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 PrintableVersion Deconstructing evangelicalism:Conservative Protestantism in the age of Billy GrahamDECONSTRUCTING EVANGELICALISM This book asks the penetrating question: what does it mean to be an evangelical? Everybody knows that evangelicalism is something to do with Billy Graham, Fuller Seminary, Christianity Today magazine, and being born again. (The author writes from an American perspective.) But when you try to pin down a more rigorous definition, you have a struggle on your hands. The author trawls through volumes of religious and social history to discover how the modern evangelical movement might be described. He concludes that the boundaries are ill-defined and the doctrinal base somewhat uncertain. Clearly the accepted definition of evangelical must be extremely broad if around 40% of all Americans claim to belong to this constituency. Hart maintains that the designation 'evangelical' is nothing more than a nose of wax, which has been used by all manner of groups and individuals over the years who take it in different ways and define it according to their own perspective. American evangelicals like to maintain that their historical roots stretch back to the Reformation and Puritanism. But the author sees evangelicalism as closer to revivalism. Writing as an academic (former professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary), he points out the theological weakness and Arminian tendencies of the movement. Even issues like Biblical Inerrancy have proved divisive, and evangelicalism struggles to maintain a substantial theological core. Hart surveys the organisation and structures of American evangelicalism - the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), and a host of missionary and para-church groupings. Evangelicalism finds a sort of unity in evangelistic zeal, or a number of other common causes. There are characteristic forms of worship style and popular streams of Christian music. The author concludes that evangelicalism is a bloated beast, lacking substance. There is no real theological heart, and only a shallow spirituality. No wonder, he claims, that some are gravitating back to the deeper traditions of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Many of this book's arguments are well made. The weakness of evangelicalism is its tendency towards a unity of the 'lowest common denominator' - and that can make for a very shallow form of Christianity. There is value in Hart's argument for a rediscovery not only of local church life, but of denominations and traditions which have valuable historical roots and substantial theological heritage. Too often are issues of theology and church life dismissed as 'secondary' and therefore 'unimportant'. Our faith is poorer if we all simply abandon our distinctive heritage and convictions, and relegate our historic confessions to the archives. Yet we would do well to pause for thought before we simply dismiss the whole evangelical enterprise as unhelpful or redundant. There are, first of all, some distinct differences between American and British evangelicalism which need to be considered. Then, most importantly, there is the principle of unity in the gospel of Jesus Christ which transcends denominational and party boundaries. Such unity is a profoundly biblical reality which we are commanded to maintain. There is surely a place to make common cause with others in the gospel, and to stand with George Whitefield who reflected in his Journals that 'it was best to preach the new birth, and the power of godliness, and not to insist so much on the form: for people would never be brought to one mind as to that; nor did Jesus Christ ever intend it'. Bill James,
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