The American Church – 34 – Evangelical Winter

Max Lucado is a wonderful and inspiring writer. Few can match his ability to bring fresh insights, infuse substance, and bring clarity to both the commonplace and complex things of life. One of his website posts was titled “Simply ‘Church’.” He posed two questions, “…what would happen if all the churches agreed, on a given day, to change their names simply to ‘church’?…if there’s no denominations in heaven, why do we have denominations on earth?”[1] His point was that we should not attend a church based on the sign outside, but we should join our hearts to the hearts of the people on the inside.[2]

This is a noble sentiment and reflects the Apostle Paul’s admonition to the Romans, “Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” [Romans 15: 5-6. KJV] In other words, the church should be in unity in thought and message.[3] Matthew Henry’s writings three hundred years earlier agree with Lucado’s sentiments, “The foundation of Christian love and peace is laid in like-mindedness. This like-mindedness must be according to Christ Jesus…” In other words, Christ should be our pattern because the unity of Christians glorifies God. However, Henry warned that our prayers for like-mindedness “…must be first for truth, and then for peace…it is first pure, then peaceable.”[4] [emphasis in original]

In our search for like-mindedness with other Christians, we must return to Henry’s admonition that our quest must first be for truth and then for peace. In that quest for truth, labels are invaluable and become a type of shorthand for what we know to be true or not true.[5]

Throughout the ages language has been the means of achieving order in culture. Knowledge of truth comes through the word which provides solidity in the “shifting world of appearances.” Richard Weaver called words the storehouse of our memory. In our modern age humanists have effectively used semantics to neuter words of their meaning in historical and symbolic contexts, that is, words now mean what men want them to mean. By removing the fixities of language (which undermines an understanding of truth), language loses its ability to define and compel. As the meaning of words is divorced from truth, relativism gains supremacy, and a culture tends to disintegration without an understanding of eternal truths upon which to orient its self.[6]

Therefore, the problem with simply “Church” is that we live in a fallen world, and there are competing voices each professing truth. Removing the labels and being simply “Church” won’t work when we must give priority to truth. Without truth, simply “Church” won’t achieve like-mindedness in a world immersed in a relativistic sea of shifting appearances. In such a world labels become our anchors to truth. But like “Church,” there are other words that have lost their ability to define and compel and be relied on to reveal truth. One of those words is “evangelical.”[7]

The evangelical label and what it means to be evangelical

“The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” This is the opening sentence of Mark Noll’s book The Scandal of the Evangelical mind. Noll was a professor of history at Wheaton College at the time of its publication in 1994. The book was well received in academic and intellectual circles and in a wider audience on the liberal side of the evangelical spectrum. Although Noll praises evangelicals for their generosity, involvement with the hurting elements of society, sustaining the church and its supportive organizations, and spreading the gospel message, he contends that evangelicals have failed to cultivate a serious intellectual life because they have forsaken the universities, the arts, and other spheres of “high” culture. In essence, Noll is saying that the scandal of the evangelical mind is that it has failed to “think like a Christian” about the physical world (its nature and workings), human social structures (government and economy), the meaning of history, and non-evangelical perceptions of the world.[8]

Noll’s prescription for the mindless evangelical is that we first must jettison any beliefs regarding “creationism”—a theory that claims the earth is ten thousand years or less old. Noll summarizes one writer’s assertion that creationism is “…a fatally flawed interpretive scheme of the sort that no responsible Christian teacher in the history of the church ever endorsed before this century…” Also, evangelicals must dispense with dispensationalism and its fascination with the end of the world which he labels as radical apocalyptic speculation that wrongly interprets world affairs.[9]

Once the distractions of these intellectually toxic beliefs are banished to the closet of superstition and anti-intellectualism, Noll believes that evangelicals can concentrate on what is essential for Christianity and not what is merely distinctive about American evangelicalism. By subordinating the distinctives to the essentials, Noll believes there is a greater chance for developing a Christian intellectual life. Noll elaborated on the differences between distinctives and essentials. He cites the evangelical distinctive of activism as opposed to the larger Christian essential of a profound gratitude to God which can be found in contemplation as well as activism. Other evangelical distinctives marked for subordination include a “literal” interpretation of Scripture, preoccupation with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, and a fascination with the apocalypse. Superior to these distinctives and an essential for Christianity is a “profound trust in the Bible as pointing us to the Savior and for orienting our entire existence to the service of God.”[10]

