A Time to Tear Down? Thoughts on Evangelicalism’s Supposed Political and Musical Divisions (James)

[I beg forgiveness for the looseness of this argument. Though it is meant to counteract what I view as hazy notions of Evangelicalism, I’m not sure that at present I can provide much more than hazy notions of its past.]

Though some observers argue that the Evangelical distinctives of worship style and conservative politics may not abide much longer, I argue that neither is essential to Evangelicalism, nor its specific axis (the Ockenga, Graham et al. coalition formed in the 1940s) under consideration on this blog. It is possible, though, that they have become integral to the present American instance of Evangelicalism, and that their demise spells that of our coalition.

Evangelicalism is a coalition. The NAE’s earliest members included Methodists, Mennonites and Pentecostals. Against my confrere’s fright at the present diffuseness of Evangelical music, I find it hard to imagine a 1940s member of any of the these denominations easily and humanly adapting to the worship style of another. We’ve moved a long way from the era of Keith Green, yes, but Evangelicals did well to exist as a coalition before the 1970s. While today one may keep to one’s own sphere of any sort of Christian or semi-Christian music, even in the time of Green, one might have preferred Larry Norman, or any number of Gospel quartets, or the even listening to the simple inoffensiveness of Pat Boone or Lawrence Welk. Musical diversity is nothing new. Perhaps the praise music phenomenon should be viewed as a blight not only on lyrical and chordal creativity, but also on musical diversity in the church. At its beginning, Evangelical music comprised classic Protestant hymnody, the Harmonia Sacra and Gospel music.

As with Contemporary Christian Music, the Evangelical coalition preceded by decades the Southern Strategy and the Moral Majority. If we find that today’s young Evangelicals are rejecting the Dobsons, Falwells and Robertsons of their youth, we should judge this as classical Evangelical behavior, for evangelicals have always striven to strike a balance between piety and action, culture building and culture critique. The Fundamentalists were children of the Progressivists. D.L. Moody, to pick just one example, is known both for soul-saving and for concern for the impoverished. Closer to home, the Evangelical Left, though largely redacted from our self-understanding, has the same institutional and intellectual pedigree of the Republicanism we assume Evangelicalism to stand for (George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, 74-75).

Of course, the very existence of concerned observers suggests that not all is well. To my mind, it is the understanding by many Evangelicals of these distinctives as markers of true faith that threatens the existence of the broad coalition. Evangelicalism cannot last if disagreement over worship style and politics fester. In my experience, the compromise of singing traditional tunes at 8 am and newer ones at 10 am, if overly accommodating, has kept us worshipping together (or at least in the same building). The greater present concern seems to be the political. We will not dwell together in unity if we reject the tension between critique and construction our forbears wrestled. I’m not sure many Evangelicals know the provenance of their conservatism; I certainly was unfamiliar with the legitimacy of politically liberal Evangelicalism until very recently, so perhaps education regarding the breadth of Evangelical political opinion and the ingratiating strategies of the political right wing would restore unity. But, again, we must decide whether we are truly at a point threatening disunity.

I’m tempted to say that we have gone from an era of political breadth to one of two disparate parties; however, I’m not sure that at any point during the coalition those at the political poles wouldn’t have appeared to belong to separate parties. It seems a matter of historical fact that both Jim Wallis and George W. Bush are Evangelicals. In the political matters, they are at each other’s throats, but both still hold to the same Evangelical creed. The same is true today of Ben Lowe and those evangelicals attempting to ‘restore honor‘ to American life. Evangelicalism, we must always remind ourselves, is something rather basic and low-level. It is a trans-denominational commitment and pattern of belief and action. It is not trans-denominational and not non-denominational; it encompasses and does not erase differences of theological, political and doxological belief and practice. Sociologically, we will continue to be Evangelical while we hold to the Gospel in the manner described by Bebbington. May we not betray this unity of thought and action with anathemas by one political pole against the other.

The Kids are Alright (James)

“[A] group of positive fundamentalist intellectuals began organizing a move away from dispensationalist emphases. …they recognized that it would be necessary to build on fundamentalism’s claim to stand in the broad tradition of Augustinian orthodoxy, rather than to promote the more narrow dispensationalist teachings of recent invention.  They also deplored fundamentalism’s emphasis on personal ethical prohibitions at the expense of a positive social program…They were embarassed, furthermore, by the anti-intellectualism that had come to be associated with dispensational fundamentalism, which had been promoted primarily through Bible institutes and pragmatic popularizers.”  (Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, George M. Marsden, p. 72)

So George Marsden describes the origins of the Ockenga, Graham, et al. Evangelical coalition, and so mutatis mutandis, could we describe the stirrings in Evangelical young people today which some fear will rend Evangelicalism.

(1)  Unsatisfied young Evangelicals want to find Jesus outside of the now narrow-seeming evangelical box and appreciate “Augustinian orthodoxy” wherever it can be found (the phrase’s patristic ring is an added bonus), with some seeking to move into extra-Augustinian, Eastern territory.  They strive to find true expressions of Christ that are yet further removed from Fundamentalism and its reaction to modernity which doomed it to be modern itself.  They also by and large deem dispensationalism a failed theology, if it ever even reaches their attention.  One qualification to be made to this general description is that while many seek to move within the whole stream of “Augustinian orthodoxy,” a number seem to be content with ressourcement only of particular Protestant teachings, thereby becoming more entrenched in their denomination rather than finding an openness to a wide range of theological expressions of the Gospel.

(2)  Though a good number of young Evangelicals will inherit the lifestyles of their parents, most active and thoughtful Evangelical young people assume the necessity of making social ethics more central to their lives and faith.  Witness the rise of ‘creation care,’ ‘intentional living,’ and ‘social justice.’  Evangelical youth desire a consistent ethic and are at times willing to cross political lines and forgo cultural practices to embody one.  Perhaps most importantly, there is an ever-strengthening critique of the American bourgeois lifestyle.  While few readers of Wendell Berry will become truly agrarian, even those that don’t will have recognized the dangers inherent in suburban life.  (This trend extends beyond Evangelical youth.)  The frightening thing, of course, is that when service becomes more palatable than proclamation, and it is for many or most young Evangelicals, we can forget the necessity of our euangelion.

(3)  Perhaps the most obvious continuity between the Evangelicals described by Marsden and those that concern us here is a disappointment with anti-intellectualism.  Those institutions connected with the beginnings of the Evangelical coalition (identified by Marsden as Dallas, Fuller and Gordon seminaries, and Gordon, Moody and Wheaton undergraduate) thrive, exposing students, as Barbara mentioned in the last post, to The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and mending it.

It seems that, if anything, today’s young Evangelicals’ discomforts with Evangelicalism are expressions of the very traits that characterize and animate the coalition.