). I am not convinced that many members of the ECUSA actually believe this and, if they do, it is a salvation that grossly misrepresents Scripture. It is, in fact, more Pelagian than Christian. Moreover, among the ECUSA members with whom I am largely familiar, there is a many-paths-to-God orientation. In stark contrast to this, Article XI of the AOR says that “[w]e are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by Faith.” The article, quite appropriately, goes on to emphasize that this “is a wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort.” If the ECUSA has relegated the AOR to the dust bin of “historic documents,” as they by and large have, who is left to say “Amen”?

Evangelical Anglicans will also have an experiential knowledge of Christ as applied by the inward working of the Holy Spirit. Evangelical Anglicans are intensely interested in having a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ and not in the outward trappings of religion. As a committed Anglican Christian, one who is also secondarily committed to our Anglican ethos, polity, and practices, I must admit that we do have a few trappings of religion.

These are, of themselves, not bad. They provide a unique structure by which we have come to understand, interpret, and communicate the substance of the Christian faith. But these are, while important to us, secondary and subservient to the message—the Good News. We need to know, and we seek to preach, Christ: incarnated, crucified, dead, buried, resurrected, and ascended. We need this message. We need this reality—a reality rooted in revelation. We need God now, now, and now! Being baptized alone does not “cut” it. Neither does going to church or being a leader within the church structure. We need the substance of Christ. Again, as before, I am not at all convinced that the majority of those in the ECUSA really appreciate this. As the concept and reality of sin has been minimized, so has the need for the relationship with Christ the Living Savior.

Bishop Ryle’s final reference is to holy living. I am consistently amazed at two issues plaguing modern Christendom: biblical illiteracy and the lack of interest in God’s call for us to live a holy life. Our society, as well as many American Episcopalians (ECUSA/TEC), has little knowledge about the Bible: its social import, implications, stories, teaching, expectations, and demands. Theological discussions are often fought on the basis of what is “felt” or upon the perceived social needs of the “marginalized” and “oppressed,” instead of what God has said. At the best of 4 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

times, many Anglicans have a “sing-song” approach to theology and worship. In our churches, this has led to substandard, sub-Christian moral expectations. Again, Bible and behaviors go together. As the ECUSA/TEC has largely abandoned the Bible’s historic interpretation, it has also lowered its moral standards. And, to be honest, those of us who claim to be evangelical Anglicans are not entirely without fault. Our standards have also been compromised.

Is evangelical Anglicanism dead? It depends upon whom you ask and where you go. In North America, except for a strong remnant in the ECUSA (Common Cause Partners in particular) and the “Anglican Continuum,” we may be swiftly approaching death. The foundations that Ryle has outlined have all but been abandoned by mainstream Episcopalians. Even those of us who embrace Christian orthodoxy, however, must be careful to “maintain the traditions once received.” Serious questions must be asked among orthodox Anglicans, first and foremost about our approach to Holy Scripture.

Moreover, a denomination of such diversity, an appropriate diversity when Anglicanism functions properly, must honestly ask whether in principle and practice we are committed to the Reformed emphasis: sola Scriptura, sola Christus, sola fide, sola gratia. In The Protestant Face of Anglicanism (Eerdmans, 1998), the Very Rev. Dr. Paul Zahl persuasively argues for a distinctly Reformed perspective. In many ways, I would agree with him.

Nevertheless, can we genuinely at this time in our history be considered a denomination in dynamic continuity with the sixteenth-century Reformation?

On the other hand, Anglicans of the global south (with their American partners) are in the midst of a revival.5 Recent efforts by GAFCON in Jerusalem this past July herald a fresh and vital movement of the Holy Spirit within historic Anglicanism to restore us to our biblical and historic roots. This, in large part, has a great deal to do with the high view they have of Holy Scripture.6 It is my hope and prayer that, with Christians from every denomination, we may continue to live up to our heritage, our hope, and the high calling of him who has both equipped and empowered us.

Rev. Dr. Donald P. Richmond, a presbyter with the western diocese of the Reformed Episopal Church, is a widely published author.

WORKS CITED 1 At the present time, the word “Anglican” needs some clarification. There are at least four types of Anglicans at the moment. The Episcopal Church in the United States (ECUSA/TEC) is (at the time of this writing) part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. They claim to be Anglicans. Within this denomination, and those who are (continued on page 47)

EVANGELICALISM’S WINTER?

The American “Gospel” Think, Pray, Speak, and Grow Rich

Whenever I see Pastor Joel Osteen’s church on television, my mind goes back to a beautiful spring day in Houston during my graduate studies at Rice University. The enormous building in which Lakewood Church now meets on the Southwest Freeway was once a basketball arena used for many purposes. That day, my wife and I took our four-year-old daughter there to enjoy the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

I’m not suggesting that Osteen’s church services are circus-like, but they do share something in common. In 1980, we went there to be entertained. If the ringmaster had faced the crowd and preached to us about animal rights, we probably would have left. Maybe we would have asked for a refund. Of course, no such thing happened. The sole purpose of the circus was to delight and entertain especially children.

Again, I’m not suggesting that Lakewood’s services are sheer entertainment; maybe there’s more to them than that. I hope so. But it looks like entertainment to me and

to many others who attend or watch. The main focus, if not the sole focus, seems to be on getting attendees—whether physical or virtual via television—to feel good about themselves.

And it works.

The vast majority of them shown on television seem to be enjoying themselves.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying Christian worship. I think worship should be enjoyable. But there’s joy and then there’s joy. The folks at Lakewood appear to be highly entertained and brought to an almost ecstasy of happiness. I wonder what would happen if Pastor Joel stood up one Sunday morning and preached to the thousands gathered in his church, and to the millions who watch on television, a message about suffering for Jesus. Maybe he has, but I haven’t heard of it.

Am I suggesting that Christianity is all doom and gloom?

Certainly not. But there’s a deeper joy than the happiness

BY

ROGER OLSON

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 41

performance luxury cars. Its evidence also appears in the preaching from many Penteto become missionaries. Self-absorption and seeking costal pulpits.

Whereas the Pentecostal satisfaction in this life were condemned as sure signs preaching of my youth in the 1950s frequently referenced of sagging spirituality.

Jesus’ healing ministry and the contemporary reality of of being entertained. I grew up in the thick of the divine healing through prayer, it never suggested that Pentecostal movement, which we called the “Full Gospel.” healing or financial prosperity could be attained through Osteen’s church is (or was) part of that movement when it positive thinking or speaking. was pastored by his father John Osteen. As far away as the In the 1970s, when we began hearing that God wants upper Midwest, we knew about him and the phenomenal us to live like a “king’s kid,”1 we were shocked and growth of his Houston church. horrified because that message was not coming from the But then it didn’t seem to be so much about feeling local New Thought church or the pulpit of Norman good about yourself or attaining health, wealth, and Vincent Peale but from fellow Pentecostals and happiness by means of positive thinking. At one time, it charismatics. The promise of a materialistic heaven on was a classical Pentecostal church like ours. We knew a lot earth through speaking the “word of faith” swept like about suffering for Jesus; most of us experienced some wildfire through Pentecostal congregations. level of persecution for being “religious fanatics.” And part To many Pentecostals and charismatics, this new of our “fanaticism” was detachment from the material message was almost totally alien. The only thing recogworld and its entertaining allures. nizable about it was the emphasis on divine healing. But The vast majority of Pentecostals were once poor or at even, and perhaps especially, that emphasis was distorted least working class people. An insightful study of midso it seemed that health was guaranteed to those who twentieth-century Pentecostalism is Vision of the “claimed God’s promise by faith,” which meant “speaking” Disinherited by Robert Mapes Anderson (Oxford, 1979). health and then wealth into existence. Pentecostal This world was not our home; we were just passing opponents of this new message began to describe it as through. Our treasures were laid up “somewhere beyond belief in a “vending machine God”—speak the “word of the blue.” The accusation that we were so heavenly faith” to God and he must deliver the goods. Almost minded we were no earthly good didn’t bother us; we overnight, so it seemed, our churches were being reveled in our attachment to that future life of rewards— populated by believers in “Word-Faith” theology and mainly the reward of seeing our Savior first of all. many Pentecostal churches divided over it.

Were we happy? Sometimes. Did we experience joy?

After completing a year of studying theology in Often. But we heard from our pulpits that happiness and Germany and while writing my doctoral dissertation for joy are not the same; we could experience joy in the Rice University, I was offered a position teaching theology middle of great pain and sorrow. Our heroes were people at Oral Roberts University. I didn’t have any viable alternative offers, so I hesitantly accepted it and we moved who left everything behind to become missionaries. Selfto Tulsa, Oklahoma—the hotbed of the Word-Faith and absorption and seeking satisfaction in this life were health-and-wealth teaching. That hotbed was not ORU condemned as sure signs of sagging spirituality. itself; it was (and perhaps still is) the large and thenOne topic of many sermons among the Pentecostals of growing Rhema Bible Institute led by former Assemblies of my youth was the sin of “conspicuous consumption.” The God evangelist Kenneth Hagin. phrase was coined in 1899 by Norwegian economist I grew up occasionally fighting for the reputation of our Thorstein Veblin, but our preachers (including my father) “Pentecostal Billy Graham,” Oral Roberts, in playground used it to label the sin of seeking financial prosperity and especially the sin of spending money on luxuries. brawls. Every Sunday afternoon in the 1950s, Roberts was on television. He was one of our heroes and we believed One Sunday morning, one of our church families pulled God had raised him up to restore the Full Gospel in into the parking lot in a brand-new Cadillac. Instead of America. But by the time I taught there (1982–84), I was regarding them as “blessed by God,” my father and elders no longer enamored with him. I could write a book about of our church criticized them—especially the husband/ the things I saw and heard there, but that book has already father—for spending on a luxury money that could have been written.2 gone to world missions.

