Future of Evangelicalism - Roger Olson

Roger Olson has a lengthy two-part post up about the future of Evangelicalism (see here and here).  The gist is that evangelicalism as an ethos can still carry on according to five basic concepts based on the Noll/Bebbington quadrilateral of biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism and activism, to which Olson adds a respect for historic orthodoxy.  But Olson thinks evangelicalism as a movement is dead.  It has fragmented into three basic groups. 

One he describes as "conservative, neo-fundamentalist" and identifies the Gospel Coalition as an example.  The second group he describes as "conservative, mediating evangelicals" and lists Christianity Today as one example.  Finally he identifies the "postconservative evangelicals" and includes Scot McKnight and Sojourners magazine as examples. 

I have to say I generally agree with him on this one.  As a movement, evangelicalism is at war with itself, particularly in relation to biblicism and activism, for conservatives and progressives define those terms very differently.  For progressives, the cross is increasingly about Christ identifying with the oppressed and is less an less about atoning for sin.  For progressives activism is increasingly about rejecting conservative concerns about the sanctity of life, individual responsibility and preservation of the nuclear family - activism is increasingly about grievances of oppressed groups, liberal definitions of social justice, radical inclusion and eradication of boundaries including advocacy of same-sex relations in some form.    Even the Noll/Bebbington quadrilateral fails to unite evangelicals these days.  (More)

I started this blog a number of years ago because I sensed that Evangelicalism was indeed fragmenting and lacked any anchor points to hold it together.  That recognition, coupled with the death of my parents and a significant period of local church conflict left me in a state of disorientation.   The primary issue in the local church culture I saw was a “me and my Bible” individualism and lack of any clear ecclesiology for dealing with church conflict.  The primary problem I saw in the larger evangelical movement was a postmodern epistemology which undercut any sense of authority in the Biblical text because the focus shifted entirely away from the text and to “interpretation”.  

After reading Thomas Oden’s “Rebirth of Orthodoxy” I believed there might be a way of re-framing things to reclaim biblical authority by seeking a broader consensus regarding Biblical interpretation and quelling the tide of “interpretive pluralism”.  So I studied the early church, spent three years within an Evangelical Anglicanism.  But I found that revisionism has many faces – the text of scripture as well as the text of doctrinal statements becomes almost irrelevant as it both can be reinterpreted to mean nearly the opposite of what the text seems to say under the rubric of cultural context.     

I have disagreed with Roger Olson on one point he has made in the past, the matter of seeing evangelicalism as a "centered set" vs "bounded set".  Oden speaks of the concept that there can be no center without an edge.  Unless we have boundaries (and Oden would begin with the boundaries of the Creed and cautiously explore boundaries in common points of Reformation confessions and doctrinal statements) we only have a point in space, and that point might as well be anywhere.   Olson speaks of this as a “bounded set”, the center is determined by the boundaries.   He argues that Evangelicalism is not a bounded set, but a “centered set”, meaning evangelicals gather around a point or set of points but do not set hard boundaries.   Evangelicals might find the “points” of Biblicism, conversion, the cross as common points to gather around but would not draw a firm boundary on inerrancy or predestination, as examples.  The reason Olson contends Evangelicalism can only be a "centered set' is because there is no establish evangelical hierarchy, no ecclesial body that can enforce boundaries if they exist.  That is a point well taken. 

There are two problems for me in using the centered set model.  First, one cannot call much of anything “out of bounds”, so the “points” are fairly fluid – the center can move, and move significantly.  That fluidity calls into question whether even a general orthodoxy can be maintained.  Unless Evangelicals could form enough of an alliance to establish a way of agreeing on some common boundaries that could be enforced at the denominational level, it is difficult to say that any doctrinal assertion should be considered truly “evangelical”.  

The second is that one needs an agreed location of the central points, we must agree on the definition of what we gather around, and we do not.

   

And this gets to the tensions of our era.  Whether it is Rob Bell calling into question the meaning of Hell or Greg Boyd flirting with Open Theism or Steve Chalke’s horror about penal substitution or Tony Jones relentless advocacy of gay marriage, there are no boundaries that can ultimately be a "line in the sand". One man’s heresy is another man’s creative discovery.

Even if evangelicalism is a centered set, a generation ago there was enough consensus that few dared push the envelope - there were "invisible" boundaries at least.  There were debates about eschatology and even inerrancy, but no one would go to the places Bell, Boyd, Chalke or Jones have gone.  Today the pluralism in the broader culture has stretched the edges of the centered set to territories few would have imagined even in 1970.

And second, we no longer really agree on the central points with any degree of cohesiveness.  Crucicentrism is supposedly part of the evangelical ethos, but what exactly does it mean?  What is the meaning of the cross?  Do progressives and conservatives agree on the meaning and significance of the cross?   Do we agree on the meaning and significance of conversion?  Do progressives find anything good about even the term "biblicism" (since Christian Smith thinks biblicism makes the Bible impossible).   Does the activism of Tony Jones have anything in common with the activism of Jim Dobson?  No on all counts.

