3. From Culture Wars Back to the Bible

3.1 You're Seeing Things
1. While I was in seminary, I once had a conversation with my mother about some topic or another. I was saying things like, "Wesleyans think the Bible says this, while Baptists think the Bible says that."

At some point, I could tell that the way I was talking about the subject bothered her. She suddenly exclaimed, "We just read the Bible and do what it says!" In other words, our group -- Wesleyans -- just read the Bible and do what it says. Other groups -- like Baptists -- don't. By implication, they read the Bible and either don't believe it or don't keep it.

I always smile when I remember that conversation. My mother was totally unaware of all the assumptions she had absorbed over the years from her childhood to her sixties. She had no idea that she had grown up with Wesleyan glasses that colored the way she read the Bible.

These are some of the greatest insights of my studies of the Bible -- realizing what actually happens when we read the Bible.

For one thing, most Christians probably don't read their Bibles very much. And if they do, they do not read it on a very deep level. They see what they already think in the words.

2. Here's how it works. We often don't realize how much of "us" is in what we see in the world. We start out naively thinking, "What I see is what I get." We don't realize how much cooking our head is doing as we interpret the world.

You might say we all have "dictionaries" in our heads. Someone says something. We use our dictionaries to interpret what they said. I was basically telling my mother that, because we had grown up in the Wesleyan Church, we brought a Wesleyan "dictionary" to the Bible and, voila, the Bible taught Wesleyan truths and ethics.

To be blunt, a lot of Christians see things in the Bible without even reading it. When I taught a survey course on the New Testament, I had students take a position on a biblical issue in their final paper. The amazing thing was that some of those papers didn't cite a single verse in the Bible.

It got to where I had to warn them. Your paper needs to engage the Bible. I would tell them about papers I had received about abortion that didn't quote a single Bible verse. Those papers often had good statistics in them but, as Bible papers, they were hard to grade because they often didn't mention the Bible. They were Christian papers but not Bible papers.

The bottom line is that what people often call "standing up for the Bible" is really standing up for their Christian beliefs. And these beliefs are usually a mixture of Bible with their Christian subculture and their Christian traditions. They have been taught that something is Christian or biblical. 

Maybe it is. Or maybe it isn't exactly. Or maybe it isn't at all.

3. Beyond what we think verses in the Bible mean, there is also the question of which ones we think are "clear" and which ones we think are "unclear." This usually means which ones we find important and which ones we -- intentionally or unintentionally -- ignore or downplay.

I was talking to a high school student recently who goes to a church with some interesting beliefs. For example, they celebrate Passover but not Easter. I asked the young man if they believed in the resurrection of Jesus. He said they did. He thought his pastor might have preached on it sometime in a previous year. 

Now I understand that someone might think that Easter itself is based in something pagan, but the resurrection? The resurrection is the very heart of the Christian faith. Without the resurrection, there is no Christianity, Paul said. I have no problem with someone celebrating Passover -- many Christians do. But it seemed really odd to me not to celebrate Jesus' resurrection every year -- at least at some point even if not when others celebrate Easter.

It's a reminder that our Christian subcultures not only have their own interpretations of individual verses but that we connect those verses to each other in different ways. Knowingly or unknowingly, we prioritize some and subordinate others. 

Take the question of whether women should be ministers. Those opposed take 1 Timothy 2:12 and read all the other verses of the Bible through that lens. "See, it's obvious," they say. Others look at all the women who minister in the New Testament -- Priscilla, Phoebe, Junia -- and look at passages like Acts 2:17 and Galatians 3:28. They see 1 Timothy 2 as the ambiguous passage, with all the other passages -- about Deborah, about Huldah -- as the clearer ones.

So there are disagreements over what individual verses mean, and there are disagreements on how to connect all the different verses to each other. The result is LOTS of different ways people see the overall meaning of the biblical texts. There are thousands upon thousands of Christian groups and individuals who all believe in the Bible -- and believe a lot of different things. 

You can't dismiss all the people who disagree with you as unspiritual or rebellious. This flexibility of the biblical texts themselves is why throughout history Christians have come up with a lot of different beliefs and practices.

4. The final piece that drives all the differences are the differences between biblical times and our times. Most Christians don't apply the verse about not boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk (Exod. 23:19). To be sure, most of us don't have baby goats. But for reasons we probably don't know, we have this "common sense" that these verses addressed a time and situation much different from ours. 

The command possibly engaged a pagan religious practice. Nobody really knows for sure. (People often act confident about things that are uncertain like this one. We just don't have enough evidence to be sure.)

In Judaism, this verse is applied by not eating meat and dairy in the same meal, which is certainly not what the verse was originally about. I was in Old City Jerusalem in the early 2000s and a couple were there who wanted to eat together. He wanted a gyros (lamb meat), and she wanted pizza. But when he came into the pizza restaurant, he was immediately shooed away. You can't have meat in a dairy place.

It's an example of the principle that "doing what they did" isn't always "doing what they did." We could stop eating cheeseburgers, but it wouldn't have the same meaning as the practice 3000 years ago.

All Christian groups pretty much do this. If a verse seems genuinely strange to us, we find ways to explain that we are keeping it without necessarily keeping it. Most Christians don't worry about wearing clothing of mixed thread (Lev. 19:19) or not trimming the edges of their beard (Lev. 19:27). 

It often is not that we are being rebellious or that we don't care. It's that in one way or another, we have an intuitive and often subconscious sense that the verse doesn't fit.

And sometimes we're right. 1 Corinthians talks about women wearing head coverings in worship when they prophesy. But the situation in Corinth 2000 years ago was quite different from today. We generally don't meet in house churches. We don't usually prophesy at random in church. And there isn't as much sexual tension being around people of the opposite sex in a house.

So if we don't wear veils or prayer bonnets, it's not that we are disobeying the Bible. It's that the specific practice in view doesn't play out the same in our contexts. We intuitively and collectively know this, so most churches do not practice head coverings, although some do. Those that do probably aren't really "doing" what this practice originally "did" because the meaning is different in our world.

5. At the same time, many Christians today feel perfectly fine about ignoring teachings that don't fit with their view of the world but that actually are very relevant to today. What does the Bible teach about caring for the poor or the dangers of wealth? What does the Bible teach about loving your enemy or respecting the immigrant? 

While there are culture-specific dimensions to these biblical teachings (there alway are), they stand more on the level of principle rather than specific practice. The practice of not sowing your field with different kinds of seeds (Deut. 22:9) seems very specific to ancient Israel. But the practice of loving your enemy is a core value of Christ. 

Yet some evangelicals today would seem be more concerned to keep the first kind of command while dismissing the second as some form of "toxic empathy." Indeed, it seems like the teachings of Jesus himself are some of the easiest for contemporary evangelicals to dismiss as "liberal" values.

And while this is sometimes done by calling it the influence of "culture" on Christianity, it is actually the influence of a certain kind of Christian subculture on evangelicalism. We are not talking about a minor mixture of hay here. We are talking about values that contradict the teachings of Jesus himself. In other words, they put the very foundation in danger (1 Cor. 3:11). 

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he said it was the love of God and neighbor (Matt. 22:36-40). All the commandments of God are covered by these (Rom. 13:9-10). Clearly, these are the center.

So why is it that so much of evangelicalism feels perfectly fine ignoring them? 

_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover 

2. From Club to Conversion

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
2.4 Joining a Club
2.5 The Mixed Church
2.6 Citizens of the Kingdom

2.6 Citizens of the Kingdom (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
2.4 Joining a Club
2.5 The Mixed Church
_______________________
2.6 Citizens of the Kingdom
26. So, what is this kingdom again that true converts to Christ are becoming part of? What is its nature and what are its values?

It is, more than anything else, the kingdom of God. It is not ultimately a visible church, and it certainly is not a visible state. God is its only king, and its only high priest is Christ. 

It has other priests, but these are all the women and men of the invisible kingdom (1 Pet. 2:5, 9). Yes -- women are priests in the kingdom of God, despite what the current flavor of Christian nationalism in America might think.

It has no earthly king. From time to time, earthly kingdoms have had earthly kings, but these have never been Christ. Indeed, they rarely have had the spirit of Christ, who reigns as a servant, who "emptied himself" of the status and power of the Son of God to walk among us (Phil. 2:6-7). He was born virtually unknown and unseen in a humble place surrounded by animals (Luke 2:7).

If some earthly figure uses Christianity to gain power or weath for themselves, they are an antichrist. Let them be accursed (Gal. 1:8).

27. It thus goes without saying that if we "convert" someone into a church in which God is not truly king or Jesus is not truly Lord, then we have inducted someone into a club and not the Church of Jesus the Christ. We have brought someone into a tribe but not the people of God. We are leading them to worship an idol of some kind.

What does this look like? It is any context where God is not truly all in all.

We reflected earlier on the fact that the earthly church often mixes the hay and straw of earthly culture in with the gold and silver. As long as Jesus is ultimately and truly Lord, this is not fatal. As long as God is the one worshiped, the church can survive some stubble to be singed on the Day of Christ's return.

But when a church becomes a hero cult, it is encroaching on Jesus' territory. Pastors and leaders are meant to be servants, not kings. Certainly the church has no room for an idol of the state or an idol of any kind. God must be all in all.

Protestants are not meant to have saints, and even Catholics generally wait until after someone has died to declare one. No, in the biblical way of thinking, all believers are saints, holy ones (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:2). The word saint never appears in the singular in the Bible. Paul gives us the Christian perspective when he notes that God especially highlights the lesser parts of the body in the body of Christ, which is the church (1 Cor. 12:22-24).

We humans love hype and we love heroes, but the ordinary person is the earthly hero of God's story, and Christ himself is the "head" of the Church.

28. So when the church becomes a circus and a spectacle, with worship becoming more like entertainment, we are beginning to create churches of straw and hay. We are bringing people into more and more of a club rather than the kingdom. There is nothing wrong with emotion. There is nothing wrong with enjoyment. There can be substance in the midst of all-too-humanness.

But the focus must always be Christ. 