Although Roberts himself did not preach the healthThings have changed for many Pentecostals and and-wealth (or “name it and claim it”) gospel directly, his charismatics in America and around the world. A paradigm doctrine of “seed faith” and his choice of guest speakers in shift began in the 1970s and grew throughout the 1980s and chapel revealed a certain affinity with it. According to 1990s. Its sure evidence appears today in the parking lots of him, if a person wants to be blessed by God in every way many Pentecostal churches—they’re populated by high-

Our heroes were people who left everything behind

4 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

T H E

possible—including financially—he or she must give money called “seed” to a ministry like his. This practice of receiving blessings of health and wealth by giving is called “seed faith.” I once heard Roberts’s son Richard preach that it’s okay for us to give with a selfish motive because God gave his Son selfishly—to receive us back from the grip of Satan.

A parade of Word-Faith preachers spoke in chapel. One declared that God cannot bless a person in a wheelchair because if that person had great faith he or she would be healed. A few students in wheelchairs sat in the aisles of the chapel as the Rolls-Royce-driving megachurch television evangelist insulted them. Many of my theology students transferred from Kenneth Hagin’s Rhema Bible Institute to ORU and were indoctrinated in the most egregious teachings about faith, positive thinking and speaking, money and healing.

One of my colleagues at ORU was theologian Charles (Chuck) Farah—a Barthian Calvinist charismatic Presbyterian who wrote one of the first books exposing the flaws of the Word-Faith doctrine of Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and others: From the Pinnacle of the Temple (Bridge/Logos, 1979) forthrightly describes the difference between faith and presumption. According to Farah, the increasingly popular Word-Faith preachers and teachers were promoting not faith but presumption as expressed in the popular saying, “Confront God with his word.”

While I was on the faculty of ORU, I heard rumors of some kind of vague connection between the Word-Faith teaching and Oral Roberts with the Unity School of Christianity headquartered in Lees Summit, Missouri. I was never able to pin down the exact nature of that connection, but an influence of the nineteenth-century New Thought movement on the Word-Faith movement became clear. New Thought was the broad and diverse mind-over-matter folk philosophy that found organized religious expression in Christian Science and Unity.

According to New Thought, the mind is capable of controlling matter; or, in the extreme version found in Christian Science, the mind is all that is real and matter is illusory. Perfect health and great financial prosperity could be experienced through positive thinking and speaking. In 1889, New Thought teachers Charles and Myrtle Fillmore founded Unity; and today it exists as a fellowship of churches as well as a publisher and teaching center in Lees Summit. Although Unity is relatively small in numbers of members, its influence on American society has been incalculable.

One might even go so far as to say that New Thought, with Unity as one of its main channels, has become part and parcel of the American folk religion. And its positive thinking and speaking platform has filtered into all corners of American culture and even Christianity. One of its main promoters was writer Napoleon Hill who in 1937 wrote the popular book, Think and Grow Rich. Several later volumes by various New Thought-inspired authors bore the title, Pray and Grow Rich.

A M E R I C A N

“ G O S P E L ”

There is almost no doubt that New Thought influenced the tremendously popular ministry of Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) who preached from the pulpit of New York’s Marble Collegiate Church, published Guideposts magazine, and wrote numerous books about positive thinking. And, in turn, Peale influenced fellow Reformed pastor Robert Schuller who built the Crystal Cathedral in Southern California for his congregation and television audience.

Peale and Schuller were both ministers of the Reformed Church in America—the old Dutch Reformed denomination. Many Reformed theologians rejected their positive thinking messages as alien to that tradition. Not that positive thinking is bad in and of itself, but it should not sit at the center of any authentically Christian ministry.

“Faith” and “positive thinking” are not the same, although some degree of confidence in God’s desire and ability to answer faithful, fervent prayer is a good thing. The positive thinking “faith” of New Thought and its various Christian permutations is not prayer but a form of magic.

All important to this particular case study in discernment is the distinction between prayer and magic.

Magic plays no role in authentic Christian theology or practice as it treats God (however conceived) as someone or some force to be manipulated and completely ignores God’s unpredictable sovereignty. (I borrow the term from Pentecostal leader David DuPlessis who, in the 1960s, criticized fellow Pentecostals who treated the Holy Spirit like a slot machine.)

Magic is the use of spoken phrases and/or gestures to evoke the power of God (or the gods or demons). That’s pagan, not Christian. And yet New Thought subtly introduced a form of magic into the mainstream of American Christianity. Nothing could be more ironic and alien. A basic tenet of biblical, orthodox Christianity is that God is sovereign (although biblical, orthodox Christians disagree about the details of how God practices his sovereignty) and cannot be forced to do anything. Even persistent, importune prayer does not force the hand of God; God is always free to respond to prayer as he sees best.

New Thought, with its magical teachings and practices, arose in the nineteenth century and gave rise to various religious expressions as mentioned above. Unity is perhaps its most influential organized expression. It then filtered into the fabric of American society, becoming part of its folkways including folk psychology (“Don’t worry, be happy!”) and folk religion. It then was taken up in various forms by Christian writers, speakers, and preachers who acknowledged no direct influence by New Thought, but who showed clear evidence of that anyway.

Word-Faith Pentecostalism (often labeled “charismatic” rather than Pentecostal) contains a strong element of New Thought mediated to it by turn-of-the-century (nineteenth/twentieth centuries) healing evangelist and author E. W. Kenyon (1867–1948). I first heard his name while teaching at ORU. A graduate theology student named Dan McConnell was writing his Master’s thesis on the connection between Kenyon and Hagin, and he N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 43

claimed to be able to show that Hagin, by far the most influential of the Word-Faith evangelists, borrowed not only ideas but entire sentences from Kenyon without attribution. In other words, McConnell was accusing Hagin of plagiarizing Kenyon’s works.

Eventually, McConnell published a book based on his thesis titled, A Different Gospel? (Hendrickson Publishers, 1995). In it, he demonstrated the intimate connection between Kenyon’s blend of New Thought and divine healing ministry and Hagin. According to McConnell, a spokesperson for Hagin responded to the demonstrations of apparent plagiarism by claiming that inspired men of God often have the same thoughts given them by the Holy Spirit.

Kenyon brought together New Thought and Pentecostal divine healing ministry. One of his mottos was, “What I confess, I possess.” Kenyon believed and taught that divine healing is guaranteed by the atonement of Jesus Christ, and that the prayer of faith powerfully uttered in the form of a confession of possession (e.g., “I possess perfect health”) automatically brings the soughtafter answer.

A whole slew of positive-thinking and positivespeaking Pentecostal ministers drew on Kenyon’s New Thought-inspired theology, adding to it Unity’s emphasis on financial prosperity. The Fillmores taught Unity students how to receive financial abundance through positive utterances called “affirmations.” For example: “Today I will live in the abundance of God who is my inner source.” Kenyon’s message was not entirely devoid of a similar emphasis: “Learn that your lips [i.e., words] can make you a millionaire or a pauper.”3 Enter Joel Osteen and Lakewood Church of Houston.

Joel’s father, the founding pastor of Lakewood, was a classical Pentecostal preacher who turned in the direction of the broader charismatic movement (neo-Pentecostalism), and near the end of his life drank deeply at the wells of the Word-Faith, health-and-wealth, “name it and claim it,” prosperity gospel. Joel succeeded his father as pastor and continued his positive emphasis with the now well-known message expressed in his best-selling book, Your Best Life Now (FaithWords, 2004). A quick perusal of the table of contents reveals the New Thought-inspired, Word-Faith theology of the book: “Developing a Prosperous Mindset” and “The Power in Your Words” are among the chapters.

By no means is everything wrong that Osteen or any other Word-Faith preacher communicates. Someone has said that a heresy is a truth taken to an extreme or pushed to the exclusion of something equally or more important.

Osteen’s message is, in a nutshell, that God wants you to feel good, be happy, experience financial prosperity, and be well. Little is said about self-sacrificial service to others, although that is not completely missing. What is missing, at least for the most part, is any emphasis on suffering as valuable. Some critics claim, with some justification, that the “gospel” Osteen and other Word-Faith preachers 4 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

deliver is a version of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship called “cheap grace.”

The problem with New Thought and its contemporary Pentecostal (and Reformed) permutations is that they have little to do with the biblical message of the cross.

Jesus suffered and died for us; should the servant be greater than the master? Biblical prophecy warns of those who will come with messages that please the ears. When crowds of Americans eagerly press in to hear a religious message that affirms but does not challenge their cultural values of self-esteem and upward mobility, a hermeneutic of suspicion ought to warn that something is wrong with the message if not with the messenger.

So one-sided, if not heretical, is the Word-Faith “gospel” that the classical Pentecostal denominations denounced it and warned sternly against it. The Assemblies of God official position paper, “The Believer and Positive Confession,” labels it a doctrinal aberration. It has divided many churches and led to extreme cases where people believed they were not even saved because they could not achieve health or prosperity through speaking positively.

In other cases, people have simply denied they were ill and refused to take medicine or wear glasses, and so on. This was supposedly their way of expressing positive faith.

The Word-Faith/health, wealth, and prosperity “gospel” has sunk deeply into the fabric of American Christianity— as has New Thought in various forms. It has achieved the status of one of America’s folk religions and has been exported with great success to developing countries. The basic problem is that it has little to do with authentic Christianity, which should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of discernment or a tad of theological knowledge.

Its biblical support is thin to nonexistent and its appeal is to the crassly commercial and materialistic desires of America’s upwardly mobile (or hopeful) middle class and working poor.

Evangelical Christians of all kinds should pull no punches: this folk religion of health and wealth through positive thinking and speaking does not belong to us. It isn’t even on our fringe. It is beyond the pale. ■

Roger E. Olson is professor of theology at Gordon W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University. A past president of the American Theological Society (Midwest Division), Olson is co-chair of the Evangelical Theology Group of the American Academy of Religion. His latest book is How to Be Evangelical without Being Conservative (Zondervan, 2008).

WORKS CITED 1 Harold Hill, How to Live like a King’s Kid (Logos, 1974).

2 Jerry Sholes, Give Me that Prime-Time Religion (Hawthorn Books, 1979).

3 E. W. Kenyon, In His Presence (Kenyon Gospel Publishers, 1991), 50.

EVANGELICALISM’S WINTER?

