Introduction to Apologetics… Part 1

Paul, The First Apologist

I think there are two main barriers to people consistently sharing their faith, fear of man and lack of knowledge.  We will do a series of blog posts to introduce the different schools of Christian apologetics.

[Christian] Apologetics means quite simply a defense of the Christian faith.  Broadly speaking, we can use the sports metaphor of offense and defense to categorize the different schools of apologetics (recognizing that all schools have both offensive and defensive elements).

DEFENSIVE – broadly speaking, defensive arguments appeal to reason

Classical Apologetics:  Classical apologetics focuses on the rational basis of the Christian faith.  It establishes this through several rational arguments for the existence of God (Cosmological, Teleological, and Ontological), and evidences for the reliability of the Bible and miracles.

Evidential Apologetics:   In one way, evidential apologetics is a subset of classical apologetics, but in the last century has grown to be a stand alone school.  It emphasizes the rational evidences for Christianity, namely, miracles, fulfilled Biblical prophecies, and how our world is incredibly fine-tuned (Teleological Argument aka Argument from Design).

OFFENSIVE – broadly speaking, offensive arguments point to the necessary foundations that precede and make sense of reason

Presuppositional Apologetics:  Presuppositional apologetics presupposes the existence of God and the truth of the Scriptures.  Presuppositional apologetics seeks not to defend Christianity with rational evidences but rather attacks the false assumptions (presuppositions) of the unbeliever.  Say, a non-believer believes that man is inherently good and does not believe in God or His Word… all the evidences in the world will do no good until his incorrect and inconsistent presuppositions are exposed.  It also challenges whether rational arguments are any good at all being that all the reason in the world will do no good unless God regenerates their heart.

Pascal:  Pascal challenges whether we can reason ourselves into heaven, being that the path to the Kingdom must pass through the heart.  For Pascal, ‘the heart has reasons of which the mind knows nothing of.’  For Pascal, faith and reason go together, but ultimately it is evidences that confirm the faith and not the evidences that lead to faith.

If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.

Alvin Plantinga (Reformed Epistemology):  Plantinga argues that belief in God is a properly basic belief and therefore requires no justification.  He has also defended Christianity against the problem of evil and put forth a modal logic version of ontological argument.

Just for kicks, here is a video of evidentialist William Lane Craig, cross-pollinating a bit, employing some presuppositional tools against scientific naturalism:

Next, we shall take a deeper look at each of the different schools and assess their relative strengths and weaknesses…

Summarizing Quote

Regarding evangelicalism’s history…

The churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone.  – Richard Hofstadter in Nancy Pearcey’s, Total Truth

Thoughts on Evangelicalism Past, Present, and Future… Part 7

Neocalvinism

It is easier to write about the past than to predict the future. Evangelicalism is quite broad today, perhaps so broad as to question the veracity of its use as a technical term.  Regardless of whether evangelicalism remains the technical term to describe conservative Protestants, I shall try to look at some potential future (and semi-present) trends.

Networks of churches will be more common:  Groups of churches, organized either locally/geographically and/or doctrinally, will be more common.  Organizations like Acts29 will be a more attractive option for new churches planted over against denominations.

Multi-site:  the multi-site movement is where one church has multiple campuses and the main pastor’s sermon is broadcast/simulcast to the other sites.  I think we will see a movement here towards multi-sites that are geographically distant from the original site – this leads to…

Branding:  I can envision some multi-site groups with a nationally (or internationally) recognizable pastor seeking to do multi-site in other cities across the country.   Instead of one self-identifying with being, “Southern Baptist,” one might identify with going to “Superstar Pastor, Chicago” or “Superstar Pastor, Memphis.”

Church Planting:  The church planting movement will continue to grow.  As liberal churches continue to bleed, there will continue to be a need for church planting.