It's fun to join a club. It's fun to watch a movie. It's fun to go to a concert. But if Christ is not the feature show, it is not the Church. 

The Corinthians had this problem with the Lord's Supper. It was very enjoyable for some -- they were getting drunk alongside a gluttonous feast. Meanwhile, others in the assembly had no food at all. Paul says it starkly -- that isn't the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:20). 

In the same way, a church is only a church if Christ is the true center of the show. Are we praying to the Lord or are we just talking to ourselves. Are our prayers monologs or even secret sermons? Are they performances? True prayers are spoken to God, empowered by the Spirit.

29. Then there is the sermon. In the next chapter, we will explore truly biblical values in more detail.

If people are attracted to our church because we are reinforcing the political rhetoric they are hearing from secular media, something is wrong. If they are joining us because we are reinforcing the culturally progressive or conservative talking points they like, something is wrong.

As we will reflect in the next chapter, the kingdom frustrates both the right and the left of the political spectrum. The person on the left says, "I like what you said here, but I'm upset at what you said there." And the person on the right standing next to them says, "I feel exactly the same way. I thought you were on my side when you said this. But then you said that!"

The kingdom of God is neither culturally conservative nor progressive. It is rather the measure against which both right and left are ultimately evaluated.

What we don't want is for God to have to call prophets to say to us, "What to me is the multitude of your baptisms? Your fog machine is an abomination to me. I cannot endure your performative worship and superficial assemblies. 

"Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Learn to do good. Seek biblical justice, oppose oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah 1:11-17).

"He has showed you in Scripture what is good and what the Lord requires of you. Do biblical justice. Love mercy and empathy. And walk in humility with your God, your only King" (Micah 6:8).

30. How can we "make evangelicalism great again" in relation to conversion? First, we are not the ones that can make it anything. It is a matter of surrender to God and his empowerment.

But we can get our heads on straight. If our church looks almost exactly the same as some secular group and its values, we should be worried. If becoming part of our form of Christianity has no cost, we may be a church of rocky soil. We may be setting up our "converts" to be scorched during the next heatwave.

If coming to faith in our church requires no difference from what we were before, then we probably are more of a club than a true church. We have simply found group members who have come home to their tribe. They are attracted to us because they already had our values and already thought the way we thought.

But true "conversion" means change. It means passing from death to life. It means dying to ourselves and becoming alive again in Christ. More than anything else, it means being filled with the Spirit so that we can be led by the Spirit and bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. 

We are not our own. We are bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

2.4 Joining a Club (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
_______________________
2.4 Joining a Club
12. My first real adventures into sociology came from my study of the New Testament. [13] I became exposed to how differently people thought in Bible times than how I thought growing up in America. I learned that the ancient world was a group-oriented culture, while I had grown up in an "individualist" culture. I learned that, while my culture emphasized being "true to yourself" and thinking independently, the ancient world was an "honor-shame" culture.

Honor-shame cultures prize being true to your group. You wanted to bring honor to your group and avoid bringing your group shame. Meanwhile, I had been taught that ethics were the same for everyone. As an American, I had been taught that there should be "equal justice under the law." I had been taught that every citizen gets to vote and that everyone's vote should count.

Even more, I had grown up thinking that these were biblical, Christian values too. Love your enemy meant that you treat those outside your group with respect. "All truth is God's truth" meant that truth was truth no matter who was saying it or where it came from. If an atheist says something true, it's true, and if a Christian says something that's false, it's false. Truth is truth, no matter where it comes from.

Group cultures value loyalty. But I grew up thinking -- both as a Christian and an American -- that the real truth trumped your group's interests. Right and wrong involved absolutes, and absolutes apply no matter who you are or what group you belong to. But in group cultures, protecting the reputation of your group is more important than the truth. "We protect our own."

13. As I've observed humanity in the course of my life, I've come to believe that Western individualism is really the exception. Most cultures in history -- in fact, most people even in the West -- are group oriented. We are tribal by default. As a philosopher, I have come to think that humanity is a "herd animal" -- at least fallen humanity. Aristotle put it more tactfully -- we are a "political" animal.

I've come to believe that we have to be trained to be individualistic. Now, we don't have to be trained to be selfish -- that's something different. But we have to be trained to think in categories like universal rights or universal values. We have to be trained to think that I get to decide what I think and what I should do. The human default is to think like your group.

The human norm is peer pressure. The human norm is what in 1 Corinthians we might call a "party spirit." "I am of Paul." "I am of Apollos" (1 Cor. 1:12). In short, my group is better than your group. "You can't be a Christian and be a Democrat." "Trump supporters are deplorables, clinging to their guns and religion."

Racism is the human norm -- my race is better than your race. The same with sexism -- men are smarter than women. Paul surely didn't really mean that "in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, not 'male and female'" (Gal. 3:28). The human norm is to put our groups into a hierarchy, not to form judgments on individuals based on their individual merits.

14. Sociology calls this "in group/out group" dynamics. [14] My group is good. Your group is bad -- or at least inferior. When someone in my group does something good, I point that out as exactly what my group is like. If someone in your group does something bad, I point that out as exactly what your group is like.

I used to visit my elderly mother a couple times a year and a particular news outlet was always on. It seemed to me that there was a regular stream of news segments with a person of color or an undocumented immigrant doing something bad. I thought to myself, "If I watched this channel all the time, I probably would end up thinking that all illegal immigrants were evil criminals." Of course, the statistics don't bear that conclusion out. [15]

15. Like every country, America has always had its groups. High-minded thinkers might say things like "all men are created equal," but the ordinary person has more typically lived in groups. When I was a boy, we told Polack jokes and blond jokes. The public school tried to train "group think" out of us. I didn't realize it, but the reason there were black students and teachers at my middle school was because of desegregation. For me, it was just normal.

But the human default -- group identity -- has always lurked there, below the surface.

In America today, group culture is very much on the rise. Indeed, it seems to me that, at its heart, the Trump phenomenon is not really so much a conservative versus liberal phenomenon as it is an individualistic versus group culture conflict. Many conservatives have repeatedly critiqued the Trump administration. The response has been to call them "RINOs" -- "Republicans in Name Only."

In other words, you are being disloyal to the group. Those conservatives are evaluating Trump according to universal truth and conservative principles. His response is, "I am the leader of the group and you're being disloyal." As is the case with group cultures, the truth is what's true for my group, not some universal truth.

16. Let me give an example from a recent post made by the president:

You can see the "us-them" nature of the post, expecting total loyalty from his group. Any lack of conformity by the "in-group" will be met with expulsion from the group. Meanwhile, the out-group is depicted as thoroughly evil.

This is classic group culture. What is true is what the President says is true. The good people are, by definition, those who are part of his group. Disloyalty to the group will not be tolerated.

Mind you, these underlying dynamics to group culture are often clothed in rational argument. Indeed, it can take great feats of intellect to find explanations for claims or behaviors that on the surface seem to obviously point to a different conclusion than the one your group wants to think.

Yet the most loyal to the group will believe such explanations every time. What's important is that there is an explanation, not whether it actually makes sense.

17. You may be wondering what this has to do with the church. The church is not immune to group culture. Indeed, it has fewer guardrails against it than the Western world. The American Constitution is meant to preserve individual rights and values. I believe these actually reflect some of the Judeo-Christian fumes of our founding.

But fallen human nature pushes us to form groups. We are Baptists and Methodists and Lutherans and Catholics. Our group has the right answers -- the right interpretations of the Bible, for example. We make creedal statements and then insist that you must agree to them to be in our group. If you fall out of line, we'll kick you out.

Free thinkers don't do well in these contexts. We really don't want people reading the Bible and coming to their own conclusions. We want them to read the Bible and assume our conclusions.

18. You might say, "That may have been the past, but people don't care much about denominations any more." That's true. The group identities have changed. They're still there. They're just different.

I always smile when people say, "I go to a non-denominational church. We just follow the Bible." Tell me what your church teaches. Tell me how and when you baptize. Tell me whether tongues are approved or rejected. 

Actually, you probably don't even need to tell me. Give me ten minutes at your church and I'll tell you which group -- which tradition -- you are part of without knowing it. Chances are, you're Baptist with a twist. 

For the most part, the new group is white evangelicalism. It has flattened out the old denominations into a gray Baptist melange. The fries are tongues and the charismata. "Would you like tongues with that?" This is your typical megachurch -- Baptist with or without the tongues.

19. But the kingdom of God is not a fallen human group. The kingdom of God is neither Democrat nor Republican. It is neither Trump supporting nor following any other human leader or figure.

The kingdom of God is the kingdom of, well, GOD. It is the kingdom of Jesus Christ. It cuts across all human loyalties and is oriented around the King of Kings. If any human group lays absolute claim on our loyalties, it is anathema. Let it be accursed.

Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar. Not my church. Not my political party. Not my family.

Jesus. God and God alone.

[13] Groundbreaking here was Bruce Malina's The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Westminster John Knox, 1981).

[14] There is an underlying reason why sociology has come under fire in Florida, and it isn't the surface reasons being given. Sociology exposes what's really going on in human culture underneath the surface. It lays bare the underlying motives and dynamics of human interaction in ways that bristle against group culture. It is no surprise that the "group" wants to shut it down.

That is not to say that there aren't group dynamics and extremes in much sociology teaching at state schools. Nor is it to deny that many state school subjects are taught with "anti-supernaturalist presuppositions." I am merely claiming that these political moves are likely more group driven than truth driven.

[15] Very common in present culture is what is known as the "you also" fallacy (tu quoque). You critique something on one side, and the response is "but you didn't critique the other side." It's a more sophisticated version of the "He started it" accusation of our childhoods. It's a deflection technique.

But the underlying dynamic I am pointing out here is the difference between group think and truth think. "Truth think" certainly involves bias, but its goal and method is universal truth. "Group think" has no universal standard for truth. It only aims to support the claims of its group by whatever means works. Unfortunately, the rise of postmodernism in the 1990s and 2000s has given a sophisticated green light for culture to be untethered from "truth think."

All media has bias (though probably some more than others). But not all media has as its aim the establishment and reinforcement of group identity. The rise of this sort of media in America has been a key feature of the twenty-first century.