The Codependency of the Media and Evangelicals Smack dab in the middle of a February 1, 1993, frontpage Washington Post story on the avalanche of calls to Congress opposing the admission of openly gay soldiers into the military, reporter Michael Weisskopf dismissed the groundswell: “Corporations pay public relations firms millions of dollars to contrive the kind of grass-roots response that [Jerry] Falwell or Pat Robertson can galvanize in a televised sermon. Their followers are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”

A few days later, Weisskopf called it “an honest mistake, not born of any prejudice or malice,” and added that he should have said that evangelicals were “relatively” poor and uneducated.

It’s no surprise that the mainstream media are something of a bogeyman to evangelicals.

But who, exactly, are evangelicals? In the 1980s, Scripps Howard religion columnist Terry Mattingly asked

BY

evangelical celebrity Billy Graham to define the term.

“Actually, that’s a question I’d like to ask somebody, too,” Graham replied, saying the word had “become blurred.”

Historian D. G. Hart argues in Deconstructing Evangelicalism (Baker Academic, 2005) that “evangelical” isn’t a legitimate category of religious expression that can be measured by social scientists or codified by systematic theologians.

How can the media possibly be expected to define the group any better?

Officially, the Associated Press Stylebook notes that “evangelical” once served as an adjective describing dedication to conveying the message of Christ. Today, it is a noun referring to a “category of doctrinally conservative Christians. They emphasize the need for a definite, adult commitment or conversion to faith in Christ. Evangelicals stress both doctrinal absolutes and vigorous efforts to win others to belief.”

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the Falwell article ran, the Washington Post anointed Tinky Winky as “the gay and culture. Evangelicals, who love to mix it up in Teletubby.”

So why did the media act those two spheres, provide a constant source of as if Falwell’s was the first media outlet to suggest that material to journalists.

Tinky Winky was gay?

Because speculating about But one thing is clear. For much of the media, the sexual proclivities of a character on a children’s “evangelical” is less a religious term than a political television show is much more exciting to present as a designation. matter of cultural conflict rather than as a humorous bit of Newsweek described movement conservative Paul pop-cultural ephemera.

Weyrich—an ordained clergyperson in an Eastern Rite Or what about the 2004 election? The media, which are Catholic Church—as an evangelical. The Washington Post overwhelmingly liberal, put much effort and energy into called Senator Sam Brownback, a Roman Catholic convert, defeating President George W. Bush and electing Senator an evangelical. Time’s 2005 list of the twenty-five most John Kerry. They came close, too. But Bush prevailed and influential evangelicals in America included Father Richard the media needed to focus its venom somewhere. They John Neuhaus, a Roman Catholic priest, and Rick Santorum, picked evangelical “values voters.” Early exit polls showed a Catholic layman who was in the U.S. Senate at the time. that 22 percent of voters named “morals” as a major Sometimes “evangelical” is used as an aesthetic motivating factor in their decision. Never mind that the designation for media-savvy Protestants. That might percentage of so-called values voters had actually declined explain how T. D. Jakes—a Trinity-denying preacher of the from 40 percent in 1996 and from 35 percent in 2000. prosperity gospel—and the Emergent Church’s Brian The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd said Bush “got reMcLaren—an author who has the ability to write tens of elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, thousands of words without betraying anything specific intolerance, ignorance and religious rule.” He was running about where he stands on centuries of Christian faith— “a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq—drawing a also made Time’s list of top evangelicals. devoted flock of evangelicals, or ‘values voters,’ as they call The media don’t get religion, but they do get politics and themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating culture. Evangelicals, who love to mix it up in those two stem cell research and supporting a constitutional spheres, provide a constant source of material to journalists. amendment against gay marriage.”

On the other hand, evangelicals need the media to engage Another article titled, “The Day the Enlightenment with the culture. And since evangelicals have no common Went Out,” worried that people believe “more fervently in confession of faith or set doctrine, they use the media to the Virgin Birth than in evolution.” define and redefine themselves for market advantage. In Perhaps because of the media’s sustained treatment of short, the two groups are codependent to the core. evangelicals as useful idiots, some in the Christian right A quick look at media coverage over the last ten years seemed to buckle. Whether through conviction or a desperate further illuminates this rocky relationship. Take, for need to be liked, some evangelicals began protesting that they example, the media travails of one Rev. Jerry Falwell. weren’t beholden to the Republican Party. They insisted they Even though he was better described as a fundamentalist cared about things as or more important than the sanctity of (a term that has a precise religious definition but is more human life and traditional marriage. These other issues— commonly used to describe anyone with cultural views to such as global warming and poverty—turned out to be much the right of the New York Times’ editorial page), Falwell was more popular with the media. Some embraced the Emergent frequently described as an evangelical by the media. In Church, hoping to run away from the baggage of the early 1999, Falwell ousted Tinky Winky, the purple evangelical movement. Since 2006, dozens of stories have Teletubby of children’s television. The press erupted: “The appeared—everywhere from the New York Times to the Los innocent world of the Teletubbies is under attack from Angeles Times, from CNN to National Public Radio— America’s religious right,” reported the BBC. Falwell announcing the birth of liberal evangelicals. became the laughing stock of the media.

Rev. Rick Warren personifies this new media Falwell had, in fact, published an article in his Liberty relationship well. The best-selling author and churchJournal that warned that Tinky Winky was a gay role growth methodologist successfully invited presidential model. The thing is, the article was right. The pursecandidates Barack Obama and John McCain to address his wearing purple Teletubby with an antenna shaped like a pet issues at an August forum. triangle had been adopted by the gay community. In fact, Unlike the evangelical leaders best known for fighting CNN reported in 1997 that Tinky Winky had “become abortion and same-sex marriage, Warren is mainly known something of a gay icon.” In 1998, the Village Voice praised in the political realm for his work battling poverty, AIDS, the Teletubbies for having a gay character. A month before and global warming. He likes to tell reporters that he and

The media don’t get religion, but they do get politics

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T H E

many other evangelicals have moved past simply being anti-abortion and calls himself “whole life.”

A bargain was struck. So long as evangelicals weren’t just focusing on fighting abortion and same-sex marriage but giving a platform and legitimacy to the media’s favorite candidates and issues, the coverage got better.

“I couldn’t care less about politics, the culture wars,” Warren told the New York Times in February. “My only interest is to get people to care about Darfurs and Rwandas.”

Sure enough, media reports referred to Warren as a “prominent,” “charismatic” evangelical leader “poised to take the helm of the evangelical movement,” and someone who “has credibility across great swaths of the global Protestant community.” Apparently Warren’s followers aren’t the poor, easily led types.

This idea that evangelicals are no longer voting Republican has caught on. Obama, no stranger to discussions of religion, has made a big deal out of his outreach to evangelicals. Dozens of major papers have run several stories each about how evangelicals are warming to Obama. One Newsweek piece in July was headlined: “Obama Campaign is Making Progress with Evangelical Voters; McCain leads with the group but the Democrat is doing all the right things.”

In fact, a Pew poll released at the same time showed that for all his efforts, Obama was actually getting slightly less support among white evangelicals than Kerry had four years prior.

Because there’s no systematic way to identify evangelicals, they must constantly define and redefine themselves against how they’re portrayed. If “evangelical” is a meaningless term, “Emergent” takes inscrutability to a whole new level. But the Emergent movement, whether or not it is a post-evangelical embrace of the nuances of postmodernism, is clearly an attempt by Protestants to escape the baggage of evangelicalism.

Coverage of the Emergent and emerging church movements, which deemphasize absolute truth, have received generally positive coverage from the mainstream media. Take this characterization from an article published nationwide in May by Associated Press’s Rachel Zoll: Author Brian McLaren is among the most influential American religious thinkers of the last decade. His break with rigid orthodoxy and embrace of new worship styles is at the center of what is called the emerging church—a movement that has gone viral.

The emerging church reclaims ancient practices and prayers and creates new ones, while re-examining Scripture to learn how modern-day Christians should live.

Confessional church bodies—presenting an unchanging church to a changing world—fail to generate headlines.

Evangelicals, by contrast, have been remarkably adept at adapting worship styles, doctrines, and outreach attempts in an effort to convert and engage the culture. It remains

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to be seen whether or not Warren and McLaren maintain their popularity or favorable media coverage, but there’s nothing to indicate that the dependence between American evangelicalism and the media will abate. ■

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a writer in Washington, D.C.

Is Evangelical Anglicanism Dead? (continued from page 40) in fellowship with them and who are seeking to uphold Christian orthodoxy, are members of what is called “Common Cause Partners.” These individuals and associations are Anglicans. There is also another group who seeks to uphold Christian orthodoxy but may not have any formal relationship with the See of Canterbury or with the ECUSA/TEC. These too are Anglicans and are generally known as the “Continuum.” Finally, there are “tares” among the “wheat” which, because of their infant baptism, are “Anglicans” but may or may not even go to church or have a genuine commitment to Christ. In this article, I will largely refer to the ECUSA/TEC (which, as an institution at this time, has embraced a liberal agenda), “Common Cause Partners” (which are Anglicans who are orthodox and yet have some formal or semi-formal relationship with the ECUSA/TEC), and the “Anglican Continuum” who may be genuinely orthodox and Anglican but may have no formal or semi-formal relationship with the ECUSA/TEC or the worldwide Anglican Communion.

2 It must be noted that the Articles of Religion (AOR) have at times, when dictated by wisdom or necessity, been altered. These alterations have, however, not impacted essential Christian doctrine. Throughout this article I will be referencing the AOR of 1801 as found in the Oxford University Press edition of the Book of Common Prayer (with Holy Bible and Apocrypha), quoted on pages 867–76; no date was given as the date of publication. The Book of Common Prayer used in this text is the 1979 edition.

3 See GAFCON’s “Jerusalem Declaration,” points 1–14.

This can be viewed online.

4 Allan C. Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of Reformed Episcopalians (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press 1994), 34.

