The Evangelicals

The modern evangelical movement began after World War II in the 1940's and 1950's.  It was started as a corrective and reform of Fundamentalism.  Key figures of the movement included Billy Graham (evangelist), Carl Henry (theologian), and Francis Schaeffer (apologist).  Evangelicalism sought to hold to orthodox doctrine while engaging the culture.  The evangelicals sought to be evangelists to the culture.  The goal was to be in the world but not of the world. 

Evangelicals believed that the Biblical worldview had the ultimate answers to life and the world.  The movement sought to be intellectually robust while retaining devotion with the heart.  Originally evangelicalism was strong on it's doctrine and held steadfast to the inerrancy of Scripture. 

But eventually evangelicalism began to drift away from it's foundations as some in the movement tried to compromise with the secular culture.  Some began to doubt the inerrancy of the Bible as well as it's sufficiency.  Evangelicalism began to move away from it's roots in the Protestant Reformation. 

In the 1980's evangelicalism began to be seen as a political movement.  Some leaders of the movement seemed to think that all that was needed was to get the right people in political office.  The problems in reality were much deeper.  The problems were really moral and spiritual not so much political. 

Also in the 1980's and 1990's the seeker sensitive movement began.  This movement downplayed doctrine.  It focused more on marketing than theology.  It was worried more about offending people than about offending God.  Also in the 1990's the emergent church began to arise.  It seemed to think that we should become postmodernists in order to reach postmodernists.  Postmodernism is the dominant belief system of our modern culture.  The postmodernists reject absolute truth claims and are characterized by uncertainty.  The emergent church began to doubt the inerrancy of Scripture, the existence of hell, that Jesus is the only way to heaven, and the sovereignty of God. 

Unfortunately evangelicalism has become much like the secular culture.  Some have even said that it has managed to be of the world but not in the world.  Many modern evangelical churches are not all that serious about things.  And not surprisingly the world does not take the evangelical church all that seriously.  It has been said that evangelicalism is a mile wide and an inch deep.  This assessment is somewhat true because evangelicals have often forgotten the mind and only focused on the heart.  Some view Christianity as life and not doctrine, but this was the slogan of the old theological liberals. 

The modern evangelical movement is in disarray.  Much of the movement really is not all that Biblical any more.  Unfortunately the evangelicalism of Graham, Henry, and Schaeffer no longer exists.  While the Fundamentalists withdrew from the world, the evangelicals became like the world.  We must hope and pray for a return to Biblical Christianity.