Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity. - book reviews

Christian Century, July 19, 1995 by Robert W. Patterson

Two and a half centuries ago, a respected member of the Massachusetts Standing Order, Jonathan Edwards, came to the defense of what we now call the Great Awakening, arguing that the fire of revival breaking out in the colonies was truly a work of the Spirit of God. Reflecting upon his own parish ministry in Northampton, and drawing on the experience of his wife, Sarah, Edwards wrote three compelling books (Distinguishing Marks, 1741; Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, 1743; and Treatise on Religious Affections, 1746) that helped redeem a religious movement from both the overzealous and the skeptical.

To what extent Edwards would recognize late 20th-century evangelicalism as his legacy is not clear. It is clear that modern evangelicalism - like the Great Awakening - needs an articulate and determined mind. That void may be in the process of being filled by another pastor writing out of his parish expereince. Alister E. McGrath has written a qualified yet passionate evangelical manifesto for the 21st century. McGrath predicts that the movement "will gain the intellectual and spiritual high ground within Western Christianity during the next generation."

While such bold projections have been uttered before by evangelical spokesmen, McGrath is no lightweight. He is a doctor of molecular biology, an Anglican cleric and a theology professor at Oxford University, with nearly a dozen books under his belt. He may not be well known among mainline American Christians, but his book demonstrates that this self-described "committed, yet critical evangelical" rapidly becoming a theological force.

Even in examining the "dark side" of evangelicalism, calling for a "shakeout of its questionable baggage" and warning fellow evangelicals of the perils of neglecting the Reformation heritage, McGrath is bullish on a movement he seeks to shape. He is convinced that liberal Protestantism, with its ties to the Enlightenment, cannot cut it in a postmodern world. More important, the effectiveness of evangelicals in proclaiming the gospel in a secular culture qualifies them as guardians upon whom the survival of the Christian church depends. Echoing the theme of Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon's Resident Aliens, McGrath notes that "Christendom" - the idea of an established church situated in a supportive Christian society - is over. Because evangelicals, unlike the established mainline crowd, have understood and acted upon this new reality by gaining converts in first-century fashion, the future belongs to them.

McGrath makes his case compelling by weaving his personal experience into the book. The reader learns that the author arrived at college in the early 1970s as a committed Marxist but soon converted to evangelical-style Christianity through the influence of InterVarsity. Prompted by John Hick's The Myth of God Incarnate and James Barr's diatribe, Fundamentalism, McGrath reacted against evangelicalism while training for the Anglican ministry in the late 1970s. But he did not find the integrity for which he longed in the religious left of the Church of England. A three-year stint in parish ministry further disillusioned him: "I came to realize that liberalism had little to offer in the midst of the harsh ... realities of unemployment, illness and death." Finally he returned to his earlier, evangelical faith, committed to defending its intellectual and spiritual foundations.

McGrath provides the rationale for his change of heart in perhaps the most helpful chapter of the book, "The Appeal of Evangelicalism." Relentlessly exposing the intellectual and spiritual barrenness of liberal theology, McGrath claims that 1960s liberalism has collapsed as completely as the Berlin Wall. In their native efforts to make Christianity "relevant" to the secular mind, liberal Christians burned themselves out by trying to keep up with a culture in constant turmoil. Whatever limited ground they did gain only made secularism more appealing to the declining number of mainline Christians, who became "little more than a pale and vaguely religious reflection of secular cultural trends." By performing "the inverse miracle of turning wine into water," liberalism revealed its inability to build or sustain the church.

The agenda of evangelical Christianity, notes McGrath, has had a more commendable result. While keeping faith with critical theological foundations, particularly Nicene Christology and trinitarianism, evangelicals have vested great energy in marketing the "pearl of great price" to a hurting world; its growing churches are the result. Furthermore, that proclamation of the gospel has been supported by giving increased attention to the life of the mind, providing the movement with an "academic credibility and respectability that would have been unthinkable a generation ago."

How McGrath's glowing account fits with the bleaker if not disillusioned picture drawn in recent years by some of the movement's native sons in the U.S. - including David Wells, Mark Noll, Os Guiness and Michael Scott Horton - is not clear. Perhaps McGrath's transatlantic perspective is a factor in his optimism. The worst features of American evangelicalism - anti-intellectualism, crass marketing, television preachers, personality cults and empire building - have never found a home in England.