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.
Evangelicalism is a renewal movement within the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. As such, it claims as its own the trinitarian and christological dogmas of the early church, not because they are ancient or endorsed by the teaching office of this or that denomination, but because they are necessarily implied by how the Bible presents God's revelation of himself in the history of Israel and Israel's messiah, Jesus the Lord. These teachings were also basic to the ecclesial and spiritual renewal in the churches of the West in the sixteenth century, generally known as the Reformation. Evangelicals are Reformational Christians, claiming as their own the material and formal principles of this movement: the normative authority of Holy Scripture and justification by faith alone. Evangelicalism since the Reformation has also been decisively shaped by the great awakenings of the eighteenth century, the worldwide missionary movement that grew out of it, and stirrings of the Spirit that continue to this day including, but not limited to, puritanism, pietism, and Pentecostalism.
I am frequently involved in conversations like this one and hear a lot of moaning about the declining fortunes of the evangelical movement. I know the diagnosis well and have described it myself: doctrinal indifference, transcendence-starved worship, cultural captivity, superficial spirituality, preaching about the Bible but not from it, etc. These are all symptoms of a deeper malaise. It is an open question whether evangelicalism at the end of the twenty-first century (if Jesus tarries that long) will have anything of the cultural cache or public influence it is said to have now, at least in parts of the United States.
But it is well to remember that Jesus did not say, "Upon this rock, I will build my evangelical empire." He promised prevailing power to his church. Insofar as evangelicals remain gospel-people and Bible-people, God will continue to use them, I believe, as instruments of renewal and blessing for the entire Body of Christ. This side of heaven, as T. S. Eliot put it, "the church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored."
In 1899, D. L. Moody died in Northfield, Massachusetts. A chorus of disconsolation arose around the Christian world: "Who will lead us now? Who will replace D. L. Moody?" Little did they suspect that the sovereign Lord had ordained the birth and calling of Billy Graham, the son of a dairy farmer, who has preached the gospel to more persons that any human being in history. Nor could they have imagined that God would speak to a shattered Chuck Colson in an Alabama jail and through him launch a ministry to prisoners and their families that is now chartered in 114 countries around the world.
How dare we be disheartened, especially when we consider the extraordinary things God is doing in Africa, Latin America, South Korea, and the former (consider that, the former!) Soviet Union. The shape of evangelicalism in the future will be, even more than it is today, transnational, transdenominational, even trans-confessional in a way that stresses the "mereness" of Christianity without necessarily dumbing it down or bleaching it out, though such dangers are real and require vigilance always. Evangelical identity is not a prize to be grasped tightly in the fist like a hand grenade about to go off. It is a freely received gift to be shared freely and, like the offer of the gospel itself, promiscuously. "Come unto me," the Master said, "all of you" (Matt. 11:28).
Some conservatives do not like the word "evangelical" because it has become too broad, too bland. Some progressives do not like it either because it is too stodgy, too restrictive. I think it is a word worth keeping, but not worth dying for. Luther did not want his followers to be called Lutherans. Even though I am a Reformed Baptist (in the tradition of John Bunyan and Charles Spurgeon), I do not think the label "Calvinist" would please the reformer of Geneva.
Christianity Today identifies itself as "a magazine of evangelical conviction," and the adjective means something. It signals a commitment to historic Christian orthodoxy, to the Bible, God's totally truthful written Word, and to Jesus Christ, the one and only Savior, and his lordship over every area of life. What I like about the word "evangelical" is that it points ad fontes, to the sources of our faith in the Holy Scriptures at the heart of which is Jesus Christ and his gospel.
I am a Christian, a Protestant, an evangelical, and a Southern Baptist. All of those commitments are important to me, but so is their ordering. Born amidst slavery and segregation, the SBC is now committed to racial reconciliation as well as world evangelization and biblical theology. We have special gifts to share with our brothers and sisters in Christ (including Roman Catholic believers who know and serve Jesus), and much to receive from them.
Southern Baptists have sometimes been better talkers than listeners. We have not always acknowledged our need for others nor have we heeded the dangers of denominational prosperity. I hope that such hubris and disconnection are more markers of our past than of our future. The old patterns of isolation and Baptist braggadocio will not serve the cause of Christ in a world like ours. If there is a future for the SBC, it will be an evangelical future-a commitment to cooperation without compromise, and a passion for sharing the love of Jesus with everyone everywhere. In this way, the SBC too can serve the renewal of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
