(Part Ten)

(Adapted from chapter one of ‘Recent Trends Among Evangelicals’ by Rowland C. Croucher, John Mark Ministries 1986/1995.

Some conclusions: the way forward

In 1974, Richard Quebedeaux introduced us to ‘the young evangelicals’. Then in 1976 he wrote about ‘the new charismatics’. In 1978 it was ‘the worldly evangelicals’. He says there are three sub-cultures among people who believe in the authority of scripture, the necessity of personal faith in Christ and evangelism. They are fundamentalists, charismatics and the descendents of the neo-evangelicals now commonly referred to simply as evangelicals.

Quebedeaux then divides the evangelicals into two more sub-groups: the evangelical right and centre, and the young evangelical left. He says more liberal Christians and the evangelical left are moving closer together: the liberals are becoming disenchanted with some of their views and are developing a more personal understanding of the faith. And the evangelical left is coming closer to new-orthodoxy, espousing the views of Barth, Brunner and Bonhoeffer. These evangelicals are more intellectually and theologically permissive; they major on the here-and-now rather than being preoccupied with the ‘there-and- then’; they major on God’s grace rather than God’s judgment; they are more sensitive to the plight of the poor and are thus more inclined to espouse a simpler lifestyle; they appreciate the fine arts more; they are abandoning many of the old revivalist taboos (they may have wine with their meals); they are open to scientific research and training; and they are concerned with such issues as Christian feminism.

Now this is a generalisation, but Quebedeaux is on to something. Today’s ‘progressive evangelicals’ (as I’d prefer to call them)

are less concerned with theories of the atonement or the eucharist, with carefully defining eschatological events, or with the ‘how and when’ of creation. They are more concerned with the ‘who and why?’ questions relating to both the proton and the eschaton.

They would affirm that the most important thing in the world – and in the church – is not doctrinal orthodoxy, however that’s defined, but love and grace. It’s less important whether you pray to the saints than whether you know God and are experiencing his forgiveness. They believe that when Paul urged the Romans to ‘accept one another… for the glory of God, as Christ has accepted you’ (Romans 15:7), then such acceptance by Christians of each other has simply to be on the same basis as God’s acceptance of us – that is, without merit or partiality.

These ‘progressive evangelicals’ can be criticised by those further to the ‘right’ as being ‘middle of the road’ or soft on the fundamentals of the gospel. Now if that means that the great primitive Christian credal affirmations are watered down in any way, that would be a serious indictment indeed.

But these evangelicals would deny they’re doing that. They affirm the key elements of the historical Christian gospel. What they are saying is that their more conservative brothers (‘sisters’ don’t seem to have such a passion for definition) have become too definitive about things scripture itself is not definitive about. They have formulated theological systems which will in turn ‘have their day’. God’s truth is larger than the measure of our minds and defies our ultimate categorisations. Progressive evangelicals are committed to historic evangelical orthodoxy, not because it’s historic, evangelical or orthodox, but because and to the extent that it’s biblical. They accuse their more conservative brothers of being selective in their preaching (majoring on Paul, minoring on the prophets, for example), inculcating by default faith in their theological systems rather than faith in the living and cosmic Christ. All our theories, our theologies and our ethical injunctions are to be tested against the teaching of scripture contextually interpreted.

These progressives no longer relish their separation from other Christian believers. They are happier with an expression like ‘one holy, catholic and apostolic church’. They are even doubtful that God is an evangelical like them! God seems to be at work in all kinds of ways and places and peoples: and certainly doesn’t seem to respect the divisions Western European Christians have foisted on the church!

Karl Marx said the point is not merely to understand the world, but to change it. He was stating, unwittingly, a profound Christian truth – though, of course, Marx’s determinism is not an inherently Christian idea. There will continue to be swings from narrowness to breadth, from accepted orthodoxies to more liberal positions. These happen in any dynamic philosophical or theological system. Our quest is certainly for understanding, but it’s for much more. Richard Cardinal Cushing was once asked: ‘Are you conservative or liberal?’ To which he replied: ‘In things I don’t know about I’m conservative. In things I know about I’m liberal.’