Denominational decline and growth:  Denominations that fail to adhere to orthodox beliefs will decline heavily.  I am sure some denominations will go unorthodox on a variety of theological issues.  I can imagine social theological issues like abortion, homosexuality, and bioethics being some gateways to denominational error.  Denominations that adhere to orthodox faith and seek balance of reaching their city and the world will grow.

Liturgy:  There will be a growth in people who want more of God’s transcendence in the service in reaction over against the more entertainment and pop oriented worship.

Consumerism, Megachurch, and Smaller Local Churches:  Consumerism has failed the church – ie. the church with the great ______ program(s).  It makes for lousy discipleship and many people thinking they are legitimate believers when they are not.  I think that there will be a decline in the megachurch movement.  Megachurches will not go away because there will always be those drawn to a more anonymous worship experience and consumerism will always infiltrate evangelicalism on some level.  However, I think people many (not all) will trend away from the megachurch, preferring real community.  I think this will be in reaction to the great irony of globalization – as the world gets smaller and closer, it becomes more fractured and less communal.  This will be a driving factor for many to leave the anonymous megachurch and go to a place where they can know and have friendship with real people.

Missional Church Movement:  Time will tell if the missional church movement overemphasizes the local mission, an equal and opposite reaction to the imbalance of evangelicalism towards defining mission as unreached or international only.  My guess is that the missional church will seek some balance and develop a positive identity that does not require a defunct evangelism as a host in order to survive (ie. post-modernity needing modernity).

Open Source and Kingdom Mentality:  The redeeming principles of the open source movement that began in computer science will be applied and used well to resource the global body of Christ.  Ministries like Third Millenium Ministries who collaborate across denominational lines and give away all their content for free will be more common (see also Desiring God Ministries).  This will happen as technology is utilized to make edifying data more and more available instaneously – combined with visionary kingdom minded people seek to ensure that the worldwide church is well resourced.

Neo-Calvinism (I am not sure how to define it, but try some of these links- 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5):  Neo-calvinism will continue to grow… whether as a reaction against something else (megachurch, anti-intellectualism, Dispensationalism, irrelevance, or unmissionality) or positively as an embracing of something substantive.

I fear that the internet era of podcasts and videocasts, people’s expectations of their unknown and unsung local pastors could become unrealistic.  This fuels my concern over the already existing issue of celebrity and may lead to the aforementioned highly problematic branding.  I wonder if the great contribution of the non-denominational world will ultimately be de facto denominations that have all their weaknesses without all their strengths.

How things will play out will depend on the actions/reactions of evangelicalism to multiculturalism, mobility, globality, pluralism, re-urbanization, technology, capitalism, democritization, and dualism.  This concludes our look at the past, present, and future of evangelicalism as I see it.

2x 50 Most Interesting Wikipedia Articles

I am going to be gone til Monday, so I thought I would give you a serious educational time waster (I cannot remember where I came across this, so I cannot give credit).  Post in the comments your favorites…

1. Marree Man
2. War Plan Red
3. Vela Incident
4. Tybee Bomb
5. United States Numbered Highways
6. Wow! Signal
7. Tube Bar Prank Calls
8. Kola Superdeep Borehole
9. Back to the Future Timeline
10. Year Without a Summer
11. K Foundation Burn a Million Quid
12. Sokal Affair
13. Blue Peacock
14. Veerappan
15. Person From Porlock
16. Eternal Flame
17. U.S. Color-Coded War Plans
18. The Wedge (Border)
19. Mohave Phone Booth
20. Stanislav Petrov
21. Valery Sablin
22. The Man on the Clapham Omnibus
23. Special Atomic Demolition Munition
24. Piracy in the Strait of Malacca
25. Prometheus (tree)
26. Zone of Alienation
27. Fan Death
28. Outlawries Bill
29. Raymond Robinson (Green Man)
30. Scoville Scale
31. Kardashev Scale
32. Larry Walters
33. Joshua A. Norton
34. Fabergé egg
35. Issei Sagawa
36. Joseph Jagger
37. Traumatic Insemination
38. James Joseph Dresnok
39. Blaise Pascal
40. Jim Corbett (Hunter)
41. Just-World Phenomenon
42. Nicholas Bourbaki
43. Humanzee
44. Old Man of the Lake
45. Alexamenos Graffito
46. Fairy Chess Piece
47. Michael Fagan Incident
48. ETAOIN SHRDLU
49. Palomares Hydrogen Bomb Incident
50. As Slow as Possible