_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

2.3 A Lasting Conversion (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
_______________________
Lasting Conversion
8. So what is a lasting conversion, an eternal conversion? What is the conversion that ultimately matters?

Let me start by speaking practically rather than technically. The most imporrtant conversion is one that lasts to eternity. It is true that a person can be truly converted and yet fall away (Heb 6:3; Jude 24). But the end result is as if the person was never truly saved at all. They are like the seed along the path, scorched by the sun, or choked by weeds. They are Israelites that do not enter the promised land, "whose corpses fell in the desert" (Heb. 3:17).

9. How does a lasting conversion begin? It is ultimately a matter of the Holy Spirit. This is the repeated message of the New Testament. 

Repentance is a precursor to conversion. Faith is an essential lead up. All along the Holy Spirit has been involved, drawing you to Christ. Baptism is significant, an "outward sign" of God's working inside us.

But, according to the New Testament, the Spirit is the moment of conversion. "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they are not his" (Rom. 8:9).

The Spirit is God's "seal" of ownership on us (2 Cor. 1:22). The Spirit is the "guarantee," the "downpayment" of our future inheritance (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:14). Without the Spirit in us, we are not yet truly and fully converted.

We see this in the book of Acts. In Acts 8, in Samaria, a group of individuals have been baptized, but they have not received the Holy Spirit. This is a problem because Acts 2:38 gives the clear pattern: Repent, be baptized, and you will receive the Holy Spirit. Something was wrong.

By the same token, conversion can happen without baptism. In Acts 10, Paul has hardly finished presenting the good news to Cornelius and his men before the Holy Spirit has come upon them. In that incident, baptism simply enacts what the Spirit has already done inside of them.

10. How do we know if we have received the Holy Spirit? I suspect that, for most of us, it will chiefly manifest itself as a "peace that passes understanding" (Phil. 4:7). [10] As the hymn goes, "blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; oh, what a foretaste of glory divine."

However, Paul tells us explicitly what the presence of the Holy Spirit looks like, and this is true not only in me as an individual but in the church collectively. He tells us that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23). 

Are these the characteristics that most would use to describe the American church? Not likely. In that respect, we have to wonder how much of the American church is actually truly converted.

The Parable of the Weeds makes it clear that not everyone in the church is actually part of the Church (Matt. 13:24-30). The true Church is "invisible." It does not coincide with the people who hold up a Bible or quote Scripture. Indeed, Satan has the entire Bible memorized (e.g., Matt. 4:6).

Matthew puts it sharply, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 7:21). The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats also puts it starkly. Those who did not use what God gave them in the service of those in need turn out to be goats rather than God's sheep. They find their end in eternal judgment (Matt. 25:45-46). [11]

11. We have to conclude that either a good deal of the American church is either not truly converted or not fully converted. My pastor used to put it this way. "Don't worry. You're all still going to heaven. You're just not fully converted yet." [12]

I would put it this way. Some in the American church are not truly converted. But many others are not fully converted. Like Paul's description in 1 Corinthians 3, their faith is mixed with hay and straw (1 Cor. 3:12). 

That is one of the main purposes of this book, to call the American church to a truer and deeper faith. It is a call to recognize where our faith has been corrupted. And for those with fake faith, it is a call to genuine faith.

[10] There are individuals whose "peace receptors" are damaged. While 1 John 3:20 probably was not psychologizing originally, there is great truth to the fact that, when our consciences are not working properly, God knows the real story. Once upon a time, I found David Seamands' book, The Healing of Memories (David C. Cook, 1986) very helpful on this score.

[11] Note that the Parable of the Talents immediately preceeds the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. While this parable is often read as a capitalist manifesto, in context, the investment of talents would seem to be giving away what God has given us to those in need. We miss this context because of the glasses we are wearing when we read.

[12] Steve Deneff, College Wesleyan Church.

_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

2.2 Dunk and Run (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
_______________________
5. In the Parable of the Soils, Jesus talks about four different kinds of soil that the word can fall on (Mark 4). Some seed is immediately snatched by birds -- the word of the gopel goes in one ear and out the other. Then there is rocky soil. The wheat springs up immediately but lacks depth and is scorched by the sun. The seed that falls among weeds is choked by the cares of life. Finally, some seed falls on good soil and not only grows but multiplies.

It's fairly obvious that not everyone who "comes in the door" of the church ends up in the kingdom. Different Christian traditions deal with this phenomenon differently. A Calvinist might say such a person was never truly a believer to begin with. My own tradition can take the text pretty much like it is -- some people start off in Christian faith but do not endure to the end.

I already mentioned 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, where Paul suggests that even he might not make it into the kingdom if he does not continue disciplining himself as a spiritual "athlete." Hebrews presents the starkest imagery of this sort in the New Testament. Hebrews 6 suggests not only that it's possible to fall away, but that one cannot return if one does (6:3-6). Such a person is like a field that, despite constant watering, only yields thorns and thistels (6:7-8).

However one wants to process this phenomenon theologically, the long and the short of it is that not everyone who gets baptized will end up in the kingdom of God. We see this happen in Acts 8, where many Samaritans are baptized, but they have not yet been truly saved (8:4-25). One of them, Simon the sorceror, is remembered in Christian history as the earliest heretic of Christianity.

6. In America, Baptists are the largest Protestant group, and they have had enormous influence on American Christianity. Every tradition has its potential weaknesses, and the greatest danger from the Baptistic influences on Christianity  is what I might call "dunk and run." The majority of Baptists in America believe in "eternal security" or "once saved, always saved." It's the belief that, if you get truly saved, you will make it to heaven no matter what.

In a popular form, it can reduce to "Read the prayer on this card and you'll make it to heaven no matter what you do." This is not official Baptist belief, but it's how the doctrine can play out on a local level. The result has sometimes been an emphasis on baptism in American Christianity without nearly as much attention to what comes afterward.

This flavor has made its way into the culture of the American megachurch. Although many such churches call themselves non-denominational, many are functionally Baptist or Baptist with a charismatic twist. [8] Of late, we have seen more and more "baptisms on the spot" in these churches. Appealing to the book of Acts, they bring out the tubs and baptize people right there on the stage, sometimes with little or no preparation.

The danger has always been that there would be no follow up. This was an early critique of Billy Graham's crusades. Many people came forward to give their lives to Christ, but initially there was no system in place to get these individuals into the ongoing discipleship of a church. Thankfully, in the later decades of his crusades, a structure of follow-up by various area churches was put in place. [9]

Similarly, most mega-churches today have created systems to try to get the newly baptized into small groups. Still, it is hard not to get the impression that these streams of American Christianity are "front heavy" with inconsistent follow up. The danger is that someone who gets baptized might think they are fully cooked and that they need not worry too much about their walk with the Lord thereafter.

7. Paul himself ran into the problem of getting baptism out of perspective with the Corinthian church. A man named Apollos had followed him to Corinth. Because he had formerly been a follower of John the Baptist, baptism apparently played a more significant role in his teaching than it did for Paul. Paul is frustrated enough that he said he was glad he only baptized a handful of people there (1 Cor. 1:14-17).

Why? Because they were getting things out of focus. At Corinth, they had come to view who baptized them as a matter of prestige. They missed the point of baptism. It represented the cleansing of their past sins and their inclusion into the body of Christ. It was a beginning, not an end point.

One danger with the current climate of Christianity in America is that we focus so much on getting people wet that we miss the long haul of faith, which is actually the more crucial part in the end. We don't want to miss "running with patience the race that is set before us" (Heb. 12:1-2). Because it is not starting the race that ultimately matters. It is finishing it. To use an illustration from the book of Hebrews, all of Israel started off the journey in the wilderness. But they did not make it to the Promised Land (Heb. 3:16-19).

The danger of evangelical "conversionism" has long been a lack of discipleship. This is one area where John Wesley excelled, one of the earliest evangelicals in the 1700s. His rigorous system of discipleship made sure that a new believer did not simply evaporate away. George Whitefield, another evangelical of that day, once remarked that those who had been saved under his preaching were a rope of sand in contrast to those saved under Wesley. He had no system for discipleship.

[7] "Eternal security" is actually a mutation of two quite distinct theologies. Its base is Calvinism, which holds logically that if you are predestined, then you will endure into the kingdom. But Baptist belief mixed this idea with the later idea of the "assurance of salvation." This is the quite distinct tradition that you can know now whether you have truly become a child of God. Mix the two together and you have a theological Frankenstein: 1) if you know you are saved now then 2) you know you will make it to the end.

[8] Even the Assemblies of God church, which is one of the largest denominations in America, could be said to have the flavor of a Baptist church with tongues and other spiritual gifts added in.

[9] Bill Hybels also lamented this about his legacy at Willow Creek.

_______________________
1. What is Evangelicalism?

• Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
• The "New" Evangelicalism
• The Poltical Takeover

2. The State of Faith in America (1)

1. What is Evangelicalism?

• Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
• The "New" Evangelicalism
• The Poltical Takeover

__________________
1. The big news in a recent Pew study was that the decline of Christian faith in America had paused. [1] The theme of previous years had been the "rise of the Nones," individuals who claimed not to have any specific faith at all. [2] A few years ago, that was the fastest growing religious demographic. In this more recent study, the percentage of young men in particular has held steady and was roughly equal to young women who professed faith.

The Devil is in the details, of course. What is this data really saying?

An intriguing theory is that the retention of male faith might have something to do with influencers like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and Wes Huff. [3] There is much talk about recovering masculinity within Christian faith, and these voices seem to be having an impact among young men.

However, it does not seem that they are bringing young men at large toward faith. Whom they seem to be helping are young men with some sort of background in Christianity. That is, they are helping a small swath of young men retain faith by inspiring them to live responsible lives.

Meanwhile, the fastest decline in faith would seem to be among young women. One of the more striking findings of the study was that young men and women had evened out in their faith -- as opposed to earlier days when the faith of young women significantly outpaced that of young men.

