Post Series

0—Intro
1—Fundamentalism (Kevin Bauder)
2—Confessional Evangelicalism (Al Mohler)
3—Generic Evangelicalism (John Stackhouse)
4—Postconservative Evangelicalism (Roger Olson)
5—Conclusion and Reflection

This is the second post on our walk through Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism, which I received from Zondervan to review. We’ve looked at fundamentalism and confessional/conservative evangelicalism. Now we turn to John Stackhouse to help us understand so called generic evangelicalism. I’d say he’s about as middle of the road you can get and as Stackhouse insists, “the positioned outlined here is the most authentically evangelical of the four positions represented in this book.” Obviously he’s jesting, but he does maintain that his big tentedness does offer a “definition of evangelicalism that lets us all feel we are authentic evangelicals, without defining evangelicalism so broadly that it becomes useless as a descriptor…” (116) I think he does a good job of both. Let’s take a look.

As has the other two, Stackhouse begins by reminding us that evangelical comes from the Greek word for “good news.” This good news is “a message about the life, work, and significance of Jesus Christ as God reconciling the world to himself and how we can participate in that salvation.” He then argues that this good news hovers among three key terms: Jesus, Bible, and church. Evangelicalism is primarily concerned with Jesus, not primarily the Bible or the church, but Jesus. But we also focus on Jesus and also the written witness to the good news of Jesus through the Bible and the received “rule of faith” about that good news from the church. So Jesus, Bible, and church. Then Stackhouse asks an interesting question:

“So far there seems nothing particularly distinctive about evangelicalism. Isn’t it just Christianity?” (117)

Well, isn’t it? Thoughts?

According to Stackhouse yes and no. Yes in the sense that evangelicalism has always been about stirring the Christian church to fidelity in doctrine, fervency in piety, and faithfulness in mission to Jesus. It’s what Stackhouse calls a “basic concern for authentic Christianity,” which means it is neither conservative nor innovative but both in that it seeks to radically (re)connect to the roots of genuine Christianity, while also cutting away all that hinders its vitality and missional orientation/posture. (118)

So in many senses evangelicalism is “merely Christianity.” But in other senses it isn’t, which Stackhouse supports by defining evangelical in two ways. In both definitions Stackhouse joins Mohler (and later Olson) in citing Bebbington’s historical evangelical criteria, but with an addition: crucicentrism, biblicism, activism, and conversionism, and then transdenominationalism which he has borrowed from George Masden. (119-121) This fifth one is key as it broadens the tent to recognize authentic Christianity in other denominations that’s “sufficiently strong to warrant working together on projects of mutual concern” when first order theological concerns were met, even though second and third were not.

I like Stackhouse’s thinking regarding the transdenominational nature of his definition of evangelicalism. I experienced this in one of the oldest Episcopal churches I attended in Washington D.C. for a year and a half. The Falls Church was founded in 1699, I believe. George Washington even served on the vestry! But while they were definitely Episcopalian—liturgy and all—they were also very evangelical, in a number of ways: worship was contemporary; zeal for the gospel and individual conversion was evident; submission to the authority of Scripture was primary, which was born out in their disassociation from the Virginia Diocese and joining with CANA over issues regarding the authority of Scripture (as evident of gay “bishoping”). So it was not your typical mainline denominational experience, because it was an evangelical experience.

I also have become good friends with a Catholic priest in Grand Rapids. By his own admission he is one of the most evangelical Catholics I’ll ever meet, and it’s true. His heart is more for people encountering the Story of Jesus in the Scriptures than simply the Catholic tradition; he longs for people to find new life in conversion through the gospel; and he is incredibly active socially and gospelly (did I just pull a neologism?) in the truest evangelical sense. So for this Catholic, at least, he aligns nicely with the five-fold description of evangelicalism of which Stackhouse attests, perhaps mostly because of the transdenominational aspect of it.

