(By Phil Johnson)
Today's post is adapted from Phil's seminar at the Shepherds' Conference entitled, "What Is an Evangelical?"
Now we need to discuss the contemporary evangelical movement and where it went astray before time gets totally away from us.
Since the mid-1800s there has been a concerted effort to broaden the definition of evangelicalism so that more people can fit in the tent. That happens on the one hand because the adjective evangelical has always been a kind of seal of approval in Christianity—and everybody wants to get into the tent. It's a shorthand way of signifying that someone really believes the Bible and takes the gospel seriously.
Naturally, false teachers who want to smuggle in false doctrines would love to be thought of as evangelicals, because that minimizes the criticism and suspicion that gets aimed their way.
Charles Spurgeon noticed this phenomenon in the nineteenth century, and he pleaded with the true evangelicals of that era not to accept the claims of those who say they are evangelicals but aren't. He warned the Baptist union that the plan of the enemy was (in his words) "to lay the egg of error in the nest of our churches." And he warned that people who called themselves evangelicals but rejected evangelical principles had already infiltrated the Baptist Union. These pseudo-evangelicals took label for themselves, but they refused to define what they meant by it. (Just like today.) In 1888, Spurgeon wrote, "It is mere cant (meaning hypocrisy—a pious pretense) to cry, 'We are evangelical; we are all evangelical,' and yet decline to say what evangelical means. If men are really evangelical, they delight to spread as glad tidings the truths from which they take the name."
By the start of the 20th century, modernists had gained a foothold in virtually all the evangelical denominations by posing as evangelicals when they really weren't. The neo-orthodox followed suit. Karl Barth's called his magnum opus Evangelical Theology.
The historic evangelicals (paleo-evangelicals) were more or less driven out of the mainline denominations in the first half of the 20th century in order to preserve the purity of their evangelical fellowships. And one of the great lessons we ought to have learned in the course of the twentieth century is about the vitality of evangelical conviction. The gospel is indeed the power of God unto salvation.
Evangelicals may have lost virtually all the mainline denominations, but evangelical churches grew and multiplied nonetheless, so that (despite the current mess evangelicals have made of their movement) in the broad sweep of the twentieth century evangelicalism was more successful (by every measure) than all the liberal denominations combined.
That should have strengthened our confidence in evangelical principles. But instead, my assessment would be that authentic, historic evangelicalism today, is an endangered species. Evangelicals sold their birthright for a mess of pottage, and the average evangelical church leader hasn't yet even awakened to that fact.
How did this happen?
I need to give you the really short version if I'm going to finish on time, so let me summarize by saying I think there were two disastrous turning points in the 20th century that sealed the doom of the evangelical movement. Either one of these events would have done serious, potentially fatal, damage to the movement. Both of them combined virtually guaranteed that the movement would become what it is today—a mess that frankly no authentic, historic evangelical wishes to be associated with.
The first unfortunate turning point was a parting of ways between evangelicals and fundamentalists. This wasn't an abrupt rift that you could easily put your finger on and date. The division actually began, I suppose, when the original fundamentalists defined themselves. Instead of two principles that embodied both the formal and material principles of the Protestant Reformation, the fundamentalists published a long series of close to 100 tracts, later compiled into 12 hefty volumes, defending the essential doctrines of Christianity. They brunt of their defense was against the higher critics, and I personally would not quibble with any of the doctrines they deemed fundamental. The one complaint I would have with early fundamentalism is that I think they gave short shrift to justification by faith. In those large volumes of tracts on the fundamentals of Christianity, there is (if I recall correctly) only one article devoted completely to the doctrine of justification by faith. If memory serves me right, it was written by Handley Moule, and it wasn't one of the more energetic essays in the collection. I've said this before, but I think that marked the beginning of fundamentalists' losing sight of the biblical hierarchy of what's truly essential. From before the 1920s on, fundamentalist energies were increasingly invested in things other than fundamental doctrine. Prohibition, intramural squabbles over personalities and politics, end-times speculation, and so on. By the 1960s fundamentalists were obsessed with dress codes and rules of conduct. Later, it was Bible versions and music styles. The fundamentalist movement lost its grip on the evangelical essential. Not that they overtly denied sola fide or the doctrine of justification by faith, but as a movement, they frankly haven't given it due stress or attention.
It's my conviction that from the very beginning, before there was even any animosity involved, the parting of ways between evangelicals and fundamentalists weakened and impoverished both groups. Evangelicals tended to be uncomfortable with the nonstop militancy of the fundamentalists; fundamentalists thought the evangelicals' desire to be as positive as possible was a sign of weakness and compromise. The truth is that both temperaments were valid, and each side's unique contribution was needed in almost equal measure.
The two groups moved steadily further apart for some 40 years or longer. Deprived of so much evangelical warmth, the fundamentalists grew increasingly contentious. And deprived of so much fundamentalist conviction, the evangelicals grew increasingly willing to compromise. Anything and everything eventually became negotiable.
The wider the rift grew, the more eager to fight the fundamentalists became, the more willing to compromise the evangelicals were. Each side, reacting badly to the temperament of the other, unwittingly exaggerated their own faults.
By the 1970s the rift between evangelicals and fundamentalists grew so wide that our fundamentalist Baptist brethren ran out of people close to them to fight, so they turned on one another. That movement (which in the early 1970s had nine out of ten of the largest churches in America) is now so fragmented, and sectors of it are so bizarre today, that it's almost as hard to define the fundamentalist movement as it is to define evangelicalism. I won't go further than that, because my fundamentalist friends think I have already criticized their movement too much.
(To be concluded tomorrow)