More than a decade before Newsweek declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelicals,” the coalition of conservative Protestants had already begun to break apart…Evangelicals were engaged in a Battle for the Bible.

Few periods of the last century were more destructive, realigning, reshaping, and redefining of Evangelicalism than the decade and a half beginning in the mid-1970s. The evangelical coalition was taut and threadbare, in danger of tearing asunder by scholars who disputed a fundamental of the Christian faith, Scripture’s inerrancy. Ironically, the ripping occurred the same year that Evangelicalism unexpectedly received national acclaim linked to a presidential election.
Arising from this period were two closely correlated questions: (1) Who are the Evangelicals? (2) What do Evangelicals believe concerning the authority and truthfulness of Holy Scripture? Both questions were thrust upon Evangelicalism in 1976, the year that Newsweek deemed the “Year of the Evangelical.” In what follows, I will show that 1976, while seemingly a high water mark for Evangelicalism, actually exposed serious fractures which proved beyond repair, despite valiant efforts by leading evangelical scholars. Many who abandoned the foundational evangelical belief in the inerrancy of Scripture took the evangelical label with them and expanded it to allow for their belief in “limited inerrancy.” They published numerous essays and books challenging the long-held belief that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. The battle was on; would Evangelicalism survive?
1976: A Pivotal Year for God’s Word
In America’s bicentennial, Jimmy Carter ran for United States president as self-professed “born again” Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, The incumbent, Gerald Ford, a reserved Episcopalian, professed the same. At that time, Episcopalian and Southern Baptist leaders identified their denominations as distinct if not separate from America’s evangelicals. With the presidential election only a week away, these distinctions were too intricate for Newsweek’s editors to acknowledge or comprehend when they designated 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical” (October 25, 1976). For example, Carter’s praise for Paul Tillich, a Neo-Orthodox theologian from whom evangelical scholars stood aloof, did not temper Newsweek’s equating Carter, the Southern Baptist, with Evangelicals.
Harold Lindsell, also a Southern Baptist, took a vastly different posture toward the SBC leadership than Carter, who identified with them. Lindsell published The Battle for the Bible in 1976 and by June it was already in its third printing. Formerly Lindsell was a faculty member at Northern Baptist and Fuller Seminaries and Wheaton College before he succeeded Carl F. H. Henry as editor of Christianity Today (1968–78). So, when Lindsell wrote his book he did so as the editor of a major Christian magazine, not as an academic. Thus, he appealed not to scholars but to “evangelical lay people in the pews who may not be aware of the central issue that faces them, their denominations, and their institutions.”[1] What distressed him was stated at the outset, as he regards
…biblical inerrancy to be the most important theological topic of this age. A great battle rages about it among people called evangelicals. I did not start the battle and wish it were not essential to discuss it. The only way to avoid it would be to remain silent. And silence on this matter would be a grave sin.[2]
Of his own denomination, he notes, “Probably 90 percent of the people in the pews believe in biblical infallibility.”[3] His concern is with the academic institutions: “Among faculty members of Southern Baptist colleges and seminaries where do you find articulate spokesmen who come out in favor of inerrancy? The silence is deafening!”[4] He laments that as academics “retreat from inerrancy,” denominations abandon vital ministries and displace them with “socio-political-economic concerns.”[5]
Lindsell’s principal distress was over Fuller Seminary’s revising of the doctrine of inerrancy by endorsing their own coinage, “limited inerrancy.” He also called attention to an ethical issue; Fuller Seminary administrators publicly portrayed the seminary as holding to its founding doctrinal affirmation, which included Scripture’s infallibility, even after some of its faculty “ceased to believe in an infallible Bible.”[6] They contended that Scripture’s inerrancy is restricted to matters of Christian faith and practice with allowance for errors in matters concerning the observable world, geography, history, and science.[7]
It is significant, then, that Harold J. Ockenga, first President of Fuller Seminary (1947–54) and still serving on the seminary’s board, launched the initial volley from Lindsell’s arsenal by writing the foreword. Ockenga drew attention to Fuller Seminary, sharing Lindsell’s concern that Scripture’s “inerrancy is the watershed of modern theological controversy” because “those who give up an authoritative, dependable, authentic, trustworthy, and infallible Scripture must ultimately yield the right to use of the name ‘evangelical.’”
This is Lindsell’s burden when he makes his final appeal:
It is my conviction that a host of those evangelicals who no longer hold to inerrancy are still relatively evangelical. I do not for one moment concede, however, that in a technical sense anyone can claim the evangelical badge once he has abandoned inerrancy…It is true that a man can be a Christian without believing in inerrancy. But it is also true that down the road lie serious pitfalls into which such a denial leads. And even if this generation can forego inerrancy and remain more or less evangelical, history tells us that those who come after this generation will not do so…I do not look for or expect a time in history as we know it when the whole professing church will believe either in inerrancy or the major doctrines of the Christian faith. There will always be wheat and tares growing together until the angels begin their task of reaping the harvest at the end of the age.[8]
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April Lexi Lee and Renee Wong have been best friends since they were 12. After supporting each other through the highs and lows of life, school and boyfriends, they took their relationship to the next level by becoming platonic life partners.
When Lee, 24, moved from Singapore to Los Angeles for college, the best friends became long-distance but remained emotionally strong. And as the pandemic hit and they both graduated, they felt this “gravitation” towards each other.
“We work so well together. We’re such great partners and support each other and love each other so much. We never see each other leaving each other,” Lee explains, recounting their train-of-thought. “So why is this not a stable foundation to start life and start a family and all those things? Why is that not as stable, even more stable, than a traditional, romantic marriage?”

