A certain hermeneutical naïveté mars the otherwise admirable consciousness-raising that is now occurring among evangelicals in the social and political arena. One of the paramount tenets of the fundamentalist movement in the past was its individualistic piety, its stubborn withdrawal from the social and political concerns.
How can one deal firmly yet humanely with those people who feel called to push doorbells? They ask: "Do you believe in the inerrancy of the scriptures." How can the scriptures be inerrant when it contains so many errors?
There appears to be an inherent incompatibility between Christian evangelicalism and the idea of a university, for only an "open" style of Christian commitment can affirm a university's commitment to free inquiry.
What is needed is a quantum-jump in the sanctification of the minds of mainline Protestants, involving repentance after 200 years of drifting from the Reformation response to the Bible. We also need a repentance among evangelicals, dealing with their rejection of genuinely biblical values upheld by their theological opponents.
A review of a book on fundamentalism by James Barr. Barr writes of the "religious basis" of fundamentalism, surveys its attitudes toward such diverse phenomena as politics, science, culture, Zionism and Roman Catholicism; catalogues such variations as Pentecostalism, Calvinist and Arminian conflicts, and millennialism; and probes its anti-ecumenical and anticritical ethos. He considers fundamentalism a pathological condition of Christianity.
Behind evangelical support for Israel lies a long tradition of Christian thinking about the millennium. Not Muslim persecution but the brutal Israeli occupation is causing Palestinian Christians to leave the Holy Land.
The very individuals who have done so much to renew the social conscience of the evangelical community have also been those who have rejected politics as a means of fulfilling social obligation. The evangelical community seeks to leap from piety to practice with little reflection on guiding principles and practical goals.
Something’s happening in the religious corner of the book world -- something that reflects religion’s prominence in public life, and the generating engine is the evangelical community.
Genuine dialogue, leaving open the possibility of mutual change, is by definition unknown to fundamentalists. "We will talk to you, but never actually with you." It is that incipient sect mentality that has tended to plague evangelicalism, and which has often kept it from building bridges with mainstream Christianity.
Evangelicals who promote a warped view of American history in an effort to undo the court rulings on church-state affairs ignore the fundamental point that no country can be called Christian, even though Christians are in it. The theism of the founding fathers and framers of the constitution was vague. From civil faith they drew up the ideals of theism, but it is wrong to assume therefore that the country was founded on Christian beliefs and thus is a Christian nation.
As evangelical Christians emerge as leaders of our society, they can find in the despised and ignored liberal theology important resources for relating the legitimate concerns of Christian faith to the pressing problems of our time. But as they emerge as leaders of our society, they can find in the now somewhat despised and ignored liberal theology important resources for relating the legitimate concerns of Christian faith to the pressing problems of our time.
The "Holiness" movement is perhaps best viewed as a synthesis of Methodism with the revivalism of Charles G. Finney, as it found expression in pre-Civil War America in a reaffirmation of the doctrine of "Christian perfection." It differs from fundamentalism and evangelicalism in that it is more oriented to ethics and spiritual life than to a defense of doctrinal orthodoxy.
Evangelicalism, as described by Marty, is a grouping of diverse religious denominations and movements that have difficulty in defining "evangelicalism" to themselves. While not increasing in numbers of recent decades, they have grown in public awareness through aggressive moralizing on issues like abortion and school prayer. Marty outlines the evolution in various evangelicals’ theology and rhetoric, and suggests some of the hurdles they face in an increasingly religously-diverse nation and world.
The desire to impose a preconceived pattern on other’s thoughts and actions, though not biblical, is a dangerous temptation for many evangelicals.
A review of a book about the rise of Evangelicalism as a separate movement within Protestantism.
We would like to know how evangelicalism’s drastic shift in what its self-critics call "cultural accommodation" has affected the lives and souls of evangelicals and the soul of evangelicalism(s).
A segment of the religious population has claimed the term ‘evangelical’ for itself and has read the rest of us out of its circle of definition. However, the author is both a liberal and an evangelist.