evangelicalism

The Billy Graham Century

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
Duisburg, Veranstaltung mit Billy Graham

Billy Graham in Duisburg, Germany, 1954.  Bundesarchiv, Bild 194-0798-29/Lachmann, Hans/CC-BY_SA 3.0

A Publishers Weekly story called to my attention that this is Billy Graham’s centennial year. If his health holds, he will turn 100 on November 7, 2018. The article noted that there are new or updated books that will be released this year by scholars William Martin and Grant Wacker and more popular books by his grandson William and former Graham associate Lon Allison. Edit Blumhofer is working on a book on Graham’s use of gospel music at his crusades, and Ann Blue Wills will publish a work on the life of Ruth Bell Graham titled An Odd Cross to Bear. Martin’s book apparently will also explore the impact of Graham’s son Franklin on his legacy.

At a time when many are questioning whether evangelicalism has a future, or whether to identify as an evangelical, it is oddly fitting and paradoxical that this attention is being given to the figure who as much as anyone defined American evangelicalism. His educational journey traced his journey from fundamentalism to the beginnings of evangelicalism, leaving Bob Jones University after a year because of its legalism to attend Florida Bible Institute and then finishing his education at Wheaton College. He started out as an evangelist with high school ministry Youth for Christ and launched his first “crusade” in Los Angeles, gaining national attention due to William Randolph Hearst’s decision to “puff Graham.”

His crusades reached across denominational lines, drawing criticism from fundamentalists. He pioneered use of media with his Hour of Decision radio broadcasts (to which I listened growing up) and with his television broadcasts of crusades. He helped found Christianity Today, the flagship publication of evangelicalism. He de-segregated seating at his crusades and included black leadership in his crusades as early as 1957. Joining with British preacher John R. W. Stott, they worked together to host the 1974 International Conference on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, propelling global efforts from every nation to every nation to advance the Christian message, making evangelicalism a global movement.

For better or worse, his close relationship with American presidents also established a pattern of engagement between evangelicals and politicians. It was clear in later years that he felt betrayed by Richard Nixon’s behavior in Watergate, including his profanity. They reconciled in later years. He spent extended times in Lyndon Johnson’s White House and prayed with every president from Truman to Obama. This was remarkable in a way after the rise of the Religious Right. It will be interesting to see the judgment of history on his involvement with Presidents.

Graham’s ministry had a shaping influence on my own life. His Hour of Decision broadcasts that we listened to every Sunday night during my childhood made it clear that there was a decision to be made about Christ, and that this was the most consequential decision in one’s life. While I did not “go forward” at one of his crusades, having made my “decision” at a Vacation Bible School at age 10, I saw him speak on seven occasions. The first was at the 1970 crusade in Cleveland at the old Cleveland Stadium, with a busload of kids from our church. On five occasions I heard him speak at InterVarsity’s Urbana Missions Conventions in 1976, 1979, 1981, 1984, and 1987. (Altogether, he spoke here on nine occasions. Here is a short video clip from his 1961 message). The last time I heard him speak was at the old Cooper Stadium in Columbus in 1993. I still have a poster from that in my office. When his associate evangelist Leighton Ford spoke in Youngstown, in the 1970’s, I was a counselor and the training they offered helped me in leading others to faith.

He continued to minister to my family even in retirement. My mother passed in 2010. My father was struggling with the loss and how to make sense of what was left of his life. In 2011, Graham published Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well. My dad always had deeply respected Graham and he read the book over and over again and spoke of how much it helped him. My dad finished his own race in 2012 and Graham’s book helped him in his last couple years to finish well.

It remains to be seen the course the movement he nurtured will take in coming years. Historians and religious scholars will no doubt have differing opinions on his personal influence on that movement, and I suspect not all will be favorable. It’s the lot of the best of us to both hit our limits and prove our fallibility. Perhaps all any of us can do is to be found faithful in our callings. By this standard, Graham is finishing out his century well. Not too long ago, commenting on his Parkinson’s disease, he said,

“Someone asked me recently if I didn’t think God was unfair, allowing me to have Parkinson’s and other medical problems when I have tried to serve him faithfully. I replied that I did not see it that way at all. Suffering is part of the human condition, and it comes to us all. The key is how we react to it, either turning away from God in anger and bitterness or growing closer to him in trust and confidence.” (Source: 40 Courageous Quotes From Billy Graham)

Personally, while recognizing aspects of his life that might be criticized, at the end of the day, I find myself saying, “thanks be to God for Billy Graham.” I suspect for him, though, the only praise that matters is the Master’s “well done, good and faithful servant.”

Update 2/21/2018: Little did I think five days ago when I published this post that we would be saying farewell to Billy Graham so soon. This morning, Billy Graham discovered the truth of the hope he preached for over 50 years and heard his Master’s “well done” as he passed through death to life everlasting.

 

 

 

Review: Still Evangelical?

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

4537Still Evangelical? Mark Labberton ed. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018.

Summary: Ten ethnically diverse evangelical “insiders” explore whether to still identify as “evangelical” and what that means in light of the 2016 election.

Still evangelical? This is a question I’ve wrestled with and written on. What seems clear, and perhaps even more after reading this book, is that 2016 is a watershed moment in the evangelical movement in the U.S.

