Redeeming Evangelicalism

(Ed: This is supposed to be my third talk for Ireland, next weekend. However, I am conscious of being waaay out on a limb here, and may just dump the whole thing!)

Where we began

I’d like to begin my third talk by making clear that I hold evangelical Christianity in the highest regard. Wherever you find true evangelicalism, you find a passion for the gospel, a dynamism to the church, a desire for holiness and a faithfulness to Scripture.

Anything which I’ve said or will say by way of criticism must be seen in this context.

However, it will also be clear that I see evangelicalism as a broad movement which is defined primarily in terms of praxis arising from experience.

The theological basis of evangelicalism is a core of often-undeveloped theological propositions. These propositions are, I believe, true. They can be summed up in the demand to believe, as the Apostle Paul demanded that we believe, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures.

Nevertheless, this is very far from a full-blown theology. Evangelicalism is not creedal, nor is it denominational. Most importantly, we cannot swap the word ‘evangelical’ for ‘Christian’, even though, in my view, Christianity is quintessentially ‘evangelical’.

The evangelical dynamic needs to be set within a bigger context —the context of the work of God in Christ, revealed in Scripture —if it is to be true to the gospel and effective in the long term.

The evangelical tradition

At the same time, we need to see that evangelicalism is itself a tradition which is not above criticism. And when I say this, I am referring not to the kind of manifestations of the Christian life that we sometimes equate with evangelicalism (I think this was the great mistake of Dave Tomlinson’s The Post-evangelical).

Rather, I am referring to the evangelical presentation of the gospel itself. I am referring to how evangelicals evangelize, and I want to suggest that some of the weaknesses in evangelicalism which I identified in the last talk arise precisely at this point.

Spot the difference

I want to tell you a story, or rather to read you a story from Scripture, and ask you if you can spot the difference between this and with most contemporary evangelism:

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. ²⁷ And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship ²⁸ and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. ²⁹ And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” ³⁰ So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” ³¹ And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. ³² Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. ³³ In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” ³⁴ And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” ³⁵ Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.

Now let me pause there and ask how many of us would have done the same. My guess is, we all would have done. We would have seen it is a golden, God-given opportunity to proclaim the gospel.

But now let me ask, how many of us would then have got the response Philip got:

And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?”

My guess is, none. In fact, I am sure the answer is none. The way we present the gospel, the way the gospel was presented to us, and the way we teach others to present the gospel, does not lead anyone to ask, “What is to prevent me being baptized?”

The way we learn

In researching this talk, I came across a website which examined six popular gospel outlines, all of which would, I think, claim to be evangelical. They were,

The Bridge to Life, by the Navigators.

ProclaimIT (formerly called The Black Book or Why Good People Don’t Go To Heaven), which is a multimedia presentation, suitable for the mobile phone or i-pod.

Two Ways to Live, from Phillip Jensen and co in Sydney

Knowing God Personally (formerly Four Spiritual Laws), from Campus Crusade for Christ

Are You A Good Person?, by Ray Comfort

The World We All Want, Sydney again.

To this list, we may also add Norman Warren’s Journey into Life, that I commended earlier.

In all of these, Christ is presented as the one who has died for our sins according to the Scriptures. In none of these, as far as I can work out, is this message presented in such a way that anyone would ask, “Where can I get baptized?”

Compare that with, for example, Acts 2:41, “So those who received [Peter’s] word were baptized ...”, or Acts 8:11, “when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women,” or Acts 9:18, “Then Paul rose and was baptized,” or Acts 16:32-33, “And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.”

Now I suspect some of us will be feeling uncomfortable, and even defensive, at this point, but don’t jump to conclusions about what I might be saying. All I want you to notice at this stage is the difference between how baptism follows naturally from the presentation of the gospel in Acts and ask why it doesn’t follow naturally —in fact doesn’t even get a mention —in most evangelical gospel presentations.

And then I want you to ask what might be the significance and the effect of this.

Caution

Let me tell you where I am not going with this. I am not suggesting there is something in baptism itself, or in the way in which we do baptism, which determines whether an individual stays on the rails or goes off them later on.

I think that was somewhat the thesis David Pawson advanced in The Normal Christian Birth, but it is not what I am suggesting here.

In fact, my primary concern is not with baptism at all. What I am saying fits entirely, I hope, with what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:17, “for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel.”

I am not suggesting that we suddenly become ‘hyper-Baptists’, who see baptism as the new key to success or failure, and for whom baptism becomes another way to divide evangelicals, as if we didn’t have enough already.

In fact, what I’m concerned about is not so much how we include baptism in, but why, as evangelicals, we leave baptism out, and how this reflects and shapes the evangelicalism. It is the hole left by the absence of baptism that concerns me — why is it there, and why does it matter?

No need for baptism?

I suggest there are two important reasons why we leave baptism out.

The first is, perhaps unsurprisingly, pragmatic. Evangelicalism emerged within Christendom, or situations close to it, where most people already were baptized.

Even today, many of the people we share the gospel with have been baptized, even though they are not only not believers, but have never been brought up even to consider becoming believers.

Unless we are ourselves Baptists, we will not be encouraging them to get baptized again. And even Baptists seem to regard baptism as something evangelism relating to the fruits of evangelism, not the gospel itself —though I am willing to stand corrected on that point.

In short, we have not spoken about baptism because we have not needed to. However, that is clearly beginning to change.

No effect from baptism?

I suspect the second reason, however, is that many evangelicals see no need for baptism because in their view it doesn’t do anything.

I have heard, though I hate to say it, of clergy who have said at an infant’s baptism that we are doing nothing here —just making the baby’s head wet.

