Form and Freedom
Evangelicals Enter the Twenty-First Century
Kevin Offner
January 1, 1998
To be the one true bride of Christ intended by God, the church of Jesus Christ must be marked by both form and freedom. There must be order and spontaneity; non-negotiables and negotiables; a uniformity where clear, unquestioned, corporate allegiance is required, and a diversity where each individual Christian is encouraged to foster his own unique spiritual gifts for the edification of the whole body. For the last two hundred years, despite their insistence on a few fundamental theological claims, evangelicals have provided the "freedom" dimension for the form-freedom duality within American Protestantism. Lightly armed with their triad convictions—the centrality of personal relationship with God through Christ, the necessity of the New Birth, and the authority of the Bible—evangelicals have been largely unencumbered by tradition in their culturally sensitive and creative styles of evangelism, worship, and biblical study. Evangelicals have been free to respond to the status quo on a number of fronts by adapting, changing, eschewing, or starting over from scratch. But historically what has made evangelicalism such an invigorating and positive force within American Christianity has been its strong connection to Protestant churches. Protestant churches provided the "form" and evangelicals contributed the "freedom." Because so many evangelicals were once nurtured in denominations (Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist, and so on) that had long traditions of commitment to liturgical and sacramental worship, hierarchical leadership, and confessional creeds, their evangelism, teaching of Scripture, and front-line cultural engagement were balanced by a certain weight, a certain tradition, a certain broad and rich worldview. The parasite ...
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