The book brings together a collection of evangelical insiders, albeit not those in the news for their associations with the president. This alone is telling because one often has the sense that the only ones speaking for evangelicalism are those (mostly white and male) figures surrounding the president.

The work is edited by Mark Labberton, whose introductory essay explores how an understanding of the varying “social locations” of evangelicals helps account for the deep divides in the movement. The contributions that follow are by an ethnically diverse group of leaders who identify as evangelical (itself a startling fact when evangelical is equated in polls and the media with whiteness).

  • Lisa Sharon Harper, a black evangelical discusses how evangelicalism was both where she found faith, and found her passion for justice betrayed. Her essay raises the question of what justice will require and whether evangelicalism will step up to this.
  • Karen Swallow Prior, an English professor at Liberty University, explores why she has remained evangelical–it reflects her convictions, it speaks powerfully to our modern age, there is a beauty in its witness, a history of advocacy for justice and equality, and it is her own family’s tradition.
  • Mark Young discusses evangelicalism as an alternative to fundamentalism and the critical challenge of recovering and refocusing on identity and mission–an ecclesial missiology across the church lines that make up the evangelical movement.
  • Robert Chao Romero represents the Latinx community and speaks both of the powerful evangelical movement within while challenging the broader movement to step beyond fear in engaging issues of immigration and the Dreamers.
  • Soong-Chan Rah challenges the American Christian exceptionalism of a white evangelicalism with no room for lament faced with a growing multi-ethnic movement both in America and globally.
  • Sandra Van Opstal, a Latinx woman engaged in mobilizing multi-ethnic worship expresses the sense of betrayal many felt on election night coupled with a commitment to reform from within, being situated in an evangelical denomination in a multi-ethnic congregation.
  • Allen Yeh contrasts the theological orthodoxy of Euro-American evangelicalism with the emphasis on orthopraxy in the developing global movement of evangelicals and that we need a theology that incorporates these voices.
  • Mark Galli, editor in chief of Christianity Today writes of his realization of being part of an evangelical “elite” that often criticized the fearfulness of the “81 percent” while being blind to their own fears. He recognizes the messiness of our scene and the need to recovery a unity not around our politics but around Christ and our love for each other in him.
  • Shane Claiborne believes evangelicalism needs to be born again along the lines of his “red letter Christian” movement.
  • Jim Daly, James Dobson’s successor at Focus on the Family speaks to the critical need for threefold listening at this time: to God, to each other, and to the world.
  • Tom Lin, president of InterVarsity, wraps up the collection with the reminder that evangelicalism is far more than its American expression. It is a global movement and the embrace of that movement as well as a re-affirmation of the distinctives often referred to as Bebbington’s Quadrilateral may be critical in our day. He is heartened by what he sees in the next generation in the movement he leads (in which I am also employed)–conversions, collaboration, the embrace of people of color (53 percent of InterVarsity), and faithfulness to doctrine.

At first glance, this might be another version of the old saw about lining up economists end to end and having them point every direction. Yet I also found several threads running through these contributions:

  1. Evangelicalism in American life is just as messy as American life. Part of the reason for this is the success of evangelicalism in saturating so many of the “social locations” in our national life. Our failure is one of not being able to transcend those locations with a stronger identification with each other through and in Christ. What could happen if we awake to that, lament our mess, and allow Christ to do a fresh work?
  2. A part of our needed awakening is to the people of color who share with those of us who are white a love for the Savior and for his scriptures, and a recovery of an evangelical passion for justice for all who are image bearers of God.
  3. Our awakening also needs to be to a movement that is global in character, one in which we are a minority, and from whom we have much to learn, even as we repent from Christian versions of American exceptionalism. How might our vision of every tribe and nation, and people worshiping God in the age to come shape how we view those peoples in the present time? A departure from evangelicalism that doesn’t reckon with our global identity risks simply falling into a different variant of American exceptionalism.
  4. There is much that remains that is good and beautiful and true, from our history, from our bedrock convictions, and from how the Spirit of God is moving amid our messy national life.

Finally, the existence of leaders like those in this book, the wider movements they represent, and the relative lack of notice they receive in the broader media reminds us that it is worth questioning the media accounts of evangelicals. I do not consider these “fake news.” I  believe they are giving us true accounts, but not full accounts of a complex and messy movement. I also believe that we cannot let these accounts define our self-understanding of what it means to be evangelical, or to determine whether we are still evangelical. For me, the contributions in this book much more closely reflect the lived reality of my faith than the media accounts. Hence, I would be one who says he is “still evangelical.”

____________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Still Evangelical?

/ rtrube54 / 11 Comments

4537

I follow different publishers on Twitter as one way of learning about their latest books. On Saturday, I saw and responded to this tweet from InterVarsity Press:

Bob Trube on Twitter Yes I am still evangelical Evangelicals who have become ensnared with the politics of the Left or the Right have left in sacrificing the centrality of Christ …

I sent this reply:

“Yes, I am still evangelical. Evangelicals who have become ensnared with the politics of the Left or the Right have left [evangelicalism] in sacrificing the centrality of Christ [for political access and influence].” (Bracketed words add clarity for what was an abbreviated, tweet response.)

The tweet is no doubt part of a campaign to promote a new book, Still Evangelical?, that wrestles with the question, in the aftermath of the 2016 election, whether they still want to identify with the evangelical tribe. The book is on my “to read” pile, so look for a review in the near future.