2. At the same time, we can ask what faith they are retaining or are being converted to. Here, the exit of women from the church may give insights. Why are they leaving? Are they leaving, for example, because the church has largely ignored them -- even as their voice has been empowered more and more?

Just a few years ago, the #MeToo movement called attention to the pervasive bullying and abuse that women get in society. According to one study, 82% of women have experienced sexual harrasment or assault in their lifetime [4] According to another study, almost half of all women (45.1%) have experienced some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetimes. 21% reported completed or attempted rape, and 39% reported unwanted sexual contact. [5] 

Did the MeToo movement change anything? According to the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University, no. [6] The question for the church is not merely whether male behavior has changed in society (it hasn't). The question for us is whether the church has offered women any reason to believe the situation is any different among believers (it hasn't).

3. A person saved is a person saved. If I genuinely come to believe in God because I thought I saw a unicorn eating lunch at Denny's, that is still a soul saved. It's important to keep that in mind. If a man keeps his faith because of a skewed version of Christianity, that's still a soul saved if the conversion is genuine.

At the same time, it is not enough to dunk and run. Paul is quite clear, despite protests to the contrary. "Run that you might receive the prize... I discipline my body and make it my servant so that I might not be disqualified after myself having preached to others" (1 Cor. 9:24, 27).

What we don't want to happen is to "inoculate" people to faith. We don't want to give them a taste and then for them to spit it out of their mouths. We want them to partake of genuine faith and to stick around for eternity.

4. I thus consider this a fair summary of faith in America at the moment. While it may have experienced a slight uptick or plateau in the last couple years, we do not know how the graph will continue. The trendline for the faith of young women is in steep decline. What is holding the demographic is that some young men who grew up in a Christian context are returning to the faith of their childhood.

Will that be a permanent return? That is another good question and one that should cause us to make sure that the faith we are advertising is genuine Christian faith. We would hate these converts to be seed on rocky soil -- or seeds among weeds or bird food (Mark 4).

Are we converting these young men to a club (while losing the young women) or are we bringing them to a lasting, well-anchored faith? That is a key question for this chapter.

[1] Religious Landscape Study, Pew Research Center (February 8, 2025), conducted from July 17, 2023 to March 4, 2024.

[2] Ryan Burge, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, 2nd ed. (Fortress, 2023).

[3] Cf. Anthony Delgato, "Comeback Christians."

[4] "Rates of sexual harassment and assault nationwide still high after #MeToo movement" (September 16, 2024).

[5] National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2023/2024 Sexual Violence Data Brief.

[6] The study quoted in n.4 is found here: #MeToo 2024 Report.

What is evangelicalism? Part II (New Evangelicalism)

continued from last week
___________________
Neo-Evangelicalism
5. Jump forward to the 1950s. With great intentionality, "neo" evangelicalism is born. [3] It loosely combined these two previous streams. On the one hand, you have Billy Graham the conversionist. For over fifty years, he channeled D. L. Moody and Charles Finney in his crusades around the world. Millions came forward to accept Jesus. (The follow-up at first was less stellar.)

Representing the other stream were the likes of Harold Ockenga and C. F. H. Henry, watchdogs of evangelical orthodoxy. The century before had seen the rise of biblical criticism and evolution. Traditional Christianity was in defensive mode. These "new" evangelicals aimed to go on the offense.

Fuller Seminary was founded. Christianity Today was sent for free to pastors everywhere in America, financed by oil tycoon J. Howard Pew. The "National Association of Evangelicals" (NAE) was born. Graham took it on the road. A movement was born.

6. David Bebbington has tried to systematize evangelicalism over the centuries. [4] This is a somewhat artificial task, because the meaning of words changes over time, and groups change over time. The values of the Democratic Party in the 1850s were quite different from its values today. In that sense, his four pillars of evangelicalism run the risk of flattening and imposing a system on people and movements from different times. 

The four key emphases he identified were 1) conversionism, 2) biblicism, 3) crucicentrism, and 4) activism. The first was an emphasis on evangelism. The second referred to the authority of Scripture. The third was the centrality of the cross and the necessity of atonement. The final commitment was to change the world rather than withdraw.

We have already seen broadly how these played out over the last three centuries. Conversionism is probably the most longstanding characteristic. Then in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a focus on the authority of Scripture and the necessity of the cross became more important in reaction to modernism.

In the 1950s, activism was key to the neo-evangelical rise. People like Harold Ockenga strongly criticized those Christians whom he saw as retreating from the world. Soon they were calling these individuals "fundamentalists." Mark Noll later identified such "retreaters" as dispensationalists, holiness folk, and Pentecostals. [5]

I'll have some thoughts on that later.

Blind Spots
7. Neo-evangelicalism was mostly white and aspiring middle class. It was "color blind" in the sense that it didn't much see those who weren't white. Like so many of the day, Graham advised Martin Luther King Jr. to move slower and avoid disruption. Evangelicalism has never had a large black demographic, and most white evangelicals did not participate in the Civil Rights movement.

In fact, the ancestors of the evangelicals today in the South were known for their flight to "segregation academies" in the mid-twentieth century. The government said to integrate. So they left the public schools to stay with their own kind.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that evangelism "exploded" in the 1970s. [6] This seems to be a predictable pattern. When white evangelicals get uncomfortable with social critique, they shift hard into conversionism -- which has a heavy focus on our insides, distracting from social injustices. (The same pattern has arguably also taken place in the last few years.)

As a quick note, a number of evangelicals over the centuries have healthily combined both evangelism and social action. John Wesley certainly did in the 1700s. Many evangelical reformers of the mid-1800s certainly did, playing significant roles in the abolitionist and women's rights movements. There were evangelicals like Ron Sider who were deeply engaged in the civil rights movement. But it is more a feature of modern evangelicalism to sever the two.

8. Another critique of this neo-evangelical movement is that it used the tools of modernism to argue against it. To fight modernism, it largely adopted its rules. You might argue that this undermines the critique. It hardly seems a winning strategy. We can wonder if a number of young people have lost their faith over the years as a result.

There are other options, as we will see. 

[3] I found Mary Worthen very helpful here, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford University, 2013),

[4] Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1970s (Routledge, 2004).

[5] Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994). Nevermind that a series of writings called The Fundamentals had been produced by intellectuals.

[6] Evangelism Explosion was the mantra of D. James Kennedy, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The church would become an epicenter in the culture wars of the late 1900s.

What is evangelicalism? Part I

1. The thing about words is -- they change their meaning over time. 

Take the word woke. For most of my life, it simply meant that someone was awake. Not sleeping, in other words. Then, about fifteen years ago, it began to be used in certain circles to refer to someone who had become aware of their own privilege in society and the challenges of others who are largely unseen to them.

Now, it has become a strongly negative term without much content, largely a nickname to mock liberal or progressive individuals. If it has any content at all, it mocks those with social concerns in relation to people of color or women.

Same word. Changing meanings and connotations.

This is how words work. The same word can mean significantly different things over time. A word can flip from being positive to negative or negative to positive. In the 1980s, Michael Jackson came out with a song called "Bad" in which the word bad came to mean really, really cool. In the early 2000s, a "googol" (1 with 100 zeros) became Google, and "to google" something became a verb.

2. The same is true of the word evangelical. It has not always meant exactly the same thing. 

In German, evangelisch simply means Protestant. Preachers of the 1700s like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards used the word to describe an approach to salvation that, like Martin Luther, emphasized salvation by grace through faith. That was "evangelical" faith and "evangelical" religion.

So we largely call these individuals "evangelical" in hindsight. In their own time, the word described a kind of Christianity more than it named a distinct group.

As the 1800s progress, two streams of "evangelical" Christians begin to emerge. On the one hand, you have those like Charles Finney who continue to emphasize the "conversion" sense of the word that Wesley and Whitefield did. These are the revivalists of the 1800s. [1]

The other stream is foreshadowed by William Wilberforce, who begins to use the word evangelical to contrast the "alive" part of Anglicanism from the "nominal" part that, from his perspective, is Christian in name only. The evangelical part of Anglicanism is still orthodox. It still believes in sin and salvation. It sees faith as personal. The other is respectable and formal, perhaps a little too influenced by the Enlightenment. [2]

By the end of the 1800s, you have two distinct centers of gravity in what we would call evangelical Christianity in America. The one is the revivalist wing that, like D. L. Moody, emphasized conversion and the experience of salvation. They are evangelically "orthodox," but that is not their focus. 

The other includes academics like Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, whose center of gravity is the more doctrinal aspects of faith. They are Calvinists who focus evangelical faith on a particular understanding of sin and salvation. For them, an evangelical especially has the right beliefs about the Bible and salvation.

3. In the mid-1900s, the word evangelical would emerge now as a clear sociological movement after World War II. Now, it is very intentionally defined by a group calling themselves "neo-evangelicals." And both streams loosely rejoin in this new coalition.

On the one hand, you have Billy Graham...

[1] For an excellent survey of this stream, see Donald W. Dayton, Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage: A Tradition and Trajectory of Integrating Piety and Justice (Baker Academic, 2014).  

[2] David W. Bebbington, as we will see, commits the root fallacy by mixing these two distinct streams together.

95 Theses for the Church Today

Today is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his famed 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral, the spark of the Reformation. He had no thought of splitting the church, only of reforming it. He had no idea of the impact. Small events often have wildly disproportional consequences.

Here are 95 theses from me for the church today.
_____________________
1. Rightly did the Old Testament teach Israel that there was only one God.

2. Rightly did the early church come to understand that the one God exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

3. Rightly did the early church discern two testaments to go along with two covenants, the old and the new.

4. Rightly did the early church come to affirm the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed.

5. Rightly did the early church come to discern the canon of the New Testament, consisting of 27 books.

6. Rightly did the church recognize with certainly the canonicity of 39 books of the Old Testament.

7. Seven more, along with additions to Daniel and Esther, are in a sort of middle status, a "deutero" canon.

8. Luther demoted them entirely out of the canon. In response, the Council of Trent (1545) promoted them to full status. Both moves changed their status.

9. The doctrine of purgatory, while logical, has no clear basis in Scripture, not even in 2 Maccabees.

10. The doctrine of hell is biblical, but Scripture uses figurative language to point to something we probably cannot understand.

