We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater
There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead
Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater
The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller
The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller
According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater
Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater
Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger
Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton
I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest
We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon
Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater
An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater
Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann
Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner
“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton
The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon
The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul
The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah
If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon
Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord
Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater
To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement
Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma
It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater
God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater
In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall
Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater
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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater
Finishing seventh on last year’s season of “American Idol” hasn’t stopped Colton Dixon from living out his dream. The 22-year-old Tennessee native has carved a niche for himself and is quickly becoming a staple in the Christian rock market.
Dixon recently returned to the “Idol” stage where he debuted his latest single “Love Has Come for Me.” The track is lifted from his debut album, “A Messenger,” released Jan. 29. The set continues to perform well on the sales charts. After nine weeks, it has a peak of No. 15 on The Billboard 200 and is currently in the top 50. Dixon’s previous single “You Are” is at No. 11 on the Christian Songs chart in its 24th week.
Following the latest “Idol” performance, www.Billboard.com caught up with Dixon who explained that pursuing the Christian rock path was a natural choice for him.
“I've been listening to Christian music since I was little. I grew up with it,” he said. Dixon added that he loves music with a message and is therefore drawn to Christian rock tunes. “I'm very happy that I was accepted well into that market. You never know…being an “Idol” and going into Christian music – I've seen it work and I've seen it not work. I'm happy that it did.”
Though Dixon is in the midst of promoting his initial release, it hasn’t stopped him from thinking about future songs. “There are endless creative juices going on inside my brain so I’m excited to get that down on paper.” He tells Billboard.com that his new material will be a continuation of the theme of his latest single. “Love and what that means… I think a lot of people look for love in the wrong places at times. So it is about finding the right venue for your love. We’ll see where that idea goes.”
Dixon also touched on the changes he’s experienced in his life since exiting the 'Idol' stage. “A lot has happened in the last year. It's hard for me to wrap my head around a lot of it but I think the coolest thing about all of this is just having people appreciate what you do musically. It’s so cool to put out a record and see people buying it and see people on Twitter and Facebook say ‘Oh, man, I really like this song’ or ‘This song is my favorite.’ Or the best to me is, ‘Man, this song really encourages me in this area."
Before rushing-off again to hit the road with Third Day, the “Idol” alum gave Billboard a behind-the-scenes look at the realities of trekking across the country with his band. “Being on a tour bus is not as glamorous as I thought it would be,” he jokes. “There is no shower, there is no ‘number two,’ but it’s still a lot of fun.”
The discovery of a potential Higgs boson particle plays a crucial role in super-symmetry - just one more of the ingredients needed to provide evidence of the M-Theory of strings - Energetic pieces of threads may finally explain all four fundamental forces of nature (photons, bosons, gluons, gravitons) and our perceived reality with space, time, matter and motion.
The basic elements of this so far are purely mathematical concepts known as 'strings' and 'membranes' — subatomic one-dimensional energy threads and built areas.
The mere vibrations of tiny strings and membranes, only about a hundredth of a billionth of a billionth of the size of an atomic nucleus generate everything - all elements of the periodic system, the vacuum of space and progressive time.
Acceptance of this 'theory of everything' relies on the super-symmetry of forces and matter.
Particle physicists need proof for super-symmetry as well as to explain their contemporary model of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) that are currently supposed to form extensive, galaxies stabilizing dark matter halos, apparently providing the majority of matter in the universe.
The announcement by CERN in 2012 that there is a high probability that the new particle they've found is the Higgs boson is an important step toward doing this.
Enter the 11th dimension
String theories, which emerged in the 1980s, postulate that 10 dimensions exist in nature. Only Einstein's three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time are 'rolled out', the other six spatial dimensions are 'curled up' and invisible.
Varying approaches led to different mathematical solutions and descriptions. Five variant approaches seemed to be promising, but did not produce suitable solutions for all existing elementary particles, space, time, and quantum gravity.
Then in 1994, the so-called M-Theory caused a second superstring revolution. It attempts to unify all five previously developed theories, introducing an 11th dimension and a staggering amount of mathematical solutions. The M-Theory considers those five set-ups to describe the same, but from different perspectives.
M-Theory formulates relationships between each of the five previous theories, calling those relationships 'dualities'. Each duality provides a mathematical solution to convert one string theory into another. The 11th dimension is supposed to acquire sufficient energy to infinitely expand.
One distinctive feature of the M-theory is the assumed existence of multidimensional spaces within any single point of space and time. Endless tring solutions are the result, creating far too many variations to find the suitable ones randomly; but powerful computes may help scienticsts find feasible results.
Multiverse Floating Membranes
String specialists ponder on a 'floating membrane' and consider the existence of our universe along such a membrane.
Infinite parallel universes accompany our universe with their own floating membranes. Leakages between those universes lead to a mathematically feasible concept of gravity.
WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles)
All elementary particles that have been observed are either fermions (matter) or forces. Fermions are supposed to build all known types of matter. And elementary forces are either photons, W- and Z- bosons, gluons, or gravitons:
Photons carry the forces of the electromagnetic fields
W- and Z-bosons mediate a weak force of radioactive decay and neutrino interactions
Gluons the strong force in the atomic nuclei
Gravitons (quantum gravity)
A feasible solution for quantum gravity would be necessary to cover all four fundamental forces of nature (photons, bosons, gluons, gravitons).
The bosons challenge string physicists most. Currently they need 26 dimensions for a boson string theory - meaning 15 dimensions have been hypothesized on top of the 11-dimensional M-Theory.
The Higgs quantum field and the Higgs boson play a crucial role in providing proof of super-symmetry because they give elementary particles a mass by spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry. The Higgs boson is an excitation of the Higgs quantum background field above its ground state.
The basic theories for all elementary particles require getting accustomed to because each material particle is described as a distinguishable excitation state of basic energy strings and areas with quantum mechanical aspects.
The classical observations of nature completely fade in the imaginations of theoretical string physicists. The quantised approach to all forces and energies of nature already challenges these scientists from the very beginning. For example, look at a simple electron: like any photon, any electron either behaves as concentrated particle or spreading wave, only depending on the set-up of the experiment. This peculiarity has been called the dualism of wave and particle.
Quantum physicists handle this remaining inexplicable contradiction by the superposition of several possible states and conditions. There is only a probability that one of these states and conditions takes place. The whole of possible states is mathematically expressed by so-called 'wave' functions. Any single result of an observation appears accidentally. This way, quantum physics can predict atomic processes with extraordinary high precision.