Religious liberalism invades evangelicalism

More than a half century ago, A. W. Tozer wrote that the evangelical branch of the church is the only one that “even approximates New Testament Christianity.” However, Tozer went on to say that over the half century preceding his writing the evangelical church had “an increasing impatience with things invisible and eternal and have demanded and got a host of things visible and temporal.”[11] In hindsight, we can say that what Tozer was seeing was the evangelical church in its autumnal season. But through the work of the progressives and modernists within the evangelical church since the time of Tozer’s writing, its autumnal season has transitioned into an evangelical winter, an apt description of the prevailing spiritual coldness and lethargy in much of American evangelicalism. As a result, large segments of American evangelicalism no longer identify with the truth, passion, and power of New Testament Christianity. The roots of their defection are found in religious liberalism birthed in the nineteenth century.

Certain of the humanistic elements of the eighteenth century Enlightenment entered German universities and gained wide influence among their faculties. This influence led nineteenth century German theologians to adopt a rationalistic theological liberalism which taught a “higher critical” view of the Bible as containing many mistakes.[12] The influence of higher biblical criticism migrated to the United States from Germany during the nineteenth century as thousands of American university students attended German seminaries. Under higher criticism, Christianity was perceived as being the result of evolving religious ideas and customs. Therefore, Scripture was not divine revelation but a product of changing conceptions of God within an evolving culture.[13] As a result Christianity must be flexible as it was the result of changing religious ideas and customs. These beliefs came into full flower in American liberal Protestant churches by the end of the nineteenth century, and a half century later it spread to some evangelical churches and seminaries in the form of modern critical approaches (see Chapter 33). Dr. Noll’s book is a leading example of the outworking of these modern critical approaches. He has sacrificed truth in his efforts to achieve peace and unity in evangelicalism.

Homogenized evangelicalism – Amorphous essentials replace solid doctrinal distinctives

Fifteen years after Noll’s book, Carl Trueman challenged Noll’s conclusions in a small book titled The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Trueman is a vice president of Westminster Theological Seminary and professor of Historical Theology and Church History. Trueman agreed with Noll that there is a scandal of the evangelical mind, but it is a different scandal than described by Noll.

More concerning is the lack of any consensus about evangelicalism’s intellectual identity…there must be not just a mind, but also a readily identifiable thing call an “evangelical” and a movement called “evangelicalism”—and the existence of such is increasingly in doubt.[14]

Trueman questioned whether such a thing as evangelicalism still exists because it has become such a meaningless term. He cites one historian who attempted to give evangelicalism definition and meaning by listing four of its hallmarks: the Bible as the primary source of truth (biblicalism), the atoning work of Christ on the cross (crucicentrism), spiritual conversion (conversionism), and public proclamation of the gospel and living life according to it (activism). Yet, these hallmarks in some form or fashion are claimed by many disparate groups within an ecumenically-oriented evangelicalism. Therefore, evangelicalism’s identity remains blurred because of a lack of institutional or clerical direction, the subjectivity of experience, and most importantly because of a casual tip-of-the-hat to important but generalized biblical concepts that have not been given the necessary solid doctrinal structure and gravitas upon which a definitive evangelicalism may rest.[15]

Trueman presents a solid case for his view that the problem is not that there is no evangelical mind, but there is no longer a definitive evangelicalism. He points to many varieties of evangelicalism who do not sing “variations of a single melody so much as different songs altogether.”[16] At its beginning in the early 1700s and even in the Indian summer of American Christianity during the 1940s and 1950s, evangelicalism had a number of distinctive and recognizable stand-alone doctrinal traditions and voices whose similarities gave form and substance to evangelicalism. But even during the 1950s, two things began happening that would eventually blur the meaning of evangelicalism as a result of a sustained assault by a culture saturated with humanistic concepts of relativism, tolerance, and inclusion. First, to maintain a degree of cultural authority, some in the evangelical camp began incorporating, changing, or abandoning doctrines, beliefs, and activities in ways that conflicted with two hundred and fifty years of evangelical thought, belief, and practice. Second, other non-evangelicals and non-Christian organizations began to appropriate for themselves the attractive, culturally-respected “evangelical” brand. This book has documented many of these groups, organizations, ministries, and movements that no longer offer variations of a single evangelical melody but sing different songs from non-evangelical and even non-Christian hymnals. This is one of the reasons for the title of this book. There is an evangelical winter because there are many in the big tent of evangelicalism that no longer sit or have never sat in the warm sunshine of New Testament Christianity.

