(by Phil Johnson)
Today's post is the final post adapted from Phil's seminar at Shepherds' Conference, entitled "What Is an Evangelical?"
The second thing that spelled the doom of the evangelical movement in America was the rise of so-called neo-evangelicalism. This was a movement strongly influenced by the early drift of Fuller seminary, led by men who were affiliated with Christianity Today and the National Association of Evangelicals, and driven mainly (I think) by a desire for academic respectability, even at the expense of a clear and consistent testimony.
Harold John Ockenga was an extremely influential voice in mid-20th-century evangelicalism. He helped found Fuller Seminary, Cordon Conwell, and the National Association of Evangelicals. He was pastor for many years of Park Street Church in Boston. He's the one who introduced the idea of neo-evangelicalism and proposed that name, in a 1948 meeting at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. The vision as he outlined it was driven by three priorities: First, it was a repudiation of the fundamentalists' separatism (which, ironically, amounted to a final declaration of separation from the evangelicals' own fundamentalist brethren at the same time it opened the door to fellowship and cooperation with non-evangelicals). Second, it was a summons to social involvement—which frankly was ill-defined, and evangelical "social involvement" never really materialized on any grand scale, unless you count the rise of the religious Right after the 1970s. And third was (in Ockenga's words) a "determination to engage itself in the theological dialogue of the day."
At the inception, you had a few men like Harold Lindsell, Carl Henry, and perhaps Donald Grey Barnhouse, who were qualified and willing to engage in theological dialogue. But by the end of the century, the evangelical movement could hardly care less about theological dialogue. Evangelical megachurches were best known for their pursuit of shallow entertainments and superficial fads. And Christianity Today's editorial board apparently came to the conclusion that engagement in theological dialogue meant giving a platform to practically every theological anomaly that came along except the old evangelical orthodoxies. You hardly ever hear anyone but fundamentalists talk about neo-evangelicalism these days, but the fact is that neo-evangelicalism completely overwhelmed and commandeered the entire evangelical movement, and that is the primary reason the movement itself is no longer truly evangelical.
In short, the evangelical movement imploded because it nurtured its own deficiencies. Neo-evangelical principles ultimately eradicated historic evangelicalism, and those of us who are paleo-evangelicals frankly have no movement that we really belong to.
Now we're nearly out of time and I haven't said half of what I intended. I haven't even given you a single quote from Lloyd-Jones's book What is an Evangelical? So let me strongly recommend again that you read those lectures. In essence, those lectures were Lloyd-Jones's answer to neo-evangelicalism. He was a classic paleo-evangelical without a neo-evangelical bone in his body. Here's a sample quote:
One of the first signs that a man is ceasing to be truly evangelical is that he ceases to be concerned about negatives, and keeps saying, We must always be positive. I will give you a striking example of this in a man whose name is familiar to most of you, and some of whose books you have read. This is what he has written recently: `Whether a person is an evangelical is to be settled by reference to how he stands with respect to six points', which he then enumerates. His definition is by reference only to what a person is for rather than to what he is against. He goes on: `What a man is, or is not, against may show him to be a muddled or negligent or inconsistent evangelical, but you may not deny his right to call himself an evangelical while he maintains these principles as the basis of his Christian position.'
Now that is the kind of statement which I would strongly contend against. I believe it is quite wrong. The argument which says that you must always be positive, that you must not define the man in terms of what he is against, as well as what he is for, misses the subtlety of the danger.
Lloyd Jones saw that doctrinal indifferentism was inherent in the neo-evangelical agenda, and he knew that would spell the ultimate demise of the evangelical movement as a truly evangelical entity.
He was right. In many ways and in several contexts, he predicted with spot-on accuracy what was coming. Check his books Preaching and Preachers or Puritanism—or almost anything Lloyd-jones wrote. He warned that neo-evangelical compromise would lead to neo-orthodox doctrines. That's what the Emerging Church movement signifies, by the way—the triumph of neo-orthodoxy in the evangelical movement. He predicted the demise of preaching in evangelical circles. He saw forty years ago that doctrinal indifferentism was eating away the foundations of evangelical conviction. And he was right.
In summary, the evangelical movement that our grandparents and great-grandparents knew is dead. Evangelical principles live on here and there, but the label has been commandeered by people who have no right to it. It has been bartered away by those who promised to be the movement's guardians and mouthpieces—Christianity Today and the National Association of evangelicals being among the chief culprits. But rank-and-file evangelicals are to blame as well, because they were content to abandon their own heritage and run after cheap amusements. The average American today thinks evangelicalism is a political position or a religious ghetto rather than a set of biblical beliefs.
The task for paleo-evangelicals like me is to remain faithful and remember that the gospel—not the combined clout of a large politically-driven movement—is the power of God unto salvation.
Church history teaches us another important lesson: The gospel has only rarely made great gains on the back of massive, popular movements. It's the quiet, sometimes unrecognized and unsung labors of faithful individuals that often result in the most profound, long-term impact for the kingdom of God.
We see that embodied in Charles Spurgeon's life and legacy, right? The whole movement he did more than anyone to build turned against him and even tried to portray him as an evil, divisive influence. But Spurgeon shows us that if we're faithful to the truth, in the long run we'll be blessed for it, and the truth will eventually defeat every error and outlast them all, no mater how popular might be whatever error is currently in vogue.