“You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner…you’re in one!” This famous line from one of my favorite movies, Pirates of the Caribbean, echoed in my ears as I read through the history of evangelicalism. Elizabeth Turner longed for adventure but when she was taken hostage by cursed pirates she didn’t believe what she’d be told. It wasn’t until she saw it with her own eyes that she believed.<\/p>\n
The word Evangelical in my “Northwestern American” church context has undergone a tremendous change in the past twenty to thirty years. Hijacked by political pundits and the moral majority to legislate morality in America, it has become a word that, depending on people’s response, quickly reveals where they are in the subcategories of American culture and politics. Pastoring a church with the word, “Evangelical” has created a challenge to reaching people who often associate this word with negative images and soundbites. I once had a guest come into our worship gathering and ask me directly if we, “burned the Quran here?” She had seen Evangelicals do so on the internet, revealed to her by a google search of the word \u201cevangelical\u201d and wondered if we were those kinds of evangelicals also? Then, only a few months ago, our church dropped the word \u201cEvangelical\u201d from the name of our church[1]<\/a> because our leadership determined (I think rightly) that it is a barrier to reaching people with the Good News of Jesus. Our church is working through what it means to still be evangelical without evangelical being in our name. Some have wondered, “Am I even evangelical?” In our vision and values we continue to affirm that our church is, “Christ-centered, Gospel-Oriented and Biblically-Grounded.” Where did these ideas come from?<\/p>\n Bebbington’s book is like reading my family history. So much of who I am, the meta-story in which I’ve lived and where I have put my hope are rooted in Evangelicalism. Though I am a descendant of The Mayflower, grew up the son of a Presbyterian minister and am now a pastor in a church with Wesleyan\/Methodist roots, I am at home in all these worlds because they are all in the family of Evangelicals. At age 3, at a Vacation Bible School at my church, I asked Jesus into my heart. At age 12, I gave my life to Jesus at a Billy Graham Crusade in Portland, Oregon. At age 20, I fully surrendered my life to Christ at a worship gathering at my local church. These conversion experiences are threshold moments in my life and represent decisions I have made to be a follower of Jesus all the days of my life.<\/p>\n Bebbington tells us story after story and quote after quote of the shaping of this movement that has been so influential in Western society and history. He names Conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism as the founding and guiding tenets of Evangelicalism. One thing that struck me is how, even in its early stages, this movement was reactionary against the sociological developments of its time. Whether in reaction to church authority and the “mediation of priests” or the reaction to the humanism of Enlightenment. Bebbington states, “One eye is constantly being cast over the shoulder at the ritualists and the rationalists. Instead of the joy of new discovery that pervades eighteenth-century lists of distinctives, there is a resolve to resist an incoming tide of error.”[2]<\/a> While much of Evangelicalism has been a reaction against certain movements of culture, powerful images and metaphors have endured, and even shaped, the theology of Evangelicalism and its history. These metaphors and movements have often not created the most Christ-like examples of love for our enemies. I\u2019m reminded of an example from Our Great Big American God, <\/em>by Matthew Paul Turner of Billy Sunday\u2019s endorsement of America entering World War 1. Turner states that, \u201cIn fact, Sunday practically became thew war\u2019s unofficial spokesperson, declaring multiple times that \u201cChristianity and patriotism are synonymous terms\u201d and \u201chell and traitors are synonymous\u201d too.\u201d[3]<\/a> So, perhaps, the hijacking of the word Evangelical is not such a recent phenomenon?<\/p>\n All that being said, no example of this is more relevant, and more powerful, in my opinion, then the image of the Cross. The Crucicentrism that has developed in the West has focused almost exclusively on Substitutionary theories of atonement. While these ideas do get at the very heart of what the cross does, it has also then been taken, in the context of capitalism, as a transactional relationship. Dr. Clark in his work on Evangelicalism and Capitalism seeks to combat the “deforming influences of capitalism”[4]<\/a> and suggest the resources to rectify them.<\/p>\n What was a new thought to me about the relationship between Evangelicalism and Capitalism was the way that the Puritan Work ethic and our works-based righteousness arose out of a need for the assurance of our salvation that church polity and theology had previously provided. Dr. Clark states: \u201cWe might understand that Protestants now stood on their own as a kind of \u2018naked self\u2019, determining their own salvation before God with much \u2018fear and trembling\u2019. For Bebbington it was this new anxiety, and focus on the doctrine of assurance, that generated the activism that was distinct to Evangelicals.”[5]<\/a> This insight will be tremendously beneficial in my NPO research related to Sabbath and why it is so challenging for Protestant Evangelicals to take a break and rest in the goodness of God.<\/p>\n But where I\u2019d like to conclude my post is on a suggestion for a healthy future of Evangelicalism in America.It seems like Bebbington’s quadrilateral has ebbed and flowed throughout the centuries, with different movements of Evangelicalism emphasizing different sides. Furthermore, Clark’s observation of the way that the cross has become commercialized and has cultivated a cruceform Evangelicalism that is transactional in nature begs the question: What is the preferred future of Evangelicalism? I’d like to suggest that the emphasis take a cruciform shape again. While Evangelicalism may generate a sense of exile from influence at the center of our Western culture, exile is not a bad place for the Church to exist. In their book, The Great Dechurching<\/em>, Davis, Graham and Burge state hopefully that, \u201cwe can trust in God\u2019s goodness in exile because no one has ever known exile like Jesus Christ. He who was in the very form of God emptied himself to take on the form of a servant\u2026His exile culminated on the cross\u2026\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n While activism is needed today, and will continue to be needed, it is cruciform activism that is necessary. While the authority of Scripture is continually being challenged in a post-truth world, it is seeing Scripture through the lens of the cross that will be the most compelling to the world of the future. Finally, while conversionism is at the heart of evangelicalism: may it be the belief that radical and transformative change is possible because of Jesus. And may that radical change take place in a way that leads to service, suffering and forgiveness of our enemies, like the Crucified One that we follow and worship. What I am suggesting is seeing the cross again in broader terms than simply a substitutionary atonement theory steeped in transactional consumerism and surface salvation assurance provided Evangelicalism. Instead, a truly cruciform Evangelical life is shaped and stirred by the cross daily and sees the cross of Christ as both justification and vocation, the place where death was dealt with and the pervasive and primary image that shapes our moral compass.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Name Change FAQ’s | corvallisevangelical (evch.org)<\/a><\/p>\n [2]<\/a>Bebbington, David W..\u00a0_Evangelicalism in Modern Britain : A History from the 1730s to The 1980s_, Taylor & Francis Group, 1989.\u00a0_ProQuest Ebook Central_, http:\/\/ebookcentral.proquest.com\/lib\/georgefox\/detail.action?docID=179445. Page 4.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Turner, Matthew Paul. Our Great Big American God<\/em>. 156.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Clark, Jason. Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship<\/em>. London School of Theology, 2018. Page 49.<\/p>\n