5 Many of these Global South Anglicans have formal relationships with their Common Cause Partners in the United States. Among these partners are the Anglican Mission in America, Anglican Province of America, Reformed Episcopal Church, and others.

6 Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

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INTERVIEW f o r

d i a l og u e

i n

and

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circles

An Interview with Michael Spencer

The Post-Evangelical Option Where are the postevangelicals going in search of this “more ancient, deeper, broader, Christian tradition”?

Are they doing this on their own (or with Wesley-like small groups) in their traditional evangelical churches or are they joining different theological traditions?

It would be a mistake to look for self-identified postevangelicals organizing under that label. What you will see are some quite serious and growing trends: (1) Younger evangelical pastors are increasingly looking back to more theological and historic resources for the work of pastoring, and paying less and less attention to denominational headquarters. The competition to imitate successful megachurch growth models has often overlooked the young pastors who are simply not playing that game at all. Look at how many young Southern Baptist pastors are now looking back to the historic roots of their denomination rather than to the latest orders from Nashville for direction. It’s quite striking and it is post-evangelical. These younger pastors believe evangelicalism has deep problems and they don’t believe the answers are in the next book by the next megachurch success story. They believe the answers are in rejecting the shallowness and trendiness for something of substance.

(2) Thousands of evangelicals are discovering the Christian tradition through the Christian year, the creeds, and exploring liturgy in their own free-church traditions. Thousands of evangelicals have become Catholic and Orthodox, but many thousand more are reading and learning about those traditions and the larger roots of their own. Many of these theological explorers are reading the church fathers as evangelicals under the encouragement of men like D. H. Williams. I know Vineyard pastors who are using liturgy and teaching the creeds. Networks of post-evangelicals like the Ancient-Future Movement are starting to consciously talk in terms of the future, meaning a major step back, rather than just forward.

(3) There is a huge group of evangelicals who have left traditional churches for emerging and missional churches. A lot of Reformed critics tend to misinterpret the emerging church and to caricature it. The emerging

Executive Editor Eric Landry spent several days dialoguing with Michael Spencer, a Southern Baptist campus minister and popular blogger (internetmonk.com and Jesus Shaped.wordpress.com) recognized by many evangelicals as an articulate spokesman for postevangelicalism. In this issue, we’re asking questions about the nature and future of evangelicalism. Here, Michael Spencer helps us understand why so many evangelicals are moving on to a different kind of evangelical experience.

Let’s start with a simple definition: What is “postevangelicalism”?

Nothing is really simple with evangelicalism these days, as one can see from books like D. G. Hart’s Deconstructing Evangelicalism, which denies that such a thing as evangelicalism ever existed, to David Wells’s recent series of books that put forward an extensive program for saving it.

Both “post” and “evangelical” are, therefore, rather evasive terms. I subscribe to the classic definition of evangelicalism as the evolution of Protestantism that began with the Wesleys, was shaped by Spurgeon, and really defined in the West by Billy Graham: confidence in the authority of Scripture; concern for conversion evangelism and world mission; a vital, transforming personal relationship with God through the Holy Spirit (and normally in the church); and a social application of Christianity that improves society, particularly for the poor and suffering.

By “post-evangelical” I do not mean a personal rejection or abandonment of these distinctives, but simply that many of us who have been born, shaped, and defined by this movement now find ourselves estranged by what evangelicalism has become. We sense that the gospel is in jeopardy, that the role of the Bible is greatly diminished, that a fully nurtured concept of the church and discipleship has been largely abandoned, and that the culture war has replaced a more constructive and compassionate engagement with society.

Post-evangelicalism then, for me and many of my readers/listeners, is a conscious step away from what evangelicalism has become and an intentional effort to find the spirit of evangelicalism again in the resources of the more ancient, deeper, broader, Christian tradition. Many of us look at Robert Webber as the pioneer in this way of relating to evangelicalism. We are critical of evangelicalism, often severely so; but we believe there is great hope for evangelicalism in other places in the Christian tradition and in the deeper roots of evangelicalism itself.

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church, like it or not, has looked at the evangelicalism of the church growth movement and said, “No thanks.”

Instead, thousands of people want a church that talks to them about Christian spirituality and not just evangelism and church growth. What they are looking for in the emerging churches—and whether they find it is another story—is something of more substance and authenticity than what evangelicalism has produced in the Rick Warren era. The emerging church is more open to the ancient church than almost any other part of evangelicalism; and while there is an important need for biblical authority and mature leadership to guide these churches from conversation to community, the best emerging/missional churches provide a clear alternative to evangelicalism and a tremendous openness to the larger Christian tradition.

(4) How many evangelicals have simply left evangelical churches all together? No one knows, but there are millions of recently de-churched evangelicals in America. Evangelical numbers are plunging, despite the image of big, growing churches, and it is not all due to the decline of the mainline denominations.

Evangelicalism is producing an ocean of the disillusioned and deceived. Hundreds of thousands of evangelical leaders and laypersons are seeing this, and they are no longer blaming these leavers for disloyalty. They are rapidly concluding that our unsinkable ship seems to have a distinct lurch.

Looking in from the outside, some non-evangelicals might conclude that post-evangelicals are just a new generation of evangelicals: rather than joining an identifiable stream of the Christian tradition, they are taste-testing various traditions, finding a particular mix that is meaningful to them. Is this just another example of radical individualism or is something else going on here?

Certainly the post-evangelical movement isn’t coalescing around a new tradition or single expression. The young Calvinists would be shocked that I am citing them as post-evangelicals. When I hear a post-evangelical voice like Brian McLaren begin talking as if everyone who buys a particular book is headed to the same conclusions, I deeply disagree. Most post-evangelicals will remain evangelicals and will, as evangelicals tend to do, identify with or start very evangelical expressions of the church.

They will have more “commonality” with the larger church, but they will continue being evangelical by going in many different directions in expressing that.

I recently spoke at the Cornerstone Festival, which is put together by many people associated with Jesus People USA in Chicago. In the 1970’s, JPUSA was the “cutting edge” of evangelical evolution into the counterculture. Today, that same group—still counterculture to the core—is exploring its roots and connections to monasticism, Catholic spirituality, and the broader Christian tradition, but they are still JPUSA and

they are still thoroughly evangelical. As I said earlier, post-evangelicalism isn’t the rejection of evangelicalism; it’s the rejection of what evangelicalism has become and the conscious decision to repair that from the broader Christian tradition.

If I were a denominationalist or a person strongly committed to one tradition being dominant, I wouldn’t be encouraged by the post-evangelical phenomenon. As we say in Kentucky, that cow has already left the barn; i.e., denominationalism is dying right in front of us. Even the past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Frank Page, said that half of the SBC churches would be gone before the middle of the century. That’s more than just generational differences. That’s a loud announcement that there’s something wrong with the way evangelicalism presented itself and its gospel.

Post-evangelicalism is a cafeteria approach and, to a certain extent, it is individualistic. As evangelicals, I think it’s important we say that we reject magisteriums determining where Christ has helped his church throughout history and telling us what we can’t read.

But “radical” individualism? I’d say “no,” because postevangelicals are affirming that the community of the redeemed is much broader than just evangelicals wearing their team colors. It’s an intentional broadening of community.

You used to call yourself a Calvinist, but now prefer the term “Reformation Christian.” You also prominently feature Lutheran resources (including our friend Rod Rosenbladt) on your website. What is it about the Reformation that you think can or does speak to post-evangelicals?

First, I think everyone has to make a decision about whether the Reformation was necessary or not. With the surge of Protestant conversions to Rome and a parallel surge in evangelical identification with Calvinism, I am glad to say that, at least on some level, this discussion is continuing. It’s very important. Fundamental.

I believe the Reformation was a tragic necessity in two ways: it is basically conservative of the gospel, and it adheres to the simplicity of the gospel. That stands in tremendous contrast to Catholicism, the contemporary charismatic scene, so-called “progressive” Christianity, and so on. Reformation Christianity today is the major voice in world Christianity calling for salvation by grace, through faith, by Christ, according to the authority of Scripture. All evangelicalism should be Reformation evangelicalism.

Post-evangelicals need to continually confess the faith.

We need the creeds. We need a critical but teachable attitude toward the Reformation confessions. We need to make sure that the gospel is the focus, that the church is derivative from the gospel and not vice versa, and that the confession of the orthodox, historic faith as expressed by the early church and the Reformers occupies the theological center of our journey in the evangelical wilderness. The Reformation solas are the “ark” for those N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 49

of us who feel we’re in a forty-year walk in the desert.

I do feel the Lutheran reformation today has stayed closer to the center, has stayed away from the rush to be relevant, knows how to live with mystery, has much better pastoral skills, and hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid of a Jonathan Edwards approach to solving every possible question with higher and higher speculations. I am pleased that Lutherans are starting to learn how to contribute to the evangelical conversation. It’s frustrating, however, that one can’t point to a Lutheran John Piper or R. C. Sproul whose resources are readily accessible on the web.

Why does the broader Christian community need postevangelicals? That is, what do they bring to the discussion that we need to heed and adopt in our particular communions?

There are few reasons for optimism in evangelicalism today, but the post-evangelical impulse does give me optimism in several ways.

First, I believe it signals a more constructive engagement with the larger Christian tradition, and there is much that those traditions can gain from evangelicals.

Look at what the influx of Protestant converts and influence has done positively in the Roman Catholic Church going back to the charismatic movement and coming down to Vatican II and beyond, especially in regard to Scripture. The same can be hoped for the mainline Christian traditions. I recently spent a weekend with forty ministers from mainline, liberal denominations, listening to one of the great postevangelicals of our time, Eugene H. Peterson. I was deeply impressed that evangelicalism has exactly what so many of the mainlines need, and many evangelicals can be enriched from the more conservative attitude toward liturgy and the Christian tradition found among the more moderate to conservative mainlines.

