Now What? Winter 1995

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American evangelicalism is in serious trouble today. We are increasingly a movement without a center, lacking a clear sense of our identity. Consequently we are finding ourselves tossed to and fro by the winds of contemporary culture's latest fads.

Just how does one define "evangelical" today? Until recently it was clearly understood, implicitly if not explicitly, that evangelicals were fully committed to two truths: the authority of Scripture and the necessity of the new birth. And the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who saves us from our sins, was the common object of adoration. One evangelical might disagree with another on secondary matters but they both shared a common, nonnegotiable center.

Today this center has become fuzzy and elusive as American pluralism hits evangelicalism with a vengeance. Lines are being drawn not over whether one does or does not wholeheartedly affirm the gospel but over secondary matters, which in turn are often set up as litmus tests for unity. Some of the issues that are dividing allegiances within evangelicalism today include styles of worship (choruses or hymns, charismatic or liturgical, seeker-sensitive or focused on God); gender distinctives (what role gender differences play in the church and the family); political loyalty (whether commitment to Christ leads one to become politically conservative or liberal); the relationship between evangelism and social action; the relationship between love and truth in the church's mission.

In many evangelical circles one knows better what an evangelical is not rather than what an evangelical is: to some an evangelical is not a liberal, not a Roman Catholic, not a fundamentalist, not a charismatic.

Of course diversity is a good thing and ought always to ...

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