The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Elite
It is obvious now, looking back at the post-9/11 and pre-Obergefell era, that the leftward drift of this movement was inevitable. The end of Renn’s “neutral world” and the beginning of a negative world hostile to Christianity began soon after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015 and accelerated rapidly with Trump’s 2016 victory. Changed circumstances undermined the attractive witness model as previously practiced. The neutral-world ethos could not hold in the negative world; the era of open debate was gone.
I converted to Christ in the year 2000, leaving behind my atheistic contrarianism. I entered American Protestantism completely unaware that something unique was occurring. In the 1980s, Calvinism reemerged as a potent intellectual force in evangelicalism, spearheaded by Baptists John Piper and John MacArthur and Presbyterian R. C. Sproul. In the early 2000s, young Gen X seminary graduates and writers who were influenced by these men became a movement known as the Young, Restless, and Reformed (YRR). New personalities and publishers emerged, and megachurches were formed. Centered on Calvinistic doctrines of salvation, these Baby Boomers and Gen X Calvinists achieved a good deal of theological unity.
Their cross- and intra-generational unity was most evident in the Together for the Gospel conferences (T4G), which began in 2006 and held every other year. It was organized by four friends, already well-established in their own circles in the pre-social media days—Mark Dever (Baptist), Ligon Duncan (Presbyterian), Albert Mohler (Baptist), and C.J. Mahaney (Charismatic), along with three invited speakers: Piper, MacArthur, and Sproul. What unified them were belief in biblical inerrancy, male headship of families, and the “five points” of Calvinism, which can be reduced (albeit simplistically) to the traditional Reformed doctrine of predestination. Thus, they were opposed to feminism, modern “critical” biblical scholarship, and the freewill doctrines of Arminianism. The conference grew over the years to include younger pastors such as David Platt (Baptist), Matt Chandler (Baptist), Kevin DeYoung (Presbyterian), Thabiti Anyabwile (Baptist), and others.
I attended the 2008 T4G in Louisville, Kentucky, seeing the men I had read for several years joyfully sitting on panels together, despite their important differences. This togetherness was real. But it was also entirely a product of the time. It was in the middle of what Reformed writer Aaron Renn has labeled the 20-year “neutral world” period from 1994 to 2014—a world in which Christianity no longer had a privileged status but was not disfavored. Most everyone in these evangelical circles was a political “conservative” or typical evangelical voter, against abortion and homosexual marriage. Nevertheless, on political questions, the YRR leaders approached politics very differently. Piper was an outspoken Christian pacifist who would have even refused to defend his own family against violence. MacArthur regularly proclaimed his sentiment that “government can’t save you.” In contrast, Mohler (along with the
Presbyterians) devoted attention to “engaging” the culture. But in the neutral world these differences were seemingly less pertinent; the glue of their unity was opposition to theological liberalism.
The late Timothy Keller also rose in prominence at this time in communicating the Gospel to coastal elites. His neo-Calvinism spread far and wide among the Gen-X world, establishing an ethos centered on “winsomeness” and a “third-way” politics above (not between, so he claimed) the political left and right.
Under Keller’s influence, the YRR era was not retreatist but activist—pursuing “cultural engagement” by demonstrating that orthodox faith is the key to a coherent, good, and complete life. The purpose of “public theology” was more evangelistic than political; and most adherents, even if they disapproved of “neutrality” language, still approved of the possibility of debate within a shared public square. That is, entering public discourse offered Christians the chance not so much to win politically as to demonstrate their serenity, through a politics that appeared attractive, heavenly, and pleasantly aloof, and devoid of anxiety, overreaction, and anger. To the urban liberal, this was a quirky but safe political stand that checked the boxes on most “social justice” concerns.