Now I hope that view is a minority, but I suspect that if pressed many evangelicals, including many evangelical clergy, would be entirely unclear as to what baptism is doing. They are clear —or reasonably clear —about what it is not doing. But they are clearer on the negatives that the positives.

And here, I would even (tentatively) include Baptists. For like much Protestant paedobaptist theology, Baptist anti-paedobaptist theology is as much a theology of negation as of affirmation and Baptist confessions have much more to say about who should not receive baptism than the New Testament ever does.

Baptism in much evangelical theology is an afterthought, a PS, a tidying-up. Moreover, it is left to the discretion of the individual —it will be arranged when they wish, as they feel ready.

They are not saying to us, “Here is water, what is to prevent me being baptized?” and we are not saying to them, “Repent and be baptized.”

Omission

Now let me stress once again, I am not saying that therefore the secret is to talk about baptism. It is the absence itself that matters, but why does it matter?

First, because it shows that we are not reading Scripture as closely as we might like to think. Let us remind ourselves of the Great Commission:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. (Matt 28:19)

It is no exaggeration to say that the evangelical typically leaves out the bit between “nations” and “teaching”. But by its very nature, this means we ignore at the outset of the Christian life precisely what we are supposed to teach, which is “all that I have commanded you”. And we leave out precisely what we are supposed to do, which is to baptize those whom we are making disciples.

Significance

But what of those who do baptize? Unfortunately, the truth is that baptism itself is generally so misunderstood that it is not administered Christianly, even when it is administered rigorously.

What I mean is this: baptism is treated separately from the process of salvation, rather than as integral to it. In Scripture, the gospel is presented in such a way that baptism is part of the process. Let me read again from Jens Christensen in The Practical Approach to Muslims:

Baptism is NOT the witness of the individual that he now has faith in Christ. [...] Baptism, considered as a witness, is the testimony of the Church to an act of God. Baptism proclaims to the world that God has a pact with mankind, mediated through the body of Christ, the Church.

Notice, baptism also confronts us immediately with the reality of the church. If we preach mere repentance and faith, as inward experiences and personal decisions, we privatize the faith. Then, when the individual is confronted by the church —by the lives and beliefs of other Christians —there is a fresh challenge: “What has my faith got to do with these people?”

Baptism, by contrast, demands and immediate engagement with the church, for the simple reason that no one can baptize themselves. I need at least one other believer to baptize me, and I need them to tell me what this is all about.

The Church

But again, what matters here is not so much the doing of baptism as its omission. We omit baptism from the message of the gospel not only because we doubt that baptism does anything but because we doubt that the church matters.

Or rather, we accept that church matters, but (like baptism) we see it as something added on to salvation, like a post-script —something which the individual can choose. So Norman Warren says to the new convert, “Join a local church at once.”

But before this, in telling you how to “grow strong as a Christian” he writes,

The Bible is the Christian’s food. It is a living book and through it God will speak to you. Read it every day.

And,

Talk to Jesus Christ naturally as to a close friend, yet respectfully remembering who he is. Spend time alone with him every day.

It is thoroughly individualistic —God speaks to you in the Bible, you speak to God in prayer, and you do this alone. True, he adds, “never miss being with Christians in church on Sunday.” But that is point three, not point one.

Once again, though, let me try to clarify what I’m saying. I’m not saying that baptism is what is important. I’m saying that the omission of baptism from how evangelicals currently tend to present the gospel (I say currently, because they wouldn’t have done so 2,000 years ago!) reflects weaknesses in current evangelical understanding and therefore in our missiology and in the effects of our mission.

It would be no good simply tacking baptism onto the end of our evangelistic appeal. We have to ask ourselves why we have left it off and what this says about our understanding of God’s work for us and in us, and what message this gives to the new convert.

It is no wonder, for example, if the new convert has a high regard for their own opinions about what the Bible means if we have taught them that the church is something for them to choose having been saved, not something which was the vehicle through which they received the gospel of salvation.

By why would they take the teachings of the Bible seriously when we leave out the fact of baptism? And why would they be anything other than individualistic, when we have taught them that everything of importance took place solely between them and God? And why would they think it mattered whether they joined a church now or later, when we have not set their conversion in the context of the church?

It is not that they have not been baptized which matters, so much as the fact that we have taught them bad habits from the outset. And it is precisely these bad habits, I would argue, that come back to weaken evangelicals and evangelicalism in later years.

Strengthening evangelicalism

Let me reiterate. Nothing I am saying is about rejecting evangelicalism. So long as the word ‘evangelical’ continues to mean a gospel-centred, salvation-proclaiming spirituality, then I want to be known as an evangelical because I believe Christianity is, in this sense, an evangelical faith.

But just as evangelicalism entails an acceptance of the witness of Scripture (we believe that Christ died and was raised ‘according to the Scriptures’) so our understanding of being evangelical must be subject to a Scriptural critique.

The evangelical church is, or should be, semper reformanda: always being reformed, and that by the Word of God. And the Word of God says to us, “What happened to baptism, and through what hole in your thinking about the gospel did it fall?”

And the answer is it fell through a hole in our ecclesiology (our understanding of the church), created by a hole in our theology (related to our understanding of the gospel).

As a result, although we have been manifestly effective in bringing people to faith, they are isolationist in their Christian living and individualist in their Christian thinking.

At worst, they wander in and out of church as they feel inclined, and they pick and choose their beliefs as they think fit.

And too often, when they discover the church they become institutionalists, when they discover the wrong ideas they become liberals, and when they discover baptism they become sacramentalists or —as a modern variation —Federal Visionists. We set them up for failure, because we have not thought through these things for ourselves.

