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Worthy Challenges, Exciting Opportunities

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My vision for the future of American evangelicalism is a positive one, although I do have a few concerns. As many of the contributors to this ongoing conversation have noted, evangelicalism has a long, robust, and meandering history. Like all movements, evangelicalism is undergoing change and will continue to transform as society and culture create new obstacles and opportunities. But the underlying principles and beliefs that unite American evangelicals are strong enough to ensure that they will continue to provide salt and light for decades to come.

The Story of Power and the Power of Story

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My June post made reference to James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World, in which he contrasts differing views of connections between evangelicals and the broader society. After reviewing “Purity From”, “Relevant To”, and “Defensive Against” (which was my reference), he ends by calling for “Faithful Presence”. This simple notion is profound in its implications. He says that Faithful Presence “is an expression of a desire to honor the creator of all goodness, beauty, and truth, a manifestation of our loving obedience to God, and a fulfillment of God’s command to love our neighbor.”

While there are a variety of voices competing for dominance in American Evangelicalism (and religion more broadly), I believe that the next decade will see an outbreak of Faithful Presence over more combative views of faith and culture. Some of this stems from changes we’re seeing in the faith of millennials. Even those who haven’t left the church are seeing the faith-culture relationship in very different ways than their parents and grandparents. They are far more aware of their identity as strangers in a foreign land who are trying to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God.

Topic # 8: The Future of American Evangelicalism

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The future will never be the same as the past. Nonetheless, as American Evangelicalism moves into the future, we may well seek to recover and strengthen our traditional commitments. At the same time, there are important possibilities for appropriating and adapting the best of other traditions, and for breaking new ground as we follow the Spirit’s leading. After reflecting on the state of American Evangelicalism over a number of topics, writers this month will respond to the following questions about the future of American Evangelicalism:

  1. What is your vision for the future of American Evangelicalism?
  2. What do you see as the major challenges and opportunities we face?
  3. What steps should American evangelical Christians take to respond to these challenges and opportunities?

“Christian Ed all the way up”

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The Christian intellectual tradition is fraught with mixed signals. Notice Paul’s dictim: “knowledge puffs up…” (1Co 8:1) and the Petrine testimony on Paul: “some things in [his epistles] are difficult to understand” (2Pt 3:16). Festus exclaims during Paul’s defense that his “much learning” is driving him mad (Ac 26:24). Paul’s exclamation that the gospel is “foolishness to the gentiles” (1 Co 1:23) is the explanation for why few among the wise and the powerful recognize God’s Son.

The Elephant in the Room

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As I have reflected further on Jeannine Brown’s thoughtful posting on “Hidden Constraints to Academic Freedom” and the comment that I posted on that piece, I have concluded that there is “an elephant in the room” that we need to acknowledge and start talking about.

Hidden Constraints to Academic Freedom

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As one who has taught at a seminary for almost all of her career, this question has a different feel for me. For the most part, seminaries reflect particular confessional stances and locations, so the question is not so much should this wing of higher education do confessional scholarship (for the most part, it does), but how does it do its scholarship? Does it provide explicit and/or implicit constraints on scholarship? And could a scholar’s work bring them into conflict with the confessional stances of their institution in such a way that they would fear bringing their full learning and selves to their scholarship?

Recovering Education as Formation

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Two great challenges to higher education are these: the omnipresence of digital technology, and the triumph of global consumerism.  Together, these two powerful forces shape human desire and patterns of thought in ways that are significantly at odds with a genuinely Christian vision of higher education and of life.  Specifically, both reinforce the supremacy of the solitary appetitive Self as the moral center of the universe.  What matters (indeed, all that matters) is what I want.  Moreover, the intrinsic aim of digital technology is maximal efficiency in actualizing user desire.  Thus, the catechesis of global consumerism teaches us that the chief end of man is the satisfaction of whatever desires we happen to have, and digital technology is our Deliverer. 

The Middle Way is the High Road in Higher Education

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At first, I planned to skip this topic, since my knowledge of Evangelical educational institutions is so distant and so slight. Wouldn’t readers be annoyed at me for having the gall to write anything? But the contrast between two sources of data I happen to have began to look so huge and so intriguing that I decided to check in after all.

Renewing Higher Education? The Holy Spirit and the Life of the Mind

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In a real sense, evangelicals are still either reeling from or responding to Mark Noll’s Scandal of the American Mind almost two decades ago. Those within the Reformed orbit, Noll’s own most immediate circle, have certainly led the charge in evangelical higher education. Inspired in part by a robust doctrine of common grace, by a Kuyperian apologetic for how various “spheres of sovereignty” invite different disciplinary and methodological analyses and forms of inquiry, or by the emphasis on integrating Christian faith and worldview with secular learning, evangelical colleges and universities especially in the Reformed tradition have worked hard to overcome the scandal. All of this is certainly welcome and lifted the standard of discourse across the evangelical world.