Rotational symmetry
A 'Theory of Everything' also requires rotational symmetry concepts of space-time. Rotational symmetry describes a successive exchange of physical quantities and states by energy impacts, for example of a length into time, time into energy density, energy density into time compression and, closing the circle, back into a space length.
Einstein described these rotational features in his theory of relativity by energy tensors and rotary functions. This circular exchange chain of physical quantities and states has been proven experimentally, but now needs completion with additional dimensions.
Quantum physics enters this picture by innovative time compression, representing the opposite function of time dilation.
Cosmology will strongly influence further development of string theory and the theory of everything.
We postulate that the accelerating expansion of the universe, explained by dark energy, is being driven by scalar fields. Fields of this kind serve as a description of changing super-symmetries that have their origin in one single type of initial force. These fields determine the development of the hierarchy of today's fundamental forces of nature. Rotational space-time symmetry accommodates the types of scalar fields that are needed to explain the peculiar negative pressure and adiabatic nature of dark energy. It explains the location and nature of the Higgs quantum field as well.
The M-Theory may soon culminate in the successful programming of powerful, quantum computers, but only the experimental proofs of super-symmetry and the identification of the circular exchange chain of parameters will open a new chapter in the contemporary standard model of physics.
My youngest son is about to turn 13, so for the next 9 months, until my oldest turns 20 (holy ape balls!), I will be Mom to three teenage boys.
That means our dinner table feels like a locker room... if locker rooms were full of nerds. The conversation tumbles easily from Xbox to music to girls to MineCraft to push ups to girls to movies to farts to money to girls to YouTube, and then back again, in an endless loop, so that over the course of one meal we come around to the subject of “girls” at least 9 times.
Atleast.
Girl talk inevitably leads to sex talk. And, let me tell you, if there is one thing these guys like to talk about more than girls? It's sex. So we talk about sex. Kind of alot. And since (as far as I know) none of my children have gone and gotten married, we're mostly talking about sex of the pre-marital sort; y'know, Virginity and stuff. The Big “V”. The Sacred Gift. The Golden Ticket.... These chats are exactly as awkward as you imagine.
Obviously, my children know that I had sex before marriage because I had a kid before marriage, so there's really no getting around it. That same kid towers over me now; a full two years older than I was when his own fluttering heartbeat wound itself into mine. These days, I look at him and I think, “He can't even keep his own room clean - how the hell did I manage an infant and a full time job at that age?!”
So, yeah, I was an unwed teenage mother. Classy, I know.
But oh, it gets worse, because before I invented MTV's Teen Mom, I was a little bit of a ho-bag. Yup. I willingly did regretful things with my body, and I allowed myself to be used in regretful ways by some regretfully sleazy douchebags, perverts, and (in retrospect) probably pedophiles. Gross, I know.
I believed that sex was the best thing I had to offer the world. It was the only thing about me worth loving. And I learned, too young, that I could leverage sex to get what I wanted. My female parts had become my greatest asset.
Then I found my way into the Church, 19 with a baby on my hip, and while I lingered on the outskirts of the Christian bubble, guess what I learned... I learned I was right! Apparently, even God was super concerned with my vagina, and where it had been, and what it had touched. Apparently, my genitals were like a portal that led straight to my soul. I had been muddied - and everybody knows that once you muck up clean water, you can't unmuck it.
It took me a lot of years and a lot of conversations with God (and with people who know more about God than me) to understand that everything I believed about my own sexuality was built on two huge lies.
The first comes from our culture, and it tells us that sex outside of marriage isn't a big deal.
The second is from the Church, and it tells us that sex outside of marriage is the biggest deal of all the deals ever.
One allowed me to give it away freely, convinced I would carry no burden. The other forced me to carry a spirit crushing load.
Both are complete crap.
Sex matters. It's the most vulnerable thing you'll ever do with another human being. Commitment breeds intimacy, and intimacy is what makes sex freaking amazing. I'm not gonna lie, you can have hot sex outside of a committed relationship – but mostly it's gonna be like... clumsy... and goopy... and ew. The better you know your partner, the better your sex will be. So basically what I'm saying is that wedding night sex is kinda “Meh.”, and five years sex is all “Yes!”, but 18 years sex is like “WOAH!!!” So go ahead and wait. Wait and enjoy the waiting, and then bask in all those learning experiences with your most trusted friend.
But.
If you've already gone down that path, you knocked boots, you got 'er done, you did the nasty.... and now you're not sure, or maybe you feel dirty and you're rocking the walk-of-shame-face day in and day out, you need to hear this -- I mean it, you really need to hear this...
You've had sex outside of marriage? *gasp* So what! You are so much more than your sexuality. And the God of the Universe, the one who turns whores into heroes, and drunks into prophets, and liars and murderers into leaders and kings - that God? He made peace with you and me and our promiscuous, pathetic attempts at love a long, long time ago. He gave you a Redeemer. Shame is no longer your burden.
...
Do I want my boys to wait? Absolutely. And they know it! But I refuse to tie their value as a human being to their junk like a shiny red balloon.
I want them to know that sex is sacred. And I want them to believe that it matters. I hope they will esteem the bodies of the girls in their lives, as they hold their own bodies to the same high standard.
But I also want them to understand that the kind of sexual purity the Bible calls us to doesn't begin or end with Virginity - It's way bigger than that. It's way more significant. And it's way harder to hold on to.
Link to - The Future of Evangelicalism, Part 2 Here is the second half of my presentation on “The Future of Evangelicalism” at George Fox Evangelical Seminary on March 11. The Future of Evangelicalism, Part II
A Lecture by Roger E. Olson
given at
George Fox Seminary
March 11, 2013 Part 2: The Evangelical Ethos and Postconservative Evangelicalism
When I talk about “evangelicalism” as a present and future reality, I mean the evangelical ethos. The evangelical movement, as a cohesive coalition, is dead. It has dissolved into competing parties, each with its own expression of the evangelical ethos. To be sure, there still exists “evangelicalism” as an affinity group, but it is too large and too diverse to call a movement. The affinity is its ethos, but the affinity is too weak and admits too much opposition and competition to forge and cement a movement.