Conclusion

Now all the way through what I’ve been saying, I’ve been painfully aware that there is the potential for misunderstanding. So let me say again, the secret is not getting people baptized.

Indeed, I’d want to emphasize that when it comes to evangelism there is no secret. There is just the hard, and sometimes terrifying, slog of preaching the gospel, of telling people they are sinners, of telling people that God sent his Son to die for our sins, of telling people that they must repent and that they must confess Christ as Saviour and Lord.

But I am saying that according to the word of Christ himself, the proclamation of the gospel ought to bring people to expect and receive baptism, and that the lack of this expectation is a weakness in contemporary evangelicalism which explains a lot about the problems evangelicals experience.

Our pragmatism allows us not to think through the meaning and place of baptism. We can get people converted, genuinely and effectively, without baptism even being mentioned (Journey into Life worked for me), so why bother trying to sort this one out?

But‘doing theology’ is already marginalised in our own understanding of Christianity, and it is actually reflected in our unwillingness to get to grips with what baptism means.

We don’t care too much about the church, though we know it is important, so why introduce something as complicated as a ‘sacrament’? That can wait. The important thing is to get people converted. But the converts this produces pick up on our attitude, and so church wait, as far as they are concerned, too.

We know that what matters is ‘my’ relationship with Jesus —no-one else can take my place in that —but we also like to think no-one else can interfere with it. Above all, why would anyone else be able to tell me what to think or do? And so we’re not going to tell anyone to ‘repent and be baptized’ —who would do the baptizing, and could they be trusted?

And so converts learn that they have a right to live their Christian lives without ‘interference’ from other Christians. They can believe what they want, and practice their faith how they like, because that is how we like to do it ourselves.

Again let me say, it is not that we don’t baptize — it is that our attitude to the gospel itself makes baptism an optional extra. But from the beginning it was not so.

Again, it is not that we have despised baptism. No evangelical I know is against baptism — but it has not figured large or accurately on the evangelical radar because the radar is not tuned to that frequency. We do not do theology or think church in regard to salvation, we are pragmatists and individualists, and it is undermining the work of the gospel.

The answer is not to baptize people. It is to examine ourselves and our understanding of the gospel. The Bible is clear:

Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

If that message is not our message, we need to acknowledge the difference and address the problem.

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Women's ordination: not all consequences were positive

It is interesting to me, as a theologically educated lay woman and a former lay woman church worker, that the observations of the 35th anniversary of women's ordination (see Episcopal Life Online story here) are positive. There was nothing from the critics of the action and, while there was acknowledgement that much remained to be done, nothing to suggest that not all the consequences of 1974 and 1976 were positive.

There were few of my church worker colleagues who wished to be ordained, once it became possible, not because they didn't approve of women priests, but because we felt secure in our own vocation as theologically educated lay professionals. What we found offensive was the complete lack of respect for our own work and vocation on the part of the women who sought ordination and were committed to their own vocations as ordained ministers. Moreover, once ordination became available for women, most of us were no longer able to work in the church. The church's clericalism saw to that.

Many of us felt pushed aside, unappreciated, and -- to bring it all home -- we had to scramble to find jobs in other sectors or had to fight to find paid work in the church and other ways to continue to express our own vocational calls in ministry. More than a few left the church altogether and even more were embittered or close to despair. Read more

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What is wrong with Evangelicalism?

Ed: As with my earlier post, this is a first draft of a proposed talk to be given in Ireland in just over a week's time. Comments are welcome.

2. What is wrong with Evangelicalism?

Where we began

In my first talk I suggested that evangelicalism is best understood first from the point of view of practice, rather than theology.

This, I think, reflects the experience of evangelicals and the development of evangelical organizations. We are rather used to seeing such organizations produce ‘statements of faith’ and we therefore fall into the habit of thinking that such statements determine what it is to be an evangelical.

We might think, for example, that because most evangelicals could sign up to the UCCF doctrinal basis, that the doctrinal basis defines what it is to be an evangelical, but that is not the case.

On the one hand, the person newly converted at the UCCF mission may be thoroughly ‘evangelical’, already keen to tell their friends about their new-found faith, and yet that same person may have given no thought at all to the sovereignty of God in redemption, or the nature of biblical infallibility.

On the other hand, and rather more worryingly, there are Christian Unions which technically ‘adhere’ to the doctrinal basis, but which rarely engage in evangelism, and have very little concern for the non-Christians within their institutions.

To be an evangelical is not, first and foremost, about doctrinal correctness, but about a passion for the gospel of salvation from sin through Christ for eternity.

That is evangelicalism’s great strength. It is what, for example, allows evangelicals to recognize and work with one another despite denominational differences —even differences with which they themselves agree.

It is, above all, why evangelicalism tends to grow —why evangelical churches and organizations tend to thrive even when others are struggling —because evangelicalism is, but its nature, self-replicating.

Evangelicalism is a spreading flame, even when it is theologically untidy, incoherent and even incorrect.

Strength is weakness

But that illustrates precisely one of the principles I have found to be true throughout life, and which I think applies especially to evangelicalism: that our strength is our weakness.

It is precisely at the point where an individual or an organization is strong that you will find manifested some of the most serious weaknesses.

A classic example is the Maginot Line, which defended the eastern borders of France at the outset of World War 2. The Maginot Line fortifications were extraordinarily powerful, but they created a mentality of complacency in the French military, whilst at the same time determining that German strategy would be directed to working around them, rather than going through them.

In the same way a church or an individual may have extraordinary strengths, but these same strengths will actually create vulnerabilities in their local ministry or in their engagement with other people.

