That evangelicals, who compose a quarter of the American population, must refocus on shaping authentic disciples of Jesus Christ has always garnered wide support. But how to do that in a consumerist society with little appetite for self-denial is debated.
The state of evangelicalism drew the scrutiny of intellectuals as 500 people attended a conference at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Mass., on “renewing the evangelical mission.” Leading thinkers called fellow believers to repent for a host of sins, from reducing the Gospel to a right-wing political agenda to rendering God as a father who merely wants “cuddle time with his kids.”
“We are seeing the very serious weakening of American faith, even among people who profess to be believers,” said Os Guinness, senior fellow of the EastWest Institute in New York and author of The Case for Civility. “Yet an awful lot of people haven’t really faced up to the true challenge and still think they can turn it around with things like political action.”
Speakers earned applause for highlighting where evangelicalism, which began as a Protestant renewal movement, has ironically come to need its own renewing.
How to become useful again, however, is a matter without consensus. Calvin Theological Seminary President Cornelius Plantinga urged pastors to talk less about fulfilling personal potential and offer more from the likes of Old Testament prophet Joel, who warns God’s people to wail and repent before the Lord scorches the earth.
Some evangelicals are taking little comfort these days in successes of the past two decades, which included hundreds of mushrooming megachurches and the advancement of a socially conservative agenda under former President George W. Bush. Too often, they say, Christians came to display un-Christian behavior in the public square and did their disciple-making cause a disservice.
“Beware the escalation of extremism,” Guinness said. “Christian sayings such as, ‘love your enemies’ — they’re forgotten. People are attacking their enemies, [but] they’re certainly not on the side of Jesus in this.”
For some, the solution lies in re-emphasizing Reformation doctrines. But others say evangelicals have worried too much about doctrinal differences when they’ve needed to be joining forces on larger issues.
Richard Alberta, senior pastor of Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brighton, Mich., said preoccupations with doctrinal purity help explain why he struggles to round up fellow evangelicals to join him at anti-abortion events.
“When you get evangelicals among themselves, instead of addressing the social and moral issues, they get backwatered into some debate about dispensationalism or Calvin or Charismatic Renewal,” Alberta said.
Similar frustrations beleaguer Travis Hutchinson, pastor of Highlands Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America) in Lafayette, Ga. He routinely gets a cool response from fellow evangelicals, he said, when he asks them to show courage and join his efforts to minister among undocumented immigrants. The problem, as he sees it, is that the doctrine-obsessed have lost touch with the heart of Jesus Christ.
Though renewal strategies may vary in the years ahead, evangelicals agree their calling is to be found in their bedrock source: Scripture. Theologian John Jefferson Davis of Gordon-Conwell, for instance, said today’s Christians “need a high-intensity experience of God” and should seek it through meditative readings of Scripture.