11. The Old Testament does not engage the question of the afterlife much, chiefly in Daniel 12:2-3.

12. Paul never engages the question of hell, but clearly indicates a resurrected body on the Day of the Lord for those who are in Christ.

13. Revelation speaks of a lake of fire, originally prepared for the Devil and his angels.

14. Matthew speaks of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

15. Scripture does not teach that ministers must be celibate.

16. Nor does Scripture teach that ministers must be male.

17. In Christ there is not "male and female," therefore, there is no function in life or the church in which a qualified woman or man cannot serve.

18. The laying on of hands is attested in Scripture as a means of grace whereby individuals are sent with ministry purpose.

19. Scripture also attests to the importance of study for the minister.

20. Therefore, it is appropriate for groups of believers to provide means of education and commissioning for the work of the ministry, known as ordination.

21. The doctrine of justification by faith is well attested in Romans and Galatians, and indicates that, when we first enter the people of God, a right status with God is only attained by putting our trust in him and in his king Jesus.

22. We put our "faith" in Jesus by confessing allegiance to him as our Lord.

23. The writings of Paul in Romans 2, 2 Corinthians 5, and James 2 also indicate that our works as a believer will be recognized on the Day of the Lord.

24. Works follow naturally as a result of having the Holy Spirit.

25. The Holy Spirit inside us empowers the image of God within us to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

26. We can be in Christ, have received the Holy Spirit, have left Egypt, and still not make it to the Promised Land. We can be disqualified for the prize despite having once been justified by faith.

27. Depravity in Paul is a thorough depravity rather than an absolute depravity. Every aspect of our selves is marred by the power of Sin over this world.

28. But the image of God is not destroyed. Thus while we do not have the power to be righteous for justification on our own, the goodness of God is present in us because we remain in the image of God.

29. All the world is under the power of Sin. Augustine called this dynamic a "sin nature."

30. For Paul, human flesh is under the power of Sin in this world unless the power of the Spirit takes over. Paul does not speak of this dynamic as a nature.

31. Temptation is not sin. It is when temptation has conceived by intention that it is sin.

32. There is such a thing as unintentional sin. Christ has atoned for all the unintentional sin of the believer.

33. Paul never says that we sinned "in Adam," as Augustine indicated. Rather, because of the power of Sin we sin like Adam.

34. Therefore, no individual is condemned because of the sin of Adam.

35. Original sin only has validity as a reference to Adam's original sin. I have no guilt because of Adam's sin, only its consequences.

36. The power of the Spirit makes it possible to love God and neighbor and thus to fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law.

37. Paul rejects any theology that considers sin the default life of the believer. We are not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies.

38. The basis of justification is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

39. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ is his obedience unto death.

40. Paul likens Christ's death to an atoning sacrifice that God offered or displayed.

41. The doctrine of penal substitution goes beyond the scope of what is claimed in Scripture.

42. We find in Scripture the sense that Jesus satisfied God's justice and that Christ died "for us."

43. But Scripture does not develop a doctrine whereby Christ mathematically satisfied a quantitative justice that was the sum of all sins past, present, and future.

44. "Sola fide," faith alone, thus must take into account the full biblical picture. Our act of faith is the trigger of justification.

45. Our faith is more than an intellectual assent but an act of allegiance that involves a life of faithfulness.

46. If our faith allegiance departs from Christ, then those acts can disqualify our justification. Any version of sola fide that does not take these truths into account is not biblical.

47. Being in Christ is a relationship. Relationships are seldom broken by a single moment or act, but they can be broken.

48. In the working out of Christian theology, both Calvin and Wesley suggested that God's grace empowers us to make the choice of faith. These are logical extensions of broader theology.

49. Wesley believed that this "prevenient grace" was a grace that empowered a free choice. This "theology of the iceberg under the surface" fits best with the appearance of a free choice in Scripture.

50. "Sola gratia," grace alone, needs to recognize that grace in the biblical texts derives from the world of patron-client relationships. In this world, grace could be solicited and could come with informal expectations.

51. Biblical grace thus can be solicited by our prayer of repentance, and our faith in God and his Christ can solicit forgiveness and justification.

52. Grace thus also comes with the expectation of commitment to Jesus as Lord. Such grace can be trampled on and insulted. One should not think such grace would then continue.

53. "Sola Christi," Christ alone is the effective basis for justification. God has chosen of his own free will the offering of Christ as the sole basis of justification.

54. Abraham was justified by faith in God when he was still uncircumcised, that is, a Gentile. He is thus the model of those who are justified by faith in God who are not Jews, as well as the model of faith for those Jews who are justified by faith.

55. He is at least possibly a model of those who have faith in God even though they have not yet heard of Christ. Such individuals would still be justified by faith on the basis of the offering of Christ.

56. When Augustine, Wycliffe, and Calvin read the predestination language of the New Testament in absolute terms, they did injustice to half of the biblical language.

57. Predestination is primarily about the plan of salvation rather than the individuals who are saved, and God's plan involves the participation of human wills.

58. When the Reformers invoked "sola scriptura," they had a pre-modern hermeneutic that was unaware of the extent to which their reading of Scripture was still guided by the rule of faith God developed in the church.

59. The Reformers only eliminated extraneous aspects of catholic tradition that were obvious to them but retained many appropriate core features of tradition, like the Trinity.

60. Because individual interpretation of Scripture uses the individual to provide the "glue" that joins the different teachings of the Bible together and serves as the basis for determining the continuity and discontinuity between that time and our time, the Protestant principle arises. The Protestant principle, set forth by Paul Tillich, is that Protestant churches will continue to split and re-split, to multiply without end, because there is no common basis to join scriptures together or determine the connection between that time and today.

61. Today there are over 30,000 Protestant churches who think they are just following scripture alone. In short, history has shown Luther the loser of his debate with Erasmus.

62. Interpretation and exegesis only tell us what it meant. They do not tell us how God wants us to appropriate it.

63. The Bible should thus be appropriated in communities of faith.

64. The appropriation of Scripture not only requires contextualization by communities of faith.

65. The appropriation of Scripture to individual situations requires improvisation. There is no Pharisaic list of application that can account for every possible situation.

66. Communion was originally a meal that remembered the Last Supper of Christ and looked forward to another meal with him in the eschaton.

67. God has used communion throughout the centuries as a means of grace, whereby the partaker with faith is spiritually empowered to love of God and neighbor.

68. Baptism was a Jewish rite that the early Christians used to signify the washing of sins and incorporation into the people of God.

69. As children were born to these first believers, it is at least possible they were baptized as well. Certainly this became the tradition of the church.

70. Infant baptism indicates that the child is in the people of God, a partaker of its faith, until the child reaches a point when he or she could make that faith his or her own.

71. The child receives a grace mediated through the community in which he or she is baptized. It is a protecting grace.

72. The adult in baptism receives a means of grace as well through the community. It is an including grace. The adult is now reckoned fully in the people of God.

73. The legalization of Christianity was not evil.

74. The organization of Christianity is not intrinsically evil.

75. Nevertheless, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When the church and state coincide, oppression eventually happens.

76. Therefore, the church should be very cautious about its involvement with the state.

77. In keeping with the way God governs the world, the church should not try to force the world to believe as it believes.

78. The church should not try to force the world to pass laws that fit with its particular theological understanding--especially the understanding of one specific Christian group.

79. The church should focus its involvement with the state on supporting laws of general morality--those which prevent harm to others.

80. In keeping with the prophets, its activism should focus on protecting those who cannot protect themselves and empowering all the members of society.

81. The social gospel was not wrong because of its focus on helping the needy and marginalized--this is what Jesus did on earth.

82. The social gospel was wrong because it left out other essential parts of Christian faith--Jesus as Lord, not least.

83. Fundamentalism is a reduction of the Christian faith to a visceral reaction against changes in modern culture.

84. All truth is God's truth, no matter where he reveals it or we discover it by his grace.

85. The New Testament says "Love God and love neighbor" is the fulfillment of the whole law. There is no commandment of God for our lives that is left out (Matt. 22:37-40; Rom. 13:8-10).

86. The love of neighbor includes the love of enemy. God himself loves Satan still and grieves at his perdition.

87. The love of neighbor and enemy never contradicts the love of God, for God never asks us to do or be anything for him that is unloving toward our neighbor.

88. God's justice fits within the context of his love. He is not a slave to justice.

89. God has the authority to forgive without payment. This would be no problem for him but less helpful for us.

90. Our love of God and Christ consists in our submission to his will as our Lord, and his will is that we love one another. God's will is that we love what he loves, and he loves not just the individual but the whole of humanity, groups within humanity, and indeed his creation.

91. There are many points on which Christians disagree. Paul gives guidelines for such situations.

92. On matters of personal conviction, each person should be fully convinced of what God expects of him or her.

93. Despite individual freedom, Christians should behave in a way that is loving toward others. Despite individual freedom, Christians should behave in a way that builds up the faith of others.

94. Paul affirms that no object is intrinsically unclean. It is a matter of personal understanding and conviction. Many actions are not intrinsically unclean. It is a matter of your intention as you act.

95. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. Everything else is mostly ice cream on the cake.

Is Evangelicalism Dead?

Yesterday David Drury pronounced the death of the evangelical movement. However, the goal of his prophetic piece was not to bury it. His was a call to repentance. It was a hope for resurrection. The movement appears dead, he said, but might God revive it if we repent and turn?

1. My thoughts today are not so noble. My goal is clarity and perspective.

I've written quite often on what are called "word fallacies." These are common fallacies you hear from the pulpit on the meaning of words. They include things like:

• The etymological fallacy - the idea that the history of a word or the parts of a word tell you what it means.
• The lexical fallacy - the idea that there is some core meaning to a word that is in play every time the word is used.
• The overload fallacy - taking the ideas associated with a word in several passages and shoving them into every instance that word is used

Interestingly, these "meaning fallacies" are just as true for the identity and significance of a movement in history as they are for an individual word in a text. As it applies to evangelicalism:

• You cannot assume that what evangelicalism was in the past is what it will be in the future or is in the present. You may have some continuity of language or group, but that does not guarantee continuity of purpose, identity, or emphasis. (etymological fallacy)
• You cannot assume that there will be some common core identity that is true of every evangelical. You cannot be sure that there is some "essence of evangelical" that plays itself out every time you find a group calling itself evangelical. (lexical fallacy).
• Similarly, you can't take the emphases of evangelicals at various periods in their contexts and say they apply every time you see an evangelical.

