Why "neo-evangelicalism" was a monumental mistake

I find it interesting that just as leaders are declaring the fundamentalist movement dead, non-fundamentalists are saying the same thing about evangelicalism (apparently in something like a “movement” sense).
If everything’s dead, what do we have now?

[Aaron Blumer] I find it interesting that just as leaders are declaring the fundamentalist movement dead, non-fundamentalists are saying the same thing about evangelicalism (apparently in something like a “movement” sense).
If everything’s dead, what do we have now?

Aaron, I did not get the impression that he said “Neo-evangelicalism is dead,” but, rather, it never accomplished its goals, all it accomplished is a watering down and a doctrinal decay/ignorance. Rather than dialogue with the liberals, it marginalized its own doctrine. No real social involvement unless you count the religious right. It succeeded it taking down the walls of separation toward the left, but this transferred those walls to the right. He did say that the older type of evangelicalism that grandma and grandpa embraced is dead. Depending upon how old the reader is, there is a lot of truth to that. These are generalities, and the author makes room for exceptions, if you read carefully.

He is saying that the original espoused form of a movement named Neo-evanglicalism is not only dead, it never materialized (whether you agree or not). But what we now call “neo-evangelicalism” is often anything but intellectually drawing those on the scholarly left.

Still, I do agree that most of the best scholars and thinkers are to the left of what many define as fundamentalism. At least these scholars (like Grudem, D.A. Carson, David Wells, Piper etc.) do not self-identify as fundamentalists, to my knowledge. But, then again, are they really Neo or more traditionally evangelical? The terminology tangles us all up because it floats so much.

(I was going to post this on pyrotechnic, but I found it very difficutl to leave a comment.)

I think a disservice is being done here to the historical record and the complexity of the situation.

First, it is a common historical occurrence that one group will emerge or coalesce as a reaction to a set of concerns, and when those concerns seem less relevant or are a matter of history, many within that group will criticize the group itself as being a mistake, as having serious problems, etc.. What happens here is that people ignore the fact that much of their criticism is only possible because of the successes of the original reaction.

Fundamentalism was, truly, a disaster for a robust, more-than-merely-orthodox Christianity; having a powerful intellectual and social testimony is not something unusual in Christianity. From the witness of the early church’s social practices to the likes of theologians like Augustine, it has historically not been that case that orthodox Christianity has to place itself within a cultural and intellectual ghetto. So, Fundamentalism, itself an important reaction to modernism with many successes, truly had the weaknesses New Evangelicals saw in it.

Now, a couple generations later, it’s easy for Fundamentalists and people like Johnson to criticize New Evangelicalism, even though, if we imagine it away, the vast majority of our textbooks in conservative seminaries and colleges as well as some of our best theological and historical thinking as conservative Christians gets imagined away as well.

So, like the New Evangelical reaction to Fundamentalism, this reaction to the New Evangelicalism is predicated on the inadequately acknowledged successes of New Evangelicalism. In that sense, it’s no better off, structurally, than Emergents or anyone else, for all these groups, in their failure to properly acknowledge their debt to those things that they criticize, react in an unbalanced way, and therefore produced equally if not more narrow slices of the Christian pie that only appeal to an equally narrow constituency. I think most of the criticisms of New Evangelicalism are sound; but I think they are also wrong in that they often them stem from a profoundly imbalanced conception of their significance and meaning, when the fact of the matter is that the clarity of the intellectual hindsight that produces such cogent criticism is often enabled by the successes of that which is being criticized (e.g. David Wells, sitting in his perch at Gordon-Conwell, issuing some of the best and most powerful criticisms of evangelical Christianity as a whole, is a good example; he’s right, but if you’re not balanced, you miss the obvious implications of his being paid to study and write by Gordon-Conwell and other funding institutions).

Anyone like myself, studying philosophy and theology at good graduate but secular/liberal school, is extremely grateful for New Evangelicalism and hopes very much that people like MacArthur, et al. don’t become that much institutionally more influential than they are because of their neglect of some many important intellectual areas.

At the same time, I am profoundly grateful for MacArthur, et al. Not only did he help me come to an accurate and Reformed understanding of the Gospel as a young student, but he also helped me appreciate the importance of the biblical text in preaching. So, I acknowledge my debts to MacArthur, just as I acknowledge my debts to someone like Francis Schaeffer, even though in many ways I seriously disagree with such (indeed, depending on the context, I’ll be the first to defend such men). That disagreement does not mean I wish them away; it means I’d glad there are other Christians who have different priorities and a better sense of the importance of certain areas of Christianity.

The tendency of every group and generation is to kill its father, which it can only do after it has been nourished and supported by and gained some independence from that which it later attacks. The only way such patricide can be mitigated is through the balanced integration of sharp, necessary criticism with a profound acknowledgement of its indebtedness – and the implications of such indebtedness – to that which it criticizes. That is something too often lacking in criticisms of any movement, in this case New Evangelicalism. And this imbalanced criticism comes down on our heads when the generation following us rises up, as the Emergents and many others have done, to decry a lack of balance, etc. in those groups that fostered them and to repudiate them with a breathtaking recklessness and ungratefulness. If we wish to avoid that, we must model the better way.

Joseph, what a good post. Yes, there are both pros and cons. I especially appreciate this statement:

Anyone like myself, studying philosophy and theology at good graduate but secular/liberal school, is extremely grateful for New Evangelicalism

What would our libraries look like if all the books written by Neo-evangelicals were off the shelf?

