Letter from America

'When I use a word it means what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less'. So said Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Caroll's Alice Through The Looking Glass. These days the word 'evangelical' seems to be used in that kind of Humpty Dumpty way. Evangelicalism as a concept is increasingly flexible.

Some therefore wonder whether it should be disbanded altogether. If groups with very diverse theological convictions, and some with very few theological convictions, all feel they can gather under the banner of 'evangelical' is the term in any sense still useful?

In America, the evangelical community is so large, so diverse, so disparate, that it's easy to wonder whether the word 'evangelical' means anything at all. Increasingly neo-orthodoxy by the back door (a latent universalism, a subjectivisation of the authority of Scripture, a tendency to squeeze all of Christian doctrine through a mesh of what is 'loving', with the notion of 'love' being secularly not biblical defined) is infiltrating evangelicalism. And even when genuinely orthodox evangelicalism here has become tarnished by being vigorously sold as a marketing product.

Commodity or community?

As opposed to the challenges facing evangelicals in the UK - how to be relevant and orthodox at the same time - here in America church has so much become a commodity instead of a community that its ability to speak prophetically to the culture is seriously undermined. One minister from the Bible belt who had recently moved to pagan New England said that while he felt there was an enormous difference between the religious cultures of the two areas (there was no religious culture in New England, he said), the secular cultures were essentially exactly the same.

That may say something about globalism and the ever present TV. Does it also say something about the influence or lack thereof of evangelicals? If an evangelical saturated culture looks the same as an evangelical starved culture one has to question the real influence of evangelicals - however large the number of evangelicals and however big their budget.

Mega-church membership

Membership is one of those community concepts which has gone out of favour as the evangelical church has been sold as a commodity. Many of the mega-churches, apparently, make no attempt to keep a membership roster. And if they do have a list of members they count as members the same people that other churches also count as members - people float from one service to another, buying sermon food like you buy restaurant food.

So while the evangelicals here have a significant voice, and a significant presence, that presence is severely limited to certain sections of the populace, and it is severely limited in its impact on the culture. It's the subtle indicators that give it away. Like one commendable leaflet called Evangelicals Against Racism; in the middle was the tell-tale phrase: racism has restricted blacks 'from fulfilling the American dream'. Maybe that's right, maybe it's not; perhaps it's an important part of the racist legacy. But what does it really have to do with being an evangelical?

A rose by any other name...

So, we either start again, and find a new term for what we mean by evangelical, or we redefine evangelical more carefully, more publicly, more tightly. The thing about the term 'evangelical' is that a) it has a Reformation history to it, b) it has an evangelical awakening history to it, c) it has a biblical warrant for it. And the trouble about rejecting it is that we might end up defining 'evangelical' in a way that is more stringent than the 'good news' that it seeks to describe.

For while the main stream of American evangelicalism may be swimming merrily towards the Niagara Falls of capitulation to the theology and culture of the age, there are others who are stuck in the mud of legalism. For while membership in churches is important, and while commercialisation is a danger, neither being for one nor against the other can take the place of the essential gospel, the evangel of evangelicalism. It's this ability to grasp profoundly the orthodox message of the gospel and proclaim it fearlessly which has been the genius of evangelicalism. And it's just this which may be in danger of being lost.

Josh Moody
New Haven, Connecticut

© Evangelicals Now - November 2001
Please consider supporting this ministry by subscribing.