The State of Evangelicalism

I have been thinking a lot about the identity of evangelicalism in the second decade of the 21th century.  The coalition of the post WWII created by the like of Harold Ockenga (founder of Fuller and Gordon-Conwell Seminaries), Billy Graham, Bill Bright, etc. has simply faded away.  Instead, we have silos throughout the fruited plains:  The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, Together 4 the Gospel, Patheos (and others I am not listing) along with individual voices such Brian McLaren, Rachel Evans, Pete Enns, John Franke who are pushing the boundaries of evangelicalism further than anyone could have imagined even 10 years ago.  The debates also take place in evangelical colleges and among publishers rooted in the evangelical tradition.  We are in an age where everything is questioned, especially the givens of Protestant evangelical identity.  The very idea of evangelical "tradition" seems suspect and should be scrutinized and usually needs, it is argued, serious re-thinking.  So it's fair to say the old liberal "hermeneutic of suspicion" has come to our shores.   This makes you long for the good old days when evangelicals argued whether there would be a 1000-year reign of Christ, arminianism vs calvinism, spiritual gifts today and the role of women in the Church. The days of chivalry are over.   Now the debates have moved to a total war approach and deal with far more fundamental issues, including:
1.  Inerrancy and the normative nature of Scripture  ("the Bible is a human product, therefore not a perfect record")
2.  Historicity of the Biblical record ("theologically true, but not always historical")
3.  Creationism (traditional reading of Genesis account is not compatible with the scientific record)
4.  Justification by grace alone through faith alone (redefinitions of justification)
5.  Sexual Identity ("as long as people love each other, they should be able to fulfill their sexual desires")
6.  Uniqueness of Christ ("not everyone needs to hear the Gospel in order to be saved")


At the same time, those who defend a traditional definition of these doctrines tend to be dismissed as "fundamentalists."  While we have to be careful in drawing tight connections, the situation is not unlike the modernist-fundamentalist controversy of almost a century ago, except now the modernists are intellectual evangelical progressives and the "fundamentalist" role is taken by those who would question the necessity to jettison these doctrines.

I will take up these issues in future blogs as each of these categories need to be unpacked in more details.