New Forces Stirring: The Young Turks of Evangelism

Deep within the corridors of the mysterious Protestant citadels known as “denominational headquarters,” a storm is brewing whose gusts will shortly be felt in many a rustic chapel and reinforced concrete cathedral throughout the land. The storm is not due to unpredictable movements in the heavenlies; on the contrary, it is being deliberately kicked up by a talented group of young ministers who may be on the way to becoming the ecclesiastical spokesmen of the next generation in our country.

The cause of the storm is their dissatisfaction over traditional forms and programs of evangelism. Many of them are in positions of importance in the departments of evangelism in their denominations, so that their discontent is no mere protest from the outside. They are determined to retool the evangelistic strategy of the churches and thus make it “more relevant to this generation.” They believe that the Church has a redemptive message to give the world, but that since the world does not appear to be listening, the message needs to be set in a new context. They realize that what they are doing is foreordained to arouse controversy. Some have already run the gauntlet of suspicion or have encountered entrenched opposition. Others are biding their time, confident that the future is on their side, that one day the world will hear them gladly.

These young men already have a name; at some point along the line they have dubbed themselves “The Young Turks.” Even though they are scattered through the different denominations, many of them know each other quite well. George E. Sweazey, now a pastor in Webster Groves, Missouri, but at one time head of the Presbyterian (USA) division of evangelism, has described them in these terms: “They are fascinated with the novel in evangelism because they are most concerned with the penetration of the Gospel into unentered cultural areas. They lean heavily on the latest popularizers of social studies, and look on what is being done now in evangelism from the point of view of culture-critics, crying disdainfully, ‘This is outmoded!’ They have no patience with those ways by which the greater number of people are each year turned from no interest in Jesus Christ to a daily concern for Him.”

The purpose of this article is not to “expose,” censure, or condemn the young men, but to evaluate their point of view in the full light of the Gospel, and to seek out whatever strains of health may be found in their challenge to the Church. First it should be noted that they are dissatisfied with the classic definition of evangelism formulated by Archbishop William Temple: “Evangelism is so to present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Saviour, and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His Church.” In slightly altered form, this definition has won wide acceptance throughout the World Council of Churches.

A NEW DEFINITION

Charles Templeton, a “Young Turk” who abandoned the ministry but whose views are still influential, broadened the meaning of the term considerably in his definition: “Anything the Church may do which has as its ultimate end the winning of men and women to Christ and the winning of Christians to deepened commitment is evangelism.” Thus evangelism has been made to seem, in the words of another, “one of those omnibus categories of Christendom that expands and contracts with theological insights and the exigencies of culture.” Or to use a phrase increasingly popular in the old-line denominations, “Everything a church does is evangelism.”

To understand how the centuries-old task of winning converts to Jesus Christ is being transmuted into a dialogue between Church and culture, it is necessary to understand parallel developments in theological thought. First, there is a new concept among many of the young men about the nature of sin, which is informed partly by the fact that they received their seminary diplomas in the atomic age. Thus one of them defines sin as estrangement, following Paul Tillich: estrangement from self, from one’s neighbor and from God. Other words often heard are “alienation” and “enmity.” As Poet Amos Wilder expresses it, “Men are more dominated by a sense of being caught in a sinful situation than of being heinously guilty of particular sins.… The modern man sees himself not as Promethean rebel or self-accusing scapegrace but as a relatively helpless and wistful prisoner in a system of huge social and cultural authorities and compulsions.” The stern Hebrew concept of sin as disobedience to God’s command seems to have been replaced by the fatalistic Greek view of sin as tragedy. Modern man, therefore, sins because he cannot help it, just as did the ancient heroes of Aeschylus. But now it is not the “fates” that make his sin inevitable, it is the pressures of “organizational living.” Such a man is to be pitied rather than warned of the fires of hell. It would be unfair (they would say) to condemn a man to eternal torment for an adultery he could not help, or for an unbelief that became his lot simply because he could not hear the Gospel in the roar of traffic.

The “Young Turks” have a genuine compassion for their fellow man. They yearn to offer him a salvation that is practical, and since a “decision for Christ” seems such a weak and futile gesture in the face of the total situation, they lean more to liturgy and the sacraments as offering genuine help in distress, and therefore as a sound goal of evangelism.