So what is the evangelical “ethos?” This is how I view David Bebbington’s and Mark Noll’s four hallmarks of evangelicalism. First, according to the two historians, evangelicals share “biblicism,” a general regard for Scripture as the uniquely inspired, written Word of God. I argue, however, that what’s unique about evangelical biblicism, as distinct from, say, confessional, Protestant orthodox biblicism, is love for the Bible. Evangelicals love the Bible as the story of God with us. Beyond the debates about its inerrancy or infallibility that divide evangelicals stands the experience of, in the words of Hans Frei, the Bible absorbing the world. Evangelicals are Christians who see the world through biblical lenses. So, evangelical biblicism is a distinctive kind of biblicism. It’s not just sola scriptura in a formal sense. It’s a very close, personal relationship with the Bible as God’s message to us, our means of knowing God in a personal, intimate way. The evangelical ethos encourages Bible reading for devotion as well as study; it motivates Bible memorization and a strong desire for everyone to have the Bible in their own language. In a word, evangelicals view the Bible’s main purpose as transformation, not just information. Second, Bebbington and Noll identify conversionism as central to evangelicalism. The evangelical ethos is distinctive in the way it views salvation. In contrast to sacramental spirituality evangelicalism, as a spiritual ethos, believes that a right, reconciled, transforming relationship with God begins with a decision of repentance and faith. Evangelicals disagree about the nature of that decision, but all agree that authentic Christianity always includes begins with it. A process may precede it, whether that be irresistible grace regenerating and bending the person’s will or prevenient grace enabling acceptance of God’s saving grace. But that a person must repent and trust in Jesus Christ for authentic Christian life is part and parcel of evangelicalism as an ethos. Third, Bebbington and Noll point to crucicentrism—cross-centered proclamation and devotion—as an essential hallmark of authentic evangelicalism. Evangelicals cling to the cross of Jesus Christ in faith. We sing about it. We preach it. We celebrate it. We re-enact it. Evangelicals disagree about theories of the atonement, although by far the majority of self-identified evangelicals have historically affirmed something like satisfaction or penal substitution or the governmental theory—all objective views of the atonement as having an effect on God and not just on people. The evangelical ethos is cross-centered. Fourth, Bebbington and Noll regard activism in missions, evangelism and social transformation as essential to the evangelical ethos. Evangelicals have always been and are Christians who feel called to spread the gospel and help the poor and suffering. The evangelical ethos is marked by concern for the kingdom of God and its growth or approximation through divine-human cooperative effort in the world. These are Bebbington’s and Noll’s four hallmarks, distinguishing features, of what I am calling the authentic evangelical ethos. In other words, “evangelical” is not merely “Protestant;” it is Protestantism energized with transforming personal experience of God. To these four hallmarks I wish to add a fifth—respect for the Great Tradition of Christian orthodoxy especially as interpreted by the Reformation broadly defined (for example, to include the Anabaptists). Evangelicals always have been orthodox Protestant Christians in the sense of having a high Christology, embracing a trinitarian view of God, and believing in original sin and salvation through Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. Evangelicals agree, however, that “saving faith” can never be merely notional; it always bears the fruit of Christ-centered discipleship, obedience and good works made possible by the indwelling, transforming Holy Spirit. This ethos, marked by these five common features, “family resemblances, is alive and well. Unfortunately, those who share it tend to emphasize and underscore their differences about details such as the exact nature of biblical accuracy, whether it should be regarded as strict inerrancy or infallibility in matters of faith and practice. Other differences that divide those of us who share this ethos were mentioned in Part 1. There is no need to dwell on them here. Suffice it to say that it now seems unlikely, perhaps impossible, that these differences will allow reunion of evangelicals into a cohesive movement. It seems to me that one great rift among evangelicals that has opened up in the last twenty-five to thirty years has to do with the authority of tradition. Reacting to perceived doctrinal drift among evangelicals (and others), some evangelical leaders have turned to tradition to shore up and reinforce evangelicalism’s identity. These evangelicals perceive an identity crisis within evangelicalism. They’re right, but in my opinion they are part of the problem. They end to regard right doctrine as the sine qua non of evangelical identity; for them, as for Carl Henry, the “dean” of evangelical theologians, at least in his later years, evangelicalism is primarily a mental category—defined by firm cognitive boundaries. As they perceive these boundaries loosening, these theologians and leaders influenced by them have appealed to one of two distinct visions of evangelical tradition and, as a result, I believe, hardened evangelical categories into a kind of rigid traditionalism that repels all creativity and reform. One of these visions of evangelical tradition is sometimes called “paleo-orthodoxy.” Its champions have been and are Thomas Oden, Christopher Hall, and Daniel Williams. The gist of it is that Christians, including, of course evangelicals, are not free to interpret Scripture apart from and especially not against the ancient, ecumenical tradition of the church fathers. Oden has expressed this in many writings but most succinctly in The Rebirth of Orthodoxy (2003). Oden, Hall, and Williams all affirm sola scriptura as prima scriptura—Scripture above tradition. But they also argue that Scripture should never be separated from tradition or interpreted against it. By “tradition” they mean the catholic and orthodox tradition of the first seven to eight centuries. The second traditionalism of conservative evangelicals is what some, including Millard Erickson, call the “received evangelical tradition.” Wayne Grudem offers a list of its exponents in his Systematic Theology. They include Hodge and Warfield and especially theologians who follow in their train—those who are faithful to the Old Princeton School of theology—almost all conservative Calvinists. This is a modern evangelical tradition perceived to be faithful to the reformers. The evangelicals of the Gospel Coalition are among those who seem to hold to the authority of this tradition as the hermeneutical litmus test for proper interpretation of Scripture. So what’s the practical point of identifying these two evangelical traditionalisms? Just this: according to these conservative evangelicals, and to the moderate, conservative to centrist, mediating evangelicals sympathetic with them (I include in that category Mouw, George and Neff), authentic evangelical theology’s only tasks are critical and contextual. That is, theology’s task is to defend tradition and translate it into contemporary idioms. The constructive task of theology, then, is closed, finished. Doctrines are not to be revised. Rarely do moderate, mediating evangelicals put it quite so starkly, but their reactions to evangelical attempts to revise traditional doctrines reveal their sympathies with evangelical traditionalists. Let’s look at two case studies. The first case study is open theism. Open theism is the belief among evangelicals that the future is partly open, undetermined, and that even God does not know with absolute certainty events not yet determined by anyone or anything. Conservative evangelical traditionalists such as Oden and Al Mohler, the