Secondly, evangelical scholarship is just beginning to engage with Patristics and liturgy in a serious way, and the potential results excite me. John Colwell is a professor at Spurgeon’s College and has written a wonderful book exploring the traditional Roman Catholic sacraments from a historic Baptist position, especially acknowledging Spurgeon’s more robust use of the Lord’s Supper in worship. This kind of engagement is happening through the Ancient-Future Movement, postevangelicalism, and among young evangelical academics and theologians in many places. They will bring their distinctive evangelical impulses to the reading of church history and make it possible for non-evangelicals and evangelicals to drink from the wells dug by their fathers and mothers.

But, finally, I believe evangelicalism itself always runs the risk of its own self-destruction, as Roman Catholic Louis Bouyer pointed out, by placing so much emphasis on “one man, God and a Bible.” There is the danger of rejecting the wisdom, depth, and connections of the broader Christian tradition and being consumed in a kind 5 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

of radical individualism that leaves little place for the gathered church community. Our ahistorical, pragmatic temptations as evangelicals have been having their way and now the most visible pastor in America is a motivational speaker with almost a hostile view of the gospel. Post-evangelicalism can apply the brakes to this race for the cliff and can help steer us back to the roads we foolishly abandoned.

As one whose own life and ministry have followed a post-evangelical track, what “road hazards” have you identified and warned other post-evangelicals about?

I’m sure that Bob Webber knew “Evangelicals along the Canterbury Trail” needed a sequel to address those who would leave evangelicalism for Rome and Orthodoxy.

Rome and Orthodoxy are aggressively evangelizing discontented, thoughtful Protestants, and doing so very successfully because of the resources they have in the broader, deeper tradition than most evangelical churches can begin to provide. If you are part of the postevangelical experience, then there is a calculated risk that you will decide it is easier to just ride the elephant rather than try to carve it up into a sandwich. Conversions to Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy are common, and they yield some impressive results, as a tour of First Things or Touchstone magazines will reveal. But if, like me, you are permanently opposed to compromise on the issues that make Protestantism necessary, you will know what it is like to be under constant barrage.

Evangelicalism itself is a mess, with a mixture of its best and its worst aspects often coexisting in the same churches. Many churches are still caught up in the fundamentalist mindset that caused evangelicalism to draw some lines in the first place; and if you are caught off the fundamentalist ranch, you may be shot as an outlaw. Particularly, liturgy, creeds, and any mention of the Catholic tradition can bring a severe reaction from many places in evangelicalism that are trying to solve the problems in the family by labeling—purges and microscopic issues of loyalty. If you aren’t a supporter of that approach, be prepared to receive luggage as a lovely parting gift.

But the primary hazard is simply the wilderness experience itself. Many of us are not able to find a church community to identify with unless we want to drive absurd distances. Many of us have family situations that are still defining our church identification by children’s programming and music. Some of us simply feel we need to be in the evangelical wilderness so we can hear the voice of God rather than the din of the evangelical circus.

So, as any reading of the comments at my blog will reveal, many post-evangelicals are alone and feel isolated and homeless in evangelicalism. If you are fortunate enough to have real world conversation partners in this journey, be grateful.

REQUIRED READING FOR 21ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS modern

reformation

m u st-r e ad s

Readings on Evangelicalism Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church Baker, 2008

by Michael Horton In order to have a future, evangelicalism must have the evangel. Arguing that much of American Christianity has lost its way, the editor-inchief of Modern Reformation shines a bright light on the startling void in our church: Where is Jesus?

The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World Eerdmans, 2008

by David Wells A capstone volume to his ground-breaking four-part series, Wells draws a map for weary evangelicals looking for a way out of the circus that is church for many. Who knew that being Protestant could be such a dangerous enterprise?

The Lost Soul of American Protestantism Rowman and Littlefield, 2004

by D. G. Hart Hart, a frequent contributor to MR, offers a penetrating historical and theological analysis of “what went wrong” in the American church. His thesis—there’s no such thing as evangelicalism—will be startling and controversial to some, but deserves the same careful consideration with which it is offered.

Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism Eerdmans, 1995

by George Marsden Marsden’s classic work shows how one stream of evangelicalism sought to distance itself from the self-identified Reformed and confessionalist mentality of some early evangelicals, particularly J. Gresham Machen and the founders of Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

SEE ALSO: Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George Marsden (Eerdmans)

Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accomodation in Postmodern Times by Millard Erickson, Paul Helseth, Justin Taylor,

Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America

and D. A. Carson (Crossway)

by James Davison Hunter (Basic Books)

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REVIEWS wh at ’s

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Keep Rooted in Truth

D

r. David Wells’s new book, The Courage to Be Protestant, was written as

heart—was one that still existed in small enclaves, like Wells’s a summary of his last four, though he says in the introduction that it own home. He wanted others to be able to enjoy it, for reasons took on a life of its own, needing updating, and prodding Wells to get from the most weighty to the most mundane. to the heart of what he The current book is stripped not only of footnotes and was about in the four obscure references that might have intimidated some books. I met Wells potential readers of his earlier books. It is also stripped of before my first year at much of the specificity that made those books charming—at Gordon-Conwell, and least to a reader like me. The target audience of this book is he was looking clearly different. A reader who enjoyed Wells’s last four forward to the books and wants a treatment of something such as the title sabbatical when he The Courage to Be Protestant suggests is probably looking for a would be doing the book more like Darryl Hart’s Deconstructing Evangelicalism. research that led to his But The Courage to Be Protestant is one that such a reader can book No Place for Truth. pass onto other colleagues who would be put off by Wells’s He explained that he other books or Hart’s book. wanted to look into If Wells’s first book was an attempt to get those who why evangelicals were were sympathetic to his outlook to see what the late not doing theology. His twentieth century was doing to evangelicalism, the new hypothesis was that the book seems to be geared to informing those on the verge of media culture had taking the next step to pause. Wells asks church growth changed the way adherents and Emergents to look at history long enough to people processed note that what they are stepping into is really a Protestant The Courage to Be information. He was liberalism that is not likely to last more than a generation.

Protestant looking forward to If the experiment is bound to fail, then why subject yourself

by David F. Wells delving deeper. He to it? Wells asks his reader to have, as the title suggests, the offered this hypothesis Eerdmans, 2008 courage to be Protestant. In our time this may not lead 267 pages (hardback), $25.00 before I had read Neil many to martyrdom. But it will require courage to ignore Postman or Marshall the marketing statistics and all the other demands to be McLuhan or Jacques Ellul, and I found implausible the relevant and keep a steady course rooted in eternal truth. idea that we had been “rewired.” Now I am almost certain Wells himself notes how his critics have faulted him in that Wells was right. When people in the church think the past for having much more to offer by way of diagnosis that cultural factors like this are neutral, I now think they than prescription. He argues that many kinds of are hopelessly naive. prescriptions suffer from the very illnesses with which we No Place for Truth and the books following offered a rich are afflicted. They are the world of technique. He continues analysis of how changes in culture had infiltrated the in his section on the church to offer some theological church. A description of an earlier church culture in reflections that might help us, if not in practice, at least in Wenham, Massachusetts, with its Congregational outlook. It is here I think that the consequences of some churches and Sabbath schools and other institutions early choices make the book somewhat confusing. As a where people would be raised in a coherent set of Lutheran, I am bound to disagree with Wells’s treatment of Christian moral assumptions, would allow a sympathetic the sacraments. But there is a deeper problem. Some of this reader who knew there had been changes in the stems from an irony in his original project. When Wells preceding decades to see this as part of a larger decline. decided to ask why evangelicals weren’t doing theology, The book took in too grand a slice of history to be a that itself was not a theological question. You could ask it as Jeremiad. The look backward was wistful. The “Delicious a theological question if you were expecting a theological Paradise Lost”—where Wells describes how the Wenham answer of the sort that Dana Carvey’s church lady from woman’s desserts, like cupid’s arrow, pierced stomach and Saturday Night Live might have offered, i.e. “Could it be 5 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Satan?” No. Wells was out to study the matter in a more sociological vein. What cultural factors were making evangelicals less inclined to do theology? I think that initial question was worth asking. If I remember correctly from class, Wells also had a definition of theology where it was a timely response to current questions, in distinction from doctrine, which was a timeless response to an age-old question. So the initial book seemed to straddle the boundaries between genres, and to a good end. It wanted to discover why in our given cultural moment evangelicals were not doing theology, and tried at points to bring some theological insights into the conversation that might at least partially rectify the situation.

The current book does so less successfully, I think.

Some sections seem to be headings one could find in a dogmatics book (e.g., God, Christ, and Church). And you can find mention of church doctrines in these sections; for example, Wells’s intriguing discussion of how Luther’s “hidden” and “revealed” categories for the church might be more useful than the often misused “visible” and “invisible.” But these sections are not really positive theological statements. In Wells’s discussion of the marks of the church, when he discusses the sacraments being properly administered, he limits the discussion to a warning against understanding the sacraments in a way that would work against “Christ alone.” His treatment is so general that while “sacraments” has six entries in the index, neither “baptism” nor “Lord’s Supper” has an entry. (“Moral norms” has 42 entries!) Now why did Wells do this? The reason could be theological. Wells might honestly believe that this is the only live way in which churches are commonly threatened with not being true churches through their sacramental practice. Only when the sacraments are offered as rival saviors are they injurious. All sorts of practices may be done that may not be exactly on target biblically, but they don’t threaten the community’s status as a true church. This is one possibility. In fact, I find it quite likely he holds this. But the reader also sees the possibility that writing to evangelicals meant that speaking of distinctive doctrines was inappropriate, as it would break the contract with the reader as to what would be civil. The rules are different when clearly written from a confessional community. It is one thing for a Presbyterian book to press upon a reader that the sacraments are to be dispensed only by a minister lawfully ordained. And an old Presbyterian might really believe that this disqualified a community that had a contrary practice from being a true church. If I read a Presbyterian book, I may run into distinctive doctrines. I should expect this. But what is the contract when I open an evangelical book? That is a tough question. All the tougher if the book is already straddling genres. Several of Wells’s decisions about general approach may be defended. But I think they converge to obscure what he is doing here in a way that should have been recognized and addressed more directly. I am never surprised when Wells has an answer for his critics. I think that some of

the questions they bring up, however, are the result of expectations raised by the forms of discourse chosen.

