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The Essential Evangelicalism Dialectic: The Historiography of the Early Neo-Evangelical Movement and the Observer-Participant Dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Douglas A. Sweeney
Douglas A. Sweeney
Affiliation:
Doctoral student of religion at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
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Extract

In the fifty years since the emergence of the neo-evangelical movement, the connotations of the word “evangelical” have changed significantly. Richard Quebedeaux charts an evolution of the movement beginning with the “neo-evangelicalism” of its founders, continuing through the “new evangelicalism” of their children, and on to the more radical evangelicalism typified by contemporary “Young Evangelicals.” Although these transitions cannot always be delineated as clearly as Quebedeaux implies, the evangelicalism of the past fifty years has certainly proved more dynamic than static and has managed to wiggle its way out of the grasp of its neo-evangelical founders.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 70 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1991

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References

1. Quebedeaux, Richard, The Young Evangelicals: Revolution in Orthodoxy (New York, 1974), pp. 39–41.Google Scholar Though contrasts of this kind aid in describing the development of the post-war evangelicalethos, the neo-evangelical founders called themselves the “new evangelicals.” The term, therefore, should not be confused as representing only second generation neo-evangelicals.

2. Sweet, Leonard I., “Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves: The New Evangelical Historiography,” Journal of the American Academy of Reltgton 56 (1988): 397, 402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Ibid., p. 413.

4. One should certainly avoid locking people up in historiographical boxes. Admittedly, not everyone discussed here falls into one group or the other. However, enough evidence presents itself to categorize these scholars loosely into one of the groups. The labels, furthermore, were not affixed arbitrarily. They are employed in much of the literature, they represent fairly accurately the theological distinctives of each group, and they point to the historical methods used by each group.

5. Sweet, , “Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves,” p. 413.Google Scholar

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10. Hedstrom, James Alden, “Evangelical Program in the United States, 1945–1980: The Morphology of Establishment, Progressive, and Radical Platforms” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1982), p. 156Google Scholar argues that “fundamentalism was transcended” in neo-evangelicalism and uses the word “progressive” to describe the new movement.

11. Marsden, George M., “From Fundamentalism to Evangelicalism: A Historical Analysis,” in The Evangelicals: What They Believe, Who They Are, Where They Are Changing, rev. edition, ed. Wells, David F. and Woodbridge, John D. (Grand Rapids, 1977), pp. 158, 154.Google Scholar

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13. Marsden, , “Preachers of Paradox,” p. 156.Google Scholar Marsden has coined the term “open evangelicalism” to epitomize the new spirit the movement took on after its fundamentalist stage. See Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, 1987), p. 245.Google Scholar

14. Bloesch, Donald G., Essentials of Evangelical Theology, Vol. 1, God, Authorit, and Salvation (San Francisco, 1978), p. ix.Google Scholar

15. Marsden proposes a five-point doctrinal depiction of evangelical belief. An evangelical trusts in the final authority of Scripture, the real, historical character of God's saving work recorded in Sripture, salvation only through personal trust in Christ, the importance of evangelism and missions, and the importance of a spiritually transformed life. See his introduction in Evangelicalism and Modern America, ed. Marsden, George (Grand Rapids, 1984), pp. ix–x.Google Scholar

16. Marsden, George M., “The State of Evangelical Christian Scholarship,” Reformed Journal 37 (1987): 14.Google Scholar

17. Robert Webber and George Marsden identify fourteen different kinds of evangelicals. Webber, Robert E., Common Roots: A Call to Evangelical Maturity (Grand Rapids, 1978), p. 32;Google ScholarMarsden, , “Preachers of Paradox,” p. 159.Google Scholarrecently, More, Webber, , “Who are the Evangelicals?,” USA Today (Periodical) 115 (1987): 89Google Scholar has identified sixteen varieties. See also Webber, , “Behind the Scenes: A Personal Account,” in The Orthodox Evangelicals: Who They Are and What They Are Saying, ed. Webber, Robert and Bloesch, Donald (Nashville, 1978), pp. 19–20,Google ScholarBloesch, , The Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call for Unity Amid Diversity (Garden City, N.Y., 1983), p. 9,Google Scholar and Carpenter, Joel, “The Fundamentalist Laven and the Rise of an Evangelical United Front,” in The Evangelical Tradition in America, ed. Sweet, Leonard I. (Macon, Ga., 1984), p. 288.Google Scholar