latter representing the “received evangelical tradition” group represented by the Gospel Coalition among others, have condemned open theism as heresy. Moderate, mediating theologians like George have labeled it a “deep deviation.” (Personal conversations). I conclude that, at least in some cases, these conservative and moderate evangelicals made up their minds against open theism before even studying it because it is non-traditional. Some of them have publicly stated that the weight of tradition is so against it that it isn’t even worthy of serious consideration. (I have had many sustained conversations with evangelical critics of open theism and my conclusion about this arises from those conversations.) The second case study is N. T. Wright’s revisions of the traditional Reformed doctrine of justification by faith. This is spelled out in several articles and books but nowhere better than in Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (IVP, 2009). There the British evangelical scholar concludes that justification is not the imputation of Christ’s righteousness on account of individual faith but the accounting of one as righteous, forgiven, based on inclusion in the people of God and “the faith of Jesus Christ.” But most importantly, it isn’t about individualized salvation at all; it is about the creation of God’s new family and the extending of God’s purposes into the wider world. (p. 248) As everyone knows who has been paying any attention to happenings in evangelical theology, Wright’s revisions have resulted in hysterical screaming from the conservatives—especially those associated with the Gospel Coalition. Much of that is in defense of tradition. “This is what we have always believed; don’t mess with it!” Wright defends his revisionist project by saying “God has always more light and truth to break forth from his Holy Word. …. [i]f the light comes, and can be shown to come, from the Word, from Scripture itself, there is no tradition so strong, venerable or previously fruitful that it should not be prepared to learn from it.” (p. 249) Open theism and Wright’s revision of the doctrine of justification are two examples of what I call “postconservative evangelicalism”—belief that the constructive task of theology is still open and ongoing and that no doctrine of tradition is so sacrosanct that it cannot be reconsidered and amended in light of fresh and faithful interpretation of Scripture. Opponents of postconservative evangelicalism have often portrayed it as “worshiping the goddess of novelty” or following the lure of unfettered innovation. They make it sound like out-and-out liberal theology or at least, as John Piper accused me, of being on a “liberal trajectory.” I hadn’t even revised any doctrines! I had just defended some who have! That alone was enough for him to accuse me of incipient liberalism. I and other postconservatives like my late friend Stan Grenz have made abundantly clear to everyone who will listen that our source and norm for theological reconstruction is always Scripture. Yes, culture can be a guide, but not a norm. It helps us discover areas of Christian belief and practice that need attention. Contemporary science and philosophy are both emphasizing becoming over static being. Without doubt that contributed to postconservative attention to classical theism’s tendency to use the logic of perfection to expound and defend God’s absolute immutability. But postconservatives who are developing “relational theism” such as Tom Oord and LeRon Shults are not letting contemporary culture drive the changes; they are arguing that contemporary culture is inviting us, even propelling us, to interpret Scripture more correctly, shaking off the spells of Greek philosophical thinking such as the “logic of perfection,” to rediscover the personal side of God. So, as I see it, something I call postconservative evangelicalism is a third major branch of contemporary and possibly future evangelicalism. The first is neo-fundamentalism. The second is moderate, conservative to centrist, mediating evangelicalism. Both, as I see it, tend to view doctrine as evangelicalism’s enduring essence and are to some extent captivated by tradition and unwilling to reconsider doctrines of Protestant orthodoxy. The main difference is that the moderate, centrist, mediating group is somewhat more generous in its orthodoxy, usually reluctant to label fellow evangelicals heretics. And they have a larger “tent,” so to speak, of evangelicals. For example, for them Anabaptists and Friends can be just as evangelical as conservative Baptists and Presbyterians. So what is the future of this fractured former movement called evangelicalism? Again, I have to insist on the distinction between the ethos and the movement. The movement has no future that I can see. It is hopelessly broken into smaller groups, parties, movements of their own. Very little dialogue happens across the divides between them. For the most part, with very few exceptions, neo-fundamentalists only talk with each other. They may talk at other evangelicals, but they don’t even invite them to their meetings. (I was invited by a not-so-well-informed president of the Evangelical Theological Society to give a plenary address at its 2006 national meeting. When the executive committee, populated mainly by neo-fundamentalists heard of his invitation they forced him to withdraw it.) In 2004 Beeson Divinity School hosted a conference entitled “Pilgrims on the Sawdust Trail: Evangelical Ecumenism and the Quest for Christian Identity.” I was not invited, but I attended. All the speakers were, in my estimation, either fundamentalists, neo-fundamentalists, or moderate-mediating conservatives. Not one postconservative evangelical was invited to speak. When I politely challenged Oden’s public declaration that open theism is “just process theology” he told me to sit down and be quiet. When I look at the future of evangelicalism I see only further fragmentation, unless we are looking at the evangelical ethos. I believe there is still a lot of life in it. And much of that is coming to us in North America from evangelicals in the Global South. But one thing that worries a lot of conservative, and perhaps also some progressive, postconservative evangelicals, is that most of these Global South evangelicals are strong believers in the miraculous, the supernatural, as normal and perhaps even normative for authentic Christian life. They don’t always fit the mold of traditional Pentecostalism, although sociologists of religion such as Philip Jenkins and Peter Berger tend to put them in that category. I would put them more in the category of “Third Wave Christianity” if we must use North American and Eurocentric categories. They insist on “signs and wonders” as essential to strong, vibrant evangelical faith. Also, Global South evangelicals are not Americans; to a very large extent American evangelicalism has been stamped by American culture in ways we are not even aware of—unless Christians from other cultures tell us about it. American evangelicals are highly individualistic and consumer-oriented. We grow churches with secular marketing methods and feel perfectly free to “church shop” and start our own churches in entrepreneurial style. We mix American patriotic fervor with our Christianity. Evangelical theologian Peter Leithardt, in Between Babel and the Beast (Cascade, 2012) argues that something called “Americanism” has become a religion and we are exporting it to the rest of the world. Many evangelicals from Asia, Latin America and Africa, however, are resistant to it in ways we may find uncomfortable. In my opinion, American evangelicalism has become so Western, so American, so modern, in the sense of Enlightenment based, that we have become a mission field for evangelicals from other parts of the world. And they are coming—to evangelize us for the gospel stripped of the cultural accretions we have put on and around it. To a very great extent, I believe, the future of evangelicalism in America depends on what we do with these missionaries to us. I