Evangelicals in a Corner?

What happens to evangelical concerns in the “ecumenical consensus”?

In closing remarks to the United States Conference of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, the WCC’s next general secretary, expressed impatience with conservative Protestants who lack enthusiasm for the ecumenical movement because of its inclusive stance. His comments can scarcely be viewed as aimed at other than evangelical Protestants, who on the American scene number more than 40 million. Of these, two-fifths are inside the conciliar movement—many discernibly restive in their association—while three-fifths remain outside.

“Some believe they hold a corner on evangelical concern,” Dr. Blake complained, in warning delegates from twenty-eight major American denominations against sharply contrasting saints with sinners or theologically literate with theologically illiterate Christians. Deploring “the labeling sin of churchmen,” he stressed that the Christian task is not essentially one of judgment.

Dr. Blake’s remarks, reports Harold Schachern, religion editor for the Detroit News, were “an obvious reply” to a paper presented at the Buck Hill Falls Conference (by invitation of the WCC American Committee, on the topic of evangelicals and ecumenical developments) by the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (see page 10). If this is actually Dr. Blake’s response, he apparently expresses a flat No! to suggested patterns of ecumenical reform that would stimulate evangelical interest in the conciliar movement.

“I get a little tired,” Dr. Blake is quoted as saying, “of those who somehow suppose that others who engage in ecumenism or social action, or leave the beaten track in search of answers, somehow are not interested in the Gospel and evangelism and the other things that are essential to every Christian belief.”

For an ecumenical stalwart who assertedly promotes a church “evangelical, catholic and reformed,” Dr. Blake’s interest in what evangelicals are thinking seems swiftly to have worn thin. For few evangelicals think that anybody has a corner on the evangelical movement (its organizational plurality ought to make that fact clear), but hundreds of thousands of them—in fact, we dare to suggest that tens of millions of them in America alone—have an uneasy feeling that some ecumenists would like to paint them into a corner. Dr. Blake contends that an “ecumenical consensus” is “guiding most of the churches in America today” and that “many fearful conservatives do not realize that the restatement of the ancient biblical faith and its defense is in fact the number one duty of the Church in our time.” So he indicated at Princeton Theological Seminary in his first public address as WCC general secretary-elect.

Ecumenical anxieties run high not only among evangelicals outside the conciliar movement but also among evangelicals inside the movement. If Dr. Blake does not sense this, he is less a student of the times than we have credited him with being. At the New Delhi general assembly, the WCC prominently publicized the entrance of the Pentecostals of Chile into the conciliar movement; why does it not give equal publicity to the recent exodus? The dilution of evangelical concerns within conciliar ecumenism encourages evangelicals inside the World Council to strengthen their transdenominational evangelical ties, and it discourages evangelicals outside from interest in conciliar ecumenism. The views of the evangelical clergy are not representatively reflected in the so-called ecumenical consensus. While it is true that the Protestant clergy outside the conciliar movement in the United States are evangelical, and that the bulk of non-evangelical clergy are in the conciliar movement, the number of conciliar clergymen who are theologically evangelical ought not to be misjudged. In the United States there are 250,000 ministers with charges—including Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and so on. The NCC lists 144,000 churches and 113,482 clergymen having charges. In CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S scientific sampling of beliefs of the Protestant clergy in 1957, 20 per cent of the clergy indicated their subscription to non-evangelical (modernist or neo-orthodox) views. It one assumes, as seems likely, that the great majority of these non-evangelical clergy are in the conciliar movement (26 per cent of 200,000 in the sampling), then at least half the conciliar clergy in American Protestant ranks—even allowing for increasing ecumenical dilution of beliefs and for the theological deterioration of numerous seminaries—should be regarded as evangelical. But no student of ecumenical pronouncements would say that they reflect evangelical concerns in this depth. Ecumenical consensus in its present mood reflects evangelical dilution.

When the term “evangelical” is used in an ecumenical context, American Presbyterians are inclined to sense its significance in the transformation of their denominational seminaries into doctrinal cafeterias; or the loss of their last conservative seminary by United Presbyterian churchmen whose denominational merger was encouraged as promising to increase their evangelical impact; or they see books on death-of-God theology and situational ethics featured in the show-windows of their denominational publishing house while the great denominational classics in theology are forgotten even in the seminaries; or they have fresh memories of the shift of interest from changing individuals to changing political structures in the highly debatable “Confession of 1967.” If Ur. Blake thinks that bold rhetoric alone will placate evangelical anxieties, he has much to learn about evangelical devotion to the Bible and to the Great Commission.

The ecumenical movement regards the Bible, insists Dr. Blake, as “the rich central source” of our Christian belief and practice. Evangelicals want to know whether the Bible still stands, as it did for the Protestant Reformers, as the only infallible rule of faith and practice—and if so, why the “Confession of 1967” sought to erase that commitment.