I see… “demise” as in decline vs. “demise” as in kicking the bucket. Probably right.

[Aaron Blumer] I see… “demise” as in decline vs. “demise” as in kicking the bucket. Probably right.

Aaron, I guess that I’m easily confused…or not! The root meaning for “demise” is the transfer of estate…after death, hence “death,” or “decease.” It does not have the definition anywhere, that I know, of “decline.”

You hardly ever hear anyone (except fundamentalists) talk about neo-evangelicalism these days, but the fact is that neo-evangelicalism completely overwhelmed and commandeered the entire evangelical movement, and that is the primary reason the movement itself is no longer truly evangelical.

I think that Johnson is actually giving the eulogy to “the dearly departed.”

I was thinking some of the same things Joseph mentioned when I read Phil’s post. He has a point, but he’s not owning up enough to the good the movement has done.

Joesph really expressed something well in the following paragraph:

[Joseph] The tendency of every group and generation is to kill its father, which it can only do after it has been nourished and supported by and gained some independence from that which it later attacks. The only way such patricide can be mitigated is through the balanced integration of sharp, necessary criticism with a profound acknowledgement of its indebtedness – and the implications of such indebtedness – to that which it criticizes. That is something too often lacking in criticisms of any movement, in this case New Evangelicalism. And this imbalanced criticism comes down on our heads when the generation following us rises up, as the Emergents and many others have done, to decry a lack of balance, etc. in those groups that fostered them and to repudiate them with a breathtaking recklessness and ungratefulness. If we wish to avoid that, we must model the better way.

This is worthy of highlighting, maybe in its own post. Excellent assessment and I think spot on. The tendency of generational patricide, and its role in the whole YF movement, Type A, B, and C discussion, and those who have left an extreme form of fundamentalism altogether (like myself). The tendency surely is towards patricide at first, but hopefully a calm reassessment takes over and prevents such a completely self-defeating rejection of the father movement. If not, patricide will become suicide.

Thanks for that food for thought….

[Aaron Blumer] I find it interesting that just as leaders are declaring the fundamentalist movement dead, non-fundamentalists are saying the same thing about evangelicalism (apparently in something like a “movement” sense).
If everything’s dead, what do we have now?

Actually, he’s been saying things like this for a while now - He did a couple of “Evangelicalism is dead” either before or after the Shepherd’s Conference when he spoke on “Dead Right” [which, by the way, is still dead right].

If everything’s ‘dead’ - well, it doesn’t bother me in the least. Just keep soldiering on :)

[Bob Hayton] I was thinking some of the same things Joseph mentioned when I read Phil’s post. He has a point, but he’s not owning up enough to the good the movement has done.

Joesph really expressed something well in the following paragraph:

[Joseph] The tendency of every group and generation is to kill its father, which it can only do after it has been nourished and supported by and gained some independence from that which it later attacks. The only way such patricide can be mitigated is through the balanced integration of sharp, necessary criticism with a profound acknowledgement of its indebtedness – and the implications of such indebtedness – to that which it criticizes. That is something too often lacking in criticisms of any movement, in this case New Evangelicalism. And this imbalanced criticism comes down on our heads when the generation following us rises up, as the Emergents and many others have done, to decry a lack of balance, etc. in those groups that fostered them and to repudiate them with a breathtaking recklessness and ungratefulness. If we wish to avoid that, we must model the better way.

This is worthy of highlighting, maybe in its own post. Excellent assessment and I think spot on. The tendency of generational patricide, and its role in the whole YF movement, Type A, B, and C discussion, and those who have left an extreme form of fundamentalism altogether (like myself). The tendency surely is towards patricide at first, but hopefully a calm reassessment takes over and prevents such a completely self-defeating rejection of the father movement. If not, patricide will become suicide.

Thanks for that food for thought….

Thanks, Bob; I’m glad some of what I wrote was helpful.

I’ve been thinking about what I wrote for a long time, and Phil’s comments were the occasion for putting them down. What you highlight is really important, I think, especially as a critique or warning for anyone who founds their identity on a movement; generally speaking, that’s just not a good idea - it will only maintain itself for a generation, and in order to survive it naturally institutionalizes; but the institutions that result are often reflective of concerns,e mphases, and modes of expressions that passed with the original founders of the movement, and thus they often represent a kind of rigid, narrow, a provincial outlook if they fundamentally seek to ground their identity in the original movement.

If I ever wrote on either Fundamentalism or New Evangelicalism, my titles wouldn’t be about how they are dead, they would be: “After Fundamentalism” or “After New Evangelicalism.” Not stark repudations, but recogntions that history has changed, new problems have emerged, and what we should gain from these movements is not a rigid committment to their historicallly particular expressions, but to the fruit they bore and to the committment they manifested to the princiciples, truths, and the one institution (the Church) that don’t pass away with history. Anything more than this and we linevitably lapse into (unnecessary) provincialism and undercontextualization to our current context, a problem that, as Keller as noted, is no better than over-contextualization, for it simply means one is contextualizing to a different era or culture than the current one.

Thanks for this incisive article. Having become a Fundamentalist by conviction from SBC denominationalism thru neo-evangelicalism, I’ve found the following books very helpful with reasons why
new-evangelicalism was a mistake: THE TRAGEDY OF COMPROMISE, the Origin and Impact of the New-Evangelicalism, Ernest Pickering, BJU Press, 1994 and PROMISE UNFULFILLED, the Failed
Strategy of Modern Evangelicalism, Rolland McCune, Ambassador Emerald, Int’l, 2004. Captain Joe Henderson