recall one such encounter some years ago. Ugandan Bishop Festo Kivengere, a passionate evangelical, came to speak at the college where I then taught. Both in his talk and in lunch conversation with a select group of faculty he shared his concern for American evangelical Christianity and how Westernized it has become. His message was difficult for many to hear. I believe that the future vitality and viability of the evangelical ethos in America will depend on our leaving behind the last vestiges of fundamentalism. I also believe that, unfortunately, those vestiges are growing in influence among us. Anti-science attitudes among evangelicals are deepening and spreading through the influence of home schooling and widespread anti-intellectualism. Evangelical crusades against science, whether evolution or global warming, are plunging us back into the 1920s and 1930s dark ages of evangelicalism. Evangelical heresy-hunting and name-calling are dividing us and causing outsiders, as well as many insiders, to think of evangelicals as intolerant and mean-spirited. Some evangelicals seem to thrive on controversy, patting each other on the back for exposing heterodoxy where it has previously gone unrecognized. Neo-fundamentalism is a real threat to the evangelical spirit. On the other hand, I’m not much encouraged by some of the reactions to neo-fundamentalism. Many younger evangelicals are running as fast as they can and as far away as possible from doctrine, Bible study, evangelism, and anything that smacks of tradition. I do not regard the demise of hymn-singing among evangelicals as a good sign. Mark Noll is right that hymns and gospel songs are among evangelicals’ most important contributions to Christianity. Hymns such as Charles Wesley’s communicate the historic faith to congregations that otherwise never hear about doctrines. Much contemporary evangelical worship reminds me of Sunday School, youth group and camp when I was a child and teenager. The so-called emerging church movement worries as well as excites me. There’s energy and intensity there; the search for authenticity is praiseworthy. But too many among them are actively disinterested in historic Christian orthodoxy, the great doctrines of the faith, and also in the warm, experiential, heart-centered piety of traditional evangelicalism. Somehow, if the evangelical spirit, the evangelical ethos, is going to survive and be “salt and light” in our world, we evangelicals have to overcome our petty squabbles, discover and build a new evangelical ecumenism, value our particularities without beating each other up over them, put secondary doctrinal, moral and ethical issues in the back seat where they belong, rediscover our spiritual heritage of Jesus-centered piety closely related to generous Christian orthodoxy, and recover from paranoia toward science and culture and every shred of triumphalism. So, finally, is there hope for a new, broad, evangelical movement? Can the late, great evangelical movement of the 1950s through the 1970s be revived? Or is it gone forever? I doubt that it can be revived and I suspect it is a thing of the past. In my opinion, it would take another Billy Graham to revive it. To a very large extent it was centered around him and his many ministries. We will have to learn to live with a shattered, fragmented evangelicalism and focus our attention and energy on keeping alive the evangelical spirit, ethos, among us. It will take many different expressions and we’ll need to learn to live with them. Only when we think there is such a thing as “the evangelical movement” does diversity among evangelicals cause consternation and confusion among us. Once we’ve disabused ourselves of that notion, perhaps we can get on with the business of being evangelicals in our own, separate ways and accept others as equally evangelical without trying to make them conform to some stereotype of our own invention. - Roger Olson
Here is the first part of my talk at George Fox Evangelical Seminary (March 11, 2013). The second part will come next (in a day or two). (I posted both talks a week ago, but the formatting made it virtually unreadable for most people.)
The Future of Evangelicalism, Part I
A Lecture by Roger E. Olson
given at
George Fox Seminary
March 11, 2013 Part 1: The Demise of the Evangelical Movement and the Survival of the Evangelical Ethos
I’ve been asked to talk about the future of evangelicalism. I’m always hesitant to predict the future. Predictions are often taken as prophecies and we all know what the prescription is for false prophets. Please don’t take anything I say here today as prophecy. I have some thoughts about where evangelicalism is going, but they are only educated guesses and don’t even rise to the level of predictions. Much of what I will say, however, has to do with evangelicalism’s present and past. Some of it will be descriptive and some of it will be prescriptive—the difference between “is” and “ought.” Allow me to begin with some personal reflections. Who am I to talk about evangelicalism? I grew up in the thick of it—whatever “it” is, exactly. I knew we were evangelicals by the time I was in high school if not before. We were also Pentecostals, but we were Pentecostals who played well with non-Pentecostals evangelicals. My uncle was president of our tiny Pentecostal denomination. My father and several aunts and uncles were ministers and missionaries. My maternal grandparents were Evangelical Free, so my mother was raised in that denomination. Much to their chagrin, she become Pentecostal and then married my dad who was pastoring a small Pentecostal mission in the slums of Des Moines. Some of my mother’s siblings were Evangelical Covenant. My paternal grandparents were Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), but late in life my grandmother became Pentecostal. My father followed her into that. So I have deep family roots in evangelicalism. When I was growing up we, my family, commonly divided the whole Christian world into two groups—evangelicals and “nominal Christians.” My father participated in the local evangelical ministers groups in cities where he pastored. My uncle served on the national board of the National Association of Evangelicals. Billy Graham was one of our heroes—along with Oral Roberts. During high school I became deeply involved in Youth for Christ. My future wife’s father was the city director of YFC and she sang in its “Youth Chorale.” I led our high school’s “Campus Life” club, a ministry of YFC, and helped organize city wide YFC rallies. It was through YFC that I really first became aware of something called “evangelicalism” - a transdenominational movement and alliance of believers in Jesus Christ who shared a relatively conservative theology and believed in conversion and evangelism. We actively proselytized our nominally Christian schoolmates. In YFC I came into direct contact with Baptists, Evangelical Free, Nazarenes, Wesleyans, Free Methodists, Christian Reformed and many other Christians who shared a common spiritual and theological ethos and gradually became aware of a movement called evangelicalism that transcended my own denomination and even Pentecostalism.
Donald Grey Barnhouse
While I was attending our Pentecostal Bible college I began to read Eternity magazine—an evangelical publication of the non-profit Evangelical Foundation founded by Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia and radio preacher and author of numerous Bible commentaries. Through Eternity I became further aware of evangelicalism through articles written by people like Donald Bloesch, Bernard Ramm, James Montgomery Boice and many other evangelical authors. I began to read especially Bloesch’s books, many of which had to do with evangelicalism as a movement. One was The Evangelical Renaissance which served as my first scholarly introduction to evangelical faith and spirituality. Then I began to read Christianity Today and then InterVarsity’s magazine His. I began to read Francis Schaeffer’s books which greatly influenced me early in my evangelical student career.
