For those interested in Evangelicalism, there’s a groovy discussion of where it’s at and where it’s going at Café Theology. It’s a good fly-on-the-wall read of several evangelical academics worrying and wondering about the direction of their movement. (Hat tip to Tall Skinny Kiwi.)

I found the discussion, in a word, confusing. I came out of it knowing less about Evangelicalism than I knew going in. I learned, in turns, that
Evangelicalism is a white North American subculture like so many others, a Reformed tradition unchanged for centuries, an assent of belief in terms that every non-evangelical Christian also believes in—the “good news,” a “high regard for the Bible,” conversion, and, well, Jesus—and a sinner in the hands of an angry God.

And it’s Evangelical sin that I want to focus on. But not like you think I will.

I found myself reading at one point in the discussion about how far Evangelicalism has fallen since the Reformation, embracing heretical doctrines like feminism, pluralism, and postmodernism (that last one focusing in particular on the Emergent Church movement). It flummoxes me how any Christian who believes the Reformation was crucial and necessary could turn around an reify that moment in history as though it were the Second Coming. (Or perhaps a First-and-a-Half.) Has God done nothing new since Luther and Calvin died? Apparently not, and believing anything that Calvin and Luther didn’t believe is sinful.

On the other hand, there was a frank acknowledgment of the movement’s infatuation with and echoing of shallow American pop culture, its glorification of wealth, and its selling out to the GOP. There ought to be frank, and loud, admission that Evangelical veneration of St. Bush and St. Market is idolatry.

What I wanted to read, and didn’t find, was a discussion of how Evangelicalism itself is a stumbling block to God’s work in the world as bad as the liberal mainlines and Roman Catholicism. Forget its exaltation of the Bible to a fourth member of the Trinity, investing Scripture with Quranic importance. Forget it’s degeneration into dead, and unacknowledged, rituals like the Sinner’s Prayer, the Altar Call, the Christian Concert, the Contemporary Worship Service, and the like.

What I didn’t find was an acknowledgment that anything as old as Evangelicalism, whatever it might be, will have necessarily become sinful and idolatrous and a stumbling block. I don’t see how they can believe in the sola doctrines and act as though Evangelicalism provides the sole entry to divine grace. I don’t see how they don’t believe that Evangelicalism is a hindrance to the Good News. Or not even suspect it.1

I continue to be curious about the Emergent movement. I’m perplexed and sometimes annoyed by Emergents’ facile bandying about of “postmodernism,” as though it’s a real thing and not a catch-all term that cultural studies majors threw around in the 90s. But what I’m impressed with is this: they realize that the Church gets in the way, even the Evangelical Church.

The Emergents are trying to open spaces for grace to happen, for God to do a new thing. They don’t do the same rituals that Evangelicals have done for decades or even centuries, pretend they’re still new things, and hope no one notices. When they do practice a ritual with centuries of history, they own up to it.

1. One panelist, thinks so, but for different reasons. For him, the movement is in sin because it has abandoned the Westminster Confession or some such. This is silly. Luther–or Calvin, or whoever–said it, I believe it, that settles it. [↩]