Future of evangelicalism

Because “evangelical” has such a broad usage and has become so inclusive, it has been rendered meaningless as an identifier of truth. It seems as though almost everyone has become evangelical. Trueman states that if the evangelical church is losing the ability to be “salt and light” in the culture, the reason is not that evangelicalism has failed to win a place at the cultural table. Rather, it is because they do not have a solid grasp of the basic elements of the faith, as taught in Scripture and confirmed by the doctrinal understandings of their faith.[17] The reasons for this rampant biblical illiteracy in the evangelical church were discussed in Chapter 26.

Evangelicalism has become fragmented as never before. In a recent CNN article Russell Moore, a leading spokesman for the Southern Baptists, was quoted, “The problem is that many secular people think that all evangelicals are alike, when there are multiple streams and theological and generational divides within evangelicalism.” As an example of this fragmentation of evangelicalism, the CNN article listed seven different evangelical approaches to politics and voting for candidates: the old guard (traditional), institutional, “Arm’s length,” entrepreneurial, millennial, liberal, and cultural evangelicals.[18]

Trueman believes doctrinal fragmentation within big-tent evangelicalism will cause a fundamental realignment among evangelicals as the various players coalesce around either a mainstream secularism or a return to New Testament Christianity, once the heart of evangelicalism.

Those institutions that cherish their place at the cultural table will have to accept the legitimacy of homosexual relationships and to abandon a fully Pauline gospel of salvation predicated on a historical Adam. Those institutions wishing to maintain traditional orthodoxy on these points will have to accept their status as marginal figures in a broader world, objects of scorn and not serious contributors to the public square.[19]

Trueman’s expected division within evangelicalism is in its early stages as shown by stirrings among some Christians and churches that are disassociating and distancing themselves from many mainstream evangelicals that have abandoned the tenets of biblical Christianity. That said, Christians should reconsider Trueman’s last statement in which he believes Christians following the beliefs of traditional evangelicalism will not be serious contributors to the public square. As will be shown in the next chapter, the obligations of the church to influence culture are not abrogated by cultural hostility and marginalization of Christianity. All through history, it is the suffering church that has spoken most compellingly to a decadent and hostile culture.
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Among the humanists’ and liberal theologians’ calls for peace through ecumenical promotion of cooperation, unity, and tolerance, we must remember that truth must precede peace in achieving like-mindedness. As a consequence, those that stand with truth may need a truth identifier other than evangelicalism—perhaps it should be New Testament Christianity which, according to Tozer, evangelicalism was originally intended to mirror.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Max Lucado, “Simply ‘Church’,” Max Lucado, November 4, 2013. http://808bo.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/max-lucado-simply-church/ (accessed November 6, 2013).
[2] Larry G. Johnson, “In Defense of Labels,” CultureWarrior.net, November 13, 2013. https://www.culturewarrior.net/2013/11/15/in-defense-of-labels/
[3] Ibid.
[4] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, Ed. Rev. Leslie F. Church, Ph.D., (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961), p.1794
[5] Johnson, “In Defense of Labels,” CultureWarrior.net.
[6] Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 148-149, 152, 158, 163.
[7] Johnson, “In Defense of Labels,” CultureWarrior.net.
[8] Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), pp. 3, 7.
[9] Ibid., pp. 13-14.
[10] Ibid., pp. 243-244.
[11] A. W. Tozer, Man—The Dwelling Place of God, (Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: WingSpread Publishers, 1966, 2008), p. 150.
[12] Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 1976, pp. 175-176.
[13] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2004, 2005), p. 426.
[14] Carl R. Trueman, The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 2011), p. 12.
[15] Ibid., pp. 14-15.
[16] Ibid., p. 37.
[17] Ibid., pp. 38-39.
[18] Daniel Burke, “7 types of evangelicals—and how they’ll affect the presidential race,” CNNPolitics.com, January 25, 2016. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/22/politics/seven-types-of-evangelicals-and-the-primaries/index.html (accessed February 4, 2016).
[19] Trueman, p. 38.