In Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, Randall Balmer claims that the American Evangelical subculture is “rather unwieldy,” one that is “rich in theological insights and mired in contradictions.” Such rich insights together with the contradictions result in part from the inherent diversity in the movement based on its lack of “hierarchical structures” and “liturgical rubrics.” In their place, a commitment to “a set of doctrines, however variously they might be defined,” and an “unambiguous morality,” help hold the movement together. The following essays bear witness to Evangelicalism’s theological richness, inherent tensions (contradictions to some), and growing pains, as the movement interfaces with secularism, religious pluralism, ancient and postmodern thought forms, environmentalism, and alternative moralities.
Martin Medhurst’s essay is based on his plenary address at a conference held at Calvin College in the summer of 2005. Commandeering Tertullian’s age-old question on the Greek academy and the church, Medhurst asks, “What difference, if any, does Christian faith make to the way we as Christian educators perform our primary roles as teachers, advisors, role models, researchers, and writers?” Medhurst takes to task Christian educators—Evangelical and non-Evangelical alike—who think that teaching a supposedly secular subject at a Christian college or university is virtually the same as teaching it at a secular institution. “There is no such thing as a wholly secular vocation for a Christian,” when viewed from Christianity’s “beginning premises,” since for
Christian faith “all vocations are callings directed by the Spirit and under the tutelage of Jesus Christ, the Truth of God.”
No doubt, many Evangelical educators at American Christian colleges and universities today are reacting to the otherworldly orientation of some of their more fundamentalist-oriented predecessors for whom it seemed the only truth (or the only truth that counted) was found in the Bible. But one extreme does not justify its opposite. “We do Christ and His Church no honor either by abandoning the academy to the secularists or by privatizing our Christianity in the name of some mistaken notion of objectivity or misplaced sense of professionalism.” At its core, “to think Christianly is to think Christ’s thoughts after Him, to model Christ’s actions, to adopt Christ’s priorities, to accept the revelation of God in and through His only begotten Son.” The transformation “of our hearts and then our minds” causes us to see everything differently, including the way we view our work as educators. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer claimed, “There is no inner discord between private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all.” This conviction shapes Medhurst’s work as a professor of communication and causes him to reflect upon the intimate relationship of eloquence to wisdom and the whole of life, not reducing communication to skill, performance, and technique, nor limiting it to the academy. How can it be otherwise when the Christian communicator, including the communication professor, is to be driven by the fundamental claim that the Word, who was full of grace and truth, became flesh and made his dwelling in our midst?
Whereas Medhurst determines to think Christianly about Christian higher education in the face of secularism’s onslaught on the Christian (including Evangelical) educator’s mind in America today, Harold Netland wants Evangelicals to think theologically about religious diversity in view of the growing presence of non-Christian religions in the West today. Building on Lesslie Newbigin’s claim that the West is a mission field, the American Evangelical church must abandon “the myth of America as a Christian nation” and set forth “an intentional missiological engagement with Western cultural and religious patterns along the lines that we expect of missionaries in other non-Western cultures.”
Netland distinguishes his approach to the theology of religions from that of his doctoral mentor, John Hick, who basically sees the theology of religions as an “extension” of “comparative religions or the phenomenology of religions.” A key question Netland raises for the adherents of Hick’s position is, “If the particular views of any single tradition cannot be accepted just as they are, why should we assume that adopting reinterpretations of various views from many different traditions will be any more accurate? What assurance do we have” that Hick’s reliance on “religious experiences in general” for the development of his system “is at all reliable in depicting the religious ultimate?” For Netland, an Evangelical theology of religions is founded on the firm conviction of Jesus Christ’s singularity and supremacy as well as the authoritative witness of inspired Scripture, and involves consideration of creation, general revelation, and sin. Netland’s contention that humanity simultaneously seeks after God and flees from God is a critical element of his Evangelical theology of religions. Arguing that human culture is the “product of God’s creation and common grace as well as human sin, resulting in the mixed verdict on any given cultural system,” Netland urges Evangelical missiologists to extend this approach to culture in developing an Evangelical theology of religions.
Building on his understanding of our shared humanity, Netland approaches adherents from other religions primarily as those created in the image of the triune God, and secondarily as adherents of their respective religious traditions. Such a framework builds trust and creates an environment in which the Good News of Jesus Christ can be shared. Evangelical Christians must go beyond efforts to protect rights for Christians against “the agenda of secularists” to promote rights for those of other faith traditions, while also seeking to persuade them to accept Jesus Christ as Savior. Netland acknowledges that this is no easy task. The task is especially difficult given the history of religious wars and current hostilities and tensions worldwide pertaining to religious fundamentalism of various stripes.
Not only is Evangelicalism experiencing tensions and growing pains in its interface with religious pluralism, but also it is experiencing conflict and growth through its encounter with postmodernism and subsequent reflection on atonement theology. All too often, conservative Evangelical Christians have viewed Christ’s atoning work exclusively through the lens of penal substitution. According to Brad Harper, Christus Victor, a model of Christ’s atoning work with roots in the ancient church, connects well with at least five features of the postmodern sensibilities of many today. While treating “potential dangers” bound up with exclusive allegiance to Christus Victor, Harper believes Christus Victor can and “should be integrated into an evangelical theology of the atonement.”