Thankfully, the reader to whom the book is addressed is not likely to read the book in this fashion. If you don’t generally read theology books, you won’t know what to expect from these headings. If you haven’t been in discussions of the marks of the church, you won’t know what is at stake when a community is missing those marks. The intended reader will likely run into insights of a sort not available in the local megachurch. And I’ll be happy if such conversations are stirred. If writing books like this is able to draw some back from joining Emergent churches or megachurches because they sense an intellectual solidity rooted in generations of theological reflection, so much the better.

When No Place for Truth came out, it made a huge splash. This was possible in part because Wells took his own advice: ignore the marketing gurus and do what you know to be inherently worthwhile. His current book is good wherever it followed that course. Where it was tailored to be more accessible, I think it lost some of its savor. I look forward with greatest anticipation to David Wells’s next inaccessible book.

Rick Ritchie is a frequent contributor to Modern Reformation and is a member of a Luther Church-Missouri Synod congregation in Southern California.

He Gave Us a Valley

By Helen Roseveare Christian Focus, 2006 192 pages (paperback), $12.99 He Gave Us a Valley is the story of Dr. Helen Roseveare’s years of service as a medical missionary in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo and formerly Zaire). It is also a deeply personal spiritual journal. Woven throughout her memoir is what she calls “a niggling question that I wouldn’t look at, that I didn’t want to hear, [that] kept pressing up into the level of conscious thought.” “OK,” she told herself, “right now, after all your philosophizing and encouraging others, just answer: has it all been worth it?”

At the time she wrote this book, first published in 1976, Roseveare had reason to wrestle with this question. She toiled for twenty years (1953–73) as a medical missionary, and returned to England at the end of her service having N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 53

experienced many disappointments, hardships, changes in job descriptions, and a brutal beating and rape while in captivity during the rebel uprising in the early 1960s. The book recounts her two ten-year terms and the implementation of the vision to train national paramedics that became her legacy. The work was accomplished in fits and starts with meager resources and in the context of the medical ministry of WEC International, then Worldwide Evangelization Crusade. The story of her beating and the subsequent struggle to forgive and return to the Congo is told in her book He Gave Us a Mountain.

The medical work that Roseveare and the WEC team established is remarkable, given the primitive and volatile circumstances. In Nebobongo, they rebuilt the 100-bed hospital with maternity services, a leprosy care center and children’s home, a medical training school, and 48 rural health clinics. They provided surgery and medical care to thousands of people annually. But by 1964, civil war engulfed Nebobongo. Rebel forces nearly destroyed the medical center. Roseveare wrote in her journal, “Through ten months...the rebels wrought havoc, destroying property, stealing possessions, inflicting cruelties, instilling fear. Shops emptied of all stores. All work ceased and the economy crumbled. Good men were murdered, many others tortured and mutilated. All sense of order and discipline disappeared and anarchy took over.” During that time, she and other women were taken into captivity, beaten and raped by rebels, and left to die.

Traumatized and spiritually depleted, Roseveare recovered in England. A year later, in January 1966, the National Army leaders invited missionaries back to the Congo to assist in the work of rehabilitation. Hundreds of thousands of people died during the war, many suffering from starvation and lack of medical supplies. “So we were each faced with the question, ‘Am I willing to return?’” In spite of her own suffering, Roseveare decided to go back.

At the border of what was then being called Zaire, she and other returning missionaries were greeted by National Army soldiers carrying rifles.

We quickly realized we were under a military regime. It was a strange feeling, this long-anticipated homecoming, so unlike the carefully-rehearsed imagery. It was rough and raw, with coarse language and barely-concealed dislike....Why have I come? I was sure I had made a mistake in coming back. I had thought I’d truly forgotten [my own] suffering. I had thought the fear had died. It hadn’t.

Immediately, the hard work started again with “sore hands and grueling hours.” The WEC team and nationals rebuilt the medical center and medical college, which gained national recognition for excellence. But a series of demoralizing events led to Roseveare’s resignation and sudden departure for England in 1973. It is at this point that the book ends, but not before Roseveare takes on her “niggling questions” about the worth of her ministry. Many 5 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

readers will feel her pain as she struggles to find any value in her many years of work. To her, there is far too much evidence of her mistaken judgment and outright mistakes.

Her story has resonated with Christians over the years because of her frankness about her very human struggles on the mission field. She wrestles with her personality, ambition, strong opinions, and impatience. She stoically faces the challenges of being a single professional woman in a pioneering mission that used her more than it nurtured and empowered her. In her journal, she is reluctant to acknowledge her huge heart, selfless service, and ability to train and inspire paramedics who were otherwise untrained. She tends to look too blandly at the results of the mission’s work and the impact of the gospel.

While she was preparing to leave Africa for the last time, she desperately scribbled down a “few facts and figures to share with folk back home. 372 major operations in 1972 with only six surgical deaths. Surely it was all worth it if we practiced good medicine.”

John—her longtime friend and medical assistant— tenderly rebuked her: “Don’t bother with things like that.

Just tell them that nearly 200 people found Christ as their Saviour through the medical services last year.”

She wrote, “I turned and hugged him, my eyes filling with tears of joy. And God said pretty plainly, ‘Isn’t My way better than yours?’”

Yet she questioned God’s ways and struggled with what she called the privilege of his calling to suffering. Having resigned because of errors and problems she held herself responsible for, she accused herself: “You went home and told everyone that [God] was sufficient at that moment, in those circumstances. Isn’t this true now, in today’s circumstances? You no longer want Jesus only, but Jesus plus…plus respect, popularity, public opinion, success and pride. Either it must be ‘Jesus only’ or you’ll find you’ve no Jesus. You’ll substitute Helen Roseveare.”

The spiritual journey of the days following that journal entry are really the heart of the book. There is a ministry of the Spirit that comes to those who listen well to the stories of faith. Roseveare discovers the answer to her question and leaves Africa with a peaceful spirit and with no medical statistics to cover-up the real story of difficulties, setbacks, and suffering. In her speaking ministry that followed her years in Africa, she uses the analogy of an arrow shaft crafted from an unruly branch snipped from a tree. The branch must be stripped to the bark and honed and polished before it is useful as an arrow. In the same way, God uses suffering to make his servant useful, if we will say, “Yes, your way is better than mine.”

Susan Disston is a freelance writer and the assessment director and an adjunct faculty member in practical theology at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. She previously served the PCA as a regional trainer for Christian Education & Publications.

Reveal: Where Are You?

by Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson Willow Creek Association, 2007 110 pages (paperback), $12.99

Follow Me: What’s Next for You?

by Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson Willow Creek Resources, 2008 158 pages (paperback), $14.99 Apparently, the latest congregational survey story goes like this: Willow Creek Com-munity Church, a 5,000member, five-campus nondenominational church in Illinois, has been surveying its members every three years since 1992; but the latest set of surveys from 2004 to 2007 have set off an alarm bell for senior minister Bill Hybels and his strategic planning staff. They believe the results show how the church made a costly mistake in millions of dollars and programming energy over the last sixteen years as they targeted seekers and baby Christians but didn’t help a significant number of people grow in spiritual maturity.

Hybels and his crew had built their ministry upon “the church activity model for spiritual growth,” where “a person far from God participates in church activities which produce a person who loves God and loves others” (Reveal, 13). What they believe they found instead is that people who are mature in their faith have a growing relationship with Jesus Christ, defined by the survey as feeling “really close to Christ” and God being “all I need in my life.” They are also those who say they are least helped by the church weekend services and activities.

Lots of weight has been placed on the two published studies, Reveal: Where Are You? (2007) and the sequel Follow Me: What’s Next for You? (2008), leading to national leadership summits where Hybels has presented the findings and recruited more than 200 churches and 80,000 respondents around the globe to take the first survey plus a set of others to assess where their congregation is spiritually and to change the way churches help Christians grow. The conclusions drawn from the surveys and Hybel’s admitted failure also have had the potential to make critics of the Willow Creek seekersensitive, church-activity model a tad more smug or at least validated in their differing opinions of philosophy of ministry.

Unfortunately, there’s a small but important wrench in all the findings. According to Bradley Wright, associate professor in the sociology of Christianity at the University of

Connecticut, the study design and analytic strategy used to interpret the data in Reveal are weak, which makes the second study, Follow Me, weak as well since it is built upon the first. In his online review, Wright says the questions and resulting data are not only ambiguous but the data is also greatly over-interpreted. So, the findings about the church and its methods to help Christians grow in spiritual maturity are, brace yourself, inconclusive. Church activities at Willow Creek may have helped its congregants grow, maybe not.

The study doesn’t compare Willow Creek’s congregants to congregants in other churches with a different model. It also doesn’t look at Willow Creek’s congregants over time, who may try different activities or personal practices. It takes only a snapshot of their individual perceptions of where they are spiritually in that moment, yet the conclusions drawn predict trends over time. If Wright is right, it’s possible that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars and programming energy have been spent to promote a study and its findings that in the end are not based on good interpretive science.

As a self-proclaimed Christian and a “fan” of Willow Creek, it’s not as if Wright has a suspicious motivation to discredit evangelicals and their surveys. If you go to his blogspot, he repeatedly compliments Willow Creek for using surveys to bring about positive change in the local church.

Though the findings in both studies are likely questionable, one still has to commend Hybels for trying to assess the spiritual life of his congregation, say he was wrong in how he pastored or “coached” people, and then work to create a new model and help other churches do the same. As a counselor for a handful of Presbyterian churches, I have witnessed pastors and leaders who have no real idea where members are spiritually until the members come up for church discipline. We are all humbled by the task to know others well in our congregations, particularly to know how to shepherd well and to help each other grow in Christ.

That being said, there are a myriad of problems with the surveys and their findings other than research methodology, but two points to consider if you read it are the definitions for a mature Christian as well as what is the church. There is space to go into only the first point briefly.