1. Anthropodermic bibliopegy
2. Elm Farm Ollie
3. EURion constellation
4. (the) Demon core
5. Pole of inaccessibility
6. Globster
7. Hoba meteorite
8. Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic
9. GRB 971214
10. “Resolute” desk
11. Candace Newmaker
12. Cryptomnesia
13. Hans Island
14. Harrowing of Hell
15. Semantic satiation
16. Dempster Highway
17. Dalton Highway
18. Paul Felix Armand-Delille
19. Herschel Island
20. Stone spheres of Costa Rica
21. Paternoster
22. Self-immolation
23. Narco submarine
24. Louis Slotin
25. Language deprivation experiments
26. London Stone
27. Cité Soleil
28. Blood chit
29. Parsley Massacre
30. Ribbon Creek Incident
31. Art intervention
32. Impostor
33. Bata LoBagola
34. Cheating at the Paralympic Games
35. David Hempleman-Adams
36. The Kafka Machine
37. Park Young Seok
38. Houston Riot (1917)
39. Albert Pierrepoint
40. Discoveries of human feet on British Columbia beaches, 2007–2008
41. Taman Shud Case
42. Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?
43. First flying machine
44. Defeat in Detail
45. Peppered moth evolution
46. Resource holding potential
47. Saint Dismas
48. Target girl
49. Longevity myths
50. SL-1

Thoughts on Evangelicalism Past, Present, and Future… Part 6

Our brief look backward at the roots of evangelism has brought us to the last two decades. I think like almost any period in history there are encouraging and discouraging elements… reason for optimism and reason for pessimism.  For me, the last two decades have been more of a cause for optimism than pessimism.

The main cause for optimism is growth of the Reformed side of evangelicalism, combined with the weakening of the evangelical populist side that had dominated conservative Protestantism for most the 20th century.

There are several factors that have contributed to the weakening of the populist group.  First, the populist group had grown to borrow heavily from the culture-at-large, namely, from consumerism and from the methodology and structure of the corporate (capitalist) business world.  The paradigm of the 150-300 person local church became a thing of the past and the megachurch with slick production, smooth communication, and programs for kids of all ages.  Pastors became de facto CEOs.  Attendees were/could be anonymous.  Community was based on affinity groups based on generation or interest.  Upon first glance, it appears to be what the culture wanted…  Diet Jesus:  little/no accountability (or church discipline), worship where that draws attention away from self, preaching that is heavy on story and light on the challenging words of the Bible.  I am painting a rather pessimistic picture of the megachurch movement here, but I think in many examples it is more than fair.  In my view, this kind of church model cannot be sustained and will either die a slow death or ultimately implode.

End Times Charts!

Another factor contributing to the weakening of evangelical populism is the death of classical Dispensationalism.  When Y2K came and uneventfully passed it was the final nail in the coffin of classical Dispensationalism.  Surprise, surprise, God doesn’t follow the Gregorian calendar or your end-times charts.  Between no seminary teaching classical Dispensationalism anymore and Y2K this led people to start thinking differently about the millenia and drinking from different wells, reading a bit more broadly.

I think real Christians want real preaching of the Bible, with real community, and to make a real impact where God has them.  I think this desire has led to a large scale movement away from evangelical populism towards churches with

John Piper

expository preaching, church discipline, historic confessions, and smaller size.  These churches are almost unilaterally Reformed in their lineage.  I think the resurgence in Reformed theology is primarily not a Presbyterian movement (that is nothing to diminish the real growth here), but predominantly Baptist.  This is due in large part to the influence of John Piper, Al Mohler, Mark Driscoll, and several others.  The Baptists have their roots in the Puritans who had deep roots in Reformed Theology.  This resurgence is not without its weaknesses and we shall talk about this later.