Now I understand these two personal examples probably complicate things for a whole lot of people, and perhaps exceed the generic criteria of even Stackhouses evangelicalism. Then again perhaps not, and that’s because he defines evangelical in two ways: first, as type of Christian ethos—meaning definition one is a noun describing a way of being Christian; and second as an individual or corporate identity that belongs to a movement known as evangelicalism. (119, 122) I like the way he defines this two-fold understanding of evangelicalism, because in the end both are discernible because both are bounded to a degree. The one fits the five-fold criteria of being, from which he quotes Bebbington and amends. The other fits a socio-historic movement. And this allows Stackhouse to argue how one is discerned an evangelical is by “how many items are on the list of ‘entailments’ of evangelical belief and how correctly one holds to any of those items.” (125)

But what about the matter of deciding who is in and out, as others have asked? Stackhouse doesn’t really answer that question, although he does believe there are boundaries around what is evangelical and there is a point at which someone or something isn’t evangelical—mainly because they don’t share the entire set of evangelical convictions. (137) Stackhouse doesn’t suggest disassociating with such people, even Mormons (137-138), but instead suggests that we can still partner with others in getting some good stuff done.

He also believes that one can be an evangelical and be a wrong evangelical and it’s OK to say so, as in the case of open theists and those who would deny that penal substitution is essential to the gospel. I liked this idea because it gets to the heart of his final exhortation, and that is for evangelicals to watch themselves when it comes to bordering people in or out, while also taking care the word and movement doesn’t simply become everything to everybody.

“May I also exhort me fellow evangelicals to be careful not to wall ourselves into a compound of fretful or, worse, chauvinistic conservatism such that we cannot learn anything from our neighbors…let’s be wary of building any walls that are too thick to alter, let alone move…Let us see our priority as keeping vital things vital. The body can tolerate peripheral challenges and even benefit from dealing with external influences so long as the core remains sound.” But then also, “To remain open to additional blessing doesn’t mean we can be reckless on the boundaries, of course. Terrible problems can emerge on the frontier, and we must not be ingenious, as too many evangelical theologians and church leaders are today, about welcoming heterogenous ideas, affections, and beliefs.” (140-141)

In the end, Stackhouse’s description of generic evangelicalism comes pretty darn close, denominationally, to the Evangelical Covenant Church, in which I spent 4 years pastoring. This denomination is as big of an evangelical tent as you can get, a tent that includes both infant and believer baptism (yes, you read that correctly!). A tent that isn’t defined by confessions but affirmations, six of them that include: the centrality of the word of God; the necessity of the new birth; a commitment to the whole mission of the church; the church as a fellowship of believers; a conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit; the reality of freedom in Christ. As you can see these aren’t boundaries so much as they are rallying points, which include Bebbington’s quadrilateral, and then some.

While I enjoyed my time in the Covenant and value its broadness and their priority to keep “vital things vital” as Stackhouse exhorts—like the first order beliefs that Mohler himself exhorts—I felt at times there is this curious inability to name problematic theology and aberrant beliefs, among both the pastorate and pew-sitter. I noticed this during the months surrounding the launch of Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins. It was as if people didn’t want to “go there” in rightly declaring Bell’s theology what it was: no longer evangelical (not to mention no longer orthodox). Perhaps it’s an atmosphere of tolerance brought about by having no second and third order commitments, which I applaud to a large degree. Perhaps its because there is no confession binding it’s members together, other than a generic evangelicalism. Regardless, the Covenant serves for me as an example of the good and bad that can come from a generic evangelicalism that, in theory, majors on the majors and minors on the minors, but in the end tends to have a difficult time maintaining even the boundaries of the majors.

In many ways, I resonated with Stackhouse and his tension of maintaining the boundaries of evangelical Christianity, while also being broad tented enough to include a whole lot of folks. But I also appreciated Mohler’s more activistic theological triage motiff and posture, which I find necessary nowadays and lacking from the generic evangelicalism of Stackhouse.

And this brings us one step closer to the end of the evangelical spectrum, which will be covered by Roger Olson in the next post.

Any thoughts about generic evangelicalism? Do you resonate with the broad tent? Do find problems with that broad tent? Where do land along the evangelical spectrum?