Reveal made people put themselves in one place on a continuum of four separate stages of spiritual growth based on how close they feel to Jesus: 1) Exploring Christianity, “I believe in God, but I’m not sure about Christ. My faith is not a significant part of my life”; 2) Growing in Christ, “I believe in Jesus, and I am working on what it means to get to know him”; 3) Close to Christ, “I feel really close to Christ and depend on him for daily guidance”; and 4) Christ-centered, “God is all I need in my life. He is enough. Everything I do is a reflection of Christ” (38). The Reveal Study says that those who placed themselves in categories three and four, the most mature, also read their Bibles, prayed, tithed, and served more often than those in stages one or two. But as stated above, N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 55

they were also the groups that were stalled spiritually or most dissatisfied with the church services and wanted deeper theological instruction in the Bible. As a result, Hybels changed the worship services and midweek instruction to include more meaty biblical offerings.

In Follow Me, the research supposedly found four “catalysts for spiritual growth” and two “breakthrough discoveries” for engendering spiritual growth, again defined as feeling close to Jesus. The four catalysts were: 1) spiritual beliefs (accepting Christ as Savior); 2) participating in organized church activities such as the weekend worship service and small group Bible study; 3) personal spiritual practices such as reading the Bible and praying; and 4) spiritual activities with others such as mentors who are not formally arranged by the church.

The two breakthrough discoveries were: 1) the “Christcentered” people on the spectrum show enormous capacity for kingdom impact—they tithe, evangelize, serve, pray, and reflect on Scripture; and 2) the Bible is the most powerful catalyst for spiritual growth.

Pardon the crassness, but how many millions of dollars need we spend in evangelical Christian church ministry before seeing the Bible as the most powerful catalyst for spiritual growth? With all due respect to a man and his church that sincerely minister to thousands and who undoubtedly has preached believingly on the parable of the soils, how does this become a “breakthrough discovery”? Hybels writes at the end of the second study: Undoubtedly we’ll be exploring the question of what it means to support Christ-Centeredness for months and years to come, but two things are obvious. First, Christ-Centered people need to be reminded they are not crazy for taking Christ so seriously. They need to be reminded of the Scriptures that tell all of us that making our lives a living sacrifice is a normal part of the Christian life. Second, Christ-Centered people need resources. They are actively building relationships, sharing a verbal witness and helping their friends explore Christianity. They’re learning more and more to die to self and to humbly do whatever Christ calls them to do. But many of them are asking, “Could we get a little help here?” (140) If this is the level of illumination that comes after years of ministry and “2.4 million points of data,” that if I already feel close to Christ and believe that I need God for everything in my life and I read my Bible, pray, confess sin, tithe, and serve others, the first thing my pastor is going to say to me is that I am not crazy for taking Christ so seriously? And then I may get a few church resources on the side? It makes me just want to weep.

Shannon Geiger serves as a counselor at Park Cities Presbyterian Church and alongside her husband, Josh, in a PCA church plant serving the Hispanic community of Dallas.

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Job: EP Study Commentary

By Hywel R. Jones Evangelical Press, 2007 304 pages (hardcover), $29.99 The Book of Job is arguably one of the most misunderstood and abused books of Scripture.

Dr. Hywel R. Jones’s commentary is a helpful, insightful, and delightful resource. The book of Job “is not about the problem of human suffering in the world at large, but about the suffering of the godly in a fallen world over which God yet reigns supreme” (27–28). Jones unpacks fifty years of pastoral experience, academic excellence, and personal reflection in this illuminating commentary.

Why study Job? Jones comments on his intended purpose and audience, and he delivers in spades on all counts: Job belongs primarily to the Christian church...but it provides a ready-made point of contact with unchurched people. There are now so many who have lost their way, either because they do not ask the big questions about life, or because they are swamped by the fact that there seem to be no real answers to them. By its presentation of both the grim realities of human existence and the wonder of divine grace, the book has something to say to any who would consult it seriously. It therefore supplies excellent material for lively and relevant preaching to people of every culture, not only by way of edification, but also evangelism. (10) The Book of Job is a bit of mystery, but it is also accessible.

Dr. Jones unfolds Job by means of the analogy of Scripture.

Jones’s insight regarding the perspectives of the story told from various realms—the heavenly court, the earth, the friends’ perspective, Job’s perspective, etc.—in light of the canon are germane to a full-orbed understanding of the book. For example, Jones begins and ends the commentary by interpreting Job in light of James (particularly James 5:10–11). In addition, unique and recurring thematic insights into Job are gleaned through Jones’s understanding that Job is “wisdom literature with elements from law-court literature.” “There is no denying that the book of Job records a trial. It has a prosecutor, a defendant and a judge. In fact, it operates like this on more than one level” (23). The manner in which Jones unpacks this trial throughout his volume is poignant and elucidating. Without intending to sound trivial, this commentary is akin to a legal thriller/page-turner because of the content of the drama and Jones’s deep understanding of form, function, and flow.

The entire commentary is worth digesting. There are, however, three sections in particular I would like to mention. First, Jones’s careful analysis and teaching regarding what happens “behind the scenes (Job 1:6–12),” at least for this writer, was a clearing (47–56). Not only were my perspectives altered of Job the man and the Book of Job, but my appreciation for the sovereignty of God and my theology were transformed. If you have been under the impression by what you have read or heard that God “threw Job under the bus” or if you have listened to (or read) countless “spin” trying to comprehend what is happening in the heavenly court, then I commend this commentary to you, unequivocally, to clear the confusion.

Second, Jones’s treatment of Elihu as a “man of God” rather than an enfant terrible is excellent. Jones notes that the years of criticism leveled against Elihu are unwarranted (228).

He makes a simple, clear, and convincing case for regarding Elihu as a type of prophet, similar to John the Baptist, preparing the way for the redeemer. Jones does not belabor the arguments regarding the historicity, placement, and style of the speeches of Elihu nor does he ignore them.

Finally, the christological and soteriological insights in this commentary are legion. The commentary acknowledges the sovereignty of God from beginning to end.

Job may be the chief human actor in the drama, so to speak, but Jehovah is the chief agent in the history that this book records. The narrative is related to the message of his sovereign, redeeming grace toward his people—and that is the theme of the whole Bible.

Whatever else must be acknowledged in these chapters, the grace of the LORD is paramount. (262) The story is about God redeeming his people; the story is about his promise. “The book is both biographical and theological. It records human history and redemptive history and, therefore, has a messianic focus” (24).

Jones’s pastoral demeanor, abundant wisdom, and seasoned grace are ubiquitous throughout his treatment of Job, Job’s wife, and Job’s friends. Jones does not paint with a large brush that blots out the nuances and subtleties of these relationships, and he avoids the harsh judgments and character attacks that are otherwise easy fodder.

Jones, however, does not give the “players” a free ride. For example, he notes in reference to Job’s wife, “It should also be remembered that the children that died were not only Job’s but hers too! A mother’s grief and a wife’s sorrow are therefore present in these intemperate and unwise words. In addition, we need to realize that Job held out only a little longer than she did....Frailty, and not folly, is what is evidenced here” (68). The commentary is chockfull of similar insights and wisdom. Jones concludes: This commentary has sought to demonstrate that the point of the book is not to answer the problem of suffering but to consider, as the New Testament says, ‘the purpose of the LORD’ with regard to Job, and so

to encourage all Christian sufferers. It is not a fairy story, or a fable, but an epic of believing bravery, just like the heroes of the faith listed in Hebrews 11, who ‘by faith’ obtained something better and ‘of whom the world was not worthy’. As such, Job is a remarkable and an enduring success. (289) So too is this wonderful commentary.

Charles A. Tedrick is an M.Div. student at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido).

Join the Conversation!

Have you ever considered writing for Modern Reformation? Here’s your chance! We’re reintroducing many of our old departments and we want your words to be featured in them.

“Open Exchange”: A forum for reader response. If you’ve ever read an article printed in our pages and thought that something else needed to be added, this is the place for your contribution.

“Ex Auditu”: Examples of Christ-centered sermons. Christ-centered preaching is sadly rare in all our circles. Have you heard or preached a good sermon? Send in the transcript to give others a model to follow.

“Preaching from the Choir”: Perspectives on music in the church. Beyond the old “worship wars,” we want to give people a way to think about the music we sing in formal worship contexts and in our private worship. Draw attention to the resources that matter.

“Family Matters”: Resources for home.

Catechism resources, ways of teaching theology to children, help with holiday themes: this is the place to direct others to resources you’ve found helpful in your efforts to be faithful at home.

“Borrowed Capital”: Witnessing to Christ in our age. Where do you start in your witness for Christ? How do apologetics play a role in your evangelism? Got a story or a helpful idea?

Share it with others in this space.

“Common Grace”: God’s truth in art and culture. God gives gifts to both believer and unbeliever. How do we see those gifts expressed in the art and culture surrounding the church? In this space, we want to hear from artists and cultural observers looking for glimpses of grace in life.

Intrigued? Ready to write? Send your 650-word essay (Ex Auditu sermons can be longer) to editor@modernreformation.org. Be sure to tell us in which department you think your essay belongs and send all your contact information. If we decide to run your work, we’ll extend your subscription by one year.

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 57

POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI Doubleday, 2007 374 pages (hardback), $24.95 With a theologian’s care and a pastor’s concern, Joseph Ratzinger—now Pope Benedict XVI—desires us to behold the face of Jesus. Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth is the first volume of a projected two. As the subtitle indicates, this volume covers Jesus’ life, from his baptism through his transfiguration.

The second volume will reflect upon the infancy narratives as well as Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection.