James Montgomery Boice
After Bible college I attended North American Baptist Seminary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It’s now Sioux Falls Seminary and was then and still is a mainline evangelical seminary not limited to Baptists. One of my professors was James Montgomery Boice, publisher of Eternity and pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia after Barnhouse. I was absolutely in awe of him. (He taught one course at the seminary while on a sabbatical from his pulpit.) While in seminary I continued to read Eternity and Christianity Today and my first published piece was a book review in Eternity. All my professors were evangelicals. I took three graduate theology courses at a local Lutheran college that hosted an extension of Luther Seminary. I couldn’t help but notice the difference between the evangelicalism of NABS and those professors. While in seminary I served as assistant pastor at a local Pentecostal-charismatic-evangelical church and attended the city’s evangelical ministers’ alliance meetings. I served on the organizing committee for two Billy Graham associate evangelists’ crusades—John Wesley White’s and Leighton Ford’s. Eventually I came to view evangelicalism as my larger Christian “home” beyond my own denomination and church. By the end of seminary I no longer considered myself Pentecostal; I was evangelical first and Baptist second. In order to understand evangelicalism I read voraciously books about the evangelical movement including ones by George Marsden, the dean of evangelical historians before Mark Noll.
All that is to say, in brief, that “evangelicalism” has always been part of my identity and became more important to me than ever once I shed my Pentecostal identity. Yes, I became Baptist, but being evangelical was more important to me than that. I could move easily among non-Baptist evangelicals and often did. Organizations like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Christian Scholar’s Review (which I edited for five years), the Christian College Coalition (now renamed the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities), the Evangelical Theological Group of the American Academy of Religion, the National Association of Evangelicals, Christianity Today, Inc., the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, all became spaces in which I felt at home and moved around easily. Eventually I began to write about evangelicalism. Probably the high point of my scholarly contribution to the subject came in 2004 when Westminster John Knox Press published my book The Westminster Handbook to Evangelical Theology that included a very lengthy essay on “The Story of Evangelical Theology.” Around the same time I found myself included, with a brief biography, in the Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism written by Randall Balmer and published first by Westminster and then by Baylor University Press.
All that is to say that I have some credentials, some “street-cred,” to talk about evangelicalism even if I am no George Marsden or Mark Noll.
Let me begin, then, with a statement about the present status of evangelicalism and then go backwards and then forwards. It is my considered opinion that the evangelical movement no longer exists. As a cohesive movement, it has dissolved. Of course, it never was perfectly cohesive, but throughout much of the 1950s and into the 1970s it was relatively unified—not as a bounded set category, which no movement really is, but as a centered set category. The movement had a gravitationally strong center that held it together. In my opinion, that gravitational center has lost its strength and the movement has dissolved. What was once a relatively united movement has become little more than a memory. Some of us miss it. What’s left is what was there before the movement—an “evangelical ethos.” And also left is a memory of affinity, fellowship, common cause, cooperation and united action across denominational lines.
The Frist Great Awakening
So what happened and what does the future hold?
As a distinct movement, evangelicalism was born in 1942 in St. Louis. That was when and where the National Association of Evangelicals was founded. Of course, it had a pre-history going back to the Great Awakenings of the 1740s and early 1800s. In a very real sense Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, both born in 1703, were the two founders of modern evangelical Christianity. I’m not talking now about the movement but the ethos. One thing I insist on is this distinction between evangelicalism as an ethos and evangelicalism as a movement. Of course they’re related; the movement is a visible, somewhat organized expression of the ethos. But the ethos pre-dates the movement and outlasts it.The ethos was born out of the pietism and revivalism of the Great Awakenings. Yes, of course, even that had a pre-history, but we won’t keep backing up.
So what is the evangelical ethos that emerged out of the Great Awakenings—first and second? Noll and David Bebbington have identified it with four hallmarks: biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, and activism. I have suggested a fifth—respect for the Great Tradition of Protestant orthodoxy, broadly defined in terms of Christology and soteriology—Jesus as God, the cross as vicarious atonement, and salvation by grace alone through faith. The Great Awakenings added to Protestant orthodoxy an experiential dimension called “conversional piety”—the born again experience, an emphasis on regeneration, and focus on a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” Crucicentrism is the centrality of the cross in evangelical preaching and worship. Biblicism is a special regard for the Bible as God’s inspired, infallible word but also love for the Bible as the story of God’s saving history for us and with us—a message meant directly for the individual’s heart and life and not only for the church. Activism is the evangelism impulse and the desire to change the world that inspired the great world evangelism crusades that grew out of especially the Second Great Awakening.
The Second Great Awakening
The evangelical ethos, then, was Protestant Christianity on fire, energized with passion and zeal, Jesus Christ experienced as living Lord and Savior, the gospel as transforming power. But it lacked a coherent theological framework until that was provided by the Princeton School of Theology formulated by Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, and Benjamin Warfield. Not all evangelicals were thrilled with their Reformed spin on Protestant theology and evangelicalism, however, so alongside them arose lesser known theologies by Methodists such as John Miley and Baptists such as Augustus Hopkins Strong. Add into that mix the revivals of D. L. Moody and the strong premillennialism of the Plymouth Brethren and the Holiness-healing movements and the Keswick spirituality and by 1901 the evangelical ethos was spreading quickly through a large number of somewhat diverse theological expressions.
Then came the fundamentalist movement, a militant evangelical opposition to the growing liberal movement in mainline Protestant denominations. Evangelical leaders such as Baptists William Bell Riley and J. Frank Norris hardened evangelicalism into an exclusive club and angry mob that divided denominations with northern Baptists and Presbyterians especially fracturing into numerous small denominations. After 1925 and the infamous Scopes “Monkey Trial” fundamentalism went underground, so to speak, quietly building its own separate culture of Bible colleges, publishing houses, evangelistic organizations and missions agencies. During the 1920s and 1930s American fundamentalism was the chief organized embodiment of the evangelical ethos, even though that ethos continued to have other expressions in, for example, Pentecostalism and the Holiness churches. But, by-and-large, it found expression mainly in anti-intellectual, Christ-against-culture organizationsthat wiped their hands of responsibility for society at large and waited for Christ to return to rescue them from the world going to hell in a hand basket.
During the early 1940s fundamentalist organizerHarold John Ockenga and some New England friends began to dream of a new organized expression of the evangelical ethos—one that would shed fundamentalism and emerge into the light of day with a renewed cultural presence that would be just as biblical and conversionist but less anti-intellectual and separatistic. That dream came true in 1942 with the founding the NAE. Fundamentalists declined to join it, probably to the secret delight of Ockenga and his friends. Of course, they were fundamentalists to liberal Protestants like Harry Emerson Fosdick and the Federal Council of Churches (which later changed its name to the National Council of Churches). But fundamentalists labeled them “neo-evangelicals” and liberals labeled them “neo-fundamentalists.” Eventually, they won the right to be known simply as “evangelicals.”Their champion became Billy Grahamwho virtually defined the post-fundamentalist evangelical movement—an alliance of denominationally diverse, relatively conservative, revivalistic Protestants who wanted to be culturally engaged, socially progressive (at least up to a point), and intellectually respectable.