Limited vision

So what are the strengths of evangelicalism? Above all, I have suggested, it is the prioritization of evangelism itself. It is this that makes evangelicals ‘evangelical’. It is this that ensures that the gospel is, indeed, proclaimed that people are brought to know Christ, and that evangelicalism, and evangelical organizations and churches, grow.

But this narrowness of focus is also a key weakness in evangelicalism. Not least, because it creates a problem of ‘what next?’

The great danger for evangelicals and evangelical organizations is that once a person is converted, all they are offered, and all they are asked to contribute towards, is more evangelism.

At its worst, everything except evangelism, and everyone except the evangelist, is regarded as not merely secondary but second-class.

Other careers, other callings, even other enterprises, are treated as matters of indifference. A bridge will not last for eternity, a healthy patient will not live forever, so why bother being an architect or a doctor —unless it is to earn money to pay evangelists?

Leaking people

Now there is a certain logic and persuasiveness to this approach. But even a cursory reading of the Bible shows that the biblical life of faith is not only and always about evangelism.

More importantly, though, this narrowness of vision creates a problem of retention. People who want to develop in other ways and use other gifts tend to move out of evangelicalism and churches which want to broaden their ministry tend to become less evangelical.

At the same time, evangelicals, and their churches and organizations, are seen as narrow and limited in their concerns, rather than being able to embrace the whole of life. The evangelical life, rather than being ‘life in all its fullness’ can look like a very truncated version of life.

The biggest problem for evangelicalism is that it leaks — it leaks people who are evangelicals. Some of them openly give up the faith, but many of them remain in the church as non-evangelicals, post-evangelicals or even, sadly, anti-evangelicals.

And a key cause of this is that, having got people converted, evangelicals don’t know what to do with them next.

Pragmatism

And this relates to a second great evangelical strength, which is also a great evangelical weakness, namely pragmatism.

This is sometimes confused with anti-intellectualism, but it is not the same thing at all. Evangelicals are not, by and large, anti-intellectuals. Rather, they are pragmatists. But as a result they often cannot see the need for anything more than a simple gospel, with a simple approach.

The focus is on ‘getting the job done’ — the ‘job’ being conceived as getting people converted. But the resources, especially the theological resources, needed for this are quite limited. Indeed, all one needs essentially is the same knowledge of the gospel by which one was one’s self converted. As Graham Kendrick famously put it, “One shall tell another, And he shall tell his friend ...” Others have spoken of ‘gossiping the gospel’.

Just on that point, however, let me read you what Jens Christensen, author of The Practical Approach to Muslims, and a man I believe was a thoroughgoing evangelical, had to say:

If you will look up the word ‘gossip’ in a dictionary you will find that, leaving aside archaic meanings, it is defined as: idle talk, tattling, spreading groundless rumours. Whoever first coined the expression, ‘gossiping the Gospel’, obviously did not look the word up in a dictionary ...

Now I will agree he is being somewhat harsh, and I will agree that we do need only a minimum of information to share the gospel with someone, and I will agree that the newly-converted layperson is often highly effective in sharing the gospel with unconverted friends and family.

But I will disagree that this is sufficient to establish, and more importantly to maintain, evangelical Christianity.

The limits of pragmatism

Evangelical pragmatism leads to the success of evangelical ministry in getting people converted and getting new converts involved in evangelism. In Norman Warren’s classic work to which I referred earlier, he writes in the section titled ‘The way ahead’,

Tell one other person within the next 24 hours what you have done, that you have surrendered your life to Christ.

Here is evangelical self-replication at its most blatant. But the average convert is in for the long haul. And that calls for more than surrendering your life to Jesus, even though that is where it begins. Evangelicals often need reminding that the wicket gate is the beginning, not the end, of the pilgrim’s progress.

We might also remind ourselves that by the middle of Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan’s characters are delivering doctrinal points to one another in numbered paragraphs — something that has never happened in any dream of mine (thank goodness).

Bunyan would doubtless qualify today as an ‘evangelical’, but he was well aware that the message of salvation must extend beyond how we become Christians to a whole range of other considerations. It made Pilgrim’s Progress rather dull in places, but we would do well to learn from him.

Protectionism

At the same time as they are pragmatists in the proclamation of the gospel, however, evangelicals are also acutely aware of anything which hinders this, particularly if that threat should come from within the church. They are painfully aware of the truth of Paul’s warning to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:

... after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. (Acts 20:29-30)

For evangelicals, these are not pious words of past concern but a reminder of a living and constant threat — that false teachers will arise, that they will arise from within the church, and that the result, when such false teaching takes hold, is spiritual disaster.

Thus they will also echo Paul’s words to the Galatian churches:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. (Gal 1:8)

Evangelicals will therefore be deeply, and let it be said rightly, suspicious of false teachers and false teaching, and evangelical leaders especially will be fiercely protective of those in their care.

Isolationism

Let us make no mistake. This is indeed a vital evangelical strength. The biblical warnings about false teaching are not to be taken lightly, and not just history but contemporary experience give countless examples of the consequences of false teaching in the lives of individuals, churches and organizations.

And yet, that same strength is, again, a weakness, for it leads to a certain defensiveness and isolationism with regard to ideas and even people outside their own trusted circle.

One unintended result of this, especially when combined with evangelical pragmatism, is that evangelical theology tends to be superficial.

In the Church of England, evangelical leaders long understood understand the dangers of so-called ‘liberal theology’, and yet they valued of the ministry of young evangelicals. So evangelical ordinands, rather than being steered towards the best theological training, were sent to university towns (where certain evangelical colleges happened to be) where they could work as evangelists and Bible-study leaders amongst the student population.