One of the more nefarious aspects of evangelicalism in the 20th century was the neglect of the everyday mission field of America.  We have already explored why evangelicals receded from cultural engagement as a equal and opposite reaction against the imbalances of the Social Gospel.  However, evangelicals were equally imbalanced in not engaging the culture with words and deeds.  In the last twenty years we have seen a resurgence in churches caring for the cities that they live in by seeing them as a mission field.  I think the missional church movement has been by-and-large very positive (minus the more radical emergent church voices).

Thrice

There has been a resurgence in Christians making diverse solid music, see:  Thrice, Cool Hand Luke, Blindside, Appleseed Cast, Denison Marrs, Reach Records, Reformed Rap, Sufjan Stevens, and Mineral.  In addition there has been a resurgence of Christians making good art, across multiple mediums, see:  Makoto Fujimura, Marilynne Robinson (also here), and Darren Doane.  There has been a resurgence in Christians in academia:  Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Rodney Stark, Dallas Willard, Phillip Johnson and James Davison Hunter.

This concludes our look at the past of evangelicalism… up next, we will at some potential future trends.

Thoughts on Evangelicalism Past, Present, and Future… Part 5

Evangelical Populist Game Plan

Protestantism split in two, and the Fundamentalist branched morphed into evangelicalism in the mid-to-late 20th century. Broadly speaking, evangelicalism has always been a mixture of two sub-groups:  populist and reformed.

The populist group is comprised mainly of the groups who were largely supportive of the revivalist practices of the Great Awakenings.  The populist evangelicals would include broadly speaking most Baptists, Dispensationalists (large overlap with Baptists), and other difficult to categorize groups like Focus on the Family, Liberty University, DL Moody (the person and the institution), Billy Graham, the Christian Right and Campus Crusade for Christ and other Parachurch ministries.

The Reformed group was much smaller, comprised mainly of conservative Presbyterian denominations and a handful of Particular/Reformed Baptists. The Reformed group was rather quiet during this period.  The Presbyterians were by-and-large dealing with internal conflicts resulting from some sub-groups going liberal (see this chart to look at the history).

The evangelical populist group had more of an outward impact, but not necessarily for the better.  The populist group abandoned cultural transformation in academia, the arts, media, and other realms, yet embraced involvement in the political arena.  Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, Robert Grant’s founded Christian voice, Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition, and James Dobson threw his weight around with Focus on the Family.   The net result was the broad formation of the Christian Right.  At first glance, it seems strange that the evangelical populists would elect to disengage from all but one cultural arena.  However, the premises behind the strategy are simple:

1.  America has always been a Christian nation with a manifest destiny

2.  Influence flows from top down

3.  Politics is at the top of American culture and exerts the most power over the culture

4.  America has a clear cultural center and that center is politics

5.  Politics is the horse that pulls the cart of American culture

6.  Because politics is influential and drives culture, and politics lies at the center of American culture… Politics is the best investment for cultural engagement for evangelical influence.

There are other reasons also for this engagement, for example, Dispensationalisms’ influence strongly encourages Zionism, which inherently involves political engagement.  The problem with the evangelical populist’s game plan is that most (or some would argue, all) of its premises are incorrect.  In my estimation, influence is always a both/and combination of power exerted top-down and individuals working grassroots bottom-up.  In my estimation, America has no coherent cultural center, instead rather hundreds of overlapping sub-cultures of varying sizes and influences.  In my estimation, politics follows the culture, not vice versa.  The evangelical populist political gameplan was steeped in modernistic assumptions about culture combined with a Nietzschean view of power.  Further, I am not sure who has been exerting influence over who, the Christian Right or the GOP?

Up next, a look at the last two decades and the resurgence of the Reformed group within evangelicalism…

Thoughts on Evangelicalism Past, Present, and Future… Part 4b

Suburbanization: Evangelicalism's Physical Cultural Sequestering

So, Protestantism tore in two:  liberal and fundamentalist.