Evangelist Billy Graham addressing the congregation in Trafalgar Square in London. Fred Ramage / Getty Images
Billy Graham 1957
The rest of the story is well known, often told by scholars such as Marsden, Noll, Joel Carpenter, Randall Balmer and, more recently, Kenneth Collins and yours truly. The heyday of the new evangelical movement symbolized by Billy Graham and his widespread ministries, Christianity Today, the NAE, Eternity, World Vision, the Christian College Coalition, Youth for Christ, InterVarsity, etc., was the 1950s. In spite of very real and significant theological differences, the evangelical coalition and movement forged ahead, steadily gaining ground against its main competitors, separatistic fundamentalism and modernistic liberalism. The secular news media began to pay special attention to it, as a movement with a distinct ethos, when Jimmy Carter ran for president in the late 1970s. Carter, of course, identified with the movement and proudly labeled himself an evangelical. If there had ever been an evangelical president before Carter, it was difficult to tell. None had so openly identified with that ethos of “born again Christianity.” Time magazine labeled 1976 the “Year of the Evangelicals,” announcing that 34% of all Americans claimed to have had a “born again experience.”
Right about then, however, the movement, at its peak of popularity, was beginning to dissolve. Remember, I’m not talking about the evangelical ethos but the movement. Fortunately, I’m glad to say, the ethos is alive and well, but the movement began to die in the late 1970s—just when the media was taking notice and touting it as a powerful socially transformative force.
Marsden, the dean of evangelical historians, wrote in his book 1990 book Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism that as of 1967 evangelicalism was no longer a cohesive movement. According to Marsden, “By 1967…it was becoming impossible to regard American evangelicalism as a single coalition with a more or less unified and recognized leadership.” (p. 74) Marsden attributes this dissolving of the movement to an internal crisis. He cites as a critical turning point Christianity Today’s 1968 replacing of Carl Henry as chief editor (Henry was its founding editor) with Harold Lindsell. This signaled a shift toward neo-fundamentalism at the core of evangelicalism. Many evangelicals reacted against Lindsell’s hard core conservatism—both political and theological. Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield and the “Sojourners” group hoisted a left-leaning evangelical banner and Fuller Seminary drifted in that direction theologically.
I tend to date the demise of evangelicalism later than Marsden. I was high school when those things happened. While in college and seminary in the 1970s I witnessed them. I read The Post-American, the original title of the magazine that later became Sojourners, avidly. I paid attention when Lindsell published The Battle for the Bible in 1976 and Carl Henry left the magazine as a regular columnist. The moderate-to-left-leaning evangelical seminary I attended suddenly jerked to the right as constituents, alarmed by The Battle for the Bible, imposed an inerrancy statement on it. The faculty had to sign it to keep their jobs. One, New Testament professor Lee MacDonald, refused and resigned. Then came the founding of the “Moral Majority” and Jerry Falwell’s emergence as an evangelical leader and spokesman. Falwell had previously been a separatistic fundamentalist who, during the 1960s, heaped scorn on the “neo-evangelicals” as compromisers of the pure faith.
As I said, in my opinion, it was really during the few years immediately following publication of The Battle for the Bible that the evangelical movement dissolved. Those years also corresponded with the gradual retirement of the movement’s main prototype and champion, its figurehead leader, Billy Graham. As long as Graham was active, the movement stayed together, relatively united, largely by his personality and huge empire of ministries. The breaking up of the movement should have come as no surprise. Marsden and other evangelical historians had been warning of it for some time. The reason it was predictable is that post-World War 2, post-fundamentalist evangelicalism always was an unstable compound.
When the National Association of Evangelicals formed in 1942, and as relatively conservative Protestants rallied together around the banner of Billy Graham throughout the 1950s, there was a tendency to paper over one very significant rift between two groups of evangelicals. One group found its theological and spiritual roots in the Reformed tradition especially as that was handed down to them via the Old Princeton School of theologians of the 19th century—Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and Benjamin Warfield. Their twentieth century successor and representative J. Gresham Machen left Princeton Seminary and the Northern Presbyterian denomination to found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Westminster Theological Seminary. This branch of evangelicalism tended to be Calvinistic and to regard correct doctrine as the enduring essence of evangelical faith. It held high the doctrines of biblical inerrancy, the absolute sovereignty of God and justification by faith alone.
The other branch of neo-evangelicalism was rooted in revivalism including the Holiness-Pentecostal movements, the Keswick movement and pietism generally. The emphasis of this branch was not as much doctrine as spirituality—a spirituality Stan Grenz and I have labeled “convertive piety” or “conversional piety.” This branch held high regeneration and sanctificiation, often free will, and a view of Scripture’s inspiration not tied to inerrancy.
How could two such profoundly different Christian traditions combine to form one movement called “evangelicalism?” I believe one answer to that lies in the Baptist ingredient. By 1942 Baptists formed a large portion of American fundamentalists and many of them were dissatisfied with the separatistic and anti-intellectual drift of fundamentalism. That dissatisfaction was illustrated by the separation between the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches and the Conservative Baptist Association with the former finding Billy Graham dangerously liberal and the latter embracing Graham. The Conservative Baptists, together with other moderate Baptist groups, often held together the two traditions—what evangelical historian Donald Dayton has called the Pietist-Pentecostal paradigm of evangelicalism and the Puritan-Presbyterian paradigm of evangelicalism. The former emphasized experience as the sine qua non of authentic evangelical faith while the latter emphasized correct doctrine as that.
This tendency of moderate Baptists, neither fundamentalist nor liberal, to include both paradigms itself became the paradigm for neo-evangelicalism. In essence, Ockanga and Henry and other founders of the movement were saying “Let’s paper over this gulf and form a coalition of moderately conservative Protestants who are neither fundamentalist nor liberal.” To the right of the NAE was fundamentalist Carl McIntire’s American Council of Christian Churches that would not have fellowship with Pentecostals or “mainliners.” To the left was the Federal Council of Churches, later re-named the National Council of Churches. Within the NAE and the neo-evangelical movement was everything from the Church of the Nazarene to the Christian Reformed Church—a motley crew of Protestants who had little in common other than being neither fundamentalist nor liberal.