The theological grounding they already had was held to be more-or-less sufficient for these things. What mattered, it was thought, was the hands-on experience of ministry. The result, however, was generations of theologically ill-equipped evangelicals —fired up for evangelism, but unable to engage with, or present, much more by way of theological thinking.

Another unintended consequence is that if an individual does discover a taste for theological development, they are either lost to evangelicalism —reacting against what they rightly see as its intellectual weakness — or they become a problem within evangelicalism, latching onto some novel idea which becomes the lynchpin of a new, and by its very nature, divisive, system or movement.

In England, the latter is what I think we have seen with regard to the Federal Vision Movement recently, or Paul Blackham’s ideas a decade ago. They have the same effect on some people’s evangelicalism as Worcestershire sauce does on chips, giving zest to the dish, but tending to become the dominant flavour.

In short, the protective attitude of evangelicalism is effective so long as it keeps at bay the wolves who have ‘I am a wolf’ written on their tee-shirts. Ironically, it is much less effective at protecting against precisely those wolves about which we are warned by Scripture —the wolf who comes in sheep’s clothing, meaning an attractive and persuasive Christian exterior. Here, our strength once again becomes our weakness.

Individualism

There is, however, another evangelical strength which plays into the same weakness, and that is the emphasis on the individual, not only in terms of salvation but in their consequent relationship with God.

One of the common threads of evangelicalism is that it has very little time for clericalism, and thence for institutionalism. The evangelical knows God personally, as the old Campus Crusade for Christ tract used to put it.

Just as significantly, the evangelical knows there is no need for any mediator between us and God, other than Jesus Christ himself. Thus the evangelical expects to stand on his or her own two feet spiritually.

Evangelicals tend to be ‘self-starters’ and self-motivators in their Christian life. They read their Bibles for themselves, and take responsibility for their own life of prayer. In this respect, they are ideal and welcome church members.

But these same strengths can also create problems for themselves and others. And the greatest problem of all is undoubtedly that evangelicals, including evangelical leaders, have much too high a regard for their own opinions and much too little regard for the views of others.

Private judgement

And here we come to one of the great evangelical shibboleths, namely private judgement.

There are many for whom private judgement is regarded as an evangelical essential. Give this up, it is felt, and you are a short step away from error in general and Romanism in particular. That was certainly the view of the great J C Ryle, the former Bishop of Liverpool.

And who can blame him, when Cardinal John Henry Newman was preaching and teaching that private judgement is the very opposite of Christian faith.

According to Ryle, no one should ever accept anything as true just because it is said by a man in a dog-collar. On the contrary, just as private judgement overthrew the anti-scientific dogmatism of the medieval church, so it will protect us from the predations of spiritual wolves in the Church of Christ today.

And he is right. All of us in full-time ministry want Christians who are mature in their faith, able to give an account of the hope that is in them, and not tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine.

According to Newman, however, the inevitable outcome of private judgement is that I become the judge and arbiter of what should be believed, rather than the recipient of the message of salvation.

And of course he is right, too! All of us in full-time ministry know from tedious experience that just because we say so doesn’t mean people are going to take our word for it that a particular doctrine or interpretation of the Bible is true.

And far from preventing people being blown about by every wind of doctrine, the exercise of private judgement, as Newman observed, leads precisely to constant changes and reversals in the beliefs not only of individuals but whole denominations. Thus, once upon a time, every Christian knew homosexuality was wrong and every denomination would have upheld that principle.

Yet today, both individuals and denominations condemn as sin and error what formerly was held to be truth and righteousness —but not in Rome.

Rather less dramatically, but just as importantly, there is ‘no king in Israel’ when it comes to the beliefs of the individual evangelical. Rather, ‘everyone does, and believes, what is right in his own eyes’, and the individual we have insulated against the errors of Roman clericalism regards the word of the Protestant minister as being just as lacking in any intrinsic authority.

The result, at worst, is that having begun with the gospel, people finish by believing simply what they want to believe, which may happen to be the gospel, but may just as easily happen to be something else.

Ironically, the warning of 2 Timothy 4:3-4 has become true for them, not despite them being evangelicals, but precisely because they were evangelicals:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Conclusion

All these are problems with evangelicalism. In my final talk, then, I will try to address how we might deal with them, and where this leaves us in the present situation.

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What is an Evangelical?

(Ed: The weekend after next, I'll be in Northern Ireland where I've been asked to give some talks on evangelical identity. If you're going to be there, you might like to look away now, but I thought I'd float the first talk on the blog to test the reactions.)

A Lack of Definition?

The first topic I’m going to consider in our three talks is ‘What is an evangelical?’

This is actually a question which has been around for a remarkably long time. It was considered, for example, by John Stott at the end of the second National Evangelical Anglican Congress in 1977.

But before that, Dr Martin Lloyd Jones asked the same question in a 1971 book of that title.

And more recently, in the mid-1990s, Mark Thompson, of Moore Theological College, has addressed the issue in a series of articles in The Briefing, and in a book titled, Saving the Heart, subtitle, ‘What is an evangelical?’

The sheer fact that the question has been asked so often, and that answers by such erudite contributors have apparently failed to settle the issue, forces us to acknowledge that evangelicalism is not a set of commonly-held, narrowly-defined, doctrines.

On the contrary, there are evangelicals who hold quite different doctrinal views, and who belong to entirely different denominations.

A Common Identity

Yet at the same time, there is clearly an evangelical ‘identity’. Evangelicals are able —almost intuitively —to recognize and acknowledge one another, even across denominational divides.

There are evangelical Calvinists and evangelical Arminians, evangelical Anglicans and evangelical Baptists, independent evangelicals and evangelicals who are paid-up members of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.

It is this common identity which makes it worth attempting to achieve a definition of evangelicalism, not least to try to clarify what it is that evangelicals share together.