My response reflected a “moment of clarity” earlier in the week. I was participating in a retreat of faith leaders involved in collegiate ministry at the university where I have worked in collegiate ministry over twenty years. The majority of those in the room were mainline Protestant, Catholic, or representatives of other religions. In the course of the day, exercises moved from fun, but relatively non-threatening discussion to the point of sharing about our religious identity. I was paired with a woman from what I would characterize as a “progressive Protestant denomination” and her views reflected that. Do I play coy, go vague, or tell the truth?

I went for truth with the qualification that evangelicalism for me had nothing to do with political captivity to the Left or the Right (and I do think both have occurred in recent American religious and political history). I went on to say that for me, this identifier goes back to the root of the word “evangel” as good news, and that David Bebbington’s “Quadrilateral” is still a useful rubric for what I consider near and dear, and in what I believe this good news consists:

  • Biblicism doesn’t mean for me a wooden literalism but that God hasn’t left us in the dark, but in a variety of ways from poetry to prophecy to history, God has spoken a trustworthy word to bring us the light of God’s grace and how we might live in consequence of that grace, and that the Bible is crucial in defining the character of the new community of God’s people and how they live out the life of faith together.
  • Crucicentrism,  that God has broken into our estrangement from him in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves, what we desperately needed. As I said in my tweet, Christ is central to my faith, the focal point of all of scripture and my hope in life and death.
  • Conversionism. The good news is that because of what Christ accomplished, we are no longer left to efforts to try harder to be better, struggling against the tyranny of self. We are “new creations” in Christ, people in whom life has begun anew, cleaning the slate of all our wrongs, and providing a new capacity, the indwelling Spirit of God, enabling us to live into that new creation life.
  • Activism. The grace of God moves us to a life of pursuing the beauty and goodness that reflects that grace, while making known in our words as well as our deeds the extravagant love of God revealed in Christ and the offer of new life in him for all who believe.

This movement, with all its flaws led the way to the abolition of slavery on both sides of the Atlantic, provided the basis of social work in our cities, has fought human trafficking on a global basis, as well as provided the impetus for a missions movement, flawed at times, but also resulting in indigenously led Christian movements throughout the world, including one in China that may soon be the largest in the world.

In sharing this, I came to a moment of clarity that “evangel” and “evangelical” are good words, and there is really nothing quite like them as identifiers for a life shaped by this good news. I have also been reading To Light a Fire on Earth by Bishop Robert A. Barron, one of the leaders of the “New Evangelization” in the Catholic Church and have been impressed by how unashamedly he uses the terms “evangelism,” “evangelical,” and “evangel” throughout the work.

No doubt these carry some distinctive valences for Barron, and yet what strikes me is not only his unashamed use of these good words that so many evangelicals are fleeing from, but also that in the effort he is leading within Catholicism, one can detect some of the same distinctives one sees in Bebbington’s Quadrilateral, distinctives I will elaborate in my forthcoming review.

All this leads me to the conclusion that it is time to reclaim this identity, and this good word rather than to slink away from it, either in identification or affiliation. It’s time for us to say to those who have co-opted this identity for a politically captive idolatry that they have lost their way, they have strayed from their first love, and we would love for them to repent, but that they should not use “evangelical” for what is a type of “national” or “political”  or racially homogeneous religion.

My fear, and it is a temptation I recognize in myself, is that in walking away from the identifier “evangelical,” whether we leave the “tribe” or not, is that we will also walk away from the good distinctives that are part of Bebbington’s Quadrilateral. (I am aware that some, like Timothy Gloege have advocated that we ought to abandon these, and I think John Fea has responded well to this contention.) This temptation to mute our identification and what makes it distinctive seems to leave us with a vague religion defined by what we are not, perhaps some form of personal piety, and maybe an impetus toward do-good-ism.

My sense is that instead we need to press more fully into that identity in ways that address our present crisis. I could see us pressing into listening hard to the whole counsel of God in the Bible rather than our selective readings. I could see us pressing into the way the work of Christ is for all without distinctions of gender, class, race, or national origins and the implications for a society deeply riven by these divisions. I could see us pressing into the transforming power of conversion and what that means for so many in our society without hope. I could see us pressing into an activism that explores how each and all of us might live out callings that pursue beauty, goodness and truth in a world where there is far too much ugliness, evil, and lie.

All this lies behind my response to InterVarsity Press’s tweet. Yes, I’m still evangelical. And unashamedly so.

[I would also commend a great article by a colleague that explores this same landscape, Evangelicalism: It’s a Brand but its Also a Space.]

Review: Karl Barth

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Karl Barth

Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals, Mark Galli. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2017.

Summary: An succinct overview of the life and theological relevance of Karl Barth, particularly for contemporary evangelicals.

By most estimates, Karl Barth is considered perhaps the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. He commentary on Romans challenged the liberal consensus of his day focusing attention on the sovereignty of God rather than human standpoints. In his insistence on the sovereign initiative of God and Christ’s reconciling work, he clashed with Emil Brunner, Rudolph Bultmann, and Paul Tillich. He stood as courageously as Bonhoeffer against Nazi totalitarianism, formulating the Barmen Declaration, and eventually losing his faculty position in Bonn when he could not swear loyalty to Hitler. He lived for the rest of his life an exile in Switzerland.

