It can be difficult being part of the American evangelical movement that took its current form in the 1940s. At least, it can be difficult for us to identify ourselves. It's not that we don't have a label; it's that we have too many labels. The liberals call us fundamentalists, and the fundamentalists call us liberals, or the next worst thing. I've also heard Evangelical, New Evangelical, Neo-Evangelical, and even Neo-Neo-Evangelical. To make matters even more confusing, many fundamentalists wish to reserve the term evangelical for themselves, and lots of liberals prefer to be called moderates. In the believing media, we often hear the churches divided into the "evangelical denominations" and the "mainline denominations." (Oddly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America is a mainline denomination.) The words fundamentalist and liberal get tossed around quite a bit, generally with a negative connotation. And when we hear all those terms that start with neo-, it usually works out to mean "not quite."
The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century had as its focus a recovery of the biblical gospel. Early Protestants not only rejected much of Catholic doctrine, but saw Roman Catholicism as a false church because it had abandoned the gospel and granted its clergy authority that belonged only to Christ. Because of their focus on the gospel (euangellion in Greek), Protestants were called Evangelicals. (Some Protestant groups, such as the non-Puritans in the Church of England, retained much of Catholic doctrine and therefore were not, properly speaking, Evangelical.) Evangelicalism from this time through the nineteenth century was centered around the five solas, Latin terms that illustrated Protestants' key convictions about the gospel:
While these points are positive expressions, they contain implicit denials of Catholic teaching. Sola gratia meant to Evangelicals that salvation was all of God, and was not a combination of human effort and divine response. Sola fide meant that saving grace flows not through the sacraments or acts of penance, but directly from God on account of a person's faith (which itself is a gift of God). Solus Christus points to Christ's sacrificial death on the cross as the basis for our forgiveness (not the Mass), and His righteousness alone for our justification (not our merits or those of the saints). Sola scriptura denies the legitimacy of church tradition and the Magisterium as authorities for belief and practice. And Soli Deo gloria stands opposed to the concept of piety as bringing glory to the Church.
In addition to these solas, classical Evangelicals emphasized the priesthood of believers and, in Baptist and Anabaptist circles, the concept of soul competency. Together these doctrines taught that individual Christians were able to discover the Bible's meaning themselves instead of trusting an elite class of interpreters, and that people should hold and practice their beliefs genuinely, without the threat of persecution or civil punishment. Nevertheless, there remained a concept of church discipline. Evangelicals were accountable to their congregations for their belief and practice, but dissidents were free to join or form other congregations. Cooperation between congregations was based on commonality of faith and practice. The primary cause for division among Evangelicals was the adoption of Arminian or Calvinistic understandings of God's activity in salvation. Questions of church government and the ordinances (baptism and the Lord's supper) also led to the formation of the major denominational families.
The Western cultural phenomenon commonly called the Enlightenment gave rise to a new approach to Christianity. By the 1700s, evangelical pietism in Germany had given rise to churches that prized a holy life and a kind spirit but saw doctrinal consistency as less important. The new rationalism that began sweeping across Europe caused many people to question historic Christian teaching in both Catholic and Protestant countries. It was in this atmosphere that liberalism developed as an attempt to make Christianity relevant to modern culture by redefining biblical teaching, doctrine, salvation, and the church. This view that substantial elements of Christianity should change over time to keep pace with the culture is a defining mark of liberalism. The early twentieth-century scholar J. Gresham Mächen identified liberalism's two key doctrines as "the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man." I would summarize the main liberal approach to Christianity as follows:
Classical liberals tended to see religion and theology as rooted in feelings, and were almost naturalistic in their approach to everything Christian. This included a denial of historic Christian doctrines (e.g., the deity of Christ) and of miracles, including the Virgin Birth and resurrection of Christ. Some church liberals were even skeptical regarding the afterlife and the existence of a personal God. It bears mention that these liberals were trying to save Christianity, not to destroy it. But this sort of liberalism could not help but arouse opposition as it spread from Continental Europe to England and America.
Because liberalism by definition changes with the times, new forms of liberalism have developed. Existential liberalism, popularized by Rudolf Bultmann, emphasized the role of authentic personal decision and self-image, and had a very subjective understanding of truth. Unitarianism denied the doctrine of the Trinity and tended toward an almost pantheistic view of God as seen through nature. Neo-orthodoxy was founded as a reaction against liberalism's extremes. It valued Christian orthodoxy and brought back the ideas of divine transcendence and personal sin, but kept a liberal view of the Bible. More recently, the desire for social reform has given rise to liberation theology, feminist theology, and various race-oriented theologies.
