Seventh in the Series “Evangelicals in Search of Identity”
One of the chinks in the armor of the contemporary evangelical movement is the defensive and reactionary stance of some of its influential leaders. That was not Billy Graham’s perspective in world evangelism nor was it the founding orientation of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
What will be the result if the evangelical mainline, like the newly aggressive far right, echoes a religious jingoism that merely ignores or rebukes multiplying nuclei of discontent and forfeits their creative potential? It is not unlikely that neoevangelical forces will pursue theologically mediating and then ecumenically concessive relationships and align themselves with a chastened neo-orthodoxy rather than a retrogressive orthodoxy.
Had late nineteenth-century evangelicals more dynamically asserted a truly biblical ecumenism and adequate socio-political interests, had they given guidance to the forces of discontent and been less resigned to a reactionary withdrawal from newly emerging centers of power, the early twentieth-century churches might have followed a sounder ecumenical and socio-political course. Now the critical question before establishment evangelicalism is whether in the late twentieth century it will duplicate the mistakes of a previous era.
Discernible changes in the evangelical arena are already in the making. Evangelism is seen increasingly as the proper burden of the local church or churches and as best effected through the faithful witness of believers at work and at play. New methodologies are already in wide use, many having been shared through Key ’73.
Magazines like Eternity, Reformed Journal, and Christian Herald are openly discussing, even if at times with a debatable emphasis, neglected socio-political concerns, as well as the doctrine of the Church and biblical authority, but in a way that candidly wrestles with contemporary disagreements. The somewhat reactionary elevation of inerrancy as the superbadge of evangelical orthodoxy deploys energies to this controversy that evangelicals might better apply to producing comprehensive theological and philosophical works so desperately needed in a time of national and civilizational crisis. It is important to know, of course, whether a launch missile can be relied upon unerringly or whether it may malfunction unpredictably; it will never reach the moon, however, if all energies are exhausted in pre-launch debate.
The sad fact is that when evangelicals do not engage in challenging alien world-life views they soon fall into battling among themselves; things are even sadder when leaders among them set the pattern for such squandering of vitalities. Already mortgaged to the hilt, some evangelical schools threaten to divide on the inerrancy issue; still others are suffering constituency blues at a time when overarching cooperative evangelical effort might have tellingly confronted the radical secularity of our times.
Unless evangelicals repair their multiplying frictions over social and political engagement in an intelligently spiritual meeting of mind and heart, the situation can result only in still further divisions that forfeit whatever impact might have issued otherwise through strategic cooperation. To be sure, political engagement is no more the hallmark of evangelical orthodoxy than is political disengagement. But evangelicals should be publicly concerned to the limits of their competence and ability; here too “to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (Jas. 4:17).
A restrictive social vision can have only doleful consequences for evangelical conscience and national life. Jesus Christ in his resurrection already displays his sure victory over all the forces of evil and injustice that would have done him to death; if the Risen Lord wishes to extend that victory over unrighteousness in the world through the regenerate community, dare we derail social justice as a marginal concern until he returns to conquer evil and vindicate righteousness?
Even if motivated by a legitimate defense of capitalism and of democratic processes against socialist and totalitarian assaults, the failure of establishment evangelicals to criticize incisively the American politico-cultural context, including secular capitalism and seamy governmental trends, has often dampened the enthusiasm of the younger generation for these structural forms. Uncritical commendation of the status quostimulated hypercritical denunciation of it by the political left. Stirred by socialist criticism of capitalism and of Western political processes, American students were left to learn about the real character of Marxism from Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, who have endured it first-hand; observable failures of socialism in Eastern Europe, Great Britain, and other lands were simply explained away by the concentration of criticism on Western alternatives. It is almost forgotten today that an emphasis on the desirable limits of government does not inevitably commit political conservatives to an atomistic society of windowless monads.
The growing impasse between evangelical groups, each of which deliberately and perhaps stubbornly advances its own approach and emphasis, stimulates misunderstanding and sacrifices gains that might accrue to the whole evangelical front by the solidifying of agreements (a process that need not ignore legitimate differences). New centers of evangelical power and conviction will almost inevitably come into being in the next decade; what is unsure is whether their input into the total evangelical context will be disruptive or constructive.
At present no single leader or agency holds the full enthusiasm and respect of every element within contemporary American evangelicalism. It may already be too late to gather for dialogue because of explicit rivalries or political liaison between the various groups. While pointing at the disintegration of COCU, evangelicals should remember that their own movement seems brighter not because of evangelical cohesion but because of comparison with the tarnished alternatives, which, in fact, are likely to reemerge sooner or later in some other novel form.
Evangelicals today have campus resources far greater than those available in generations previous to the modernist takeover of various institutions. The newly projected $6 million Billy Graham Center at Wheaton will, for example, greatly enhance the missionary influence of that school. But what evangelicals need most amid the present tide of irrationalism and cultural decay is to enlist all the movement’s rational and moral energies for a comprehensive confrontation of the religious, philosophical, and social arenas. By sharing in such a vision, the somewhat lame and halt evangelical forces in all enterprises—from Southern Baptist and Missouri Synod quarters, from ecumenical conciliar quarters, from evangelical establishment sources, from the more radical social activist groups, from among isolated independent spirits who labor with a sense of messianic individualism—could together forge fresh conviction and brilliant truth which the redeemed society proffers a despairing world.
CARL F. H. HENRY
