A Few Thoughts on the Future of Evangelicalism

Just read a very interesting blog post and listened to a very interesting pod-cast about the current state and future of Evangelicalism that I thought I would pass along.  I am still negotiating my relationship to Evangelicalism.  I will say that through the prodding of a couple very close friends and reading Rachel Evans' blog (from which one of the posts I want to draw your attention to here comes) I am beginning to reconnect more with my Evangelical roots.  More thoughts on that later when I am not under the crushing weight of the end of the semester...

So this started when I saw a link from Rachel Evans' blog to this interview with theologian Roger Olson on the Homebrewed Christianity site.  The opening of the pod-cast is a little home brewed and the interviewing is a little messy, but its very much an interview worth listening to. Olson talks about a lot of different things in the hour or so long program, but over the course of doing that he gives a pretty good description of some of the current trends in Evangelical theology and some of the difficulties it faces.  One of my only points of criticism came when he took up the issue of younger people from the "post-conservative" crowd abandoning the Evangelical label.  His thought is that keeping the label allows for the maintainance of some relationships or connections that would not be possible without it.  Certainly true, but I think the other side of the coin is equally true- there are some relationships and connections that can probably never be made with the Evangelical label.  The "cash value" of Evangelicalism doesn't solve the problem of choosing a label, I think, because being "mainline" has an equal, perhaps greater "cash value."  The question could possibly be asked which set of connections and relationships are more significant, but that seems a bit too political for my liking.  Overall, I was a little disappointed with that part of the discussion.  However, on many other points he makes some very insightful assessments and comments.

Then, I clicked to another post on Rachel Evans' site entitled "The Future of Evangelicalism."  It was a very well written post, I thought, that largely describes the growing rift in the Evangelical community from the side that I find myself most aligned with.  It has a more pessimistic outlook on the idea of maintaining the Evangelical label than Olson's interview did, and that may pretty adequately describe the attitude I've had lately.  But it also highlights that such a rift is not inevitable.  The problem, as I see it, is that the solution she has outlined requires the "Neo-Reformed" movement to give up a lot more than the "Post-Conservative" movement- I cannot imagine Piper or Driscoll openly saying "we are fine with people holding an Arminian theology.  We don't hold it, but if you want to hold that view, be our guest."  That kind of conciliatory gesture seems to me to require a pretty radical change not just in the rhetoric of these leaders but also some of their fundamental theological ideas, particularly as it pertains to the locus of theological authority, which as I understand it is the very thing that they see as defining "Evangelicalism."  Which means, I predict, that such ideas won't be given up, the rhetoric from the "Neo-Reformed" movement will continue to get more and more fundamentalist in tone, and more progressive minded Evangelicals will continue to leave the Evangelical community altogether.