Significant for the purposes of this editorial is Harper’s claim that Christus Victor chronicles in story form the cosmic struggle and victory of God in Christ over Satan and his forces, which bears upon the redemption of the whole of creation. This feature resonates well with postmodern frames of reference, which are story-shaped and keenly conscious of the cosmic dimensions of reality. Moreover, Harper notes that Christus Victor “addresses more directly the suffering/healing ethos of postmodern culture” than penal substitution given Christus Victor’s “broader motif of healing for all of creation and of victory over the powers from which the creation needs to be healed.”
Harper’s article calls attention to the fact that theology is never done in a cultural vacuum. While Evangelicals have often been quick to warn of the dangers of catering to cultural trends in doing theology, Evangelicals have not been as sensitive to the cultural forces that have shaped their own theology such as “some historic escapist and cultural-rejection tendencies typical of American evangelicalism in the twentieth century.” “An historic and valid criticism of American evangelicalism is that it has little or no concept of the power of the gospel to redeem social structures, at least in the present age.”
This problem is unmistakable in the area of environmentalism. Sara Koetje begins her essay on Evangelicals and the environment with a quotation from Bruce Barcott: “Lions may one day lie down with the lambs, but can the beef-eating, pro-life, Jesus-is-Lord soul savers lie down with the tofu-frying, pro-choice, proudly pagan flower children long enough to save the earth?” Koetje takes up the challenge posed by Barcott, mindful of Lynn White Jr.’s 1967 “watershed” essay in environmental thinking, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.” There White claimed that Christian theology bears a significant share of the blame for the environment’s plight given Christianity’s historically less-than-affirming view of the non-human creation. According to White, “Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny—that is, by religion,” to which Koetje responds, “A religious problem requires a religious solution.”
Koetje offers a biblical and theological reexamination of humanity’s relationship to the rest of creation and of the nature and scope of Christ’s atoning work. Like Harper, Koetje contends that Christ’s death and resurrection redeem the whole of creation, not simply humanity. Moreover, Christ’s life and death provide Christians a model of service that should make them model caretakers of the environment. Humans are to be “earth-keepers” in view of the fact that the creation has inherent value, for it comes from God and will be redeemed fully by God in the eschatological future.
The Christian community is called to bear witness to this hope in the here and now in word and in deed. “As a community called to witness to reconciliation through Christ, we cannot separate ourselves from culture, or from the environmentalist subcultures, but [must] witness to it of reconciliation by reaching out to it.” The refusal to engage results in a theological vacuum that alternative spiritualities and secular worldviews cannot fill in their attempt to address the crisis. The secularist approach fails to account sufficiently for human depravity. Nor does it address adequately the nature and scope of the required redemption. How then will the Evangelical Christian community respond?
Bruce Barcott claims that part of the suspicion many Evangelicals have of environmentalism is that it embodies “loose-moral liberalism” and leads down a slippery slope: “tree-hugging today,” “gay marriage tomorrow.” While the one does not lead to the other, the Evangelical Christian community must respond biblically and compassionately to the homosexual neighbor. All too often, Evangelicals build walls of confrontation rather than bridges of communication. The last essay by New Testament scholar Linda Belleville and the “Cultural Reflections” piece by “Tony the Beat Poet” Kriz of Blue Like Jazz fame serve as a collective attempt on the part of the journal at a biblical and compassionate response.
While Belleville’s essay seeks to “debunk” “socio-biblical myths of the religious gay community,” she also calls for developing healthy same-sex friendships in the Evangelical Christian community, saying that “ministry to those struggling with sexual identity is long overdue and the need is a desperate one.” Many Evangelicals feel desperate because of pro-gay activism’s gains in the broader sphere, a point Belleville highlights. In view of such gains, they fear that claiming that change is possible or that same sex unions are wrong will eventually wear the label of “hate crimes.” Some gay activists even claim to be Evangelical, such as those associated with Evangelicals Concerned, and, according to Belleville, argue that the Bible says nothing against homosexuality; it speaks only of God’s grace and love. Belleville exhorts Evangelicals to “equip themselves with the facts regarding homosexuality” sociologically and biblically, contending that change is possible, that the Bible does speak against homosexual behavior, and that Evangelicals must respond to the person struggling with homosexuality in grace and love.
While Koetje claims that religious problems require religious answers, Belleville and Kriz each in their own way maintain that relational problems require relational answers. In “Living in the Space Between,” Kriz acknowledges that “the evangelical/homosexual divide” is an expanse. While he does not offer formulas for how to engage one’s homosexual neighbor and friend, he believes that key to breaking through the divide are “humility, compassion, confession, pain revealed, authentic story.” Kriz’s story of his conversation with his lesbian friend illustrates the fact that what is required today is a twofold hermeneutic: one that engages the text of people’s lives in addition to the biblical text in honest and holistic terms. Only then can Evangelicals navigate their movement through the contemporary cultural currents of alternative moralities and ethical issues with an expansive set of orthodox doctrines that bear authentic witness to Scripture’s authority and Christ’s centrality as Savior and Lord.
—Paul Louis Metzger, Editor