Yet evangelicals have often been uneasy about Barth. From the early opposition of Cornelius Van Til down to present day concerns about Barth’s view of scripture and fears of the universalist implications of his soteriology, many evangelicals have wanted to hold Barth at arms length. Mark Galli, as editor in chief of Christianity Today, the flagship publication of evangelicalism, gets that, and yet offers in this slim volume a sketch of Barth’s life, and theological work, and what evangelicals might learn and gain from this, even if they retain their reservations.

Galli traces the theological development of Barth in the liberal protestant tradition shaped by Schleiermacher and his mentor Adolph von Harnack. He describes the “conversion” of Barth from a young social activist and socialist pastor through his study of Romans, and how the publication of his commentary on Romans rocked the theological world as he reasserted the centrality of God rather than human initiative, and God’s gracious action rather than even the best of human religious impulse. We trace his continued theological development as a professor first at Gottingen and then Bonn.

Galli shows us both the courageous and human side of Barth. He was one of the first to recognize the dangerous pretensions of Nazism and its insidious foothold in the German Church, and led the resistance to this in the formulation and promulgation of the Barmen Declaration, affirming the precedence of the sovereign God over any human sovereignties and that the church could not relent to political captivity to any ideology. This led to Barth being stripped of his teaching position, and his emigration to Basel, Switzerland, where he spent the remainder of his life.

The human side was what Galli concedes was his “emotional adultery” with Charlotte von Kirschbaum, his research assistant for many years. Despite the strains this placed on his marriage, he was unwilling to break off this relationship, and it seems that Barth and his wife Nelly eventually reached some kind of understanding. Even after Karl’s death, Nelly regularly visited Charlotte, an Alzheimer’s victim. This may say something of Nelly, about whom I wish Galli might have told us more.

It is impossible in a book of this length to adequately summarize the Church Dogmatics. Galli focuses on the two aspects that have often been of concern to evangelicals, and while not removing them as cause for reservation, he points out aspects from which evangelicals might learn. With regard to scripture, he acknowledges the problems of Barth’s position of God’s authoritatively revealing himself through a fallible scripture, yet he observes Barth’s Bible-centered practice, how extensively he cited scripture, and always with a view to it’s authority as God’s witness, not in criticism of its faults. He also tackles Barth’s ideas of “universal reconciliation.” He contrasts the Reformers “If you repent and believe, you will be saved” with Barth’s “You are saved; therefore believe and repent.” He sees in this a position that may have the promise of ending the impasse between Calvinist and Arminian positions, while acknowledging the further work that remains.

Finally, Galli takes up what he sees as a fundamental challenge to contemporary evangelicalism. In Barth’s unflinching commitment to the initiative of God, he sees a challenge to an evangelicalism at once focused on subjective experience and on human activism in doing good. He sees in these trends a theology not unlike that of Schleiermacher, even while clinging to evangelical affirmations. He trenchantly observes

“The point is not to make a sweeping condemnation of evangelicalism, as if it were the epitome of nineteenth century liberalism. The point is not to look to Barth as our theological savior. The point is to suggest that the theology Barth eventually found bankrupt, and so ardently battled, is a theology we understand and identify with at some level. That we imbibe it unthinkingly is a problem, because as Barth’s theology demonstrates, it is an approach that brings with it a host of problems, problems that undermine not only the church’s integrity but especially its evangelistic mission” (p. 145).

Galli gives us a succinct biography that leaves us much to consider. Would we have Barth’s courage to stand against a compromised church and a powerful regime? What place does the “strange world of the Bible” have in shaping our world? How central in our thinking is God’s initiative in salvation? In Barth’s “no” to the natural theology of Brunner, and nineteenth century liberalism, do we also hear a “no” to our own generation’s human pretensions? Galli, a skilled editor, also serves us as a skilled writer, using few words to give us much to consider.

____________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The Evangelical Penumbra?

/ rtrube54 / 5 Comments

29148092781_526050e0f3_z

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr

Ross Douthat, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times titled “Is There an Evangelical Crisis?” proposed that evangelical intellectuals and writers and their friends might be part of an “evangelical penumbra” that has overestimated the role of serious theology (and thought in general) to evangelicalism’s sociological success. He raises the question in light of the 81 percent who voted for President Trump whether this “penumbra” might leave evangelicalism, and what this would expose about the movement that is left, one predominantly white and racially segregated, and perhaps more committed to American greatness than the kingdom of God.

In case you are wondering, a “penumbra” is the outer region affected by an eclipse, that is only in a partial shadow or weakened light. In the recent eclipse that crossed North America, central Ohio, where I live was in the penumbra of the eclipse while areas to the south experienced total eclipse. As it happens, I also live in the penumbra Douthat writes about and I deeply resonate with Douthat’s concerns. I’ve lived in a world where we read the Bible cover to cover and discovered a gospel that transcends racial, economic, gender, and national boundaries and a God who loves the world he created and wants us to love and care for it as well. I’ve lived in a world where the transforming work of Christ calls me to not only personal but social holiness–a life pursuing personal integrity and justice in society. I find myself far from perfect in all of this, but unwilling to rationalize my imperfections or the ways our communities of faith fall short. I’ve lived in a world of “taking every thought captive to Christ,” where knowing Christ leads to a kind of intellectual renaissance in which every intellectual endeavor is immeasurably enriched by knowing it is shot through with the glory of God.