18. Timothy Smith has employed the terms ‘mosaic’ and ‘kaleidoscope’ as motifs for the evangelical movement. He depicts evangelicalism not as a doctrinally static twentiethcentury phenomenon but in all its glory, so to speak, as a historical, dynamic, and ecumenical movement. Smith and his students have been working for several years on an evangelicalism opus (yet uncompleted). Randall Balmer has suggested recently that a patchwork quilt might provide a more satisfying alternative to Smith's metaphors. He notes that a patchwork quilt exemplifies “folk art rather than fine art” and better symbolizes “the absence of an overall patter”to evangelicalism. Smith, Timothy L., “The Evangelical Kaleidoscope and the Call to Christian Unity [ecumenical and evangelical antipathy],” Christian Scholar's Review 15 (1986): 125–140,Google Scholar and Balmer, Randall, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America (New York, 1989), pp. 229–230Google Scholar.

19. Donald W. Dayton, “An Analysis of the Self-Understanding of American Evangelicalism With a Critique of its Correlated Historiography” (Paper delivered at the Wesleyan/ Holiness Study Project First Fellows Seminar, Asbury Theological Seminary, 28–30 January 1988), pp. 18–19 and passim (used with permission), and Dayton, , “YetAnother Layer of the Onion, Or Opening the Ecumenical Door to Let the Riffraff In,” The Ecumenical Review 40 (1988), p. 97Google Scholar and passim. Dayton uses Ransm's, BernardThe Evangelical Heritage (Waco, Tex., 1973)Google Scholar as a foil in a number of places. Ramm traces the evangelical heritage from the Reformers through the Scholastics to the Puritans and eventually on through Princeton and into the twentieth entury. This epitomizes, according to Dayton, the Reformed bias prevalent among evangelical historians and shows that the Princeton experience has become historiographically determinative. See not only “An Analysis” and “Yet Another Layer,” but also Dayton, “The Four-Fold Gospel: Meeting Ground for Holiness, Keswick and Penteostal Theologies” (Paper delivered at the Wesleyan/Holiness Study Project First Study Conference, Asbury Theological Seminary, 10–11 June 1988) (used with permission).

20. Dayton, , “An Analysis,” pp. 12–13, 19,Google Scholar and “Yet Another Layer,” p. 94. They generally side with Robert Anderson who sees an evangelical social class ladder on which Pentecostals are at the bottom, holiness groups one rung up, and “evangelicals” on top “as the elite who offer the interpretations and history by which the whole is understood.” The people's history would look at evangelicalism “from the bottom up rather than through the projections of the elite” who have taken their interpretive models “from a foreign cultural experience.” Dayton, , “The Four-Fold Gospel,” p. 4,Google Scholar and Anderson, Robert Mapes, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

21. Smith, , “The Evangelical Kaleidoscope,” p. 125.Google Scholar

22. Dayton, Donald W., “The Holy Spirit and Christian Expansion in the Twentieth Century,” Missiology: An International Review 16 (1988): 403;Google ScholarDayton, , “‘Evangelical’: More Puzzling Than You Think,” Ecumenical People Programs Papers, Occasional Paper No. 29 (05 1988), pp. 5–6,Google Scholar and Harland, Gordon, “Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism,” Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age 5 (1987): 29.Google Scholar

23. Smith, , “The Evangelial Kaleidoscope,” pp. 125–128,Google Scholar traces the emergence of modern evangelicalism from its origins in the revivals of the eighteenth century and takes a much more inclusive ipproach to the ensuing history (exemplified in a roster of some contemporary educational institutions he deems “evangelical”). He proposes three characteristics that “have defined evangelicalism in the English-speaking world: the Bible is its authority, the new birth its hallmark, and evangelism its mission.” One wonders, however, whether these characteristics find common enough expression in Smith's institutions to justify labelling all the schools “evangelical.” Pacific Lutheran University or Calvin College, for example, surely view the new birth in a very different light than, say, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles or even Houghton College. How, then, can one use the new birth to define evangelicalism? (One could ask similar questions of the other two characteristics.)

24. See especially his Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, N.J., 1987),Google Scholar in which he expounds on this evangelical legacy.

25. Dayton, Donald W., “Response to Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism” (Paper delivered at the Evangelical Theology section of the American Academy of Religion annual conference, Chicago, Illinois, 21 11 1988), pp. 21–22Google Scholar (sed with permission).