It is also the case that the sense of shared identity also leads to an ability to work together. It is important to understand why this is so, but it is important also to understand the points at which this shared ‘evangelical’ identity may be in tension with important denominationally-expressed doctrinal differences.

Thus I have found myself, in the past, happily working alongside individual Seventh Day Adventists on the basis of what could rightly be called a shared evangelical identity. Yet I would have to disagree with, and indeed oppose, some of the distinctive doctrines of Adventism.

A false identity

But there is, unfortunately, another reason why we must make the effort to identify evangelicalism, and that is because there are situations where the evangelical label has ceased to have any real meaning.

An obvious example would be the way that the term ‘evangelical’ is used on the Continent — where it comes much closer to meaning simply ‘Protestant’.

Again, it would certainly be a mistake to assume that everyone in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, wherever it was found, was an evangelical. But closer to home, there are painful divisions in the evangelical movement, particularly between those who use the term ‘open’ evangelical to describe themselves, and those who, in response to this, now tend to call themselves ‘conservative’ evangelicals, or by some such similar name.

There are those, and certainly they would include many open evangelicals, who argue that evangelicalism is a broader-based movement than has hitherto been assumed, and that it should embrace consciously a diversity of views, including some which previous generations might have regarded as not particularly evangelical — or even, when it comes to matters of sexuality, Christian.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that evangelicalism is more narrowly defined, and that many of those calling themselves ‘evangelical’ are not actually evangelical at all, but rather are post-evangelical liberals who just don’t realize, or admit it, yet.

A Definition

It is all very confusing, and it points us in the direction of the talks coming up, where I will try to address what is wrong with evangelicalism and what is the future for evangelicals.

But first, we ought to try to identify the nature of evangelicalism, bearing in mind the historical importance of evangelicalism.

We might remind, ourselves, for example, of the huge impact of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship in the twentieth century, both in these islands, and abroad, bearing in mind that its full and proper title was the Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Evangelical Unions.

Self-confessed evangelical Christianity is a distinct, and therefore a distinguishable, movement. What, then, distinguishes it?

The Priority of Evangelism

I have hinted that the answer does not lie in doctrinal definitions — these come later, rather as the historic creeds appear later in the life of the church.

Rather, evangelicalism must be understood first by praxis — by action — and the defining action of evangelicalism is, crucially, evangelism.

But since evangelism is itself a somewhat-debased word, I would define what I mean by this as follows:

Evangelicals are those who have as a first priority, in their own lives and in the life of their churches and organizations, the desire and aim to see other people become Christians.

Notice, it is not their sole priority, nor is it necessarily their top priority. Some would say their top priority is to worship God or to live for him. Many would add that serving others or changing the world are also crucial to their understanding of the Christian life.

However, insofar as they are evangelicals, all would agree that the most important thing they can achieve for another person is to see that person become a Christian. And that shapes the evangelical understanding of the Christian life.

Thus God is served —or ‘worshipped’ in the proper sense —by our engaging in the work we see exemplified in Jesus himself, of seeking and saving the lost. We live for God when, like the first disciples, we become ‘fishers of men’. We serve others when we bring them the good news of salvation. We change the world when people are brought to know Christ as Saviour and to serve him as Lord.

This is the heart of evangelicalism, and it precedes any more specific confessional statements we might want to make.

The Individual and Evangelicalism

A very important feature of evangelicalism, however, is that salvation is an individual matter. The crowd may ask, “Brethren, what must we do to be saved?” The evangelistic response, however, is addressed to the individual: “Repent and be baptized, each one of you.”

The ‘we’, here, may all be repenting at the same time, we may all get baptized together. But for this to happen, each one must repent individually, each one must get baptized, and each one must certainly live for Christ.

Indeed, it is this focus on the individual which is one of the outstanding features of Christianity which features in the evangelical understanding.

Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am?” is addressed to the disciples collectively. But Peter’s answer, “You are the Christ,” is given by him individually, and it has been revealed to him personally by the Father.

In this, of course, the New Testament is only picking up an Old Testament emphasis. “The soul who sins shall die,” says Ezekiel (18:20), and similarly the sinner who turns from his wickedness shall live.

We are not condemned for the sins of another, but by the same token, we are not saved by the faith of another — whether it be our friends, our family or our community. Salvation, the evangelical believes, comes in personal doses, and so the evangelical cannot rest until the individual is saved.

Sticking to the knitting

It is this understanding of salvation and the Christian life which determines whether a person or a church or an organization can properly be called ‘evangelical’.

To the extent that it is a priority, to that extent we have evangelicalism. To the extent that other things begin to take priority, to that extent we have a decline from evangelicalism.

The first lesson of understanding what it means to be evangelical is that we must ‘stick to the knitting’. It is also important to see that we do not remain evangelical by adhering to evangelical doctrines. Being evangelical is about what you are and how you live on that basis.

Evangelical ‘spirituality’

In that sense, then, evangelicalism is a ‘spirituality’, but the evangelical would immediately want to say that it is a spirituality which arises from without, not from within.

The evangelical has not arrived at evangelicalism by searching out or trying out different approaches to God. Paradoxically, people do not become evangelicals by deciding to become evangelicals. Nor do evangelicals preach ‘evangelicalism’ to others.

Rather, it is the common experience of evangelicals that they are what they are as a result of becoming Christians. They do not look back to the point at which they received a set of evangelical doctrines, but to the point at which they received Christ as Saviour and Lord.

And where there are those who are not conscious of a particular moment of conversion, nevertheless, they will also be conscious that it is their relationship with God, in and through Christ as Saviour and Lord, which gives shape to their spiritual life and which is something they wish to share with others.

