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Only a few years ago, it would have seemed a contradiction in terms to speak of a “fundamentalist social gospel.” One of the paramount tenets of the fundamentalist movement was its individualistic piety, its stubborn withdrawal from the social and political arena. This retreat came as a reaction to the theological liberalism of the “social …
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I should have known, when two young men appeared at the door with black book in hand, what they had in mind. But these two were different. Their clothes were a bit too sharp for Pentecostals, not somber enough for Mormon missionaries, and they had no Salvation Army caps or buttons. When I learned that …
Continue reading “Brother, Are You Saved? or How to Handle the Religious Census Taker”
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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 …
Continue reading “Can Evangelicalism Survive in the Context of Free Inquiry?”
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By authorities as varied as George Gallup, Andrew Greeley and Peter Berger, it has been asserted that America is experiencing at least the beginning stages of a major religious awakening. Admittedly, the statistical count of those who profess to be “born again” is open to more than one interpretation. Still, those of us who train …
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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 …
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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 …
Continue reading “Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance”
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
Continue reading “Resurgent Fundamentalism: Marching Backward into the ‘80s?”
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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 …
Continue reading “Standing the Founding Fathers on Their Heads”
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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 …
Continue reading “The Contemporary Resource of Liberal Theology”
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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 …
Continue reading “The Holiness Churches: A Significant Ethical Tradition”
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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 …
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Although the teacher was shocked at his class’s response, unfortunately the desire to impose one’s preconceived pattern on the thoughts and actions of others, even though not biblical, is a dangerous temptation for many evangelicals. Since a society’s desire to produce a standard, approved human product through a rigid control of thought and action is …
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Thirty years ago Dial Press commissioned me to write a book on the Protestant experience in America (Religious Empire) for its bicentennial series. I was asked to exclude the "evangelical" half of mainly white Protestantism, since William R. Taylor was to write about it. That his book never appeared does not matter so far as …
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“We’re in the money!” announces the cover of Christianity Today (June 12, 2000). “How Did Evangelicals Get So Wealthy, and What Has It Done to Us?” the subhead asks. Michael S. Hamilton’s lead article defines the “us” as the parachurch organizations which, by Hamilton’s estimate, have combined budgets of $22 billion. Both he and, in …
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Two years or so ago I picked up an issue of a widely circulated religious publication and found a statement titled “A Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern.” The document put into words many of the convictions which I had been moving toward since the days when I first began to grasp the social dimensions of …
Continue reading “Will the Real Evangelical Please Stand Up?”