It stings to wake up and find that what one assumed to be authentic evangelical Christianity is in fact marginal to much of this movement. No wonder so many of my friends are disenchanted and have decided either to drop the name or leave altogether. I find myself wrestling with what to do about that myself. It seems like a futile thing to say that the evangelicalism of Jerry Falwell Jr., Franklin Graham, and Robert Jeffress is not really evangelicalism when it appears that a majority of white evangelicals identify with that evangelicalism. Yet what disturbs me more is that if I am living in the penumbra, to pursue Douthat’s analogy, then these folks are in the umbra, the place of darkness. I have to admit that it really looks dark to me–politically captive as opposed to being captivated by Christ, considering national greatness more important than the kingdom of God, willing to perpetuate and deepen our racial wounds rather than to heal them, and turning a blind eye to sins they would preach against in their own churches to advance a narrow political agenda.

Dean William Inge is perhaps most famous for his remark that “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” I tremble when I consider what is happening right now because I see a movement that is destined to be a bereft widow–abandoned both by the young and the powerful in the years to come. I also haven’t got a clue what will awaken those I see pursuing this destructive path, apart from a Damascus road-type encounter with the Lord himself. It seems this group has no interest in listening to those in the “penumbra.”

So what does one do? Yesterday, I reviewed a book titled Faithful Presence, and I think the author is onto something. I see many local congregations (including my own) that embrace the beliefs that have been a part of my life, who are practicing this kind of faithful presence where I live. They’ve neither departed from an evangelical faith, nor embraced the truncated version of that faith about which Douthat writes. I don’t despair when I look at them. They aren’t trying to wield political clout or stack “the court.” They are too busy feeding the hungry, visiting prisons, finding ways to collaborate with our state’s leaders in addressing our opioid crisis, and forging relationships across racial and economic lines to engage in such stuff. They are too busy thinking about the nations of the world to think about making only one nation great. And they still believe that the good news of Christ’s redeeming work is far more important than the latest “tweet.”

One thing that must also be observed. The people I’m talking about are often part of neither the intellectual or media “elites” within evangelicalism nor the “court” evangelicalism about which Douthat is concerned. Many are thoughtful people who are less interested in writing or talking about their faith than simply living it in their congregations, communities, and workplaces. My hunch is that if anything will endure the winnowing (and widowing) of evangelicalism, it will be these people, who quietly have been the presence of Christ in their communities. And that’s where I think I must remain.

Ten Books For Understanding Evangelicalism

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
The God Who is There.jpg

My copy of Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There, purchased c. 1972.

In a review of Carl F. H. Henry’s classic The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism the other day, I mentioned a conversation in which I wondered aloud how many of those who leave evangelicalism understand the rich, if imperfect, part of the Christian family they are leaving. My own sense is that often, though not always, they are responding to distortions or downright contradictions of historical evangelicalism. I recognize that for some it is a matter of leaving the incredibly painful, and may well be warranted, but I sense for others, it is wondering whether the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. I won’t try to answer that, but would propose that it might first be important to appraise the grass on the evangelical side of the fence.

The friend I was talking with asked me about some books he might consider. This is a kind of expansion on my response. I suggest two kinds of books here. Some are histories, which go back to Great Britain as well as our own national beginnings. The others are “classics”–books that for many of us shaped an evangelical outlook. At the end, I provide links to some other lists–mine is hardly exhaustive–but rather a starting point.

Histories:

David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. London: Routledge, 1988. The history of Wesley to John Stott is covered here, as well as Bebbington’s crucial delineation of four evangelical distinctives: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism and activism.

Donald W. Dayton and Douglas M Strong, Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage, 2nd edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2014. An updated edition of a study of the pre-Civil War nineteenth century roots of evangelicalism in the United States and the combination of piety, preaching, and social reform characteristic of this movement in this period. (From my review).

George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. This book looks at the retrenchment of evangelicalism into fundamentalism in the U.S. post Civil War, with the rise of Darwinism, European biblical scholarship, and the “social gospel” associated with theologically liberal Christianity. The new edition tracks this movement since the 1970’s in its more politically engaged form.

Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995. Noll explores the historical reasons for the lack of evangelical influence in the academy, the arts, and “high” culture. This book served as a kind of rallying cry for a group of us involved in launching a national ministry effort with graduate students and faculty.

Brian Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013. This is part of InterVarsity’s “History of Evangelicalism” series (all worth reading) that covers the post-World War II rise of modern or neo-evangelicalism–the evangelicalism of Billy Graham and John Stott, and an increasingly global leadership. Here is my review of the book.

Classic Formative Works:

Charles W. Colson, Born Again. Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2008 (revised edition). The biography of White House aide and Watergate conspirator Charles Colson and his conversion to a socially engaged evangelical faith that led to launching Prison Fellowship, and a career as an influential social commentator within the evangelical community.

J. I. Packer, Knowing God. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993 (revised edition). This was a classic for many of us that explored how we may know God, the attributes of God, and benefits of knowing God. You read a few pages, and then had to stop, think, and worship.

Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who is There. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998 (revised edition). Schaeffer was the prophet of L’Abri whose analysis of a culture that had moved further and further from God gave us a framework to make sense of our times.

Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2005 (revised edition). Sider was one of the voices that re-awakened the slumbering social conscience of evangelicals, challenging the privatized versions of the Bible with it social teaching, as well as exposing American Christians to the challenge of global hunger.

John R. W. Stott, Basic Christianity. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012 (revised edition). This was a book that taught many of us the basics of our faith and how to explain it to others.

The histories, I think, are even-handed, showing both the best and the worst. Likewise, the “classic” works I’ve selected are not without their flaws, but are representative of books that reflect some of the “best” of evangelicalism and were important in shaping the outlook of many of us.

The list is hardly exhaustive. My friend said, “there is only so much I can read. But as I researched this post, I came along a few other lists you might visit:

The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals. A list published in 2006 by Christianity Today.

10 of the Best Books About Evangelical Christianity. I appreciate Kyle Roberts inclusion of Amos Yang’s work and also Soong Chan Rah’s The Next Evangelicalism.

Five Great Books on Evangelical Christianity. Thomas Kidd narrows it down even more and includes Michael Emerson and Christian Smith’s Divided by Faith–a very important book!

What all these do is go beyond the media soundbites which rarely do justice to any religious tradition. Whether you are an evangelical or someone diffident about this identity, or you are just trying to understand this group of people who seem to be so much in the news, these lists should help. Happy reading!

 

Review: The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Uneasy Conscience

The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, Carl F. H. Henry (foreword by Richard J. Mouw). Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003 (originally published 1947).

Summary: Henry’s classic manifesto challenging the heirs of the fundamentalist movement to a recovery of a social and intellectual engagement while maintaining gospel integrity.

In a recent conversation about people leaving evangelicalism because of the “rootedness” of those in traditions like Catholicism, I wondered aloud whether many who are repudiating evangelicalism have much knowledge of what they are repudiating, other than the uncomfortable experiences they likely have had personally. In my experience, most evangelicals are sadly out of touch with even their own history, let alone the great history of the church over the past two millenia.

The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism is one of the keystone works in the rise of the twentieth century evangelical movement. In it Carl Henry decries the regrettable loss of a social conscience in fundamentalism’s retreat from a vibrantly engaged evangelicalism of the nineteenth century.  He writes:

     “In a company of more than one hundred representative evangelical pastors, the writer proposed the following question: ‘How many of you, during the past six months, have preached a sermon devoted in large part to a condemnation of such social evils as aggressive warfare, racial hatred and intolerance, the liquor traffic, exploitation of labor or management or the like–a sermon containing not merely an incidental or illustrative reference, but directed mainly against such evils and proposing the framework in which you think a solution is possible?’ Not a single hand was raised in response.”

He attributes this in part to the retrenchment from theological liberalism and its associated “social gospel.” But he also lays part of the blame on an eschatology that is indifferent to all efforts to address social and physical needs since “it is all going to perish” and what must be done is simply to rescue lost people. He argues that the exclusive focus on the “not yet” of the kingdom to the exclusion of the “already” that heralds the work of Christ leads to a great imbalance in preaching. He writes this as one who embraces rather than denies premillenial theology.

Furthermore, he calls for an intellectual recovery of a Christian mind and social ethic that roots a vigorous engagement in the realms of higher education as well as societal needs in theological orthodoxy. He proposes protest that roots advocacy in evangelical belief while also recognizing that ameliorating social needs without spiritual regeneration through Christ is inadequate.

Carl Henry represented a vanguard of evangelical leaders who created journals like Christianity Today and began to assert a socially engaged and intellectually rigorous Christianity that remained rooted in fundamental beliefs. It was a movement that advocated for a “both-and” approach when everyone else had assumed an “either-or” approach to Christian faith–either socially engaged or doctrinally orthodox. Henry argued for both and believed this reflected gospel integrity.

While there were things Henry and others no doubt didn’t get right, many more don’t even know he existed or that his manifesto anticipated the socially engaged evangelicalism of Sojourners, the intellectual and doctrinal rigor of the neo-Reformed folk, and the movement toward a recovery of a Christian mind in the world of higher education.

This slim volume “stirred many pots.” It is worth a read in our day, both for the vibrant vision it articulates and for the glimpse it gives us of the beginnings of twentieth century evangelicalism after World War Two.

Is Evangelicalism Dying?

/ rtrube54 / Leave a comment
Duisburg, Veranstaltung mit Billy Graham

Billy Graham in Duisburg, Germany, 1954.  Bundesarchiv, Bild 194-0798-29/Lachmann, Hans/CC-BY_SA 3.0

Recently apologist Hank Hanegraff converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, joining the exodus of prominent evangelicals to Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. Ed Stetzer, in a column in Christianity Today, noted the attraction for many thoughtful evangelicals of the liturgy and sense of authority and unchanging belief when belief seems to be a “choose your own adventure” story for evangelicals and many Protestant churches are trimming their belief sails to the winds of culture.

A friend of mine, who has recently converted to Catholicism described the evangelical church as “fading away” and that it will probably not exist in 50 years. His judgment was that were this to occur, the movement won’t be missed. I’ve been thinking about his remark all week. You see, both in terms of the organization I work with, and the church where I worship, evangelicals are the “people” within the larger Christian family with which I am identified. And truth be told, I am unashamed of the core distinctives David Bebbington and others have said mark this movement within the larger Christian family: a focus on the work of Christ, the authority of the Bible in our lives, the need for conversion, and a commitment to live out our beliefs in action. I should also say at the outset that I both deeply respect and learn from believers from these other parts of the Christian family, as I hope they might from our part of the family as well.

