Yesterday I got to be part of a conversation that was spurred by the Internet Monk’s prognostication that evangelicalism as we know it is just about ready for Hospice. There were several interesting points made for and against. There may be a death of institutions, but probably not of “evangelical” as defining a certain family of commitments, including an everyday, lived religious experience.
Processing the question of evangelicalism’s future as a professor at an “evangelical” seminary, I found myself pulled in different directions.
- Part of me does not care whether or not the infrastructure that many associate with “evangelicalism” continues to live and thrive over the coming century. But then there’s a part of me that realizes how tied my employment is to just such institutions. Not only is Fuller one of them, but at least historically our support, connections, and church partnerships have come from “institutions” that self-identify as evangelical.
- I am willing to wear the label “evangelical,” but the people who are most vociferously clamoring for the title right now are a smaller sub-set of conservative Christians, closer to fundamentalists. I have it on good authority that a certain seminary of blessed memory instructs its students on “the decline of evangelicalism” with a lengthy section on the history of Fuller! Which is not unrelated to…
- I am willing to wear the label “evangelical,” and happy for Fuller to lead the charge in embodying a broad-compass “Evangelicalism,” but is it significant that almost nobody at Fuller can be a member of the professional society devoted to speaking for Evangelicals, the Evangelical Theological Society, because we can’t in good conscience sign off of the inerrancy statement?
- In light of the previous two issues, I start to wonder about the value of the word “Evangelical.” In the popular imagination, there is no difference between “evangelical Christian” and “fundamentalist Christian.” Yesterday a Fuller faculty member told a story of students at the Graduate Theological Union not knowing that Fuller was Evangelical rather than Fundamentalist. I have had the exact same conversation with a GTU student. But if students in the world of graduate-level theological education in our own state, and within 45 minutes of Fuller’s largest Regional Campus, don’t know that Fuller is something we’d call “Evangelical” as distinct from “Fundamentalist,” what value is there in our own self-understanding along those lines? Is the “reality” of a difference sufficient if that does not correspond to the perception of reality in most people’s minds?
- This all leads to what is perhaps the most pressing question I came away with from that conversation: If those who occupy roughly the same theological terrain as Fuller decide to keep calling ourselves Evangelicals, despite our decision not to promote inerrancy and despite our inclusive stance on women in ministry, etc. do we need to start more self-consciously staking a claim to the title? Do we need to start advocating for a different way to be Evangelical, a non-Fundamentalist, perhaps post-conservative strand of “Evangelical” that offers an alternative to the definitions being generated by our brothers [sorry, it's mostly brothers and not sisters!] to the right of us?
- Or, option B, do we attempt to find a new label that is equally descriptive, but that will serve not only to identify us as people in this particular tradition, but also distinguish us from those to our right who are committed to a more conservative expression of Evangelicalism?
- Or, option C, do we do nothing and just see how things shake out? I tend to be a “get some vision and lead forward” type, so I lean toward action. I’d rather decide we’re going to keep claiming “Evangelical”, and then start leading in offering definition. Or, I’d rather we shed the title and self-consciously promote a new way of speaking of the “we” that fits this world. But maybe I just need to chill out.
In general, though, I tend to think that if the label “Evangelical” matters, we probably need to do something about it. What do you think?
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Update, of sorts: It was just pointed out to me that the “Say Hello to My Little Friend” blog has a post today giving advice to evangelicals. One of his paragraphs begins like this:
One of the worrying things that is suggested to me in all this is that the conservative Christian community wants its scholars as long as it can control them. It’s as though there are communities of believers who really think that they already know and understand as much as can possibly be understood about the Bible, theology, philosophy etc, and what they want is someone with letters after their name who can just give voice to what those communities already know. (HT: James McGrath)
The concerns expressed in the post highlight afresh the challenges of claiming the title “evangelical,” especially in connection with an institution of higher ed.
UPDATE 2: Roger Olson has some parallel thoughts today as well. Does this mean we’re asking the right question? Or that we all drank the same Kool Aid?
I’ve found it odd that Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller, is an ETS member, but almost none of the other faculty at Fuller is.
The term “evangelical” is most used by groups like Barna as a way to evaluate voting trends among different types of Christians. However, “evangelical” has become a universally despised term among just about everyone who would generally qualify as an evangelical. The theologically and politically moderates and liberals despise the term because it represents a conservative political movement. Conservative reformed evangelicals despise the term because it represents a seeker-sensitive, doctrinally vacuous movement. The emerging/emergent church don’t identify with the term because … well, because they repudiate any just about any single label you try to put on them.
Personally, I’d rather see more unity regarding the term “evangelical” rather than division. I would like us to identify with the core meaning of the word “evangelical” — the gospel — despite differences in our views of inspiration, women in ministry, separatism, and politics. Unity in the gospel is primary (1 Cor. 1, Gal. 1, Phil. 1). God is glorified in that unity. Making ourselves distinct in the eyes of groups like GTU, while important, is secondary.
I stopped calling myself an Evangelical a few years ago. The way the movement is being moved towards fundamentalism made me feel rather unwelcome among Evangelicals even in my own denomination. It seems lime the Evangelicals who were the thinkers of the movement back in the 90′s have been shoved aside by a new breed with an agenda I want no part of.
Do we need a new name? *shrugs* My fear with this is that’ll just increase the us/them split that already exists among Christians right now – I’m sure a new name will come at some point, I’m just not sure the time is now.
For the time being, I just say I’m a Christian who will worship with any believer who embraces the worship of the triune God and acknowledges Jesus as our fully-human/fully-divine savior. I think if we’d encourage believers to return to an understanding that theology is about worship, rather than a a series of academic precepts, we’d be a lot better off.
Typing on my iPhone, sorry for typos.
post evangelical?