Ratzinger works through the Gospel accounts in roughly chronological order: Jesus’ baptism, desert temptations, kingdom message, Sermon on the Mount, calling disciples, parables, and finally Peter’s confession prior to the transfiguration. While Ratzinger draws material primarily from the synoptic Gospels, his vision of Jesus is markedly Johannine in character, a perspective he further explicates in a chapter exploring principal images in John’s Gospel: water, vine and wine, bread, and the shepherd. He concludes with Jesus’ declarations of identity as Son of Man, Son of God, and the “I Am.” Ratzinger understands the Gospel stories christologically and typologically, unfolding Jesus’ actions and teachings in terms of his own person and work, against the backdrop of the Old Testament. Thus, Ratzinger connects Jesus’ baptism back beyond John’s ministry to ritual purifications, life-giving waters, and the chaotic deep. In his own person, Jesus bears humanity’s sin into the depths of the Jordan, only to rise up, inaugurating a new creation.

Likewise, Ratzinger reads the Sermon on the Mount as replaying the law’s promulgation at Sinai, but now focusing upon Jesus as fulfilling all righteousness. Jesus himself is preeminently poor in spirit, meek, and pure in heart, who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, fulfilling the Old Testament’s theology of poverty, Moses’ meekness, and the psalmist’s call to purity.

Ratzinger also interprets parables through Christ. Jesus 5 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

is the Samaritan neighbor who rescues our bruised, broken humanity; the one who reveals the Father’s love for prodigal children; the poor Lazarus scorned by the rich and powerful, whose resurrection is a sign to a faithless world.

Interwoven with these intriguing readings of the Gospel text, Ratzinger speaks to contemporary readers. He not only calls us to faith but also exhorts us to live the pattern of Jesus’ life, and so to resist temptations to materialism, idolatry, and power that Satan continues to offer.

Moreover, Ratzinger’s Jesus comes to free our humanity to become all that God has always desired, and so transcend present secular agendas.

It is difficult, however, to pin down just what sort of book Ratzinger intends. Clearly, his overarching purpose is a theological reading of Gospel witness to Jesus. Yet along the way he delves into historical criticism, social implications of Jesus’ ministry, the Gospels’ relationship to the church’s confession, and patristic exegesis, all while describing Jesus with deep devotion.

As a result, Ratzinger’s book remains uneven. He is at his best as a spiritual theologian, illuminating Jesus in conversation with the Old Testament, the Epistles, and the Fathers. He thus vividly and movingly shows us the heart of Jesus, inviting us into God’s own life, revealing how Christ’s universal kingdom bursts the limits of Torah and merely a national hope for Israel. In Jesus, God draws near each and everyone one of us, calling us to follow.

But concerning historical criticism, Ratzinger seems content engaging with material from more than a generation ago, despite fruitful use of several contemporary figures (such as Jacob Neusner and Joachim Gnilka). While earlier historical criticism still haunts us, scholarship has moved on, not least in the Englishspeaking world—developments Ratzinger fails to note.

Along with occasional clumsiness in handling historical criticism, Ratzinger’s implicit sparring with ghosts of earlier scholarship leads him to miss the eschatological character of New Testament soteriology that Vos and Ridderbos rightly perceived. Thus, while professing a desire to engage historical issues, Ratzinger’s treatment will likely remain unsatisfactory to the scholarly guild.

Regarding the character of New Testament soteriology, Ratzinger’s oversight has implications for his Protestant readers, since it is Israel’s eschatological hope that Jesus embodies when he undergoes judgment and vindication in his death and resurrection. Ratzinger rightly emphasizes Jesus fulfilling righteousness representatively on our behalf and does recognize a realized eschatology in the parables.

Moreover, speaking of Jesus as the “bread of life” in John, Ratzinger helpfully notes Jesus’ hearers are “ready to work, to do something, to perform ‘works,’ in order to receive this bread. But it cannot be ‘earned’ by human work, by one’s own achievement. It can only come to us as a gift from God, as God’s work” (268). He correctly sees this as resonant with Paul’s perspective.

Elsewhere, he interprets the poverty of spirit enjoined by the Sermon on the Mount in light of Paul’s theology of

justification, speaking of those who do not “flaunt their achievements before God,” nor “stride into God’s presence as if they are partners able to engage with him on an equal footing,” nor “lay claim to a reward for what they have done” (76).

Yet, for all these salutary emphases, Ratzinger remains unclear concerning the fundamentally declarative character of biblical justification, grounded in Jesus’ righteousness reckoned to us. Instead, he speaks a desire “to live in inner harmony with God’s nature and word” and the empty hands of faith as ones that are also “open and give and thus are ready to receive from God’s bountiful goodness” (76). When we receive God’s gifts by faith, we “enter into the dynamic of that gift” and so have a “living relationship with the Father” whereby Jesus may “become Word and love in us as well.”

Ratzinger is right, of course, to include such observations as part of a full-orbed understanding of biblical salvation. Yet, he misses out on the Pauline dynamic in which we become, through faith, what we already are by God’s declaration.

Whatever the problems of Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth, it remains a profound reflection upon the Gospels that will encourage believers all the more to worship and follow Jesus, in whom God moves toward us. Furthermore, Ratzinger provides a rich resource for dialogue with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers and for spiritual conversation with all who find themselves drawn to the figure of Jesus.

SHORT NOTICES

John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man

Credo: Meditations on the Nicene Creed

By Carl Trueman Ashgate, 2007 132 pages (paperback), $29.95

By Donald T. Williams Chalice Press, 2007 135 pages (paperback), $16.99 Following the four sections of the Nicene Creed (Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Church), Modern Reformation contributor Donald T. Williams offers his own poetic voice to the many who have reflected upon both the enduring value of the Nicene Creed and its relative silence on matters of profound (and divisive) issues of our own day. Writing as a recovering fundamentalist and confessing evangelical, Williams finds the creed “inspiring,” and his work should inspire others to take up the creed again or for the first time. With each meditation an easy page of reading, this short book would make for valuable devotional reading or serve as a good basis for group study of the creed. The book’s greatest value, however, is not just its accessibility. Williams traces the narrative of the creed through the pages of Scripture, showing that the creed functions not just as a confession of our faith, but of “the Faith.”

—Eric Landry

Joel Garver is professor of philosophy at LaSalle University and a member of City Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

From the always entertaining and enlightening pen of Carl Trueman comes a short, yet packed study of the work of the greatest of the seventeenth-century English theologians, John Owen. Trueman sets out by placing Owen in his theological context, arguing that Owen must not be seen through the category of “Puritanism” but of High Reformed Orthodoxy (1640–1700). It is within this schema that Owen’s renaissance education, as well as scholastic polemics with Rome, Arminianism, and Socinianism, is best understood. The substance of the book, though, lies in Trueman’s explanation and analysis of Owen’s doctrine—his trinitarianism, covenantalism, Christology, and passionate exposition of justification via the imputation of the active and passive obedience of Jesus Christ to sinners. Since J. I. Packer was right in saying, “There is no denying that Owen is heavy and hard to read,” Carl Trueman’s introduction to Owen will lay the groundwork for a lifetime of study of this voluminous and verbose theologian, whose epitaph reads in part: “Worthy to be enrolled among the first Divines of the age.”

—Daniel R. Hyde

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 59

FINAL THOUGHTS f r o m

t h e

d e s k

of

the

editor-in-chief

More confessional and more open?

I

n my article in this issue, I tried to articulate my own sense of ambivalence about the

When confessional convictions become relationship between Reformed Christianity and the evangelical movement in the reduced to slogans, kneejerk reactions, and United States especially. On the spectrum of Reformed opinion regarding this question, narrow-minded loyalty to a heritage, that tradition I don’t find an easy place to stand. On one hand, I am has already become dangerously moribund. However, a grateful to be a co-laborer with those who are not rediscovery of the truths that others have discovered Reformed, some of whom may and others may not wish before us provides resources that help us to make real to identify themselves as evangelicals. In my view, contributions instead of settling for a generic and shallow evangelicalism has been a mixed blessing in church consensus. Those who have themselves become fully history. In its expressions most closely tied to the persuaded that covenant children should be baptized Reformation, it has been a source for enormous health and should be eager to come together with brothers and sisters the advance of the gospel. Besides the sixteenth-century who disagree and in the process, with their Bibles open, Reformers and their heirs—Lutheran and Reformed; come more fully to realize their shared love for the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist—one authority of God’s Word. And where we do agree thinks of later evangelical alliances: Bishop Ryle and together, our common witness can only be stronger, more Charles Spurgeon in their winsome proclamation of Christ unified, and more profound. against the “downgrade controversies” in their own Many in our circles today regard themselves as church bodies. In our day, I have become deeply evangelicals first and as Reformed second. In my impressed with the theological integrity of some Methodist experience, however, this always means that the richness friends, such as Thomas Oden and William Willimon, who of the Reformed confession—a richness that is not meant defend the central evangelical tenets that some to be possessed self-righteously but shared with the whole Presbyterian and Reformed theologians and pastors today church and the world—must be made subservient to an seem either to have forgotten or rejected as belonging to a implicit creed and its “new measures,” no matter how Reformation that is now over. There is still a place for alien they are to our covenantal convictions and practices. being “evangelical,” I am convinced. If so, what is it?

Is it not better for “evangelicalism” to serve as no more Whatever the differences between the churches of the than a larger table around which are seated for occasional Reformation, the strength and vitality of a Lutheran conversations and cooperative enterprises those who are church committed to its Book of Concord, an Anglican something else first? In other words, is not the level of church that lives out its faith and practice from the riches conversation and cooperation enriched rather than of the Thirty-Nine Articles and its Book of Common hindered by a greater depth of convictions that are Prayer, a Reformed or Presbyterian church shaped by the brought to this common table and its common causes?

Three Forms and Westminster Standards, and Baptists who interpret their mission in the light of the London/Philadelphia Confession are a stronger witness for Michael Horton is the editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation. the common truths that bind evangelicals than all of the statements of faith that the evangelical movement seems perpetually to generate.

To be sure, as we dig more deeply into the Scriptures and our confessional identity, we become more aware of the distinctives of a particular tradition; but if we resist the temptation to indulge the narcissism of a party spirit, we may also discover that we understand and appreciate the truths that we all confess together and there discover a genuine openness to each other as “evangelical,” even if not altogether satisfied to be called “evangelicals.”

Traditionalism is as mindless as perpetual innovation.

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