Single thread or rich piece of the tapestry?

Date: 20 March 2010 13:10:29

The wonderful 42 has picked up on an "interesting" post by Adrian Warnock about Don Carson's book Scandalous. Within the post Adrian makes the interesting comment, "There was a time when the definition of an “evangelical” was someone who liked John Stott and Billy Graham. Today, perhaps one could suggest that Don Carson has a similarly defining role, alongside people like John Piper."

Dave who writes 42 wrote a post about a year and a half ago which summed up the standard definition of evangelicalism which comes from David Bebbington. Within it the key points are there are four components which combined can be seen to define evangelicalism. Within both academic and popular texts on the subject this definition which is unpacked within Bebbington's "Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s" is agreed to be the one which shows what is distinctive about the rich strand of evangelicalism.

Adrian Warnock, however, is focusing in on a single thread of Calvinist, reformed theology when he refers to Carson and Piper. In doing this he is doing the exact opposite of what John Stott himself did in Evangelical Truth which sought to acknowledge diversity but then look for where unity could be found, (aswell as integrity and faithfulness). Within this text Stott does express disease with Bebbington's accepted definition, but does not seek to remove it rather amend it, as various authors have done. A summary of what Stott does is expressed within this IVP summary.

What Adrian Warnock and co. are seeking to do is try to give prominence and make normative one single approach within the rich strand of evangelicalism. Even as somebody who knows little about textiles I do recognise that a single thread cannot be used within producing a tapestry it requires the combination of different threads in order to make the strong and beautiful combinations used. This recognition of the contribution of different bits of evangelicalism, whilst seeking a unity, is something that Joel Edwards did in his 2008 Greenbelt talk which I commented on in this post.

Whilst I would not term myself as an evangelical anymore I do recognise it is part of my heritage and do recognise the huge contribution that it is making to faith today, (sometimes for good and sometimes for not so good). This leads me onto a couple of other things which concern me about Adrian Warnocks approach:

1) He is seeking, in his choice of contemporary evangelicals with a defining role, to put all emphasis and power within the hands of the north American church. I value the contribution north Americans have made to faith but I also value the distinctive aspects which UK evangelicalism has contributed and continues to contribute. In the current age one significant part of the "evangelical package" has come from the Alpha course which has grown out of Holy Trinty Brompton, and made Nicky Gumble a defining character internationally I might suggest suggest. Both Gumble and Stott have had a significant impact, one might argue, because they have come out of the established church - something the US does not have.

2) In seeking to define evangelicalism by using these people he is arguing a particular approach to systematic theology. This particular approach to systematics leads on to a particular interpretation of the bible which has, over recent decades, been questioned and debated within aswell as outside the evangelical sub-culture.

3) If these people become defining and normative as representing evangelicalism then a huge number of people who are proud to still be described as evangelical, (after Christian), would be disenfranchised from this movement. Those whose approach to women particularly is more akin to the evangelicalism that has been expounded by people like Steve Chalke, Tony Campolo, David Coffey and so forth would be in a position of being so out of tune with the dominant thought that they would push alot of people who are firmly within the evangelical sub-culture into the position of being in a void. It is the creation of this type of void which results in fear and disillusionment, both of these reactions cause the gospel to suffer as they are not Christian responses.

Through doing the fieldwork for my research in evangelical churches, aswell as mixing much more with Roman Catholics and Protestant Anglo-Catholics over the last eighteen months I have gained a much greater appreciation of how much the church has to be greatful for because of the diversity within it, when the diverse groups are able to work together. I have also become more aware of the problems that are caused when one group seeks to put forward their interpretation as normative. Each strand does need distinctives to make them recognisable and to give them identity but these need to be as broad as possible, rather than increasingly restrictive.