As the articles in this issue of Modern Reformation suggest, evangelicalism is experiencing a change in seasons: former evangelical statesmen are passing from the scene, new evangelicals don't seem to rally around the same issues and ideas as their forefathers, and it's increasingly difficult (if it was ever really possible) to identify clearly what an evangelical is. If you have any warm feelings at all about evangelicalism, you want some answers: Where is evangelicalism going? Who better to turn to for answers than the individuals whose lives and work helped create and shape evangelicalism. Modern Reformation is honored to include the reflections of these evangelical leaders, pastors, and scholars as we seek to understand our own time and the future of the evangelical expression of Christianity.
My spiritual and theological history and that of my congregation is "evangelical," a designation we knew was derived from the Greek word for the "gospel" or "good news" of Jesus Christ. Evangelicals were "gospel people," committed to simple New Testament Christianity and to the central tenets of apostolic faith, rather than to later ecclesiastical additions. While I have not changed in my theological convictions, what is now understood by "evangelical" has changed.
Once, evangelicals were able to identify themselves as those who enjoyed a personal saving relationship with Jesus Christ and who held the central tenets of the Christian faith. They understood that there was one God in three persons-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-who was revealed as gracious by taking the initiative in salvation and the outworking of his plan for the world, without which a sinful humanity was powerless, condemned, and lost.
This God had revealed himself in objective truth, his Word in the Old and New Testaments, which was therefore the final authority in all matters of faith and practice, and which took precedence over reason, tradition, ecclesiastical authority, and individual experience. The uniqueness of Jesus Christ was under-stood to be fully God and fully man. He was sinless, and his life was lived in perfect obedience to the will of God. His death on the cross was seen to be penal in that he absorbed the just judgment of God against sin, and substitutionary because Jesus freely substituted himself in the place of sinners, securing by his condemnation their release. Dying a real death, he experienced a real physical resurrection. His return to the Father was a prelude to his eventual return in judgment to separate believers from unbelievers, and rewarding faith in Christ with eternal life in heaven and unbelievers with spiritual death in hell. Gratitude for the cross of Christ, which was the God-appointed means of salvation from sin, resulted in a passionate commitment to proclaim the gospel of Christ as the only means of salvation for men and women.
Even though there was a recognized diversity among theologians and churches about particular doctrinal issues of the Christian faith, these affirmations provided a framework for understanding essential truth and offered a basis of cooperation for gospel ministry that crossed confessional and denominational bounds.
Over the last decades, the term "evangelical" has undergone a change in meaning, describing now an organic group of movements and religious traditions and denoting a style more than describing a common set of beliefs. The "evangelical movement" has become a broad term embracing a "big tent" diversity of traditions in which any Christian who professes a relationship to Jesus Christ may lay claim to the title.
This transformation has been accomplished largely by the development of institutions and organizations that have been directly responsible for giving "evangelicals" a conscious sense of belonging to a movement that has sought to gain a voice in the wider forums of ecclesiastical and national life.
Their strategy for increased visibility and influence has been achieved at the expense of theological integrity. "Evangelicalism" has grown in size and influence but now includes some who deny the reality of hell or dispute the legitimacy of penal substitution, and some who question the assertion that faith in Christ is the only way to gain salvation. The very uniqueness of Christ and the necessity of the gospel thus are abandoned or imperiled.
Identification with ministries whose theology and practices reduce the gospel can only lead to confusion. When the message of the gospel is distorted or lost, then Christ is dishonored. Examples of ministries that distort include those offering humanist self-help therapies and those offering false "health and wealth" promises. Others deny significant Christian truths or redefine Christian truth in humanistic ways.
At the same time, "evangelicalism" has gained increased influence as it adopted an activist political agenda. It has established its own institution for political advocacy on moral issues such as anti-abortion policies, defining of marriage, and other social policies that are important to consistent biblical Christianity. However, the movement has been reshaped by these involvements making "evangelicalism" less theological and more institutional, and accepting for "evangelicalism" the status of being one "wing" of the church as the price to be paid for "a seat at the table" of ecclesiastical and political influence.
When the church confesses Jesus Christ as her Lord, acknowledges the final authority of the Scripture in regulating her life, and preaches the gospel as the only means appointed for the salvation of souls, she is not a "wing" of the church but the very church itself that dares not be content to throw away its birthright as members of an eternal kingdom in order to gain influence in a kingdom that is passing.
Any utilitarian value of being associated as an "evangelical" today is greatly outweighed by the disadvantages of being associated with subversive and deviant theology for the sake of political gains. With Francis Schaeffer we must ask, "What is the use of evangelicalism seeming to get larger and larger in number if significant numbers of those under the name of 'evangelical' no longer hold to that which makes evangelicalism evangelical?"