I grew up in a church culture that was very picky about which groups could rightly wear the name “evangelical.” It was not until I went to seminary, in fact, that I realized that there were those who didn’t think “fundamentalist” was a word with which to happily label oneself. As I have spent the last several years as pastor of an evangelical church (my denomination is a Baptist one in eastern Canada) I’ve found it harder and harder to square what seems to me to be important with the kinds of concerns in this church culture (right-wing political activism, specific views on women, beginnings and endings – a little scary to talk about either Gen. 1 and 2 or Revelation, etc.). Recently I’ve had a little bit of an identity crisis, catalyzed by a video of Stanley Hauerwas on youtube talking about his feelings about his evangelical audience. For the first time I started to wonder, “Am I an evangelical?”
I appreciate the concerns you’ve raised here about the name. I am ambivalent. On the one hand, it seems like such a fight to keep the name while constantly trying to redefine it; but on the other hand, what happens if we give it up in our North American context? Do we lose our ability to bring a healthily orthodox Christianity to evangelical churches, which is where we find the largest numbers of young adults committed to some form of following Jesus? With the kind of fervor that often comes in those environments, I would think we’d want to keep ties to the name as long as possible in order to start shifting the ways of thinking, away from the established fundamentalist-evangelical habits that are currently forming them. Seminaries are important in this, for sure, and even if a school like Fuller is portrayed as one of the bad guys in the “decline” of evangelicalism, it is still supplying pastors to many churches that are working within the evangelical circle. I have to remain hopeful that that can make a difference.
Daniel, it’s exactly the confusion of “evangelical” with “fundamentalist” that has kept me away from many “evangelical” organizations. In fact, (shameless self-promotion alert!) I’m currently writing a series of articles along with Camille Lewis (who literally wrote the book on the rhetoric of fundamentalism) about the shocking similarity between fundamentalist rhetoric and the rhetoric of Together for the Gospel, an organization that would consider itself “evangelical.”
It’s about time the Church got serious about understanding the impact of the words we use.
I was not aware of all the baggage associated with the term evangelical til recently. Initially, i thought the difference meant whether someone was interested in missions, both local and world.
Now that i know that evangelical can often be a synonym for fundamentalism, which is unfortunate. i am wondering why christians that dont identify with evangelical churches move on to mainline churches? What is the difference, and why do you think mainline congregations are shunned. Maybe i just need a primer on what the terms main line, evangelical, and emerging mean, and a summary of which denominations fall into what category.
Fundamentalist is yet another term that needs to be defined. The true, self-identifying fundamentalists (like IFCA, BBFI, GARBC), also reject the term evangelical, and have been ever since the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals half a century ago.
So when people talk about fundamentalists taking over the evangelical name, they’re really either talking about A) the self-identifying fundamentalists who reject “evangelical” who get lumped in with evangelicals by Barna anyway, or B) not fundamentalists, but evangelicals more conservative than they whom they’ve labeled as fundamentalists because of their conservatism.
Don, I appreciate the sensibilities and desires for unity and clarity you’re bringing to the discussion. In particular, the idea that we should seek clarity on unity rather than clarity on division is a good word. For all of us it’s easier to talk about being together and standing as one with those whom we agree! This is true of conservative Christians coming together for the gospel and liberals uniting in their world councils and the folks in between as well.
It is important to stake out both kinds of ground. I suppose I’m in a little bit of “marketing” mode–why should someone come to Fuller rather than Southern Seminary? Is it a difference between going someplace “evangelical” or not evangelical? Or is there a better way to articulate that?
Much of what these comments reflected resonates with me. Scott, you talk about our ability to reach and connect with young people who are committed to following Jesus. When we talked about the word “evangelical” as Fuller faculty, one member said, “This is ‘on the street Christianity.’” We mean by this word that sort of serious commitment to following Jesus that people who self-identify as Christian typically have, though we want to say, as well, that this doesn’t include the baggage of several assumed ways of interpreting the Bible.
And it’s that dimension of our social context that makes it so difficult in both directions: On the one hand, because people see evangelical as inherently conservative, as inherently politically conservative, as relegating women to subordinate roles in society, “evangelical” as a label can be a liability. But on the other hand, because “evangelical” means “serous follower of Jesus,” we want to be able to keep saying “there’s a better way of being evangelical;” or even, “If you’re serious about following Jesus you’re going to find kindred spirits at Fuller.”
A couple of you have also rightly pointed out that the way “fundamentalist” is used in common parlance is not the way it was originally designed to function. Now it typically means “someone to the right of me whom I do not like.” Perhaps that’s even how we who are so eager to preserve a better meaning for “evangelical” are using “fundamentalist”–using social stereotypes rather than academic precision!
I guess I have a more simplistic take on this in day-to-day interactions. I am happy to self-identify as an evangelical, for example, when speaking with students on campus, in their campus ministry settings, different people at my church, etc. I generally make clear, however, that what I mean by evangelical is people who want to be really really really serious about orienting their lives around Christ and who think that taking the Bible very very very seriously is an integral part of that.
I know this is undertheorized (to understate it), not a scholarly category, and (frankly) not what others mean by the term. Regardless, I can draw on its generally recognized notional cache of “those serious Christians” after I quickly dispense with the negative associations attached to it. The payoff here is that I have a redefined term for what I take as an underlying “instinct” common to what many of us see in whomever we consider “evangelical.”
Again, I know there are tons of problems with this and that I imagine the term’s usefulness in relation to several common settings in my life as opposed to settings not common for me where it may not be useful. But there it is…I find it useful to have a term that, for example, subsumes all the committed Jesus -people who participate in a campus ministry here (including the Catholics) and notionally distinguishes from the kinds of Christians they know who are not “serious” about Jesus. Of course, this leaves all the issues of how we define “serious” on the table…