When the evangelical is able to articulate this, then, they will say that it is the work of the Holy Spirit which has given them their spirituality, by his operation within them. The words of Isaiah, quoted in Romans 10:20 would very much fit their experience: “I was found by those who did not seek me.”

The evangelical message

We see the nature of evangelical spirituality also in the way that evangelicals seek to bring others into their own evangelical experience —for what they do not do is preach the experience.

They may well be driven by the experience, they may well speak about the experience, they may even tell others they may have the same experience, but the message is not “This is how to have this experience,” but rather, “Repent and believe, and you shall be saved.”

Incidentally, we may say that where the message does become, “Do this to have this experience,” here too we have a departure from evangelicalism, which will show up subsequently in the life of the individual or the organization or movement.

The evangelical message to the non-Christian is not “You are missing out on life,” but, “You are facing judgement and damnation.”

Evangelical theology

And it is here that we begin to see that evangelicalism does, indeed, have a systematic theological heart, even though it is not itself a full-blown system of theology.

Indeed, the message of evangelism is a microcosm of a consistent systematic theology, even though it may be expressed in a number of ways.

In Norman Warren’s classic tract, Journey into Life, for example, first published in 1964, we read this summary of what it takes to become a Christian:

Something to admit
That you have sinned in the sight of God. [...]

Something to believe
That Jesus Christ died on the cross bearing all the guilt and penalty of your sin.

Something to consider
[...] Every part of your life, work, friendships, time, money must all come under [Jesus’] control.

Something to do
Accept Jesus Christ into your life to be your Lord to control you, your Saviour to cleanse you, your Friend to guide and be with you.

But then compare this with the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians (written about ad 54),

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ² By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. ³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures ...

There are differences in the detail, yet clearly we are in the same theological territory. And the key features are these: sin, from which we need to be saved, Christ, who saves us from our sins through his death, a new life, exemplified by Christ being raised from the dead, and faith as a resolve to believe in and live by the truth of what has been said about sin, Christ and salvation.

In fact, it would be fair to say that evangelical theology is an expansion of these key points, as Paul puts it ‘according to the Scriptures’.

‘Fellow’ Evangelicals

Thus, when we say we believe that Christ died for our sins ‘according to the Scriptures’ we mean that we look to the Bible, to tell us what sin is, to explain why Jesus needed to die for it, and indeed to tell us who Jesus was and is, why his death was both necessary and effective, and what exactly it achieved for us.

Evangelical theology thus has a position on Scripture. Notice, however, that being an evangelical does equate to a view on Scripture. That is why we sometimes get confused over the issue of evangelical fellowship.

To be a scriptural conservative does not make you an evangelical.

At the same time, however, merely wanting to ‘spread the faith’ does not make you an evangelical —otherwise we would have to say that Jehovah’s Witnesses are ‘fellow evangelicals’, since they, too, want to see people converted so that they can be saved.

We are not evangelicals just because we want to see other people come round to our point of view. There is some content to the notion of becoming a Christian, specifically as regards who Christ is and what his death has achieved, which is defined for us, not by us.

Nevertheless, where we find that the desire to proclaim Christ so that others may believe in him and be saved is given priority in engagement with the world and with those who do not know Christ, there we find fellow evangelicals and evangelical fellowship.

Problems

And yet, at the same time it is true that evangelical fellowship is always fragile. Historically, evangelical unity easily, and it has to be said, repeatedly, gives way to evangelical disunity.

This is enough to tell us that there is also something amiss with evangelicalism. And in my second talk I intend to examine what that is and to make some suggestions as to how it may be put right.

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Tarantino 'proves his critics right'

(A helpful review of Quentin Tarantino's work, in my view. Just a pity the reviewer didn't spell "Inglourious" right!)

[...] Violence has particular power on film precisely because it involuntarily activates our powers of empathy. We imagine ourselves, as an unthinking reflex, into the agony. This is the most civilising instinct we have: to empathize with suffering strangers. (It competes, of course, with all our more base instincts). Any work of art that denies this sense – that is based on subverting it – will ultimately be sullying. No, I’m not saying it makes people violent. But it does leave the viewer just a millimetre more morally corroded. Laughing at simulated torture – and even cheering it on, as we are encouraged to through all of Tarantino’s later films – leaves a moral muscle just a tiny bit more atrophied.

You can see this in the responses of Tarantino himself. Not long after 9/11, he said: “It didn’t affect me because there’s, like, a Hong Kong action movie? called Purple Storm and they work in a whole big thing in the plot that they blow up a skyscraper.” It’s a case-study in atrophy of moral senses: to brag you weren’t moved by the murder of two and half thousand actual people, because you’d already seen it simulated in a movie. Only somebody who has never seen violence – who sees the world as made of celluloid – can respond like this. Read more

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Liberals and Evangelicals: with friends like these ...?

The Modern Churchpeople's Union has published a lengthy critique of recent pronouncements by both Archbishop Rowan Williams and Bishop Tom Wright on the present position of The Episcopal Church.

In the light of the latest developments —or non-developments in the evangelical wing of the Church of England —it raises two interesting challenges.

The first is whether the apparent alliance between Williams and Wright is as ‘opportunistic’ as Stephen Kuhrt, a prominent Open Evangelical, suggested was the alliance between Conservative Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

According to Kuhrt:

[...] FCAUK’s temporary ‘alliance’ with Forward in Faith suggests a willingness to combine with those with whom they have deep theological disagreements, so long as they have a current objection to authority.

According to MCU,

Both Williams and Wright show themselves to be dogmatic authoritarians. [...]

The current alliance between these two theologies cannot be stable: they disagree with each other about too much.

