The Crisis of Evangelical Christianity

Roots, Consequences, and Resolutions

Sewell

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498238762
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In the broad context of Christianity as it developed over two millennia, and with special reference to the last three centuries, this discussion finds that Evangelicalism has repeatedly offered a reduced and distorted understanding of the faith. The evangelical outlook is much less scriptural than evangelicals generally assume. When it comes to appreciating the order of creation, our calling to develop integral Christian thinking and living, the religious significance of culture, and the coming of the kingdom, reductionist Evangelicalism struggles with its only rarely acknowledged deficiencies. As a result, we have all too often ended up with a Christianity shorn of its cosmic scope and wide cultural implications, and restricted to institutional church life and the cultivation of private spiritual experience. The consequences are frequently enervating and corrosive. Without disregarding what is important in the past, evangelicals are here challenged to take the Bible much more seriously, and thereby transcend the limitations of their habitual reductionism. Evangelicals are encouraged to embrace an integral and full-orbed understanding of Christian discipleship that will equip the faithful to address the deep and complex challenges of the twenty-first century.

Part One

Context

1

The Meaning of Evangelicalism

A Quadrilateral of Priorities

It is important to establish as clearly as possible what is meant here by the term “evangelical.” It is also needful to remember that many who might not habitually define themselves as evangelicals also affirm with conviction the ancient creeds of the Christian religion—the Apostles,’ Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds. In addition, while the present divisions among the Christian churches are scandalous, the extent to which they and evangelical Christians are doctrinally divided should not be over-stated. The truth is that the vast majority of Christians concur in respect of those doctrines that are bedrock, that is, foundational to their faith, even though they may not always agree on how these beliefs should be expressed.

Nevertheless, although the term evangelical is derived from the Greek evangelion, meaning gospel or “good news,” (from the Old English “god-spell”), in the English-speaking world, it is almost universally applied to a certain kind of Protestant. So what is the meaning of the term in our present context? The question is challenging, because evangelicals come in a great variety of shapes and sizes. The sheer diversity can be very confusing, sometimes to evangelicals themselves, and certainly to those who contemplate Evangelicalism from beyond its bounds. The diversity arises, in the main, from multiple disagreements, which have resulted in divisions and fracturing.

Some evangelicals are willing to be present in denominational structures that include a variety of non-evangelicals. Others insist that separation from such “mixed” structures is necessary if doctrinal integrity is to be maintained. Some are in churches administered by bishops (Episcopal); others are subject to a hierarchy of assemblies (Presbyterian or Reformed), while others abide by the independence of the local congregation (Congregational, Baptist, Pentecostal or Free Evangelical). Some are willing to be called fundamentalists, others are not. The former are more likely to insist on what they term the “infallibility” and even the “inerrancy” of the Bible, than those who are content to simply affirm the inspiration and authority of the canonical scriptures. Some believe that under certain circumstances it is right to baptize infants—others are Baptists, believing that only those able to profess their faith should be baptized.

Moreover, among Evangelicals there are many different views on the return of Christ—the Second Coming. Some are a-millennial, believing that the single Bible passage that speaks of a thousand-year reign of Christ (Rev 20:1–6) is figurative rather than literal. Others are post- or premillennial, depending on their view of whether or not a more or less literal millennial reign of Christ on earth will take place after (“post-”) or before (“pre-”) the definitive second advent of Christ. Moreover, from the nineteenth century onwards, many premillennial fundamentalists have accepted a version of this viewpoint known as “premillennial dispensationalist,” along with belief in a so-called rapture in which Christ collects believers from the earth prior to his full and final return.

As if these differences were not enough, evangelicals are also divided on the question of Pentecostalism. The Pentecostal movements and the churches they produced are part of the wider evangelical fold, but they teach that the charismatic gifts referred to in the New Testament are still present in the church, and emphasize a “baptism with the Holy Spirit.” Pentecostalism has entered both mainline and separatist evangelical denominations in the form of the charismatic movement. While all evangelicals affirm the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian, and the necessity of his work, not all concur that the charismatic gifts of the New Testament are imparted to contemporary believers, nor do all understand the baptism of the Holy Spirit to be an event subsequent to Christian conversion.

This wide diversity renders all the more necessary a definition of the meaning of the term Evangelicalism for the purposes of the present discussion. Certainly, many evangelicals will declare themselves to be against liberal theology, by which they mean theologies arising from the rationalist-critical approach to the Bible expressed in the thought of the Enlightenment, and modernism generally. However, such statements are inadequate for definitional purposes because they do not enunciate positive characteristics and emphases. Great movements should not be understood only in terms of what they are against. Often they are best understood in terms of what they declare themselves to stand for. In other words, we need to ask the question: What have evangelicals historically said that they actually stand for above all else? In 1980 the evangelical historian David W. Bebbington persuasively answered this question. He formulated four leading characteristics of evangelical religion in terms of a “quadrilateral of priorities”:

conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and what may be called crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.1

This formulation has been widely accepted. It captures the heart of the evangelical commitment, and it signifies what is meant by the terms “evangelical” and “Evangelicalism” as used in this discussion. This formulation will be referred to as Bebbington’s quadrilateral of priorities in this discussion. How these relate to fundamentalism and Pentecostalism will be discussed later.