If there is anything that is dying, it is white, boomer evangelicalism. The evangelical movement globally is rapidly growing, particularly the Pentecostal segments of it. In the U.S., ethnic minority churches are rapidly growing and they share the theological convictions, if not the ethno-cultural trappings of boomer evangelicals. There has been a great deal of commentary about white evangelicals since the presidential election. What I think it all really comes down to is that large swaths of the white evangelical church have exchanged gospel power for political clout and have associated themselves with partisan politics rather that the impartiality of the gospel. We’ve forgotten our own conversions and what it was like to be lost…and found, and we’ve become indifferent to others or even judgmental. The Bible is often simply the launching board to justify whatever we want for ourselves or want others to do. Crosses are just part of the “Jesus junk” we adorn ourselves with and we think little of this as the place where God’s love and justice meet. Activism is going to political rallies and posting yard signs.

I know this is sweeping and there are many exceptions. I had a chance to visit with some of them on Thursday. They are bright, talented graduate students. They were simply talking about the Christian community of which they are part. It is diverse in majors and the ethnic background of people and they love that and want it to be even more true. They love to read and think deeply about the Bible and not beat others over the head with it but rather do what it teaches. They love conversations with those who differ from them–that is the nature of grad school. They love Jesus and each other. They care about the poor in their midst. Several worship in a church in a rough area of town that is a “food desert” and they are dedicated to serving the people there. They encourage me to hope and pray for better evangelical days ahead. And their example makes me want to do all I can both to encourage them and call the evangelicals of my generation to repent and to recover.

  • To repent of our political captivity and to recover our prophetic calling.
  • To repent of our forgetfulness of our lostness and the wonder of being found by Christ and to recover our sensitivity to the least, the last and the lost.
  • To repent of our “solo scriptura” approach to the Bible where each of us are our own pope and we read into the Bible what we want. Will we test our reading against the creeds, the confessions, and how our brothers and sisters from other classes and cultures read the same text?
  • To repent of sin management and censoriousness of others and recover the sense that we are all equally in need of the work of Christ at a cross that brings down the privileged and raises the powerless.
  • To repent of our culture wars and to recover a sense of culture care that seeks to preserve and strengthen what is good, and to bring healing to what is broken.

I mentioned earlier how I learn so much from Eastern Orthodox and Catholic believers and the rich resources of this part of the family. At the same time, I would entertain the humble hope that there are riches within the evangelical part of the family line, and that it would indeed be a tragedy for this to die out. As sad as the break of the Reformation was, it led to reform in all parts of the church. The evangelicals who came from this fomented a missionary enterprise, that despite its imperfections, brought the light of Christ to many people, who in some cases are now re-evangelizing the West. Even as evangelicals have played a key role in the modern day fight against human trafficking, so also they led the fight against slavery. In the world of the university where I work, I’ve seen a generation of Christian researchers arise coupling academic rigor and Christian thought in fields as diverse as philosophy, education, and technology.

I do think there are things in evangelicalism as it has developed over the past 40 years that deserve to be laid to rest. But I would also suggest that to talk about a branch of the family dying is a regrettably sad, and even cruel thing. I wonder if a better conversation might be one where we seek to learn from the best of each part of the family. Will we heal the rifts of the Great Schism, or the Reformation? I doubt it. But we might begin to draw closer as we pray and wait for the Great Return when all wounds and rifts will be healed, and a single, pure and spotless Bride will greet her Lover. Come, Lord Jesus!

 

Review: Recovering Classic Evangelicalism

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Recovering Classical Evangelicalism

Recovering Classic Evangelicalism, Gregory Alan Thornbury. Wheaton: Crossway, 2013.

Summary: Addressing an evangelical context that seemingly has lost a sense of its identity, core convictions, and model for cultural engagement, the author commends a re-appraisal of the work of Carl F. H. Henry as a source of wisdom for the future.

It seems there are numerous books being published at present addressing what is perceived the parlous state of the contemporary church in America. They seem to fall into two camps. Either they recommend innovation, or they call for a return or recovery of some lost tradition, whether the church fathers, Benedict, or the Reformers.

This book, written particularly for that part of the church that would identify as “evangelical” proposes that the way forward is to recover the philosophical, theological, and cultural vision of the movement birthed in the post-World War II years. This was the time of the founding of Christianity Today as a periodical of both evangelical conviction and theological and intellectual heft, befitting the concerns of two of its’  founders, Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry. This work focuses on the work of Henry, who was evangelicalism’s leading theologian, probably until his death in 2003.

Thornbury hardly consider’s Henry to be perfect, and in the first chapter enumerates some of the flaws in both his personality and work. He also chronicles the “drubbing” Henry has faced from scholars criticizing his commitments to inerrancy, his epistemology, and more. Furthermore, what may be his most significant work, his six-volume systematic theology, God, Revelation, and Authority is also largely unread and unknown, particularly because few got beyond its first, densely written volume. Yet Thornbury commends Henry as a model of someone who brought a Christian mind to bear on both the theological and cultural questions facing evangelicalism, and as one whose example and advocacy paved the way for renewed efforts to bring Christian thought to bear in the academy and the culture.