CRITIQUE OF THE CHURCH

A second major premise of the “Young Turks” is their critique of the Church’s pretension to moral rectitude. So aware are they of the secular man’s indifference to the Church, of the mistakes the Church has made in the past, and of the present cultural mood which treats all moral principles and standards of value as relative, that they are ready to rip to shreds every effort to equate Christianity with middle-class respectability or “religiosity.” The late Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose words carry added weight because he was one of Himmler’s final victims, sounds the keynote: “There is the Godlessness in religious and Christian clothing which we have called a hopeless Godlessness, but there is also a Godlessness which is full of promise, a Godlessness which speaks against religion and against the Church. It is the protest against the pious Godlessness insofar as this has corrupted the churches, and thus in a certain sense, if only negatively, it defends the heritage of a genuine faith in God and of a genuine Church.”

The “Young Turks” feel a spiritual kinship to the man who believes but who scorns to come to church because he has an abhorrence for its genteel institutional life. They agree with Bonhoeffer that he may prove to be more godly than the faithful communicant. They warm to the surgically sharp honesty of an atheist like the existentialist Albert Camus, whose hero (in The Fall) gave up his prominent legal practice in Paris and his life as a model citizen to become an alcoholic because, as he expressed it, “I realized, as a result of delving in my memory, that modesty helped me to shine, humility to conquer, and virtue to oppress.” In the face of such candid revelation of truth, they reason, how can the Church feel that she is discharging the Great Commission simply by handing out packets of home visitation materials at an evangelism supper?

In short, they hold that the Church should cease proclaiming her message to the world with so much assurance, and should spend more time listening to the world, seeking to understand it, and then asking significant questions that might somehow make a difference in the way the world seeks to resolve its problems. Thus Theodore A. Gill declares that the Church “must now find other than traditional ways to state the gospel’s constant relevance, ways less concerned with giving the superlatively informed world answers about itself, more concerned with asking the world questions about the shadowed context of its brilliant competence.”

This is evangelism “in depth,” we are told. It is “a positive thrust forward into the complex structure of life and society.” It is the “spire” speaking to the “town” rather than for the “town”, and speaking of Christian goals rather than of cultural values. Adding members to the church roll, say the “Young Turks,” means little enough if the person added is the usual type of stable citizen who is already “pretty well conditioned toward participation in a committee-run organization with religious aims.” D. T. Niles, in fact, shocked the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland last year by declaring that “the primary task of the Church today in evangelism is discovering what are the successful methods of evangelism that must be discarded because they are not faithful to the gospel.”

On one point all are agreed: there are “no easy answers, no immediate, streamlined programs available” to renew the Church so that it is “alert and alive to the movements of history and sensitively aware of the birthpangs of a new age.” And the more daring will add, “We must not be intimidated by those who mistake obsolete theology for loyalty to the Gospel, or who regard obedience to Christ as synonymous with a narrow, inadequate interpretation of the Scriptures, and who conceive of evangelism as being synonymous solely with some particular method.”

DOCTRINE OF CREATION

A third theological emphasis made by some “Young Turks” is that the Church’s voice is only one voice among many that speak for God. There is no suggestion of belittling the deity of Jesus Christ; on the contrary, most “Young Turks” uniformly hold an incarnationist Christology (albeit sans virgin birth). Their attitude toward the world, however, is oriented more to the doctrine of Creation than to the Incarnation. God made the world, and is continually providing new dynamic for his creation and working out his purposes in it. What conclusions are drawn from this? First, that regardless of the fall, not everything that happens in the world is “necessarily bad.” Second, the concept that “the Church is the only instrument through which God works in the world for the salvation of men and the transformation of society” is held to be false and unbiblical. The Church is not some “desperate bridgehead” God has established in the world in order to convert people out of it. On the contrary the Church is a “colony of heaven” which seeks to identify itself with the world and to participate in the life of the world, even to “going native” in everything except faith and morals.

“So when in the course of their normal duties,” a “Young Turk” explains, “the ministers of the parish have to do with various social agencies and political organizations which affect the life of the community, they do not seek to make them ‘more religious’ or feel concerned that it is not the Church that is working in all these ways for the full benefit of the people, but rather they seek to make use of them as they fulfill their proper function, recognizing the hand of God in anything that brings wholeness and meaning into the lives of the people.”