Suffice it to say, these fallacious ways of thinking about meaning are alive and well in the analysis of evangelicalism. [1] That is not to say that there are not continuities in identity. It is to say that:

• There may be significant discontinuities in identity in the history of evangelicalism
• Evangelicalism is a family, and not all members of the family have all the same characteristics. Families have a pool of characteristics features, but no one family member has all of them. [2]
• We cannot necessarily claim to be what the evangelicals of the past were just because we are called by the same name today. [3]

2. So when it comes to David Bebbington's four-fold characterization of evangelicalism, we have to beware that we do not try to shove everyone called an evangelical into the same exact box. He suggested that the identity of an evangelical throughout the last three centuries has been typified by:

• biblicism - the centrality of the Bible
• crucicentrism - the centrality of the cross
• conversionism - the importance of conversion
• activism - the eagerness to be "up and doing" 

Historically, there may be a continuity of group without a precise continuity of formula or emphases. You cannot say, "One of these is missing, you are not an evangelical" or "You're not like Billy Graham or Jonathan Edwards or Charles Finney; therefore, you're not doing evangelicalism right."

In fact, it seems not a little dangerous to me that John Wesley did not think of himself as an evangelical. It is our label. The German word evangelisch basically means Protestant, which is far broader than what we mean by the word evangelical. What an evangelical is today is a function of what people today are calling evangelical, and that is the meaning of the word today, not what it meant in the past.

The inherited pronunciation of my last name is "skank," even though it is spelled Schenck. These days I often go by a German pronunciation, "shank." [4] Why? Because somewhere around the late 90s the word "skank" came to mean a disreputable woman. Where that came from I have no idea, but that is in fact a meaning for the word now.

In the same way, what an evangelical is today is not determined by what an evangelical was fifty or a hundred or two hundred years ago. It is however we as a society use the term today. That's that. There will likely be continuities, but they are not necessary or determinative.

3. In the remainder of this post I want to point out some key shifts in how Bebbington's four characteristics are currently playing themselves out. There is some continuity in the groups he calls evangelical, but the Devil is always in the details.

I will start with conversion, for the seeds of what we are calling evangelicalism start here. That seed is the shift toward individualism that took place in the 1600s and 1700s in Western Europe. This is the age of democracy's rise. This is the age of free will's rise. This is the age of the Enlightenment's rise.

With such a paradigm shift, it is no surprise that we would see a rise in the doctrine of believer's baptism over infant baptism. You are an individual. You must decide. The doctrine of justification by faith is at the core of the evangelisch split from Catholicism, and it has the individual written all over it.

4. Certainly we can find a thread of active evangelization from Wesley to Finney to Graham. This has often been the key manifestation of the activism that Bebbington speaks of. But there have been other forms of activism as well. John Wesley was very involved with social causes, such as the plight of the coal miner.

Donald Dayton famously wrote about the "evangelical heritage" of nineteenth century holiness groups that would be considered socially liberal today. Abolitionist groups and women's rights groups of the 1800s were far more the heirs to the so called evangelicalism of the 1700s than the stodgy Princeton Calvinists who opposed abolition.

In the twentieth century, the social justice aspects to the good news were divorced from its salvation aspects. "High evangelicalism" in the late 1900s generally rejected social activism. [5] There was always the Jim Wallis strand, but it was not how most people used the word evangelical in the late 1900s. So is Jim Wallis an evangelical or not? It depends on who you are asking. Some groups define evangelical in a way that includes him. Others don't. The meaning of a word is in how it is used by a group of people.

At the moment, an evangelical is primarily defined by political conservatism and fundamentalist ideology. In most circles, that is what the word means. You can pout. You can say it shouldn't be so. You can try to give a history lesson. But if that is the way a society is using a word, that's what the word means in that society. Period.

So evangelical activism at present is primarily about being against abortion and against gay marriage along with a host of civil religious accouterments like being for state's rights and being pro-NRA and being a fiscal conservative. Of course we cannot expect every evangelical to believe all the same things. But these are the central associations right now.

If you think of the emphases of evangelicalism as a word cloud. Sometimes one word is bigger than the other at various times. Right now, the word ACTIVISM is the biggest word in the meaning of evangelicalism, and it is activism of a civil religious sort. It remains to be seen whether the word can be effectively redirected. I personally doubt it for the near future. Those who do not want to be identified in this way should stop self-identifying with the word for now.

5. In the early days of "evangelicalism," the Bible certainly played a central role. This is another evangelisch inheritance. After rejecting the Church as the organizing principle of Christian faith, something needed to take its place, and the Bible was the ticket.

However, it was pre-modern interpretation of the Bible. Lacking a full historical consciousness, interpreters danced with the text, bringing the definitions in their head, full of unexamined culture and traditions, and the myriad theologies of Protestantism were born. The Bible was their one book, except that its meaning had everything to do with the dictionaries in their heads.

This was of course an opportunity for the Holy Spirit too. God met them where they were. God molded generations as preachers danced with the texts.

Enter German criticism and historical consciousness in the late 1800s. People had not read the Bible like they would read other books. Without knowing it, they just used a different paradigm when reading it. It is quite shocking when you start to read the Bible in its literary and historical context. The principles are so simple in some ways because it is how you read other books.

But you don't realize you read the Bible differently. You don't use common inductive sense when you are a pre-modern reader of the Bible. Suddenly contextual meanings become obvious. How could I have missed it? It was standing right in front of me!

6. Danger! Danger! It is one thing to fend off an attack from without. But what happens when scholars start telling you that the alleged source of your identity, the Bible, doesn't mean what you think it means?

And there were new ideas rising in the culture, ones that took you off guard. There is the rise of evolution. There had been a fairly friendly relationship between science and faith for a couple hundred years. Although some tried to accommodate evolution into their faith at first, others found it a hostile force, especially when social Darwinism came into play. Social Darwinism is the idea that some people are just more evolved than others and so deserve to be privileged.

The result is that the character of "biblicism" within evangelicalism changed from what it had been. Biblicism was now a protectionist move. Rather than the Bible serving as a generator of theology and practice, it often would now become the wall that stands against the evil forces at work in the culture. Fundamentalism is born.

The neo-evangelicals who rose in the late 1940s, the true parents of evangelicals today, liked to distinguish themselves from "uneducated" fundamentalists. Mark Noll calls holiness folk, Pentecostals, and dispensationalists, "fundamentalists." But the real fundamentalists are those in the twentieth century and beyond who have been fighting back against the forces of modernism--often doing so using the tools of modernism. Evangelicalism might have been a little more couth in the mid-twentieth century, but it stands in this same strain.

Jerry Fallwell effectively took over evangelicalism in the late twentieth century, intensifying its fundamentalist character. One of the primary functions of the Bible in evangelicalism has thus been as a bulwark against higher criticism, developments in science, and progressivism in politics. The Bible becomes a banner-head rather than a generative source of spiritual transformation.

High evangelicalism absorbed the inductive scientific method of modernism but then told it where it was allowed to go. [6] At present, though, post-modernism opened the door for a return to out of context reading. Only the old school evangelicals still worry about inductive Bible study. Theological interpretation is the new norm, a green light to read the Bible in the light of your theology rather than reading it historically. [7]

It is significant to realize that, typically, concepts like "inerrancy" are not really used to defend the real Bible, not really. They are used to defend against culture and, sometimes, against the Holy Spirit. The first ones to use the word inerrancy in the 1800s were anti-abolitionists. The concept was used to try to hold abolitionists to the fire of verses like Colossians 3:22. At present, some would try to use the concept to keep women from pursuing their call to ministry.

In short, the use of the Bible is quite different in contemporary evangelicalism than it was for John Wesley in the 1700s.

7. So we finally come to the cross. In my opinion, this is the least significant of the four characteristics as a defining feature. In practice, what we are looking at here manifests itself presently in an emphasis on penal substitution. In my own circles, it is hardly a point of discussion.

Penal substitution is not just the idea that Jesus took my place on the cross, not just that he absorbed the penalty of sin, but that he absorbed my individual penalty for sin. This is often conceived in a somewhat quantitative sense. If you could calculate the precise amount of my sin and add it up, Jesus was punished that exact amount.

What we are looking at here is a strand of Western Christianity that finds a certain high mark in Anselm (1033-1109) and the Roman Catholic tradition. John Calvin is in continuity with it despite the fact that he is a Protestant. And John Wesley believed in it too. It is a part of his theology that made him a "hair's breadth" from Calvinism.

The Wesleyan tradition currently sits somewhat loosely to this tradition. That doesn't mean that we are or are not evangelical. It just means that not everyone in the family has a long nose but they are still in the family... if they are.

8. Is evangelicalism dead? As long as there are people calling themselves evangelicals, as long as there are people being called evangelicals, then evangelicalism isn't dead. It just may not look like the people who were called evangelicals at some earlier point.

[1] The propaganda of Dinesh D'Sousa is rife with this fallacious thinking as well. He finds characteristics of Democrats and Republicans in the past and then insists that is what they are in the present. So while he may be correct about many aspects of Democratic thinking in the 1800s and early 1900s, the parties largely switched sides on matters relating to race in the mid-twentieth century--especially in the South.

[2] Some will recognize my allusion to Wittgenstein.

[3] Again, this is true of the holiness movement or Wesleyans or any group. Historically speaking, the holiness movement of the late 1800s and 1900s took on quite a different flavor than Wesley, especially due to the influence of a woman named Phoebe Palmer. The character of the movement changed, despite some areas of continuity. In itself, that is neither bad nor good. It is simply a question of meaning and who we want to be. We can "get back" to Wesley if we want, or we can stay "Phoebe Palmer," or, as I prefer, we can move forward taking the best of both, "constructing" an appropriate identity for today.