Hence, Christians who followed Keller’s approach could downplay or overlook questions of political power and focus instead on verbal and aesthetic persuasion. The principle regarding politics, especially for followers of Keller, was that political commentary and activism was an extension of “witness,” not fundamentally a means for good political outcomes. Every decision in ministering this witness tended to defer to whether it resulted in making Christianity attractive to non-believing urbanites. Politics was an extension of cultural apologetics, built around “authenticity” as opposed to the kitschy, suburban “seeker-sensitive” movement of the ’90s. The assumption was that secular people will become dissatisfied with the secular identities on offer and look for a coherent alternative. This approach made sense in that neutral world that no longer exists, where the Christian identity was one viable alternative among competing identities.
The Gospel Coalition (TGC), founded in 2005, exemplified this approach. A “coalition” of likeminded mostly neo-Calvinist churches, TGC served mainly to platform rising stars and to establish an elite evangelicalism. TGC’s long-time (and current) editor in chief, Collin Hansen, who wrote the book Young, Restless, Reformed in 2008, credited Keller’s works on “cultural apologetics” as a driver of the movement. Subsequently, the target engagement-audience for TGC (and neo-Calvinist apologetics in general) has always been urbanites, or at least non-rural residents. Few talked about the need for ministries to rural, working-class whites.
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The Neighborhood Church Returns: Making the Comeback a Reality
It’s time for the neighborhood church to make a comeback. The stigma of small churches is fading. Fostering is becoming more common. Pastors should feel free to leave the islands of their campuses and make friends. The opportunity to revitalize neighborhoods is as big as ever. The neighborhood church movement is primed for a relaunch.
Neighborhood churches tend to be small or midsize and well-established. For years, we have dismissed the potential for a significant move of God in these churches. I believe they are primed for a comeback. They are numerous, and they are located in the heart of places with lots of people.
I believe in this comeback so much that I wrote a book about it. The Surprising Return of the Neighborhood Church just released! If you lead or attend a neighborhood church or want to know more about this potential movement, you can pick up a copy now. I wish I could write that these churches will make a comeback, but it’s still an unrealized possibility. But what might it look like if such a comeback were to occur?
The Stigma Must Become the Advantage
Some have bemoaned the “on every street corner” nature of the established church. I understand. It seems there are churches everywhere that are doing nothing. But a shift is already underway. The megachurch movement is waning. The younger generations don’t prefer the giant sanctuaries on sprawling campuses that their Boomer parents enjoyed. The neighborhood church has a long way to go before we can talk about a movement, but the stigma of small and local is fading. Smaller churches embedded in neighborhoods have a certain appeal. If these churches step up and begin to reach into their surrounding communities, that stigma might shift to an advantage.
Church Fostering Must Become More Common
We understand the term fostering in connection with children being placed with a family. It differs from adoption in that it’s not intended to be permanent. Similarly, a new movement called fostering is emerging in the world of church revitalization, as healthy churches provide people and other resources for unhealthy churches over a specified time frame—usually six months to a year. In many cases, the fostering relationship involves sending in a preacher, improving the worship ministry, and restarting programming for children. The most successful fostering relationships also include outreach into the surrounding neighborhood.
Local Pastors Must Work Together for the Kingdom
In too many communities, pastors treat their church campuses like islands instead of as interconnected outposts in a kingdom network. Pastors need to get off their islands and befriend other pastors. When pastors in a community become friends, tenures become longer, and churches stop competing and start cooperating.
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Chapter One: Believing The Bible
If you are in Christ, I am your brother. One day we will meet in glory and we will both be right and wrong about various firmly held beliefs. Keep your open-hand items and give grace in abundance to those who don’t currently hold your conclusions. Their tertiary beliefs will adjust over time, and so will yours. The Christian life is one of transformation that doesn’t stop until our breathing does. If you are not transforming in any way, you are drifting. And nobody ever drifted their way to holiness.
That sounds a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it? In Christian debate, it is not uncommon to hear someone give reasons why their view is the biblical view, inferring that the opponent is unbiblical. This book opens with a chapter that says that the first step to accepting the supernatural realm as defined by the Bible is to be faithful to what God’s word says. That is true in all things, and allow me to begin by saying that everything the Bible reveals is perceived in its own time. I have read through the Bible several times and each time I come away with insights that I hadn’t considered before.