Many of today's liberals have embraced process philosophy and postmodernism, and so believe truth is forever changing and rooted in the community. There is therefore somewhat of a return to the tradition and heritage of liberal churches, insofar as that can be done without offending the churches' more progressive members. Essential teachings of Christianity are returning to liberal pulpits, but are preached for their personal significance or practicality rather than from any belief that the doctrines are objectively true. Because all these forms of liberalism dominate most of the larger denominations, liberal churches are often referred to as mainline.
Fundamentalism arose among American Evangelicals as a reaction against the tide of liberalism in the mid-to-late 1800s. Its beginnings are usually traced to the Plymouth Brethren and John Nelson Darby, the founder of dispensational theology. Fundamentalism's strategy was to call the faithful out from faithless (i.e., liberal) churches to restore a pure church. If your denomination is steeped in liberalism, you do not try to win it back through politics or reform; you get out. By the turn of the century, this exodus included many Northern Baptists and Presbyterians, and there were related defections from Southern Baptists and Methodists as a result of the Landmark and Holiness movements.
Fundamentalism's primary opposition to liberalism was based on the conviction that Christian theology should not change over time, but must remain faithful to certain non-negotiable "fundamentals":
The multiple-volume defining work on classical Fundamentalism, The Fundamentals, reveals that these five commitments actually involved a wide range of doctrinal, ecclesiological, and ethical concerns. One that came to the forefront was the issue of evolution, which liberal churches and secular society had embraced. While Fundamentalism's main strategy was separation from those in error, the movement was aggressive in confronting the culture on this point.
Another major emphasis of early Fundamentalism was personal holiness. Liberalism had pursued social transformation and redefined the task of missions as liberation and social welfare–the "social gospel." In response, Fundamentalists focused on individual purity–such as modesty in dress, total abstinece from alcohol, dancing, the theater, and card playing.
Fundamentalist churches were insistent on their denominational distinctives as well as on the fundamentals of Christianity, and so they were not eager to merge together into a cohesive movement. The new denominations that formed were small and fragile. A few institutions, such as Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary, were founded. But most of Fundamentalism consisted of independent churches providing their own ministerial training–if any–and sending their own missionaries. Evangelism and conversion-focused missions remained important, and the methods used arose from the Great Awakening revivals of earlier American history.
By the 1940s, the overall influence of Fundamentalism on the church and culture at large was questionable. Nearly all the major non-Pentecostal denominations were liberal or becoming so, and the public perception of Fundamentalists was that they were divisive, legalistic isolationists. Many of the younger believers were dissatisfied with Fundamenatlism's technique and demeanor. Led by Carl F. H. Henry and Harold John Ockenga, they sought to maintain the solas and the fundamentals with a spirit of love and a strategy of cooperation and engagement. Ockenga coined the term new evangelical to describe the movement, although the term neo-evangelical was more commonly used by critics. In addition to the solas and fundamentals, the new evangelicalism was characterized by strategy:
In the beginning, the movement gained prominence through Fuller Theological Seminary, the magazine Christianity Today, and the mass revivals of Billy Graham. The cooperative strategy resulted in many parachurch organizations and conferences such as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ, the Navigators, and more recently Promise Keepers and Women of Faith. The focus on education led to the development of worldview studies as a distinctly evangelical way of doing philosophy and apologetics. Many seminaries and Bible colleges were founded by prominent evangelicals, although perhaps the greatest teaching influence came through major publishing houses such as Zondervan, Baker, Thomas Nelson, Crossway, and Tyndale. The church growth movement and the concept of lay ministry are examples of evangelical innovation. In all this, evangelicals sought to avoid the pitfalls of Fundamental traditionalism without slipping into compromise with liberals. The greatest victories came in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and the Southern Baptist Convention saw a return to conservative leadership.
From the beginning, however, there have been two strands within new evangelicalism that are so different in approach that some hesitate to call this phenomenon a movement. Many evangelicals focus on cooperation, innovation, and personal experience to the point of excess. While maintaining evangelical stances themselves, they are willing to work with non-evangelical groups despite widely divergent doctrine. Seeker-driven worship, egalitarianism, sentimentality, narrative preaching, and a de-emphasis of repentance are among the more problematic developments. Leading evangelicals known for their conciliatory tendencies include Bill Bright, Chuck Colson, Billy Graham, Bill Hybels, D. James Kennedy, and Rick Warren. On the other side are evangelicals who serve as "watchdogs" for the movement as a whole, and are critical of these developments. Spokesmen such as John Armstrong, John MacArthur, John Piper, David Wells, and Don Whitney seek to revive the God-directed, doctrinal focus and devotion to biblical authority of previous decades. Book titles such as The Compromised Church, No Place for Truth, and Ashamed of the Gospel illustrate the level of concern these evangelicals have for the present crisis.
