Interesting Article: The Coming Evangelical Collapse
Read this article yesterday. Very provocative. What do you think?
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4 comments:
Don't remember how I found your blog (I think people were posting different blogs they read on a post at http://twentytwowords.com/)
As for the article, it probably depends on how one defines Evangelical (http://www.shepherdsfellowship.org/pulpit/posts.aspx?ID=4095). I'm not even sure I know what that means. But I do know Christianity in America is changing (it usually does) and I think for the good (http://theresurgence.com/new_calvinism).
iMonk has been preaching the downfall of Evangelicalism for a while now on his blog; it's a lot of doom and gloom. But I think he's got some good points at the end.
Thanks for the comments Curtis... you got me curious about the twentytwowords site so i 'surfed' over to it.
I think the world would be better off without evangelism - well at least the aggressive form that is so popular in the states.
Hi LDU,
I think you might be mistaking the word "Evangelical" in the article's title with the word "evangelism". They are very distinct in meaning. Check here for a brief definition of the term "evangelical"... http://www.wheaton.edu/isae/defining_evangelicalism.html.
While most evangelicals believe in the necessity and command of evangelism (including me), the definition of the group is much different.
There are three senses in which the term "evangelical" is used today as we enter the 21st-century. The first is to see as "evangelical" all Christians who affirm a few key doctrines and practical emphases. British historian David Bebbington approaches evangelicalism from this direction and notes four specific hallmarks of evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. A second sense is to look at evangelicalism as an organic group of movements and religious tradition. Within this context "evangelical" denotes a style as much as a set of beliefs. As a result, groups as disparate as black Baptists and Dutch Reformed Churches, Mennonites and Pentecostals, Catholic charismatics and Southern Baptists all come under the evangelical umbrella-demonstrating just how diverse the movement really is. A third sense of the term is as the self-ascribed label for a coalition that arose during the Second World War. This group came into being as a reaction against the perceived anti-intellectual, separatist, belligerent nature of the fundamentalist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Importantly, its core personalities (like Harold John Ockenga and Billy Graham), institutions (for instance, Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College), and organizations (such as the National Association of Evangelicals and Youth for Christ) have played a pivotal role in giving the wider movement a sense of cohesion that extends beyond these "card-carrying" evangelicals.
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