We spoke w/ 75+ pastors across the country.
Evangelicalism is fracturing and likely irrevocably so.
The former unity we thought was rooted primarily in Jesus has been revealed to be rooted more in cultural, political, socioeconomic, and ethnic factors.https://t.co/DACmj24z8M
— Michael S. Graham (@msgwrites) June 7, 2021
All together now: Can the word “evangelical” be defined in doctrinal terms or is it time to admit that “evangelical” is now a political term and that’s that?
A related question: Is the war between the alleged “woke” conservatives and the “real” conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention based on serious disagreements about essential Christian doctrines or leftover resentments and anger from the 2016 rise of Donald Trump?
The way I see things, religion-beat pros can do some groundbreaking research on these questions this coming week during the SBC’s tense national meetings in Nashville.
If you have been following SBC life for a half-century or so, you know that what goes around comes around. Only this time it is really, really hard to find concrete doctrinal differences between the generals in the two warring camps. That was the subject of this week’s GetReligion podcast: “Will SBC politicos answer questions about doctrinal clashes in this new war?”
But here is one more question for this weekend: Is there anything really new about this conflict?
A fascinating piece at MereOrthodoxy.com — “The Six Way Fracturing of Evangelicalism” — believes that we are watching a religious and cultural earthquake that will change evangelicalism forever. The piece was written by the Rev. Skyler Flowers of Grace Bible Church in Oxford, Miss., a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary.
Before I point out a few crucial pieces of that puzzle, I’d like — once again — to flash back to a 1987 interview I did with the Rev. Billy Graham, a man who knew a thing or two about evangelicalism. I asked him: “What does the word ‘evangelical’ mean?”
“Actually, that’s a question I’d like to ask somebody, too,” he said, during a 1987 interview in his mountainside home office in Montreat, N.C. This oft-abused term has “become blurred. … You go all the way from the extreme fundamentalists to the extreme liberals and, somewhere in between, there are the evangelicals.”
The key, he argued, is that “evangelical” needed to be understood:
… in doctrinal terms, if it is to be understood at all. He finally defined an “evangelical” as someone who believes all the doctrines in the ancient Nicene Creed. Graham stressed the centrality of the resurrection and the belief that salvation is through Jesus, alone.
Graham was worried, quite frankly, that journalists and other commentators were already assuming that “evangelical” was a political term — period. He also stressed that it was crucial to ask what this word means to evangelicals around the world, including in the already booming churches of Asia and Africa.
In other words, Graham was already worried about two of the issues that are at the heart of this MereOrthodoxy.com essay about this “new” crisis in evangelicalism. So here is the overture of that essay:
Colin Kaepernick.
“Grab them by the p… ”
Confederate monuments.
George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery.
COVID – serious problem or overblown?
Trump, Biden, other, or abstain?
January 6th, 2021.
The last few years have highlighted major differences in how Americans have processed the same cultural moments. Every month seems to bring another national Rorschach Test as to how we parse the times. Unlike Rorschach Tests these national events are not always neutral blobs of cultural ink. The same rending of the fabric of America is also happening (maybe not so) quietly within evangelicalism.
That leads to this summary material, which should be read more than once, methinks:
The fracturing we are experiencing is likely to be irrevocable as the historical ties that bind have eroded beyond repair. The reality is that while many in the evangelical movement thought their bonds were primarily (or exclusively) theological or missional, many of those bonds were actually political, cultural, and socioeconomic. These political, cultural, and socioeconomic differences have always been there beneath the water line but what has occurred over the last 5-10 years has been the extent to which those values are expressed has been exposed. With the expression louder and the exposing more visible, these divergent values have rapidly created substantive wedges between various subgroups.
The rate at which divergent views have been revealed has created jarring relational dissonance. People in the pews are left questioning the extent to which their unity is based on the Apostles or Nicene creeds or other political, cultural, and socioeconomic matters.
Flowers then describes what he sees as six emerging camps in American evangelicalism — three among believers who continue to embrace that label and the “other three have cut ties.”
There’s no way to edit his first three camps down, so here they are:
Neo-Fundamentalist Evangelical – Neo-fundamentalists are those who have deep concerns about both political and theological liberalism. There is some overlap and co-belligerency with Christian Nationalism (a syncretism of right wing nationalism and Christianity) but neo-fundamentalists do so with more theological vocabulary and rationality. Concerning threats within the church, they have deep worries with the church’s drift towards liberalism and the ways secular ideologies are finding homes in the church. Outside the church, they are concerned by the culture’s increasing hostility to Christianity, most prominently from mass media, social media, and the government.
Mainstream Evangelical – Historically this term has been Protestants who hold to the Bebbington Quadrilateral of conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism. The emphasis for this group is on the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Concerning threats within the church, they share some concern for the secular right’s influence on Christianity, including the destructive pull of Christian Nationalism, but are far more concerned by the secular left’s influence and the desire to assimilate since the world still remains so hostile. Outside the church, they are likely uncomfortable with the rhetoric Trump and other conservatives use but view this direction as the lesser of two evils.
Neo-Evangelical – People who would see themselves as “global evangelicals” and are doctrinally “Evangelicals” (w/ some philosophy of ministry differences) but no longer use the term “evangelical” in some circumstances in the American context as the term as an identifier has evolved to be more political than theological. Within the church, they are highly concerned by conservative Christianity’s acceptance of Trump and failure to engage on topics of race and sexuality in helpful ways, but they have not totally abandoned evangelical identification and likely still labor in churches with the broadest spectrum of these groups. Outside of the church, this group feels largely homeless in today’s world. There is equal concern, or slightly more either way depending on the person, at the threat the left and the right pose to Christians seeking to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness.
Finally, there is a “Post-Evangelical” camp made up of those who remain solidly committed to church life, but may have moved on to creedal Christian traditions. Camps four and five are the “Dechurched (but with some Jesus)” believers and the “Dechurched and Deconverted.”
Here is my question: Where does the massive, growing and at times doctrinally vague world of independent non-denominational Protestant congregations and movements fit into this typology? Just asking.
The main question, for Flowers, is how all of this works at the local level. Can congregations minister to believers from more than one of these camps?
I’ll end with this other block of material from the essay:
If 2016 was an X-ray, then 2020-2021 is a 3D MRI. What was previously invisible is now largely plain for all to see. Imagine for a moment that every local church is a rubber band. If you have ever had one of those multi-packs of rubber bands there are different diameters, widths, and elastic qualities. The bottom line is that the rubber bands of local churches, ministries, and parachurch organizations are now less elastic. This means the overall tension tolerable before the band breaks has been reduced.
How much elasticity can a church handle now?
Read it all, and I encourage comments from people who agree or disagree with the idea that this “doctrine” vs. “politics” and “culture” issue is new, in terms of defining the term “evangelical.” For example: I would note that there is no way around the doctrinal content of a debate about the definition of marriage, a fight that ended up shaping key political contests and court decisions.
But what are the traditional Christian doctrines that at the heart of the #SBC2021 wars?
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