Dr. Blake deplores the sin of labeling—and we stand more than ready to meet his interest in Christian unity on terms that do not imply that only ecumenically undefined Christianity is standard-brand, and that evangelically defined Christianity (unless ecumenically diluted) is off-brand. In his James J. Reeb Memorial Lecture, at Princeton Seminary, Dr. Blake stated:

The theology that now undergirds the churches, Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic may be summed up in these four major convictions:

a. There is a transcendent God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.

b. Knowledge of this God is found in reading the Bible and understanding what it says in historical context.

c. The heart of Christian faith remains what it has always been. God, who created the universe, is Redeemer through Jesus Christ and he is fulfilling his purpose in history.

d. “Time makes ancient good uncouth,” which fact requires us radically to revise our understanding of what should be expected of followers of Jesus Christ today as contrasted with what was required fifty years ago.

This is not an easy faith, or a minimum faith. This is the traditional faith restated for our times.

We rather think that neither Roman Catholic nor Orthodox Christians would consider this summary an acceptable restatement of the traditional faith for modern times. But of one fact we are sure. It is not adequate for evangelicals worthy of their heritage.

It is difficult to know exactly what to make of the attitude of contemporary ecumenism toward evangelical Christians. One moment influential ecumenical leaders may insist that they themselves are evangelicals; later they may urge all evangelicals to swim in the ecumenical mainstream for the sake of their evangelical witness; or again, they will criticize or deplore evangelical efforts.

One fact is sure. A generation ago liberalism was sufficiently related to reason and logic that it consciously distinguished itself from the evangelical alternative; no modernist wanted to be tagged as an evangelical, conservative, or fundamentalist in theology. Who wanted to be tied to an authoritative Bible? But recent religious speculation has had a different effect through its anti-intellectual, dialectical, and existential temper. Contemporary non-evangelical spokesmen may talk of the Bible as a “normative witness to Christ” or even as an “inspired” Book; but if they insist—as they do—that divine revelation is not rationally given in the form of intelligible, authoritative truths, they have departed from the controlling premise of evangelical Christianity. It is not only an inerrant Scripture that they now reject but the regard for Scripture as an intelligible, authoritative disclosure of God’s nature and will. Liberals who share this rejection of rational revelation (but who wish to be known as evangelicals!) have really departed farther from the Bible than modernists of two generations ago who clung—for a season at least—to the teaching of Jesus as authoritative rational disclosure.

Dr. Blake’s further defense of ecumenism and social action off “the beaten track” serves to fix attention on the continuing involvement of ecumenical leaders in matters of political expediency. While ecumenical spokesmen take every liberty in making controversial political pronouncements, irrespective of their divisive effect upon many congregations, they profess great anxiety over prominent evangelicals whose political comment as individuals might unsettle Communist tempers. It is not evangelicals but ecumenists mainly of a non-evangelical sort who seek to commit the institutional church to specific political positions, while some act behind the scenes to discourage evangelicals from expressing contrary views even as a matter of personal conviction, and sometimes to discredit them. While those who promote social revolution assail those who promote personal redemption, the issues remain of critical concern. It is not enough that here and there an ecumenist privately apologizes for the well-publicized attacks of other ecumenists on evangelicals and stresses that the critic was speaking only for himself. Unless the public is told that the ecumenical movement is unsympathetic to the critic and sympathetic to what he attacked, the public—and particularly the evangelical public—has every right to identify an ecumenical spokesman’s criticism with the movement he represents.

The ecumenical movement will decide its own destiny in its attitude toward evangelical priorities. It is ultimately a matter not of names or numbers but of truth. The title “evangelical” is today used in a variety of references; in Germany it was employed to describe the Lutheran church in distinction from the Roman; in the United States it has occurred in a few denominational titles, such as the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church; in Latin America, it designates Protestants in general. In this sense, of course, no Protestants have a corner on the title. But in the United States, it has been used since the modernist-fundamentalist controversy particularly to designate a conservative or biblical theology over against those that oppose the full inspiration and authority of the Bible and the doctrinal commitments this implies. The National Association of Evangelicals used the term when the leadership of the Federal Council of Churches understood full well that the NAE represented an alternative to the theological commitments of ecumenical leaders, and at that time few ecumenical spokesmen wanted either an evangelical theology or the term “evangelical.” This usage was anticipated by the Evangelical Alliance, formed in Britain in 1846, which espoused biblical theology and evangelism. On a common doctrinal basis, it promoted cooperation of denominational, interdenominational, and nondenominational effort in furthering evangelical objectives. In those days ecumenism as a common cause held out no welcome to modernist deviants from the Bible, either in their plans and proposals to restructure the Christian churches or the Christian faith.

Evangelicals are far from perfection, and in an early issue we plan to speak candidly of some of their flaws. There is good reason for observers of the current scene to point a finger at this or that phase of “evangelicalism” and to doubt whether what appears there really mirrors apostolic Christianity. In many respects we stand far removed from what would have pleased the apostles and need desperately to bring ourselves under the searching scrutiny of the New Testament. If the conciliar movement were an open invitation to that kind of engagement, evangelicals would welcome it. Or at least, evangelicals had better pursue that kind of engagement, in the midst of their uncertainty about the conciliar movement, lest they declare to all the world that their greatest concern is a mere promotion of evangelical self-satisfaction, rather than a burning zeal to serve Christ. In that case, evangelicals will simply be painting themselves into a corner, and the twentieth century will pass them by. But if they resolutely determine to find for themselves the biblical renewal whose absence elsewhere they lament, they can yet restore to twentieth-century Christianity in its last decades the bright luster that has faded in the recent past.

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