Gradually, throughout the late 1970s, these two branches of evangelicalism pulled further apart over issues such as inerrancy, political involvement, predestination, the attributes of God, gender roles in family and church, and the possible salvation of the unevangelized. By the first decade of the 21st century the two sides were barely speaking to each other. Each side had its champions—D. A. Carson and John Piper on one side and Stan Grenz and Clark Pinnock on the other. Many evangelicals tried to mediate the divorce and bring evangelicals back together with limited, and I would say ultimately no, success. Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, himself a moderate-to-progressive evangelicals, has worked tirelessly to hold together a broad evangelical consensus and coalition. With him are Timothy George and Christianity Today. In 2008 Mouw, George, David Neff of CT and a number of like-minded moderate evangelicals published “An Evangelical Manifesto” that called for evangelical unity and renewal. It did not mention biblical inerrancy, women’s ordination, or most controversial issues that have divided evangelicals.
At the same time, however, Carson and his conservative evangelical colleagues, all Reformed theologically, created “The Gospel Coalition” and held meetings and published books calling for renewed evangelical commitment to doctrines such as inerrancy, monergistic salvation, penal substitutionary atonement, and male headship.
Now, a new group of left-leaning evangelicals calling itself “Missio Alliance” will hold its first annual gathering in suburban Washington, D.C. in April, 2013. Present and speaking will be many self-identified evangelicals associated with the emerging church movement, anathema to Carson and the Gospel Coalition and a cause of concern to Mouw and George and their group. Emerging as a spokesman for this group is Scott McKnight, but in the background are recently deceased postconservative evangelical Stanley Grenz and (still living) British scholar N. T. Wright.
It is my considered opinion that “the” evangelical movement, “the” post-fundamentalist, neo-evangelical movement that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s and was, in my opinion, still alive if not well in the 1970s has died. It has fractured into at least three separate groups that have little contact with each other and often stand toward each other with postures of opposition and even competition. First, there are what I call the conservative, neo-fundamentalist evangelicals. They are represented by the Gospel Coalition and similar organizations such as the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that publishes Modern Reformation. Second, there are what I call the conservative, mediating evangelicals. They are represented by Mouw, George, Neff and Christianity Today. Finally, there are what I call the postconservative evangelicals. They are represented by McKnight and the Missio Alliance and magazines such as Sojourners and Relevant. These are not monolithic groups; each has much diversity within it. But they are, as evangelicalism once was, relatively cohesive affinity groups, alliances, coalitions.
So why do I call them all, and many more, “evangelicals?” It’s because I do not consider “evangelical” a concept tied to the post-WW2, post-fundamentalist, neo-evangelical movement. “Evangelical” is an ethos, not just a movement. Movements come and go, ethoses that gave them their identities and outlived them live on. Let’s look at some examples of this outside of our present subject.
“New Thought” was a spiritual-philosophical-quasi-religious movement that flourished in America in the 19th century. It emphasized mind-over-matter with physical healing and financial prosperity possible through positive thinking and speaking. Its practitioners shared an ethos and on that basis they formed a movement that transcended their own individual practices and organizations. The International New Thought Alliance was founded in 1915 to coordinate practitioners’ efforts and creating a better world and to provide fellowship among them in spite of certain sometimes profound differences. The fundamentalists of New Thought, Mary Baker Eddy’s Church of Christ, Scientist (“Christian Science”) refused to join even though everyone knows it was inspired by New Thought philosophy. For much of the later 19th and early 20th centuries the Unity School of Christianity founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore was the best known of the New Thought organizations. It still has churches all over North America. Even though the International New Thought Alliance still exists, the once flourishing and influential New Thought movement exists no more. At best it’s an affinity group with many New Thought practitioners and teachers existing and operating quite apart from any explicitly New Thought organization. New Thought gradually filtered out of its movement into the fabric of American culture. Protestant ministers such as Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller and now Joel Osteen have re-packaged and popularized it for non-New Thought Christians. Some would say they have vulgarized it.
What New Thought really was and is is an ethos. The ethos pre-dates Mary Baker Eddy and the Fillmores and the New Thought Alliance. And it is still very much alive and well, taking on new forms and finding new expressions all the time. The Pentecostal-charismatic “prosperity gospel” is one of them. The New Thought ethos was probably born out of American pragmatism, the popularity of esoteric ideas and practices such as Mesmerism, and mind healer Phineas Quimby’s peripatetic therapeutic ministry. Lurking somewhere in the background of New Thought is almost certainly German philosophical idealism, transported onto American soil and translated for always optimistic American individualists. Today it is ubiquitous and nearly identical with “the American ‘can-do’ spirit.”
I could give many examples of the distinction between “ethos” and “movement.” The charismatic movement arose in the 1960s and died sometime later. But its pre-existence was in Pentecostalism and its post-existence is in “renewalism,” Third Wave Christianity and television evangelism.
The evangelical movement of my youth is dead. It broke apart. Relics such as Christianity Today and the rather ineffectual NAE remain. What’s left? The evangelical ethos—that pre-dated the movement, was given new expression by the movement, and is still shared in distinct expressions by the three evangelical groups I mentioned above.
So what is this evangelical ethos? Each group of evangelicals will give it a somewhat different description. One evangelical party will emphasize its experiential dimension—“conversional piety.” Another one will emphasize its doctrinal dimension—usually then with emphasis on a distinctive view of Scripture that includes inerrancy. Yet another one will emphasize its culture-transforming dimension with stress on changed people changing culture toward the Kingdom of God.
Rachael Held Evans
I find Mark Noll’s and David Bebbington’s approach to evangelical description most helpful, but I want to amend it in some ways. In my next talk I will focus on the evangelical ethos as the present and future of evangelicalism and on what I mean by “postconservative evangelicalism.” - Roger Olson
Bebbington is widely known for his definition of evangelicalism, referred to as the "Bebbington quadrilateral”, which was first provided in his 1989 classic study Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s.
Bebbington identifies four main qualities which are to be used in defining evangelical convictions and attitudes:
biblicism - a particular regard for the Bible (all essential spiritual truth is to be found in its pages)
crucicentrism - a focus on the atoning work of Christ on the cross (Jesus died for sinners)
conversionism - the belief that human beings need to be converted (born-again)
activism - that the gospel needs to be expressed in words and actions