[4] My name is actually Dutch.

[5] The roots here are historical as well. Mainline churches in the early 1900s were often typified by what is called the "social gospel." This approach basically reduced the gospel to helping other people, an ethic, while rejecting or at least sitting loosely to doctrines like the divinity of Christ or the need for atonement.

Since we often define ourselves by our opposition to other groups, what would become evangelicalism became polarized against social causes. "If they are for it, we are against it." So we ended up with two halves instead of a whole. Of course the Wesleyan tradition never completely followed high evangelicalism in this area.

[6] By "high evangelicalism," I refer to the "neo-evangelical" hegemony launched in the late 1940s by individuals like Harold Ockenga, C. F. H. Henry, Billy Graham, and others. This is the era of the founding of Fuller Theological Seminary and Christianity Today. See The Apostles of Reason. It's power base consists as a collection of academic institutions and publishers.

[7] These two are often conflated. "I am reading the Bible through the lens of my theology but this is what it meant historically."

"The Eclipse of Evangelicalism" by David Drury

David Drury has written a prophetic piece about the state of the evangelical movement. I copy it here.
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The Eclipse of Evangelicalism

Repentance Upon the Death of a Movement

By David Drury

As of this day, August 21, 2017, I believe that the evangelical movement is dead. At least, it appears to be dead. As a movement, evangelicalism is no longer effective in its original aims in the West. The movement has shirked its persistent values, and has quit practicing the core convictions that made it relevant and necessary. Even if evangelicals still claim to believe the core values, they do not practice them. Evangelicalism still exists as a category of people today—but it no longer is an actual movement in the kingdom of God.

Today Americans gather to watch one of the most unique sights the skies produce: a total eclipse. The moon is passing directly between the earth and the sun, blocking its rays, but for a corona of subtle light exuding from the dark circle, a faint reminder that the sun is still there, obscured for a time. Visible from coast to coast, the eclipse shown on a map looks like an arcing brush stroke swept from Oregon to South Carolina. The last time the sun was eclipsed like this (what they call a “totality”) in America was June 8, 1918. Much has changed in the 99 years since the last total eclipse, particularly for evangelicals.

In the last century, but particularly in the last decade or two, the core of what it means to be evangelical has been eclipsed by other priorities. The shining truths have been obscured by other moons, which have come between evangelicals and their core identity. In the process of this eclipse, a darkness has come across the land of evangelicalism, and even though it happened slowly, it has happened surely to this day, where a near totality has been reached.

Evangelicalism has a long history that can be told in a variety of ways. Finding its source in revivals and awakenings as well as Methodism and pietism. Whitefield and Wesley, Ockenga and Graham, Finney and Stott, Edwards and von Zinzendorf: they all could be seen, in their own way, as founders from different eras of the evangelical movement. Most agree that evangelicalism, as a movement, reflected a core set of values, which were:

1. Conversion-oriented 
2. Bible-following 
3. Cross-focused 
4. Culture-transforming 

These are the classic four core values affirmed by many in evangelicalism, including the National Association of Evangelicals. Let’s examine each of these characteristics of evangelicalism and how they have been eclipsed:

Conversion-oriented
Evangelicals not only believed but behaved in a way that being “born-again by the transforming work of Jesus Christ” was critical. They shared their love of Christ to others and people “came to Jesus.” Was it messy? Yes. Did it all add up like a theology text-book? No. But because of this passion for conversion millions entered into a life-long process of following Jesus in fits and starts. This meant that disciples were called out to “follow me” and enter discipleship.

Today the conversion-oriented activity of evangelicals has now been eclipsed by the love of entertainment.

Bible-following
More than merely Bible-believing, evangelicals were a Bible-living sort of people. They followed the Bible and obeyed its teachings. They gave scripture a higher authority over any other source. Some might have valued reason, tradition, and experience, but even those critical elements were subject to the witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ found in the Bible. The pietistic, revivalist, and holiness streams of evangelicalism ensured that the people called evangelical were not just evangelistic, but also discipled to live differently by obedience to this gospel.

Today the Bible-following lifestyle of evangelicals has been eclipsed by the love of self.

Cross-focused
Core to being an evangelical was a cross-focused way of life. The evangelical was living by the mantra: Christ has done it on the cross. The evangelical was all about the forgiveness attainable by the sacrifice of the perfect God-man on the cross, making possible the redemption of all humanity. Evangelicalism believed in the incarnation, the teaching of Jesus, the miracles, the resurrection, and the ascension, and return of Christ—but central to it all was the crucifixion as the event and doorway into the rest of its three values. This brought the movement a potency and clarity in focus where all things began and ended with Jesus.

Today the cross-focused nature of evangelicals has been eclipsed by the love of power.

Culture-transforming
Evangelicalism was missionary and activist in an inter-dependent manner. Evangelicals cared about the souls living down the street and around the world, so they sought to share the gospel with them in innovative ways, and advocated for changes in the economy and government in a way that would help those who were voiceless or oppressed. Abolitionists, suffragists, and pro-lifers all found a home in this paradigm. To a lesser extent, the civil rights movement found a home in this paradigm as well (although largely in the Black Evangelical church, more on that later). They all sought to see people come to Christ worldwide and to, as a result, transform entire societies as the holy witness of Jesus spread across the land.

Today the culture-transforming mission of evangelicals has been eclipsed by the love of money.

You might see the a theme evident in the phrasing above, but one of the things that has had a frog-in-the-kettle effect for this change in evangelicalism is that long ago we stopped actively measuring the actual activity attached to these values, and instead merely treated them as beliefs one would check off like a creed. Evangelicals were decidedly not a creed-oriented people, so this is out of character, but these four values became something to help us discover the answer to the question: “who is an evangelical?”

Surveys began to ask questions discerning how much someone believed statements like: “the Bible is the highest authority for what I believe,” or: “only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.” It is quite difficult to measure the actual behavior of people, and easier to do a survey of what they say they believe. Further, it may be important for younger readers who have come of age during a partial eclipse of evangelicalism, that evangelicals of days gone by didn’t just say they believed these things, they actually lived differently than their non-evangelical neighbors because of them.

Some have attempted to redefine evangelicals or categorize them to make a distinction for those who actually go to church, or engage in other practices. These attempts are noble, but have for the most part shown disappointing trends all the same.

I say “we” in the next sections because I am part of the problem I will outline. I repent of each of these choices, for I have my part in them, particularly since I am a leader in a denomination, and have responsibility for not only my own actions but for the behavior of my people. I am convicted in each of these areas, and write them through tears, grieving for the eclipse of one of the most important and Christ-honoring movements in the history of Christianity.

The Eclipse of Conversion by Entertainment
We choose entertainment over evangelism every day of our lives. We evangelicals care more deeply about the characters on our favorite Netflix show than the neighbors in the homes next to us. We value news as entertaining commentary and conflict more than the world full of those who need Jesus. We choose to value attendance at our churches far more than conversions in our services, much less in our conversations. We have even ceded the worship of God over to an entertainment-driven cycle, one where our Church teams and staffs are continually required to top what they did last week to continue to attract us and entertain us as the “audience.” Our churches accidentally become a part of the menu of Sunday entertainment choices the suburbs have before them, where people wonder: “should I exercise, watch news shows or football, sleep in, take the kids to soccer practice, mow the lawn, or go to Church today?” This is all propagated by an evangelical culture that chooses to feed off the entertaining rush that comes through mostly socio-political conflict with strangers, and even our friends, in comment sections and social media. We care little for the souls of these people we interact with—we demonstrate that we only care that our ideas win the argument, and that we look smarter than our opponents while doing so. We need lessons in civility at a 101 level, to say nothing for the lack of holiness displayed. We no longer love our enemies for the sake of the gospel, we don’t even build bridges our friends if they disagree with us. Evangelicals have “un-friended” the world in the process, as if the gospel of Jesus Christ and possible conversion of these acquaintances is worth nothing to us.

But, before I depress us overmuch, I need to say that I think we post-evangelicals know deep down that conversion of the lost is more important than all the entertainment of this world. Everything will change when we engage more devoutly in our own converted discipleship journey—updating the simple, millennia-old practices of our faith, by meeting as handfuls of believers in living rooms and coffee shops, reading the Bible and praying for each other, interceding over names of lost people, and serving together in our communities. We must repent of our idolization of comfort over conversion, knowing that only Jesus saves us.

Regardless of what others do, I commit to conversion-orientation, because it starts with me, or my vibrant faith dies along with evangelicalism. I repent that I have allowed entertainment to eclipse the importance of conversion, and will make concrete steps before the end of the year to engage with fresh focus in this area, and reject the idolatry of entertainment and comfort which evangelicalism has embraced.

I will…

• Pray for the lost
• Share my faith
• Eliminate excessive entertainment and consumption
• Engage in uncomfortable conversations
• Converse with civility and redemption in mind online and in person 

The Eclipse of the Bible by Self
We choose ourselves over the core convictions of the Bible routinely, so we are bereft of anything resembling the fruit of the Spirit. It has gotten so bad that mainline liberals who we think don’t even believe in the authority of scripture in their lives are better at actually obeying most of the commands of Jesus than we are. This is a profound indictment for us who purportedly have the blood of Jesus covering our sin. Jesus has called out a holy people, a royal priesthood of all believers, and instead we choose whatever our own selfish desires want. Instead of contextualizing the gospel, we rationalize our behavior. We think less of what the world needs to next hear, or what the gospel claims for our actions, and we think more of what backs up our actions in scripture. When we are challenged by anyone we do a google search of scriptures that might somehow be negotiated into backing up our behavior, rather than engaging in the word in such a way that it actually challenges us and our obedience to it any longer. We attack the world primarily over matters of sex, while being no more holy than we were a decade ago ourselves. We are stuck in our sins and believe in the authority of the Bible only in as much as it gives us the authority of self-expression of our evangelical political concepts over others. We don’t actually give the Bible authority over our own daily walk, we use it as a pseudo-authority over others, thus turning the living word of God into an idolatry of selfish aims.