Partly because of this divide and partly because of its defining strategy, evangelicalism has always had difficulty defining its boundaries. Just how much of a departure can one make from orthodoxy and still be called an evangelical? While biblical inerrancy was as central to the new evangelicalism as it had been to Fundamentalism, Fuller Seminary had a president who rejected biblical inerrancy as early as the 1960s. Evangelical scholars from predominantly liberal denominations were less than solid on the five fundamentals and wanted to maintain dialogue with their liberal colleagues. There quickly arose a large contingent of scholars and pastors who aligned themselves with evangelicals but who wanted to accept liberals as Christians and who straddled the fence on doctrinal matters. These became known variously as neo-evangelicals, liberal evangelicals, moderate evangelicals, or the evangelical left. (The term young evangelicals seems to be preferred at the moment.) The marks by which they are known resemble a mingling of evangelical strategy with liberal priorities:
These moderates are primarily scholars and instructors, as opposed to the megachurch pastors and revivalists that form the core of evangelicalism. Their influence comes mainly through seminaries where their doctrinal books catch the eyes of students. Since moderates are writing to a largely conservative audience, it may sometimes take a trained mind to catch the subtle way they seek to move the reader away from the traditional commitment to "propositionalism" (objective truth) or "Augustinianism" (the historic Christian view of God and salvation). The resulting theological shift affects all the major doctrinal categories, but three issues have caused the most stir. The first is open theism, which asserts that God does not know the future decisions of his creatures, and that He lives in an open, give-and-take relationship with His people. A second is a redefining of biblical interpretation so that meaning is determined subjectively by the reader rather than objectively by the author. The third is inclusivism, the view that salvation is possible, or even guaranteed, for those who have never heard the gospel, who are basically good people, or who are sincere in their commitment to certain other religions. These doctrines have brought controversy to evangelical institutions, for many evangelicals wish to be as broad as possible, while others see evangelicalism as already compromised even without such additional departures from the Bible. It remains to be seen how this group will be categorized, and their acceptance or rejection may determine the success of the new evangelicalism.
Today's fundamentalists see the new evangelical movement as a mess, and with good reason, given the divisions just described. As a result, they have strengthened their commitment to the older strategy of separation. Cooperation in any good cause is subordinated to total or near-total doctrinal purity. The basics of today's fundamentalism that distinguish it from evangelicalism proper are these:
The specifics of the new fundamentals differ from one group of fundamentalists to another. For most, adherence to the King James Version alone and to young-earth creationism, and rejection of charismatic gifts and of secular psychology are essential. Calvinists and Arminians, dispensationalists and covenant theologians, often see their opponents as godless heretics, and say so. It seems that the fundamentalists deliberately oppose the evangelical attempt to put a positive face on orthodoxy, instead lambasting and ridiculing those with whom they disagree. In the fundamentalist view, opponents are unsaved false teachers and should not be dealt with or spoken of with respect.
Separation from doctrinal error is itself an essential of Christianity for fundamentalists, and so we must also avoid those who do not practice separation themselves. So, for example, a fundamentalist would shun Catholics and charismatics, but also Chuck Colson for cooperation with them, as well as anyone who endorses Colson's ministry or books. If a denomination is suspect, anyone who speaks in that denomination's churches or who is on friendly terms with that denomination's leaders is also suspect. For this reason, true fundamentalists rejected Jerry Falwell when he brought his church into the evangelical-led Southern Baptist Convention.
The anti-intellectual spirit that the new evangelicals saw in classical Fundamentalism survives today in many quarters. I've heard it said that any pastor who tries to tell his congregation the meaning of the original Hebrew and Greek in the Bible is simply trying to get around what God has said "in the English." Inquiry into astronomy, biology, psychology, or other sciences is discouraged in fear that students will be corrupted by exposure to secular theories, and so fundamentalists are often ill-equipped to challenge those theories beyond quoting proof-texts.
(This may appear to be an overly harsh critique of modern fundamentalism, but I consider it accurate, based on my experience with fundamentalist churches, evangelists, Bible teachers, books, broadcasts, and websites.)
It is fashionable in many circles to claim "moderate" as a label for one's theology or denominational politics. I have heard Jerry Falwell and John MacArthur described as "moderate fundamentalists" for their willingness to work with evangelicals, and some people consider Wolfhart Pannenberg to be a moderate because, while very liberal in his theology, he nevertheless believes in the resurrection of Christ. Here are the primary uses of the term moderate, in my recent experience:
I believe most people known as moderates would fit nicely into one of the major groups described above, and so I rarely use the term without qualification.
It is probably clear to the reader that I have more admiration for the "Classical Evangelicals" than for any of these other groups. Given my choice, I would place myself with them. However, I see much promise in the original spirit and purpose of the New Evangelicalism. I believe if evangelical churches give heed to the admonitions of its internal critics, they would recover their health and be more pleasing to God. For a fuller statement on the vision I have for evangelical churches, see The Future of the Faithful Church.
For a concise statement of my beliefs about true and false teaching, see my Declaration of Faith.
