Lived Evangelicalism – Present Conditions and Future Possibilities

As these first posts from our friends indicate, there is such a thing as evangelicalism understood from historical, theological, sociological and cultural perspectives, and then there are all sorts of evangelicalisms in their more popular forms that are lived out by all sorts of people in all sorts of churches with all sorts of understandings of what it means to “be” an evangelical.  It is evangelicalism at this more popular level I find fascinating with lived beliefs and practices that perhaps say more about who evangelicals are in their own self-understanding, and give us insight into present conditions and future possibilities. 

As John Wilson rightly notes, many Christians in North America are evangelicals without owning the label.  This was true in his own Baptist context, and it is true for Christians in mainline traditions that are “evangelical” but do not use this term as a self-designation, such as my own United Methodist ecclesial context.  But what about the many Christians who do say “I am an evangelical” and “I go to an evangelical church,” who are largely unaware of the ways in which evangelical faith and practice have come to be in its distinct North American forms?  What shapes this kind of self-identity? What might be their self-understanding of this identification as it is actually lived out in their own lives?   These seem to me to be the harder questions to ask for ascertaining present conditions and future possibilities. 

I agree with John Franke that there is a theological ecumenism in evangelicalism based on its trans-ecclesial nature as a movement as opposed to a particular denomination or confessional stance. Those of us who “live and move and have our being” in these kinds of conversations understand this. However, on a lived level, I am not as optimistic about this evangelical ecumenical spirit for a few reasons. Given what we know about the emergence of certain segments of contemporary North American evangelicalism out of the modernist-fundamentalist controversies of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, seeds of separation from those with whom there is theologically disagreement have been part of the DNA of much contemporary evangelicalism.  While I too affirm the Scriptural mandate for the unity of the church as a normative one for Christians, I find a higher commitment to truth at all cost among evangelicals (at least in the forms of propositional truth statements) as the supreme virtue, largely at the expense of other important commitments, such as unity, love, kindness, compassion, forbearance and a much needed epistemic and personal humility.

I think Vince is right when he presses on the ways in which the sola scriptura principle gets lived out in actual practices in many evangelical contexts.  A common thread in each of these first posts noted the centrality of the Bible for evangelicals.  I couldn’t agree more, and am very grateful for my own evangelical heritage that explains my own deep commitments to Scripture today.  Yet, I would suggest that the commitment to the Bible’s authority, understood in a very particular way, has become a confession that is used to determine who is in and who is out of the evangelical fold.  This particular way of articulating Scripture’s authority in most evangelical contexts is inerrancy which does not solve the hermeneutical difficulties of reading and interpreting Scripture nor of making appropriate hermeneutical jumps from one context to another, nor how we understand authority or how it actually functions when reading the Bible.  Many evangelicals know what they think about the Bible, without actually knowing the narrative and trajectories of Scripture.  This is where evangelicals can benefit from a theological interpretation of Scripture, reminding us of the larger faith, theological, ecclesial, and formation contexts of our reading of the Bible. This is a way forward for a future possibility in order to appreciate and live out the functional authority of Scripture that evangelicals value as opposed to insisting on a particular view of the Bible’s authority as authoritative. 

I find Amos’ re-envisioning of evangelical distinctives helpful as he reminds us of the prominent role which the Holy Spirit has in certain “Pentecostal, charismatic, and renewalist spins” in reference to Bebbington’s categories.  This experiential dimension is a good reminder, given most evangelicals insist that one must have a personal relationship and an on-going experience with God through Christ made possible by the Holy Spirit as a mark of authentic evangelical piety and faith.  Evangelical faith has always had a deeply experiential component, yet evangelicals also maintain degrees of ambivalence toward experience as somewhat untrustworthy, fickle, and even dangerous.  I have heard often a  warning that goes something like this: “every experience must be weighed and judged against the Scriptures.”  Yet, there are all sorts of bizarre experiences recorded in Scripture that would never pass the muster of this kind of scientific judgment and evaluation of authenticity in the evangelical contexts in which I have been a part. I think evangelical experience has been shaped by all sorts of things such as race, class, and gender that go unnamed as experience but must be named for the ways they shape evangelical identity and practice. For Wesley, experience in Christian faith was never unmoored from the primary shaping source of Scripture, from faithful Christian traditions, and from our capacities to use reason to understand more fully and to evaluate more faithfully.  Along with an interpretation of Scripture that is more theological in scope, purpose and practice, I think a robust lived trinitarianism also holds some fruitful possibilities, particularly when it comes to how we understand experience in light of the Holy Spirit’s relationship to the missional and creating purposes of the Son and the Father, commitments which evangelicals hold dear.  

As postmodern theorists remind us, identities are shaped and are always being shaped.  This conversation reminds us that evangelical identity has been shaped, is being shaped, and will continue to be shaped, much to the consternation of some.  I resonated with insights offered by Corwin Smidt and the reminders offered by Jeannine Brown.  How we respond to the important questions posed in this conversation about evangelicalism, identity, practice, history and meaning may need a caveat of, “well, it depends.”  Our contributors have helpfully clarified some of these issues. It depends on the trajectories of evangelicalism in which we find ourselves; the ecclesial communities with which we identify; in what part of the country we live; the parachurch organizations of which we have been  a part; where we have been educated, along with how we read the Bible and what theological claims we make as primary ones.  I suggest that evangelical identity formation may largely be hidden from view, and I suspect this is the more difficult aspect of evangelical identity and belonging to address, the one which many of us have experienced, and perhaps the area which has caused the greatest pain to those whose experience is not counted as part of the evangelical mainstream, such as women, who are often shaped and constrained by the prevailing gender ideologies that have characterized so much of evangelical faith and practice.  It is for this reason that exploring evangelical identity and practice through more popular (and hence more powerful?) lenses may give us more clues to present conditions and future possibilities.