THE EVALUATION

It is clear, as Sweazey points out, that “these young Turks are getting at something that business as usual in evangelism is missing.” The fact that so many of them are in key positions, and are preparing materials and conducting seminars on evangelism for the pastors and lay leaders of their denominations, suggests that the churches may be facing a re-thinking of evangelism even more drastic that that which took place during the recent liberal era. It was common enough in the early years of the century for a Church to turn its back on Billy Sunday’s mass evangelism, but some leaders of the new generation are prepared to go further. They are willing to subordinate all specific evangelistic activity, of whatever kind, to the making of a “total impact” of the Gospel on the “world” of work, the “world” of leisure, the “world” of education and government, and even the “world” of ecclesiastical institutionalism. Such is the meaning of the phrase, “The Whole Gospel for the Whole World.” The impact will be made by witness, but not necessarily by verbalized witness. For the word “witness” is also being re-tooled, and the cup of cold water is not merely the expression of Christian love but is becoming the maximal evangelistic testimony as well.

In behalf of the young “re-thinkers” of evangelism, certain points must be emphasized. It is no sin to “think fearlessly and plan daringly,” as one of them expresses it, nor to bring “the total task of evangelism under the most searching judgment and agonizing reappraisal in the light of the best insights of the New Testament and contemporary human need.” Just because an idea appears new, moreover, it is not necessarily dangerous or wrong; it is well that older ecclesiastical secretaries are forced to think out their positions afresh. Further, it is a healthy sign when the Church can produce young leaders who are more interested in furthering the cause of Christ than in “playing it safe,” following the denominational “party line,” and padding their futures.

Having said this, however, we must point out certain weaknesses in the “Young Turks” movement that seem to strike not only at the cause of evangelism but at the Church herself.

There is a touch of unreality, as Sweazey remarks, in the whole approach. It is primarily armchair evangelism, and makes good conversation in the seminary coffee shop and thoughtful oratory in the evangelism seminar, but it has little enough to do with the making of Christians.

Its “solving” of the sin problem by excusing it, and by putting everyone “in the same boat,” is a far cry from the New Testament concept of the Church as a “called-out body” of “holy ones” whose sins have been removed by the washing of regeneration. More than that, it does not really grip everyday life. The average sin-laden American looks to the Church neither for condemnation nor commiseration. He can get the latter at the nearest bar, and the former he gets without asking for it, everywhere he goes. If he looks to the Church at all, it is for truth that will help him and that may even save him. Yet the “Young Turks” who soften the note of individual moral responsibility in the Gospel in favor of social sympathy are the ones who threaten to make the Church irrelevant. It takes more than formal ecumenical worship per se to get rid of what one of them calls “my radical me-ness.” Or as a realistic Methodist layman put it, “The Church offered me the right hand of fellowship when what I needed was a kick in the pants.” No one knows the joy of the Resurrection until he has been to the Cross with his own sin.

Further, by minimizing the value of traditional evangelism, the “Young Turks” betray an exasperation that is ultimately directed at the Holy Spirit. Why, they ask in effect, does God persist in using such “frontier methods” in our century? The next step is to doubt that God is in fact using them. The dialogue of God with man is then reduced to a dialogue between the Church and culture, and evangelism becomes a combination of “confrontation” and critique instead of a passion for souls.

If the “Young Turks” but knew it, they themselves may be the key to the situation. Were one of their number to make the astonishing discovery that God is sovereign over all of human life; that he is truly Redeemer from sin as well as Creator; that he determines through his Spirit and through his Word how men shall come to him; that he reigns even over the “organizational rat race”; that he overcomes all estrangement, imparts power to transcend every modern pressure; that he can lift twentieth century burdens as easily as he lifted those of other centuries; that he can purify even the man in the gray flannel suit; that he can use every kind of evangelism, no matter how clumsy, so long as the evangelist’s message is that Jesus Christ saves men from their sins, but that he will never bless a message if it is downgraded into a proliferation of verbosity or a hassle over authority; then we could hope and pray for the Holy Spirit to bring revival right into the midst of the departments of evangelism of the great denominations.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

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