But, I think we post-evangelicals know deep down that the Word of God is more important than any one of us in this world. If we return to the beautiful life-giving way of scripture-living people the movement may rebirth in us. If our neighbors see us actually living differently than them, instead of just putting a different political sign in our yards than them, we will have begun to change this trend. May we repent of our sins and go back to Scripture in our quiet moments each week, worshipping God in our every step, confessing and repenting when we err, and becoming a people that are admired for our devotion to living as Christ taught, rather than as hypocrites who always point out the sins of others, never taking care to confess our own.

Regardless of what others do, I commit to Bible-following, because it starts with me, or my vibrant faith dies along with evangelicalism. I repent that I have allowed authority of the self to eclipse the authority of the Bible, and will make concrete steps before the end of the year to engage with fresh focus in this area, and reject the idolatry of self which evangelicalism has embraced.

I will…

• Read my Bible in a way that it convicts me about my behavior and attitude
• Allow others to truly keep me accountable to live in a holy way
• Live with conviction under the authority of Scripture
• Eliminate hypocrisy from my life
• Selflessly admit I could be wrong 

The Eclipse of the Cross by Power
We choose the power of the world over the power of the cross, preferring to chase the halls of power in Washington D.C. through political machinations rather than to rely on the work of Jesu Christ. We would prefer to put a picture of ourselves with our favorite politician on our wall than the cross of Jesus Christ. We leaders point to our likes and shares and platform, all symbols of our powerful status, rather than point to the cross of Jesus, boasting only in him. We would rather invite a politician into our pulpit, literally between the congregation and the cross in our buildings, to curry favor and let fame rub off on us than to call people to the forgiveness of Jesus Christ at the cross. All too often this power we desire has actually had overtones of white power with a strident denial of any white privilege. We have allowed those with vaguely white supremacist views to not only take refuge in our churches and go unchallenged from the pulpit, but also to allow a neo-supremacist view of race to cultivate even among our educated and influential leaders. As this has happened, the idea of a Black Evangelical and a White Evangelical has become even more distinct, and the already deep divisions and darkest days of evangelical separatism have re-emerged, threatening the unity that God commanded of us in a more direct way than at any time since the Civil Rights era, when we likewise largely failed at the challenge set before us by God. Some have hoped that revival would come and then magically end our problems of race, providing unity. It could be that God is waiting upon our true repentance from the lust for power and the subtly supportive practices of racism to allow revival to come. We may have his priorities out of order, since confession often precedes and sparks revival, rather than coming after it.

But, I think we post-evangelicals know deep down that the cross is more powerful than the powers of this world. If we begin to see how the Holy Spirit might bring us together, across race and ethnicity, and to truly listen to the concerns of our brothers and sisters of color, we can reverse this trend. If we repent of our chasing after the power of the world, and begin to chase after the power of God, we will find a greater statesmanship, and a credibility to actually speak into the public square that we have somewhere along the way lost. When we think of our identity, we can regain a sense of movement only by pointing to the cross of Christ, by pointing to the party of the lamb, rather than advocating for the party of the donkey or the elephant, chasing after the permanent power of heaven, rather than temporary power of this earth.

Regardless of what others do, I commit to cross-focus because it starts with me, or my vibrant faith dies along with evangelicalism. I repent that I have allowed power to eclipse the cross of Christ, and will make concrete steps before the end of the year to engage with fresh focus in this area, and reject the idolatry of power which evangelicalism has embraced.

I will…

• Fix my eyes on Jesus and his cross
• Ask others to question ways in which I seek power
• Eliminate partisanship from my faith convictions, demoting party affiliation to a preference
• Ask open ended questions of people of color, receiving and follow their counsel
• Doing the hard work of reconciliation that actually costs me something more than words

The Eclipse of Transformation by Money
We choose money over missions and over the transformation of cultures and societies. We calculate the cost of every move so we never say anything that might too sharply challenge anyone, we have ceded the prophetic high ground of biblical justice in our churches to ensure the steady flow of resources to make sure we meet budget and build buildings. We have lost the urgency to send anyone to reach the billions and billions who are lost worldwide, and evangelicalism is no longer the mission sending movement it was designed to be. Evangelicals from the global south now send droves of missionaries to North America to reach those we miss in our back yard, and nine other countries now send a higher percentage of their members as missionaries than we do. Church boards act more like money managers of missionary funds than the classical evangelicals who gathered in days gone by, shedding tears, praying prayers, and paying the way for those to reach entire countries dying without Christ. They sent their own sons and daughters for the cause, while we obsess about a rate of return on our investment like bankers instead of believers. Likewise, we care not for the actual transformation of our neighborhoods and cities at home. Evangelicals largely see immigrants and refugees as only a threat to our fiscal security, rather than people that we might reach for the sake of the gospel, or when they are Christians (as is often the case) seeing them as partners we can learn from and work with. This erosion of transformative motive has made tapping into the xenophobia of evangelicals a sure-fire election issue for politicians. We choose where to live and where to have our children educated with only a concern for our financial well-being and protection. Propagating our financial security and growth is the unspoken but constant aim of our decisions, and we cannot transform the souls and systems of society when the goal is our own greed.

But, I think we post-evangelicals know deep down that the transformation of our culture is more valuable than all the money in this world. We can restore what we once were by fostering a zeal for the world’s salvation, a sense of loving the whole world like our Father does, sending his own Son to save it and offer his transformative way of life to all. We can regain what God wants for us if we look at our culture as a whole, and find cross-cultural ways to bring the kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven, whether that means a loving connection to the immigrant new to our neighborhood, or the lost land in another hemisphere that needs us to rekindle the fires of missionary impulse.

Regardless of what others do, I commit to this kind of missionary culture-transformation, because it starts with me, or my vibrant faith dies along with evangelicalism. I repent that I have allowed money to eclipse the transformation of culture, and will make concrete steps before the end of the year to engage with fresh focus in this area, and reject the idolatry of money which evangelicalism has embraced.

I will…

• Live on dramatically less and spend more wisely
• Give a greater amount of my income to supporting missionaries 
• Pray for worldwide evangelism daily
• Consider which areas of systemic injustice require my sacrificial investment
• Eliminate ways I contribute to injustice and risks my white privilege to defend the oppressed

Four out of Five White Evangelicals
Now we need to talk about the elephant in the room. Much has been made of the data showing that White Evangelicals in the US voted for Donald Trump at a rate of 4 out of 5. You may not like me bringing this up in the context of this treatise which is more about the state of the church and theological matters, but like or not, as evangelicalism reaches total eclipse, it comes at a moment when we are associated quite directly with the President we largely helped achieve power. It is notable that many prominent evangelicals were silent about politics in the past few years, but many supported and continue to support Trump vocally. As a full disclosure on my part, two of the most notable public evangelical detractors of Trump include two great leaders I worked for directly in the last decade, Jo Anne Lyon and Max Lucado.

So as we consider evangelical identity in its age of eclipse it is pertinent to ask ourselves: is Trump an evangelical? I am tempted to say no, based on the above classical components of evangelical belief and life, Trump is not a classic evangelical. However, he may in fact roughly match the reality of evangelicalism in eclipse. He juggles these four factors like a court jester of Washington DC, giving little if any respect or attention to the values evangelicals have said they care about for hundreds of years.

He has experienced no personal conversion personally, claiming to have never even asked God for forgiveness and defending his faith as an entirely private matter, but he values entertainment over most anything, devoting most of his business life to it. Even those that cannot stand our president must admit that he is a highly entertaining sort. No one has ever accused the man of being boring. He is not Bible-following, in belief or practice, as is patently evident in his behavior and words. He is not cross-focused, never bringing to bear the concepts of redemption or the reconciling grace made possible by the death of Jesus on the cross. Nor is he culture-transforming, as his isolationist values make no room for the longstanding moral and Christian influence of our nation worldwide, something that evangelicals have perhaps even over-stated in the past, in their drive to be a witness to the world.

Some hoping to gain through his candidacy have written these things off as the beliefs and practices of a “baby Christian,” or a “man with flaws but a good heart.” I am not here to talk about politics. My aim is not to convince you to object to Trump as I and my mentors have, or to support him. Instead, my claim is that Donald Trump may in fact be a mirror to hold up to show evangelicals what they actually look like now. Whether you have a politically calculated toleration for Trump, or a revulsion to his policies and behavior, he is us, reflecting in the mirror all our lost glory as evangelicals.

Donald Trump is what we evangelicals already are, or at least are becoming. It explains why he is so supported among us. Even after a cavalcade of circus-like activity coming from the White House since his inauguration, he still retains his support. Why? Why not, I say, if he matches what we actual value. We love entertainment, ourselves, power, and money. Trump gives us those things. We need to admit it. We love these values even more than the Son of God they obscure behind them. We might fill out surveys and claim differently, but we don’t live that way.

Next Evangelicalism
In this treatise I have claimed that like the eclipse of the sun by the moon, evangelicalism has been eclipsed internally by other priorities and idolatry. Repentance is needed by we evangelicals, and a return to the core values that made evangelicalism purposeful for God in the first place. Evangelicalism was never perfect, but it was used by God, and perhaps this eclipse will pass if we each as individuals recommit to do our part to the core tenants that made evangelicalism work for Jesus. We may need to throw out the term. We may need to join a Christian identity that will emerge and be created by young people tomorrow that we cannot clearly see today. But whatever the case, may we again become those who value:

1. Individual lives converted by Christ and made new… 
2. The Bible as the true guide for actually living differently than we used to live… 
3. The cross of Christ as the actual crux of history, which provides the only persistent power worth aligning ourselves with, and… 
4. The missionary transformation of cultures and communities, found here and nearby, and in the hard and faraway places likewise.

May all this be made possible by the Him who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or even dream of, Jesus Christ.

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David Drury is author of ten books, including God is for Real, Transforming Presence, Being Dad, and SoulShift. He serves at the chief of staff for The Wesleyan Church headquarters. The Eclipse of Evangelicalism may be re-published in any format provided these lines are included.
© 2017 by David Drury