We must consider the affects of denying inerrancy on how we view the story of the Bible.  Recall that higher criticism read the Bible through rationalistic eyes.   The net result was the demythologization of the Bible.  Demythologization means exactly what it looks like – taking the supernatural and mythological elements out of the text.  So, liberal Protestants recast Jesus as a  more charitable/moral, kinder, gentler and better way to be human – rather than the substitionary sacrifice to save sinners from the wrath of God and an eternity in hell.  Jesus is boiled down to the moral teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.  The concept of the Kingdom of God is not salvific but merely social in nature.  For the deconstructed liberals, Jesus’ mission statement was something to the effect of:  I came to make society better by showing an unselfish way of living.  Jesus’ vision statement would be something like:  By showing a better way to live, people will follow my example and gradually make the world a better place.

The tragic thing about the liberal social gospel is that there is truth to be found, the problem is that the truths are imbalanced by a lack of their necessary counterweights.  The reality is that the Gospel is both salvific and social in nature.  When God’s people take the Gospel to a new place, God’s rule/reign/authority comes along with it.  Where God’s rule/reign/authority is manifest, His blessing is also manifest.  That blessing is not full, final, and complete in the manner that it will be at the Second Coming of Christ – but it is present.  Unfortunately, the early fundamentalists did not fully embrace this consequence of the Gospel.

What happened was simple… the fundamentalists saw that the liberals were embracing and engaging culture because they had bought into a merely social gospel.  Hence, the fundamentalists reacted against the liberal engaging of culture and they decided they would disengage from culture and sequester themselves.  The core issue was the fundamentalists did not develop a positive identity, rather they defined themselves anegativa (the not-liberals and hence not-socially-engaged).  Fundamentalism became a negative term and eventually conservative Christians grew to self-identify as being “evangelicals” to avoid the negative connotations of the pejorative title of fundamentalist.  Recall that most evangelicals were already highly anti-intellectual at this point (with the notable exception of the Reformed Old Presbyterian folk), so a movement to disengage further from culture was devastating.  Conservative Christians receded from the world of academia, art, media, and other American cultural institutions.  A cursory look at the history of American Universities during this same period (first half of the 20th century) will show a rapid de-Christianization and the beginnings of secularization.  The receding of the conservative Christians from cultural interaction combined with the suburbanization and white flight of the mid-20th century created a huge void of Christian witness in America, particularly in city centers, the hub of cultural life.

Evangelicals have decried how godless/liberal our schools, Universities, media, art… etc. have become and are upset with urban decay.  The problem with this is that we are substantially culpable.  If only the Gospel brings God’s blessing on a society, and the people who still hold fast to that Gospel completely disconnect from society, we can only expect serious moral, intellectual, and social decay to follow.

Next, we shall look at the methodology of mid-late 20th century evangelicalism…

Thoughts on Evangelicalism Past, Present, and Future… Part 4a

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Ideas have consequences.

Essentially the ideas of two German men split American Protestants in two:  Friedrich Schleiermacher and Ferdinand Baur.  Schleiermacher started exploring something called Higher Criticism*.  Higher criticism is a kind of literary analysis that seeks to figure out the origins of a text.  Specifically, higher criticism looks at who wrote a text, to audience whom the text was written for, and the time the text was composed.   Higher criticism as applied to the Bible has its roots in rationalism.  In rationalism, reason alone is the source of knowledge… hence, the rationalists ultimately reject Scripture.  They reject Scripture because they see things in the Scripture that do not seem to fit their rational framework.  Baur comes on the scene after Schleiermacher, influenced by both Schleiermacher and Hegel.  Baur was the leader of the Tübingen school of theology at the University of Tübingen.  Baur and the Tübingen school of theology were  highly influential in the 19th century.  These ideas eventually crossed the Atlantic and Protestants were divided on how to handle the criticism of the Bible.