26. Dayton, , “AnAnalysis,” p. 13;Google Scholar and “Response to Marsden,” pp. 14,16–18. Sandeen, , The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1800–1930 (Chicago, 1979)Google Scholar, has postulated that American fundamentalism was produced primarily by a combination of dispensational premillennialism and Old Princeton orthodoxy.

27. Sweet, , “Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves,” p. 400.Google Scholar

28. Dayton, Donald W., “The Embourgeoisement of a Vision: Lament of a Radical Evangelical,” The Other Side 23 (1987): 19.Google Scholar

29. Dayton, Donald, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (New York, 1976), p. 121.Google Scholar

30. Bloesch, , The Future of Evangelical Christianity, pp. 5, 17.Google Scholar

31. Wuthnow, Robert, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World Wan II (Princeton, 1918), p. 143.Google Scholar

32. See for example Smith, , “The Evangelical Kaleidoscope,” p. 125.Google Scholar

33. Bloesch, , Essentials of Evangelical Theology, Volume One, pp. 8–9, 21;Google Scholaridem, The Evangelical Renaissance (Grand Rapids, 1973), pp. 30, 48; and idem, The Future of Evangelical Christianity, p. 11. Marsden is careful to point out, however, that definitions of evangelicalism also have potential to include “some whose evangelicalism is marginal.“ Marsden, , Evangelicalism and Modern America, p. x.Google Scholar

34. Carpenter, Joel A., “Evangelicals: Why Should We Put Up with This Label?” (Paper presented to the presidents of the Christian College Corsortium in Chicago, Illinois, 26 10 1987), p. 2Google Scholar (used with permission).

35. Marsden, , “Why No Major Evangelical University?” p. 299.Google Scholar

36. Ellingsen, Mark, The Evangelical Movement: Growth, Impact, Cofltroversy, Dialog (Minneapolis, 1988), p. 100.Google Scholar

37. Carpenter, , “Fundamentalist Institutions,” p. 63.Google Scholar

38. Carpenter, , “The Fundamentalist Leaven,” pp. 266–267, 261, 283,Google Scholar and “Evangelicals: Why Should We Put Up With This Lahel?” pp. 2–3.

39. Carpenter, , “The Renewal of American Fundamentalism,” pp. 194–205.Google Scholar

40. Evangelical Action!: A Report of the Organizatmon of the National Association of Evangelicals for United Action (Boston, 1942)Google Scholar, provides a representative account of the neo-evangelical agenda.

41. Marsden, , Reforming Fundamentalism, pp. 229–230.Google Scholar “The most dramatic moment” in Fuller's history, according to Marsden, Black Saturday (1 December 1962) saw the controversy over the seminary's identity (especially as it related to inerrancy) reach its boiling point at a faculty/trustee planning conference in the Huntington Sheraton Hotel. See Reforming Fundamentalism, pp. 208–215.Google Scholar

42. Marsden, , “From Fundamentalism to Evangelicalism,” p. 148.Google Scholar

43. Carpenter, , “The Fundamentalist Leaven,” pp. 258–259.Google Scholar

44. Smith, , “The Evangelical Kaleidoscope,” pp. 130–131.Google Scholar Moody Bible Institute, however, was at the organizational center of the neo-evangelical movement from its inception. Indeed, it served as the location where the neo-evangelical founders first strategized.

45. Neo-evangelical intellectual E. J. Carnell is representative here. One of Fuller Seminary's early faculty members, Carnell described his work in 1948 as a “defense of Fundamentalism.” Though Carnell, like Carl Henry, Harold John Ockenga and others, sought to avoid the contentious ethos of fundamentalism, he did so from within a fundamentalist frame of reference. Not until the late 1950s did Carnell's view of fundamentalism sour to the point that he could refer to it as “orthodoxy gone cultic.” Even then, however, he identified with fundamentalist “orthodoxy.” See Carnell, , An Introduction to Christ ma pm Apologetics (Grand Rapids, 1948), p. 8,Google Scholar and The Case for Orthodox Theology (Philadelphia, 1959), p. 113Google Scholar