Accepting the supernatural view is the sort of thing that will challenge some of our notions, and it may need to be accepted gradually. And even as grace can be shown to someone accepting it in smaller bites, grace by those who are more knowledgable than me can be shown to those who are considering it with a healthy amount of skepticism.
In my church tradition, there are “open hand” and “closed hand” beliefs. Closed hand beliefs are those that one must believe if they are to be a Christian. Open hand beliefs are ones that you can hold to, but these are not ones that Christians should use to invalidate the Christianity of others. A closed hand issue would include a belief in the trinity or that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. An open hand issue would include most eschatological views or what mode of baptism is proper. You can believe you are right and your brother in sister is wrong. You can discuss it and debate it together. But it is inappropriate for either of you to declare the other reprobate just because they think that many of the predictions Jesus gave in the Olivet Discourse were fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
I say all this to confirm to you that your acceptance of the concepts put forward is not salvific. You may disagree, you may agree but to a different extent. That’s OK. If you are in Christ, I am your brother. One day we will meet in glory and we will both be right and wrong about various firmly held beliefs. Keep your open-hand items and give grace in abundance to those who don’t currently hold your conclusions. Their tertiary beliefs will adjust over time, and so will yours. The Christian life is one of transformation that doesn’t stop until our breathing does. If you are not transforming in any way, you are drifting.
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We Have Answers
Written by James N. Anderson |
Monday, December 5, 2022
The Bible not only assures us that God will provide sufficient answers to the most pressing objections to the Christian faith but also explains why we do not have an answer to every question we might want answered, at least while we “see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12).After exhorting his readers to “in your hearts honor Christ as Lord as holy,” the Apostle Peter instructed them to always be prepared to “make a defense” to everyone who asks the reason for the hope within them (1 Peter 3:15). The Greek word translated “defense” is apologia, from which we get our English word apologetics, meaning the reasoned defense of the faith. Apologetics is one of the tasks of the church, and whenever God directs His people to a task, He supplies whatever is needed to fulfill that task. Thus, when Scripture directs us to give answers to those who raise critical questions about the Christian faith, we may reasonably assume that answers will be available to give.
When I first delved into Christian apologetics, it was primarily (I’m ashamed to confess) for the purpose of self-defense. I wanted respectable answers to the hard questions tossed at me like grenades by the very smart unbelievers with whom I worked, so that I wouldn’t look foolish in their eyes. But in those early years, it felt like a roller-coaster ride. Whenever I encountered a new objection to which I had no ready response, I would experience a sense of panic, as though the entire Christian faith were hanging in the balance. Every single time I did the research, however, I discovered that there were solid answers to the objection, and it wasn’t nearly the devastating blow that I had feared it to be. It took many years for me to learn the lesson: newly encountered objections should be seen not as threats to faith but as opportunities for growth, and it’s safe to assume that answers will be available if we’re willing to do the work of finding them.
I learned a second important lesson through those experiences and the studying I was prompted to do. Apologetics is not a recent innovation in the history of the church. Christians in the early centuries were confronted by a battery of objections to their claims about God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Yet the Lord has never left His people without answers. In every generation, God has equipped His church with gifted thinkers who have been equal to the task of defending the Christian faith against the prominent critics of the day. The objections have varied over the centuries, and the answers have sometimes changed too—mostly through critical refinement and improvement. The one constant has been the faithful provision of the Lord Jesus, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).
Thanks to this long history of intellectual engagement, we have more resources today for defending the faith than ever before. We should be greatly encouraged that Christian apologetics is flourishing in our time. There has been a remarkable renaissance of Christian philosophy in the last sixty years, and some of the most respected and productive scholars in the field are also professing believers. Conservative biblical scholarship is very much alive and thriving. Historical research into the ancient world is increasingly confirming that the four Gospels contain exactly what they claim: firsthand eyewitness testimony of the ministry of Jesus. Meanwhile, in the natural sciences, the more we uncover about the structure of the universe and the history of life on our planet, the more we find confirmation of the biblical doctrines of divine creation and providence. To echo Francis Schaeffer: all truth is indeed God’s truth.
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