Evangelism

By Sam Horn. Republished with permission from Baptist Bulletin © Regular Baptist Press. All rights reserved.

“No human mind could conceive or invent the gospel.” These words comprise the opening line of a little-known prayer included in a collection of Puritan prayers, The Valley of Vision. These words arrested my attention and caused me to reflect again on my own understanding, response, and commitment to the gospel—especially my ineptness, fear, and disinclination to share it with others even after three decades of ministry and multiple evidences of its transforming power.

I have learned that while my soul longs for the gospel, my heart is often indifferent to its effects—and my lips are often silent to its glorious truth. This sad state has become increasingly difficult for me to accept as the status quo. I am convinced that a good bit of my difficulty lies in my failure to reflect regularly and deeply about the true nature and divine purpose of the gospel. Furthermore, I suspect this same failure is why many Christians and evangelical churches fail to engage in sharing the gospel accurately, attractively, and authoritatively with those who desperately need to experience the redemption it offers.

Robert P. Jones wrote his book in 2016. He’s the founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, and holds a PhD in religion from Emory and an MDiv from Southwestern. He’s a clever and engaging writer, and opens with an obituary for “White Christian America” (“WCA”). In this “eulogy,” he explained that WCA had been ill for some time, but the disease became terminal after the 2004 presidential election:¹

The cause of death was determined to be a combination of environmental and internal factors—complications stemming from major demographic changes in the country, along with religious disaffiliation as many of its younger members began to doubt WCA’s continued relevance in a shifting cultural environment.

Jones writes from a progressive Christian perspective, and he sheds few tears at the death of WCA. His thesis is that a particular cultural era has ended in America; an era largely shaped and defined by WCA.²

What is WCA?

This is the million-dollar question, but (for me, at least) the biggest initial stumbling-block is that Jones decided to use a framework that generalizes Christians of various theological stripes by the color of their skin.³ It’s these white Protestants, Jones argues, who have lost their grip on the culture and are fast fading into obscurity.