One cannot underestimate the impact of the thoughts of these isolated German nerds.  American Protestants split in two over higher criticism.  At issue was whether the Scriptures were without error or inerrant.  Half of Protestants followed the critics denying the inerrancy of Scripture and formed the liberal half of Protestantism called Mainline Protestantism (United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Presbyterian Church USA, Episcopal Church, American Baptist Church, United Church of Christ, and Disciples of Christ… and a number of smaller denominations).  In reaction against the liberal Protestants, the other half of Protestants formed the conservative branch, at that time called, Fundamentalists.  The fundamentalists were influenced by the writings of the conservative Old Princeton theologians reacted stating five fundamental positions:  1.  Inerrancy of Scripture   2.  Virgin birth of Christ   3.  Christ’s death as atonement for sin   4.  Bodily resurrection of Jesus  5.  Historical reality of Christ’s miracles.  One can see how reading the Bible rationally, like a science textbook, would lead one to doubt miracles like virgin birth, penal substitution, and resurrection of the dead, leading one to conclude that the Bible had error.

Next we will continue to look at the split of Protestantism and its monumental impact on evangelicalism today…

*Eichhorn and Spinoza are also critical in the establishment of Higher Criticism.  But if we mention them, then we have to mention the influence of Kant on Schleiermacher and Hegel on Baur.  We can go on ad infinitum talking about the influence of Hume on Kant.  I am obviously being selective here.

Thoughts on Evangelicalism Past, Present, and Future… Part 3b

evangelicals ought to take a good hard look in the mirror

One of the aims of this little blog series is to help other evangelicals understand that many of the things that frustrate us about America, we not only did nothing to stop but are actually culpable in creating.   There are too many ironic consequences of the Second Great Awakening to warrant only a single post.  We need to take a hard look in the mirror and like the Escher drawing, things aren’t necessary as we thought they would appear…

Consider these quotes:

Americans of the early Republic experienced an epistemological crisis as severe as any in their history… Truth itself seemed to be shattered, and everything was left to the individual-the voter, the buyer, the religious believer-to make decisions strictly on his own.    Gordon S. Wood in Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 275.

Instead of critically challenging the emerging culture of modernity, populist evangelicals were reshaping Christianity to fit the categories of modern experience.  Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 285.

An Arminian message and a free-church ecclesiology fit with their experience as independent, autonomous actors in a democratic polity and an expanding capitalist economy.  Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 285.

“The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter”… Theological education began to focus more on practical techniques and less on intellectual training.    Nancy Pearcey and Richard Hofstatder in Total Truth, p. 286.

The outcome of all this was the rise of personality cults, the celebrity system that has become so entrenched in evangelicalism… the leaders of the populist evangelical movement made an end run around denominational structures and built movements based on sheer personality-on their ability to move people and win their confidence… “the ‘star’ system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater…”  Today we rail against the celebrity system within Christianity, thinking it was imported from Hollywood culture… but when we look back historically, we find that the star system began in Christian circles.    Nancy Pearcey and Richard Hofstatder in Total Truth, p. 287; 292.

One of the dangers of personality cults is that they lead easily to demagoguery.  The revivalists were often strong-willed leader who, ironically, ended up exercising an even higher degree of dogmatism and control than pastors in traditional denominations, whom they denounced…  John Nevin, argued that the revivalists’ “high-sounding phrases” of liberty and free inquiry were merely masks for a new form of domination.  Though they called loudly for “liberty,” he said, most evangelical groups pressed every member into “thinking its particular notions, shouting its shibboleths and passwords, dancing its religious hornpipes, and reading the Bible only through its theological goggles…” “so many wires that lead back at last into the hands of a few leading spirits, enabling them to wield a true hierarchical despotism over all who are thus brought within their power.  Thus, ironically, the magnetic leaders who encouraged people to break away from traditional theological structures often ended up becoming authoritarian leaders within their own groups, sometimes verging on demagoguery…  Most of all, perhaps, evangelicalism still produces a celebrity model of leadership-men who are entrepreneurial and pragmatic, who deliberately manipulate their listeners emotions, who subtly enhance their own image through self-serving personal anecdotes, whose leadership style within their own congregation or parachurch ministry tends to be imperious and domineering, who calculates success in terms of results, and who are willing to employ the latest secular techniques to boost numbers.    Nancy Pearcey in Total Truth, p. 289; 290; 292.