Of course, both Kuhrt and MCU may be right. It may be that neither the FCA nor the Williams-Wright alliance can survive. However, it is notable that MCU has itself joined an alliance which includes at least three evangelical groups with whom they would doubtless take issue over matters like the atonement, judgement, Christ’s physical return (or maybe even his physical resurrection) and so on. It is all very confusing.

The other challenge, however, is the clear perception within MCU that Open Evangelicalism belongs in the same camp as themselves —which may be why they have no embarrassment about their own alliances. Thus their critique of Williams and Wright continues,

Neither position is characteristic of Anglicanism. Other Anglicans, calling themselves open evangelicals, or liberal catholics, or broad church, or radicals, or liberals, have not been part of this programme to condemn the Americans and introduce an Anglican Covenant.

Now I am sure there will be many Open Evangelicals who would rightly reject this suggestion of comparability as far as they are themselves concerned. However, the perception must be regarded as significant. The problem is that Open Evangelicalism is, by its own definition, a diverse and diffuse movement, and it is clear that it contains —and more importantly is willing to contain —both those for whom the traditionalist view of sexuality is correct and those for whom it is not.

And the very fact that Open Evangelicalism is not split by contradictory views on human sexuality suggests that the MCU is right. The old ‘orthodoxy’ is now optional. There is therefore no reason to split with TEC over this issue, even whilst one may (as a private individual) hold opinions that disagree with the prevalent view within TEC.

I write this not to pick a fight with Open Evangelicals —there are enough of those going on already —but because I find it increasingly difficult to see how we can talk about one ‘Evangelicalism’ with two (or three) ‘aspects’: Conservative, Open and Charismatic. It all depends whether a particular understanding of sexuality is viewed as necessarily Evangelical. Fifty years ago, it would undoubtedly have been so. Today it is undoubtedly not —at least, not by all who regard themselves as ‘Evangelical’.

Yet when orthodox sexuality becomes optional, it is perhaps significant to note who emerges as one’s new bedfellows. Dr Williams is now clearly regarded by his erstwhile friends as little more than a traitor, whilst Dr Wright is described as being Puritan and Calvinist (but in a bad way). Open evangelicalism, however, is embraced as being true to the ‘inclusivity’ of real Anglicanism —along with TEC and so on.

If I were an Open Evangelical, I would be more worried about this than I was about the possible depredations of FCA. It is a fine mess to have been gotten into. The question is, how to get out of it.

John Richardson
21 August 2009

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Jensen: Jesus’ Birth, Death & Resurrection (in balance)

There is a real danger of this becoming the 'Phillip Jensen Portal' instead of the Ugley Vicar Blog, but remembering the 'debates' on the relative status of Jesus' death and resurrection, here and elsewhere, I thought this video was a classic in cutting through the kerfuffle.

If you've still got questions, go to the website page, where there are links to other talks which, I'm sure, will treat the issues in greater depth. Don't ask me, Ask Phillip!

JPR

Ask Phillip - Jesus' birth, death & resurrection from Audio Advice on Vimeo.

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Phillip Jensen's website

I was surprised to find today that Phillip Jensen has his own website - surprised because it's clearly been around for some time, and I didn't know it existed.

Phillip is a friend (not a close one, but a friend nevertheless) and a great evangelical preacher and teacher. I am delighted to be able to recommend his website.

Go there! Now!

JPR

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Bible Overview Files Online

The following Bible Overview files are now online for downloading at ADrive.com:

Genesis to Exodus
Leviticus to Deuteronomy
The Historical Books (Former Prophets)
The Latter Prophets
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs
The other Writings

I hope they work!

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Looking for God? The Alpha Male's experience

The Fulcrum blog was, until a little while ago, carrying links to Adam Rutherford’s Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ diary of doing an Alpha Course — not least, I’m sure, because he was doing it at St Mary’s Islington, until recently home of the now Bishop of Sherborne, Graham Kings.

I’m not sure the latest updates have been linked, but the diary is well worth reading, not least to see how a Guardianista approaches the faith. One thing that seems clear to me is that Rutherford has a fixed view that Christianity is essentially a moral philosophy propagated by a man called Jesus which, if we could strip it of its ‘miraculous’ accretions, would reveal something worth living by, if not necessarily dying for. It all sounds wonderfully reminiscent of the Enlightenment. Take this summary of ‘the story so far’, for example:

What I have learnt so far is that Christianity does not lend itself well to hard rational and factual analysis. No great revelation there. But what appears to be a theology of atonement via penal substitution relies on the physical truths of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. My sense from this course is that our latent cultural Christianity, particularly amongst us, the de-churched, means we are prone to relinquishing critical faculties out of apathy. Barbara, of whom I am growing fond, doesn’t buy into the resurrection myth and is unmoved by this session. But she’s not bothered enough to let it shake her belief that there is something divine to inspire her faith. It strikes me this might be a key to Christianity’s success: give them enough to believe, but not enough to tear it apart.

Now I am not a great fan of the Alpha Course (though I’m pleased to see it means penal substitutionary atonement is alive and kicking at the heart of Open Evangelicalism), but I will endeavour to keep following this to see how it turns out. I will be particularly interested in the ‘Holy Spirit weekend’ (if they did it — I gather the diary is well after the event).

Meanwhile, I commend it to you for consideration as to how you would handle the same issues, and how you would talk to Mr Rutherford if you met him at a dinner party.

John Richardson
10 August 2009

Week 1: From AA to Alpha
Week 2: A Matter of Facts, not Faith
Week 3: Why did Jesus die?
Week 4: Resurrecting Doubt
Week 5: The Good, Sexist, Beautiful, Violent Book

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