Somewhat later the evangelical author Alister McGrath expanded on Bebbington’s quadrilateral of priorities. McGrath spoke of “six fundamental [or “controlling”] convictions,” as follows:

1. The supreme authority of Scripture as a source of knowledge of God and a guide to Christian living. 2. The majesty of Jesus Christ, both as incarnate God and Lord and as the Saviour of sinful humanity. 3. The lordship of the Holy Spirit. 4. The need for personal conversion. 5. The priority of evangelism for both individual Christians and the church as a whole. 6. The importance of the Christian community for spiritual nourishment, fellowship and growth.2

McGrath’s six points are more doctrinal, while Bebbington’s quadrilateral of priorities is more descriptive. Nevertheless, there is a substantial overlap between the two. Both emphasize the saving work of Christ and the need for conversion. In addition, Oliver Barclay (1919–2013) later added his gloss to Bebbington’s formulation in order to distinguish between his preferred classical Evangelicalism, and liberal Evangelicals, and possibly also charismatic Evangelicals.3 More recently, Timothy Larsen has offered another slight expansion of the formula.4 Nevertheless, it is Bebbington’s formulation that has been widely received and has stood the test of time. It will be used here because it is commendably succinct and one that many evangelicals themselves would regard as a valid characterization.

Creation and Culture

It is highly significant that none of the points in Bebbington’s quadrilateral of priorities, or of McGrath’s controlling convictions, makes specific reference to the order of creation. By this term, and its synonyms, we refer not only to the divine act “at the beginning” (Gen 1:1), but also to God’s sovereign ordering, upholding and directing of the entire cosmos in all of its diversity, both natural and cultural. The creational setting provides the context in which all human culture (and not just art and literature) is expressed. Moreover, as all human thought and endeavor is in the service of the living God, or of a presumed substitute for the Creator (idols, ideologies, making “absolute” what is only creaturely and relative), it follows that in this sense all human culture is ultimately religious in character, a response to our Creator, whether or not this is actually acknowledged.

This neglect of the order of creation is inextricably bound up with what Evangelicalism is prone to do with the gospel it proclaims. It tends to reduce the gospel to a message focused on the salvation of individual souls. This is a great deal less than (and arguably a distortion of) the proclamation of the good news concerning the coming of the kingdom of God that we encounter in the New Testament. Bebbington’s quadrilateral of priorities, or McGrath’s six points make no explicit reference to these biblical teachings. In this respect their characterizations are a true reflection of the evangelical outlook. In Evangelicalism, the dominant tendency has been to emphasize the repentant individual before the cross in a way that neglects what the Scriptures have to say about the order of creation and the kingdom of God. Evangelicalism is persistently prone to reduce all to an individual-road-to-personal-salvation narrative—and the result is a serious distortion of the biblical message.

Although the Reformation of the sixteenth century, at its best, exhibited an awareness of the order of creation, in the Evangelicalism that emerged later in the English-speaking lands the creation order is generally assumed to be at best a natural or secular prelude to an other-worldly supernatural salvation. Gordon J. Spykman (1926–93) was right when writing of “the eclipse of the creation . . . in many wings of evangelical Christianity.”5 This “creational deficit” across Evangelicalism has meant that even Evangelicalism’s evangelism has characteristically fallen short of the biblical norm—the gospel has not been brought to every creature and to every part of life as the Bible teaches, but for the most part only to individual souls. This deficit has had a deep impact on the evangelical understanding of the Christian life and calling, characterised by a strong tendency to seriously under-recognize and under-proclaim the cosmic scope of Christ’s redemptive work and kingship.

Moreover, among evangelicals, multiple unexamined assumptions, taken to imply that at least some aspects of human culture are religiously neutral, have resulted in unbiblical viewpoints being absorbed and tacitly attached to the gospel itself. We may therefore also speak of an evangelical cultural deficit arising from its creational deficit. This being so, what we are about to discuss is not a set of philosophical or cultural questions of concern only to a remote, intellectual elite. On the contrary, before us are issues that address our understanding of scriptural religion, the fullness of its character, and the consequences that all of this entails. At best, Evangelicalism has exhibited only a sporadic and fluctuating awareness of the religious significance of human culture, and of the truth that all of life is religion—in the sense of lived coram Deo; before the face of God. Yet this truth is central. It does not mean that everything is churchly, or that everything is to be understood in terms of theology. It means that the totality of our lives—our thoughts, words and deeds—is in the service of the one true living God or of an idol.

There arises from this insight an outlook that seeks to be integral. It is not interested in gaining leverage or acceptance (even for the purpose of preaching the gospel) by allowing the prevailing culture, as in the translation of J. B. Phillips (1906–82), to “squeeze” us “into its own mould” (Rom 12:2). It is not interested in any attempt to conjoin the supposedly sacred with the presumably secular. On the contrary, it seeks an integrally Christian standpoint that is free from such false dichotomies. At the same time it delights in the rich diversity displayed within the ordering of creation, even as it sees in every lawful expression of human culture an opportunity to honour the living God and be of service to humankind. This is neither idealism nor perfectionism, although it does foster an outlook th...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Context
• Part Two: Focus
• Glossary
• Bibliography