Can Evangelicalism Survive in the Context of Free Inquiry?

Article by Lloyd J. Averill.

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. Text Despite the fact that a Christian university, built along evangelical lines, has been an announced part of the program of the neoevangelical …

Evangelicalism Without Fundamentalism

Article by Donald W. Dayton

Book Review: Fundamentalism, By James Barr. Westminster, $7.95 paperback. Of the proliferating interpretations of “evangelicalism” or “fundamentalism” and its recent. “resurgence,” James Barr’s Fundamentalism is surely one of the most profound. Seldom has fundamentalism had so distinguished a critic. Barr, Oxford University’s Oriel professor of the interpretation of Holy Scripture, brings the penetrating argumentation and …

Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance

Article by Donald Wagner

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington this past January, his initial meeting was not with President Clinton but with Jerry Falwell and more than 1,000 fundamentalist Christians. The crowd saluted the prime minister as “the Ronald Reagan of Israel,” and Falwell pledged to contact more than 200,000 evangelical pastors, asking them to “tell …

Love, Power and Justice

Article by Paul B. Henry

The past five years have seen a resurgent awareness in evangelical Protestantism relative to the Christian community’s political responsibility. But despite this awareness of political responsibility, maturity and consistency are sadly lacking in the pronouncements of evangelicals on this topic. The evangelical community, to paraphrase social critic Michael Novak, seeks to leap from piety to …

Religion Sells

Article by Marcia Z. Nelson

By a number of measures, sales of religion books are booming. The Association of American Publishers reports that religious publishing grew by 37 percent in 2003. The Book Industry Study Group predicts that religious book publishing will expand by 6 percent this year; it calls this sector of publishing "a growth business." The trade magazine …

Resurgent Fundamentalism: Marching Backward into the ‘80s?

Article by John Scanzoni

Sometimes seemingly disparate events form a highly significant pattern. In December 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was imposing his own brand of medieval Islamic fundamentalism on the most westernized of Mideast countries. Then Pope John Paul II stripped Hans Küng of his teaching Post. The well-known Catholic theologian was found in “contempt” of church doctrine by …

Standing the Founding Fathers on Their Heads

Article by Richard V. Pierard

The most advanced affirmations of religious liberty at the time of the founding of the republic, Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (submitted to the Virginia legislature in 1779 and enacted 1786) and James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessment (1785), were not widely known until our century. Even the hallowed phrase that …

The Contemporary Resource of Liberal Theology

Article by William R. Barnett

Despite the recent evangelical resurgence in American Christianity, contemporary Christians must not delude themselves that the old liberal problems of religion and culture will go away. Certainly, mainline Christianity’s preoccupation with social affairs as a substitute for religious experience has resulted in a general decline of “standard-brand” denominations. And for some, the current evangelical renaissance …

The Holiness Churches: A Significant Ethical Tradition

Article by Donald W. Dayton

To many outsiders, the world of “conservative” Christianity no doubt seems an undifferentiated mass. But the uniformity and agreement often claimed by advocates of “evangelicalism” are to great extent a myth. The groups that compose conservative Christendom are marked by distinctive theological stances and sociological dynamics as significant as those that distinguish other church traditions …

The Years of the Evangelicals

Article by Martin E. Marty

Reporters who want to know something about evangelicalism — or about “evangelicism” or evangelisticism” or “evangelism,” as they sometimes put it — often call on someone like me to do some defining. Once I had to spell out, literally, the difference between “evangelicalism” and “evangelism.” The culture at large has only somewhat less difficulty getting …