46. A growing number of analysts, including Billy Graham himself, have used Smith's model in recent years. See, for example, Marsden, , Evangelmcalism and Modern America pp. viii, xGoogle Scholar (interestingly, the Evangelicalism in Modern America volume was dedicated to Smith); Carpenter, , “The Fundamentalist Leaven,” p. 258;Google ScholarMurphy, Cullen, “Protestantism and the Evangelials,” The Wilson Quarterly 5 (1981): 114Google Scholar (Murphy wrote this article in consultation with Smith); and Woodward, Kenneth L., “The Split-Up Evangelicals,” Newsweek 99 (26 04 1982): 89.Google Scholar

47. See note 17 above.

48. Jacobsen, Douglas, “The Rise of Evangelical Hermeneutical Pluralism,”Christian Scholar's Review 16 (1987): 325.Google Scholar

49. Dayton, , “Yet Another Layer,” p. 100.Google Scholar

50. “Roster of Delegates,” in EvangelicalAction! pp. 92–100.Google Scholar

51. Marsden, , Evangelicalism and Modern America, p. xiv;Google Scholar and Nash, Ronald H., Evangelicals in America: Who They Are, What They Believe (Nashville, 1987), p. 24.Google Scholar

52. Carpenter, , “From Fundamentalism to the New Evangelical Coalition,” in Evangelicalism and ModernAmerica, pp. 12–14.Google Scholar

53. Dayton, , “An Analysis,” p. 7Google Scholar, and “Yet Another Layer,” p. 99.

54. Lindsell, Harold, “Evangelicalism's Golden Age,” Moody Monthly 86 (1985): 113–114.Google Scholar

55. Quebedeaux, , The Worldly Evangelicals, p. 22.Google Scholar

56. Sweet, , “Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves,” p. 401.Google Scholar

57. Marsden, , “Unity and Diversity,” pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

58. Walvoord, John F., “What's Right About Fundamentalism?” Eternity 8 (06 1957): 35.Google Scholar

59. Butler, Farley Porter, “Billy Graham and the End of Evangelical Unity,” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Florida, 1976)Google Scholar, claims that Graham's cooperative evangelism marked the end of evangelical unity. Silk, Mark ironically shows in “The Rise of the ‘New Evangelicalism’: Shock and Adjustment,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900–1960, ed. Hutchison, William R. (New York, 1989), pp. 278–299,Google Scholar and Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II (New York, 1988), pp. 54–69, 101–107,Google Scholar that Graham's New York crusade symbolized the cessation of mainline insecurity regarding the neo-evangelical resurgence. While by the mid 1950s the new evangelicalism's evangelistic fervor had begun to spread even into the upper eschelons of the mainline Protestant establishment, by the early 1960s the new movement's leadership had sanded its edges so smooth that it lost the ability to cut through the liberal establishment. Neo-evangelicalism had become too conventional. It was even beginning to fallout of touch with the popular religious needs of an increasingly unconventional American people.

60. Roddy, Sherman, “Fundamentalists and Ecumenicity,” The Chrcstian Century 75 (1 10 1958): 1110.Google Scholar

61. Balmer, , Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, pp. 228–229.Google Scholar

62. Marsden, , “Why No Major Evangelical University?” p. 300.Google Scholar

63. Marsden, , Reforming Fundamentalism, p. 259,Google Scholar writes that “the movement had never sailed far enough from the fundamentalist shores to avoid breaking up oil surrounding rocks.”

64. Quebedeaux, , The Worldly Evangelicals, pp. 9, 24.Google Scholar

65. Marsden, , Reforming Fundamentalism, pp. 245, 260.Google Scholar

66. “An Interview with Donald Dayton,” Faith and Thought 1 (1983): 31.Google Scholar

67. Lindsell, , “Evangelicalism's Golden Age,” p. 113.Google Scholar

68. Smith to Henry, 25 April 1961. Folder 20, Box 16, Collection 8, Records of Christianity Today. Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, Illinois.

69. Carpenter, Joel A., “Comments on ‘The Four-Fold Gospel’”(Response to a paper by Donald Dayton delivered at the First Study Conference of the Wesleyan/Holiness Studies Project, Asbury Theological Seminary, 10–11 June 1988), p. 5Google Scholar (used with permission).

70. For a presentation of the fundamentalist critique of neo-evangelicalism, see Woodbridge, Charles, The New Evangelicalism (Greenville, S.C., 1969)Google Scholar, and idem, Reaping the Whirlwind (Collingswood, N.J., 1977).

71. Carpenter, , “The Renewal of American Fundamentalism,” p. 187.Google Scholar