\u201cWe need to become a New Testament church!\u201d My predecessor recounted the numerous times he heard that statement during his tenure. I like the response he consistently gave, \u201cWhich New Testament church do you want to become? Corinth with all its issues? Philippi with its infighting? A church in Galatia with a quick turn away from the gospel?\u201d A quick survey through the book of Acts finds cultural and theological tensions introducing change into the fledgling movement. The early church grappled with its internal and external issues, and so has every generation since. A na\u00efve, or at worst an arrogant, assumption concludes that one expression of the church is the true, unchanged, New Testament church.<\/p>\n
Historian D. W. Bebbington details one era of the church\u2019s changing expression in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, <\/em>a book classified under the history of Christianity in Europe. Bebbington\u2019s premise asserts a church movement \u201caltered enormously over time in response to the changing assumptions of Western civilization.\u201d[1]<\/a> The author begins by articulating the defining traits of evangelicals emerging in the 1730s. Those traits, what some term as Bebbington\u2019s \u201cquadrilateral,\u201d[2]<\/a> include \u201cconversionism,\u201d a belief in lives transformed by the gospel; \u201cbiblicism,\u201d a high regard for the Bible; \u201cactivism,\u201d real-life applications of the gospel; and \u201ccrucicentrism,\u201d stressing the sacrificial atonement by Jesus on the cross.[3]<\/a> While those traits existed during the two hundred and fifty years of the author\u2019s span of the study, they transformed in emphasis and expression across that era.<\/p>\n Bebbington\u2019s book divides three distinct movement phases within the broad category of Evangelicals. The first phase pays significant attention to Wesleyan Methodism, heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and rationality. A second phase emerged during the nineteenth century marked by \u201cheightened supernaturalism\u201d giving centrality to subjective spiritual experience. The third phase took place in the twentieth century and was shaped by Modernist Expressionism, including skepticism about objective reality. No single factor alone created the shifts to new stages. Bebbington elucidates a complex interplay of multiple influences. As a principle, movements emerge and shift due to multifaceted dynamics.<\/p>\n If I could ask Dr. Bebbington a question, I would ask: \u201cDuring the timeframe in question, what exerted the most influence \u2013 the church upon the culture or the culture upon the church?\u201d The author details cultural stimuli like the Reformation, Enlightenment, Romanticism and Modernism. Theological tensions, especially surrounding the doctrine of assurance, also led to a strategy toward activism to gain confidence in one\u2019s salvation. Dr. Jason Clark notes that the connection between economic factors and the desire for assurance led to those dynamics becoming \u201cintrinsic to each other.\u201d[4]<\/a> Bebbington refers to Evangelicalism during the influence of the Enlightenment and its emphasis on biblicism as \u201can expression reflecting the age of reason.\u201d[5]<\/a> He goes on to state, \u201cat least for a while, Evangelicals had remoulded British society in their own image.\u201d[6]<\/a> He cites influence in both directions. His premise may tip his hand toward the external factors initiating shifts that resulted in ministry relevance to the culture in response.<\/p>\n A question I pose when preparing sermon material asks, \u201cso what?\u201d What difference does this make? While there are numerous benefits to studying history in the church, I will relate just one here. Heraclitus famously said, \u201cNo man ever steps in the same river twice. For it\u2019s not the same river, and he\u2019s not the same man.\u201d Changing the metaphor, no person steps into the same church twice. The church always exists in the complex currents of the age. No matter the type of church, it comes from a particular history, exists in its present form, and moves toward some future. Bebbington states, \u201cNothing could be further from the truth than the common image of Evangelicalism being ever the same.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n In this time of disruption, change forced its way upon the church in the West. For some, change signals abandonment of faith \u201conce for all delivered to all the saints\u201d (Jude :3 ESV). I believe that planned or forced change unsettles many due to a human tendency to make sacred what God used to transform someone. The lurching changes produced by the pandemic can raise a sense of foreboding about the present and the future. \u201cIs it really the church when it is online and not in-person?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s next?!\u201d Works like Bebbington\u2019s give a leader in this age a tool to share the ever-changing nature of the church over its two-century existence. \u201cSure, change happens faster than ever, but the church has always been changing.\u201d<\/p>\n For the leader herself or himself, Bebbington\u2019s book gives a context to their work that history preceded them and a future will follow them. Every leader is leading that organization somewhere within a specific cultural context. May history help leaders in this cultural moment to experience the assessment made of King David in Acts 13:36, \u201cFor David, when he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep\u2026.\u201d Dr. Bebbington helps leaders today to understand how leaders of past thought, believed and acted in their generation. May that help prepare leaders for a moment like this one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s <\/em>(New York: Routledge, 1989), 19.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [2]<\/a> John Turner, \u201cWhat Is Evangelicalism,\u201d Anxious Bench <\/em>https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2012\/06\/what-is-evangelicalism\/<\/a> accessed February 2, 2022.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern <\/em>Britain, 3.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Jason Paul Clark, \u201cEvangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship\u201d (diss., George Fox University, 2018), 62, https:\/\/digitalcommons.georgefox.edu\/gfes\/132<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Bebbington, 53.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n