CHRISTIANITY ASTRAY: WHAT'S LEFT OF EVANGELICALISM?


The following two pieces originally appeared at Christian Research Net, an outreach of Apprising Ministries:

For those who actually would like to better understand the current state of the American Christian Church CRN points you to this piece by Phil Johnson over at Pyromanics:

This post by Rob Bowman over at “Parchment and Pen” last week got me thinking again about the rapid erosion of evangelical distinctives and the major role the editors of Christianity Today have played in muddling the question of what differentiates historic evangelicalism from everything else—including Mormonism’s aberrant doctrine of God. (Online source)

What Does Remain of Evangelicalism?

After 35+ years of relentlessly being tweaked about how unstylish we are (first by shallow seeker-sensitives and now by smarmy Emergents), evangelicals have slept through the near-total erosion of their own doctrinal distinctives at the hands of people ostensibly within their own movement. It’s amazing how many evangelicals still have not caught on to what these über-cool peddlers of “relevance” are all about. It has little to do with style (which changes every month anyway) and everything to do with changing things that should never have been regarded as fluid.

Specifically, what has actually changed most in the visible evangelical movement over the past thirty years’ time is the content of our confession. “Evangelical” belief has become so minimalistic that whatever remains of the evangelical consensus is now in effect devoid of every principle that ever made evangelicalism distinctive.

Phil Johnson