D. G. Hart's essay "The Evangelical Narrative: Getting Rid of the Church" (Modern Reformation, November/December 2008) is an insightful study of the nature of evangelicalism and its relationship to Reformation Christianity, and an incisive critique of what Hart sees as evangelicalism's resulting weakness in ecclesiology and approach to ministry. I find Hart's history plausible, his analysis impeccable, and his criticisms of the evangelical movement in America both biblical and pertinent. Nevertheless, I cannot shake off a certain unease about his presentation, a haunting fear that in its very excellence, it may tempt us to impale ourselves on the horns of a False Dilemma.
Summary
Hart agrees with Mark Noll in seeing evangelicalism as a "new kind of Protestantism" that began with the First Great Awakening and its stress on "conversion and holy living–as opposed to church membership and attending the means of grace" (36, emphasis added). He references Whitefield's opinion that "it was best to preach the new birth and the power of godliness and not to insist on the form [of worship and church government]" as representing a new set of assumptions: that "the individual's conversion experience matters more than corporate worship, the simple teachings of the Bible more than creeds, and the fellowship of the Spirit more than church membership" (36). These emphases contrast with the religion of the Reformers, in which "to be a Protestant was to be a member of a church, and to grow in grace meant attending diligently to the weekly ministry of the church, through preaching, the sacraments, Lord's Day observance, catechesis, and the oversight of church officers" (37). The essence of evangelicalism is its tendency to replace these practices with personal experience. Hart cites nineteenth-century Presbyterian theologian John Williamson Nevin's observation that the revivalists of his day wanted him to think that all these churchly observances "must pass for nothing…that regeneration and conversion lay outside the church," which was "more a bar than a help" (37). The end result is a form of Christianity in which the church is reduced to an almost optional club for individual believers, whose personal experience matters more than creed or communion, and whose privatized faith is increasingly uninformed by Word and Sacrament.
Critique
Hart is right. This is indeed where American evangelicalism increasingly finds itself, and it is less than full-orbed biblical Christianity. Why then do I feel a need to add anything more to my response than a hearty "Amen"? Well, let's go back to the italics I added to one of his quotations. According to my learned colleague, evangelicalism began with a stress on "conversion and holy living–as opposed to church membership and attending the means of grace." And Hart continues to write in his essay as if we had to choose one or the other, as if the two emphases are somehow inherently inimical to one another. This opposition bothers me a great deal. Surely Scripture demands both of us? And surely there are classic forms of evangelical religion that emphasize conversion and holy living in addition to, not opposed to, church membership and the means of grace? If there aren't, there should be.
Let us begin with Scripture. Evangelicalism at its best takes seriously what Jesus told Nicodemus: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). Highly significant is the person to whom this was said. Nicodemus was completely committed to and immersed in the forms of outward religion that were current for God's people before Pentecost. He was a covenant member of the community of faith as it then existed, who was in as good a standing as one could be. If Nicodemus–circumcised, immersed in Torah, faithfully participating in the sacrificial system–needed to be born again, what should we say of a good Presbyterian who was baptized as an infant, catechized, confirmed, and is faithful in his attendance to the ministry of Word and Sacrament? If Nicodemus, who was in the identical position to our hypothetical Presbyterian for his period in salvation history, needed regeneration (that is, the new birth) to make his outward observances spiritually efficacious, how is it that baptism, catechesis, and confirmation now suffice to do for Hart's Presbyterian what circumcision and temple observance did not suffice to do for Nicodemus? Does our good Presbyterian not need to be born again as badly as his evangelical counterpart who has had a conversion experience needs the church and the means of grace?
I pause to notice just one further biblical statement, this time from the Book of Acts. Luke tells us that in the heady days of the church's establishment in its New Testament form after Pentecost, "The Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved" (Acts 2:47). Note carefully what he does not say: "The Lord was saving day by day those who were added to the church." Is the difference between these two statements not significant? Evangelicals certainly believe that it is. Does it follow from the fact that they are wrong when they draw the conclusion that the church and its ministry are not then central to the Christian life that they are also wrong about their initial premise that the new birth is central? No, it does not.
Because it was Nico-demus who needed to be born again, we should conclude that evangelicals are as right to see dead orthodoxy and nominalism as threats to the church–as Hart is to see the amorphous and rootless subjectivism, into which conversionism degenerates when it is not rooted in the kind of churchly life to which Hart so rightly exhorts us–as a threat to biblical faith. Because to be baptized, catechized, and confirmed is not necessarily to be born again or to show any evidence of spiritual life, good Presbyterians need to hear evangelical warnings about nominalism just as surely as evangelicals need to hear theirs about privatized faith. Those who are not blind to what is in the pews around them must resonate with Wesley's warning:
Say not then in your heart, "I was once baptized, and therefore am now a child of God." Alas, that argument will not hold. How many are the baptized gluttons and drunkards, the baptized liars and common swearers, the baptized railers and evil speakers, the baptized whoremongers, thieves, extortioners?
Wesley is of course echoing Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. Nominalism–the capacity of fallen human beings to go through all the right motions and mouth all the right words without any of it ever penetrating their hearts–is a real threat both to the life of the church and to the salvation of individuals. My cry is simply that both warnings, Hart's and this one, need to be sounded if the church is to be faithful to the gospel and healthy as a community of faith.
Conclusion
The place where I hope my brother and I can come together is the doctrine of the means of grace. God has graciously instituted certain practices and committed them to his church–public worship, the true preaching of the Word, the right administration of the Sacraments, and prayer–which are the normal means by which his children come to faith and grow in grace. They "work" not because there is anything magic about them but because God has graciously promised to bless and to use them when they are received in faith. To neglect them or to take them lightly, as too many evangelicals do, is foolish disobedience. But faith is the key word here. We do not share the Roman Catholic expectation that the means of grace work ex opere operato, as if we were dealing with some kind of magic formulae rather than the gracious action of our personal heavenly Father. "Do they not create faith rather than merely respond to it?" our Reformed brothers and sisters may well ask. Yes, mysteriously, but not automatically. To speak as if in and of themselves they remove the need for the new birth is to replace them with a Romanist view of the Sacraments working ex opere operato. Or so it seems to this Reformed evangelical.
Reformed evangelical? In his essay, Hart usefully asks us to consider whether that dual designation is not a contradiction in terms. Too often it has been. I devoutly hope it doesn't have to be.
Do evangelicals need the church with its ministry of Word and Sacrament? Absolutely.
Do good Presbyterians need to be born again? Absolutely.
Can we find the place where the Reformed churchmanship of D. G. Hart and the evangelical emphasis on the necessity of the new birth meet? If we can, I believe we will finally find the new reformation and the new awakening that we so desperately need.