So why does it matter?  Can’t we all just be happy in our local churches and worship with those who agree with us?  

Yes and no.  On the one hand the fragmentation means we forfeit a prophetic voice in the larger culture.  I don’t think there is necessarily a “Christian” position on the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, mind you, but certainly on issues where law and morality inertwine, the church can and should have influence.  We have none any longer because we speak in confused tones, church leaders often saying the very opposite of each other.  How can the church provide moral guidance to the culture when even in the church the viewpoints are at completely opposite extremes?

But more to the point, in losing our voice, we create a vacuum.  Policies will be formed.  And it is more and more common for public policy to be less and less friendly to faith based reasoning, whether the issue is naturalism taught exclusively in public schools or contraceptive mandates in Obamacare or Catholic Charities being forced out of adoptions for a particular moral stance that was at odds with the government’s moral point of view.  Because of our extreme pluralism, embraced and celebrated by many progressive Christians, the society that is now almost completely secularized can simply shop for approval of virtually any view from a smorgasbord of "Christian" viewpoints.   

I still believe that Oden’s quest for consensus is conceptually possible, but I now believe short of a miraculous shift in the thinking of large segments of the church and society, such consensus cannot happen because too many in the old Evangelical coalitions do not want consensus.  The progressives in particular do not want a consensus about truth in doctrine or truth in any other area because they are captivated by the notion that truth is by its very nature far too elusive.  In fact, universal truth claims are seen as “oppressive” and as such private “truths” are preferable to any transcendent or universal ones.   The hostility toward truth claims is no longer limited to philosophy wings of secular universities, it now has almost completely paralyzed major segments of the evangelical movement and thus the evangelical “ethos” is captive to "sensitivity" and hostile to true/false distinctions.  

Evangelicalism is now, in fact, merely a mood, a nebula without boundaries.   

So what to do?  

Perhaps it is time for the admission that the progressive wing of the Evangelical movement operates from an entirely different worldview and as such it is not going to be possible to achieve a consensus with that wing about much of anything. As much as they resent the comparison, there is a parallel to the old liberalism.  As Francis Schaeffer saw in the neo-orthodox movement, there is an illusion of communication because the individuals in opposite camps use the same words, but the words have significantly different meanings.  He spoke of “connotation words”, words that have a history in the collective memory that suggest a commonality that no longer exists.  Atonement no longer means to progressives  what it has long meant to other evangelicals.  "Sin" tends to be applied to collective groups in the context of social justice as opposed to the spiritual rebellion of individuals.  The "Kingdom" is increasingly seen as a political movement toward equity rather than the reign of Christ in the hearts of men. 

Just as revisionists in the Anglican movement continue to recite Creeds and read from the scriptures while completely redefining the meaning of the words on the page, progressive evangelicals maintain an outward appearance of commitment to scripture but fill the text with foreign meanings imported from strained appeals to historical context, naturalism, scientism, sociology and more.   

Olson speaks of the centrality of scripture as one of the points the “centered set” of Evangelicalism was once built around. But in order for that “point” to be an anchor for the set, there must be agreement about what “scripture” is.  There is not.  Conservatives see scripture as an inspired text, where the words penned by the original authors have some objective meaning that is substantially knowable.  In the evangelicalism I was tutored in, the term “inspiration” refers to the text while “illumination” refers to the experiential process of coming to understand the intent of the author by the power of the Holy Spirit.  But to progressive evangelicals, “inspiration” refers to something other than the text, usually the meaning ascribed to the text by the interpretive community.   The text is not inspired, the interpretive community is.  So the Holy Spirit can speak in ways that are not necessarily bound by the text.  And just as ordination of a gay bishop was attributed to a new work of the Spirit in the Episcopal church, the argument for full inclusion of gays in progressive evangelical circles tends to focus on the some sense of the spirit of Christ moving the church toward justice.

It is difficult to imagine “consensus” when such disagreement about foundational definitions exists. 

     

I am increasingly resigned to the likelihood that Evangelicalism as a movement may well be dead, as Olson suggests, but I don't share his optimism that the Evangelical "ethos" can be maintained.  If evangelicalism was merely an alliance built around a set of defined central ideas and those very ideas are fluid and undefined, then we are no longer gathered around common points because the points themselves have split apart.   The very definitions of biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism and activism are at question.  We are in fact gathered around different points that only seem to be common because they have been assigned the same labels, hence we are no longer a centered set in any real sense.   An "Ethos" or mood or spirit or sentiment cannot be much of a basis for working together toward a common goal.

Maybe the day has come when an alliance of different groups under the umbrella of the term Evangelical has become untenable.  Maybe Roger Olson is right, Evangelicalism is not a denomination but a movement, an alliance.  Allegiances change.  Conservatives and progressives no longer have the same goals, the same definitions, the same theological foundations.  Alliances come and go.   Maybe it is time to let it go.