Then it clicked. Wong moved to the United States to become Lee’s platonic life partner.

“I wasn’t even interested in marriage to begin with, neither of us were,” Lee says. “But then with each other, we suddenly saw the future and we were like, ‘This fits. I would do this with you.’ ”
She describes the partnership as “a deep platonic love and also a commitment to each other, like marriage, where we are trying to build the next step for our lives together.” This includes things that “typically married couples would do” like starting a family and having a joint bank account to achieve their goals of buying a house and more.

Why People Choose Platonic Life Partnerships
For Jay Guercio, 24, a platonic life partnership “just made sense” after realizing how much her life goals aligned with her best friend Krystle, who she first met in 2012 and had filled her life with “companionship, love, laughter and adventure.”
“We want to raise kids the same way. We have the same ideas as what finances should look like. We are already symbiotic in how we work,” she said. “There’s no reason to keep on waiting to hopefully find a partner who is going to align with all those things that also happens to be romantic and/or sexual in nature when it just made sense to start building the life that we wanted to live together.”

Fast forward and now they raise their adopted son together after getting platonically married in November 2020.
Guercio describes a platonic partnership as “a committed relationship to someone that doesn’t involve romance or sex.”
Cyndi Darnell, a certified clinical sexologist, therapist and couple’s counselor, says platonic partnerships can “absolutely” be as successful as a traditional marriage, because “partnership is based on shared values.”
“If you want to create a partnership based on values that are meaningful to you as individuals… I actually think that that’s a better model than the notion of romance, which we know is fickle,” she adds. “To rely on something as unreliable as romance for a contract as heavy as co-parenting and marriage seems to be why these things seem to be diametrically opposed on some level.”
Historically, marriage also hasn’t been about love, she points out.
“When we think about the origins of marriage, it was never about love. And it was certainly never about romance. It was about asset management.”
Guercio agrees partnerships like her own are centered around “mutual benefit.”
“It’s about purposefully deciding to live the life that you want to live together because those things align. It’s not just getting into a committed relationship with someone because you have sexual feelings.”
Darnell doesn’t view this as a bad route.

Written by Samuel G. Parkison |
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
Christ came to you at your lowest and he positively transformed you from an enemy to a friend. The Father’s overflowing, gushing love for you he displayed when he sent his Son to win your reconciliation with his life, and purchase your reconciliation with his death—all while you were breathing out venom and hatred and rebellion towards him. That is news good enough to put undue shame to shame.

Shame is a popular word today. Sometimes preachers like to substitute the word “sin” for “shame,” as if the antithesis to a whole and fulfilled life is a life free of shame. In this respect, such pastors do not sharply contrast with the rest of our world. If our culture is anything, it is on a mission to rid ourselves of shame. Of course, if you think the antithesis to a whole and fulfilled life is shame, this will shape how you go about seeking wholeness and fulfillment (and not at all in a good way). If shame is the primary problem, shamelessness is the solution. This is why our world is intent on ridding ourselves of all absolute standards of morality. The sexual revolution is nothing if not a grand attempt to whistle in the dark and wish our consciousness away. If shame often comes from the transgression of sin, there is nothing to do but rule sit out as a category. There are no taboos anymore. If someone else’s sexual sin causes you to have a reaction of disgust, we are told, that says more about you than it does them. There is no accident to the fact that the phrase “you do you” is often coupled with the phrase “no shame.” We vehemently hate the shame that accompanies knowledge of moral transgression, so we erase the idea of moral transgression. There is no nature nor command behind sexuality—it is what I want it to be.
Christians should steer clear of this kind of wholesale antipathy for shame. Shame is not our sworn enemy. Sometimes shame is useful. Some sins should cause us to have reactions of disgust! The Scriptures often appeal to shame at various points. Much of the time, shame is an indication of a conscience that still functions properly. It is often the rightful corresponding emotion to shameful acts.

Bad Shame
Having said that, undue shame is a horrible thing. Shame that persists wrongly is not good. This would include, for example, shame for a sin that was committed against you. Victims often feel shame for sins that their oppressors should feel shame for. In such situations, shame is doubly perverted; where it should be absent in the psyche of the victim, it is overactive, and where it should be present with a vengeance in the psyche of the oppressor, it is altogether absent.
Another kind of undue shame is that kind that hangs onto sins that have been truly confessed, repented of, and forgiven by Christ. This kind of shame, while it may feel pious, is actually dishonoring to Christ. It cheapens his blood and essentially says that Christ’s atonement is not sufficient—it needs to be supplemented with wallowing shame. So, the opposite of shame is not shamelessness; the opposite of shame is a humble gratitude for forgiveness. Now, it’s easy for me to say that in the abstract—“let go of the shame for the sins that Christ has atoned for and cleansed you of”—but practically, this is easier said than done.
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