This leads us to posit an important dictum: theological stance is probably largely a matter of temperament. Certainly, persons at any point along a theological spectrum can be hard-line (Ian Paisley, Jim Wallis) or soft-line. Three psychologists can help us at this point. Jean Piaget’s theories of cognitive development suggest a differentiation in our mode of thinking when we become adolescent. He says the child (7-11 years) thinks ‘concretely’, whereas from adolescence we acquire the ability to think ‘formally’ (having ‘ideas about ideas’). It is a short step from this hypothesis to believing that adults think both ways too: there’s a mix of concrete and formal modes in the way we think. How we think about something will depend most importantly on the amount of risk we’re willing to take with novelty. And this is, of course, a function of our emotional security and maturity as well as our intellectual integrity. When you think about it, this is the reason fundamentalists are preoccupied with evangelising children and teenagers, but often don’t get very far with well-educated adults.

James Fowler builds on the contributions of Piaget and others and suggests six stages that emerge in working out the meaning of our lives: from the intuitive imitative faith of childhood, through conventional and more independent faith, to the universalising, self-transcending faith of fuller maturity. He explains how many people do not complete the stage sequence, but remain on a plateau. The ‘stage six’ persons are heedless to self-preservation and have a feel for transcendent moral and religious actuality: ‘Their enlarged visions of universal community disclose the partialness of our tribes and pseudo- species… it is little wonder that (stage six persons) so frequently become martyrs for the visions they incarnate’ (‘Stages of Faith’, Dove Communications, 1981, p.200).

Now put this together with Leon Festinger’s main contribution to social psychology, his theory of cognitive dissonance. He says discrepant cognitions (ideas in conflict) produce an uncomfortable psychological state, dissonance, that we are motivated to reduce or eliminate. If our security is bound up with our belief-system and our peers who also hold to these beliefs are ‘significant others’ for us then there is significant psychological pressure to retain ideas that are compatible with each other and incorporate new ideas which reinforce, or complement, existing ones.

An example: the churches most resistant to the idea of charismatic renewal are those with the most fixed ideas about biblical inerrancy and the ‘rightness’ of their own theological position. Because those churches had not incorporated such ideas into their thinking and worship, but nevertheless people seemed ‘turned on for Christ’ in this form of the renewal, and the Bible is also full of ‘signs and wonders’, then ‘cognitive assonance’ is attained by castigating or explaining away the new phenomenon, isolating members from exposure to charismatic meetings, or adjusting their biblical understanding to cope (signs and wonders ceased with the apostles etc.).

Now whilst some of us might deplore this lack of openness to any new thing God is doing, nevertheless this is the psychology of the human creatures God has made. It behoves all of us to be accepting of others. Those whose thinking is rooted in ‘simplicity this side of complexity’ must not be too harsh with those who enjoy ‘complexity the other side of simplicity’. Ideally we are all moving towards ‘simplicity the other side of complexity’, but we must be patient with one another on the way there.

Again, the things that unite fundamentalists and evangelicals are much, much greater than the things dividing them! So ‘don’t let’s polarise’ as John Stott put it in an address I heard him give in Melbourne. Although some Christians are conservative by temperament, he said – ‘stuck in mud, set like concrete’ – every Christian is called to be a conservationist, to conserve the faith handed down from Christ to his apostles and to us. But every Christian is also called to be radical, asking awkward questions and, like Jesus, becoming a keen critic of establishments where necessary. On the whole, thinks Stott, Christians tend too much to be conservative. They don’t easily adapt to change.

So our aim in wrestling with theological issues is to be both radical and conservative, in fellowship both evangelical and ecumenical, in attitudes espousing both truth and love, and in spirituality given both to reflection and action. We must develop a ‘Christian mind’ on the big issues of our day, but also learn to ‘fold the wings of the intellect’ and open our hearts to God as well.

In the past we have sometimes been known for what we have opposed rather than what we have affirmed. We have expended a lot of energy opposing other Christians rather than together waging war against the real enemies: the world, the flesh and the devil. Sometimes in our questioning we have lost the ‘sure word of the Lord’. But sometimes, too, in our resistance to change we have not listened to the wind of the Spirit.

Four issues that will continue to be debated will be biblical inerrancy, charismatic renewal, church growth (and our relationship to the social sciences generally) and social ethics. But there are four more issues which I believe are in the ascendency: our relationships between the sexes (Christian feminism), our relationship with God (spiritual formation and direction – the journey inward), our relationship with the world (peace and justice – the journey outward), and relationship with other Christians (ecumenism). (Two of these – justice and spirituality – occupy the rest of the book).

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Here’s a good summary of the Evangelical movement in the U.S. at the end of 2011: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/12/28/3399068.htm