The focus of Thornbury’s discussion is volumes two and four of God, Revelation, and Authority (hereafter GRA) and Henry’s much more approachable The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism.  He focuses on four significant contributions of Henry that he believes deserve renewed attention. First was his rooting epistemology in a God who reveals God’s self and does so in language and propositions.  Second was that theology matters, and here, he focuses his discussion around the fifteen theses found in volume two of GRA. He engages the theology of speech-act theory and the work of Hans Frei and Kevin Van Hoozer, and still comes back to the idea that while language may do more than what Henry allowed, it does no less–that we may find more than just theological propositions arising from the scripture, but for a God who reveals God’s self effectively, we will find no less.

For Henry, the inerrancy of scripture, so much under fire even in evangelical circles today, was of utmost concern because of its connection to the authority. His concerns were not merely liberal criticism, but the hermeneutical relativism of Continental philosophy. It was not that Henry was unmindful of both problem texts in scripture and the fallibility of interpreters. Rather, he was convinced that concessions here would cast a shadow over the whole of scripture and the Church’s proclamation.

Finally, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism was a kind of manifesto that brought to bear biblical thought on the social, political, and economic issues of the day. It lead to the recovery of a social conscience that had been lost in the fundamentalist retreat from society. It provided an argument that culture, and cultural engagement that was not culture war mattered deeply.

Thornbury concludes by arguing that our evangelical roots matter. To unthinking shift from these or to live cut off from our roots can be fatal. To re-examine these roots, in this case the roots provided by the work of Carl F. H. Henry, is not necessarily to affirm that these roots are adequate, but rather important and not to be neglected. It strikes me that in growing things, roots continue to grow as well as the plant above ground, and the plant draws nourishment from an growing root system, both new roots and old.

I have to admit that I have not paid attention to Henry in recent years, paying more heed to newer thinkers. Yet this book reminds me of the personal debt I owe him, and those like him. As a young Christian working in the university context, Christianity Today, which in the seventies still reflected Henry’s intellectual influence and heft, was a great encouragement that I could both believe and think, that I could root my thought in a trustworthy and authoritative revelation that provided the foundation to wrestles with the deepest questions being asked in the university world. I could root a commitment to justice and compassion in the care and standards God established for human societies, and the words of the prophets who called a straying people back to such things. Reading Thornbury, I realized that I have often heard but never read Uneasy Conscience. It now sits on my TBR pile. Look for a review.

Review: Praying at Burger King

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

praying-at-burger-kingPraying at Burger King, Richard J. Mouw. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007.

Summary: Short essays on the life of faith in the world, originally appearing on beliefnet.com, and several other publications.

Richard Mouw is the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary and one of the more thoughtful and irenic commentators in evangelicalism today. This little book, with its unusual title and book cover is a great way to get acquainted with Mouw. He has collected a number of short (most are three pages or so) essays from contributions to Christianity Today, Perspectives, and posts on his blog and on beliefnet.com.

The essays are grouped under three categories: living, believing, and church and world. They are written in a conversational style yet cast a fresh light on some familiar aspect of Christian faith. The title essay has to do with the practice of prayers before meals, and Mouw’s recognition that Burger King is one of those places where God is indeed present and so he will keep acknowledging that. The next essay gives equal time to competitor McDonald’s and an insight of how important it is to talk with youth that translates into caring for the indifferent youth who is serving his burger the next time he is at the airport McDonald’s. Subsequent essays in this first section include reflections on Halloween, Lent, Machiavelli, integrity, greed and a number of other everyday matters from housekeeping to the “ordinary” work of a researcher. He speaks simply about how we often subconsciously bracket off the “stuff” of scholarly work from the “spiritual” life when in fact “every square inch” (as Kuyper would put it) belongs to the Lord.

In the second section, three essays caught my attention. In “Entrenched” he observes how this label is often applied to conservatives when in fact everyone is interested in “conserving something” and may be liable to trench digging. He proposes that we might consider a better, more biblical metaphor of “the way” in which we’ve chosen to walk through life, something we are all doing, whether or not we are all walking in the same way. In “He Did Weep,” he writes about Jesus not simply at Lazarus tomb, but in the manger at Christmas. True incarnation involved a crying baby, experiencing the discomforts of all human babies, contrary to “Away in a Manger.”  His sensitive response to a student’s troubled questions in “What about Hell?” and the distinction he made between those who think they are too good to be condemned by God, and those who consider God too good to punish are responses I will remember for similar conversations.

In the third section, his essay on “Eating Alone,” inspired by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone notes the great dangers that come to us in our increasing isolation from social organizations, the mediating institutions, that once were a significant part of the fabric of belonging. I’m surprised how many writers are sounding this theme, which may truly be one of the great perils of our age. He also includes some beautiful essays about his encounters with Catholicism and some thoughts about “Patriotism” that are balanced and measured and worthy of consideration wherever you are on the political spectrum.

Mouw’s irenic voice is one we need in our time of ambivalent triumphalism on one side and anguished resistance on another. He explores the everyday acts of faithful Christian presence in the real world we inhabit. These essays feel to me to be “dispatches from another place” than where we usually live that call us to both our true selves, and the true north of our faith.