Alexander de Tocqueville wrote concerning America:

Meet a politician where you expected to find a priest.   p. 306-307.  (Reminds me of much of the Christian Right)

David Wells on post-revolutionary Americans:

The person for whom democracy is not simply a political system but an entire worldview and for whom, therefore, culture and truth belong to the people… in America, the love of freedom, from which individualism arises, is as fierce as the love of equality, from which conformity arises.    David Wells in No Place for Truth, p. 189-190.

Calvinistic orthodoxy, which looked to be unhappily anchored in the older world of hierarchy and privilege and hence appeared to be decidedly undemocratic, was put to flight before Arminianism.  The church-centered faith that had been favored before the Revolution retreated before itinerant revivalism, reasoned faith retreated before exuberant testimony, and theological confession retreated before axioms of experience.    David Wells in No Place for Truth, p. 206.

Nancy Pearcey hits the nail on the head when she says:

Evangelicalism did not provide a critical stance from which to evaluate the new developments in politics and economics, but was itself in many ways a powerful force of modernization. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 286.

For the most part, evangelicals in America have not considered their heritage and the things they have cause willingly and inadvertently:

-Celebrity culture – culpable

-Enlightenment Project – culpable

-Modernism – culpable

-Democritization of knowledge – culpable  (implicit in this is also culpability in post-modernism)

We shall look next time at the split of Protestantism…

Thoughts on Evangelicalism Past, Present, and Future… Part 3

Charles Finney

The Second Great Awakening took place from 1790 to 1840.  The Second Great Awakening brought more of the revivalism of the First Great Awakening without many of the redeeming aspects of the First Great Awakening.  The critical difference between the First and Second Great Awakenings was the Revolutionary War that stood between the two.  The Revolutionary War had a profound affect on the ethos of American society.  There was a kind of rebellion not only against political hierarchy but of also religious and historical hierarchy.  Several US historians have pointed outthat following the Revolutionary War a democritization of knowledge also took place (see this and this and this).   The net effect of this was the weaving of anti-intellectualism, utilitarianism, pragmatism, and populism into the American tapestry.The First Great Awakening had the credence of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley, whilst the Second Great Awakening brought us Charles Finney, the Restoration Movement, and numerous “New Religious Movements” (aka. cults).

Mike Horton on the Disturbing Legacy of Charles Finney – please read this article if you are unfamiliar with Finney’s revivalism.

No single man is more responsible for the distortion of Christian truth in our age than Charles Grandison Finney. His “new measures” created a framework for modern decision theology and Evangelical Revivalism.

The Restoration Movement was an interesting beast.  The movement sought to create a united Christianity harkening back to the apostolic times.  A lot of times when these movements come around they make the mistake of thinking that true unity = least common denominator Christianity.  The result of these movements is often anti-intellectual, atheological, and destructive.  The Restoration Movement had some weird things about it, namely, claiming that baptism by immersion is necessary for salvation and strange marriage to Enlightenment thinking, particularly John Locke.  The end result of the Restoration Movement is weird theology, and three mainline (liberal) Protestant denominations.

Numerous cults formed in the wake of the Second Great Awakening:  Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Millerites (and other Millenarian sects), Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Scientists.  One has to ask oneself why all these new religious movements formed within a few decades of the Second Great Awakening?  You cannot help but think that the lack of discipleship and theology from the revivalistic methods of the Second Great Awakening contributed in large part to the formation of these abherrent theologies.

We need to continue to explore the impact of the Second Great Awakening on the history of evangelicalism…