Oh dear. I didn’t realize I couldn’t be both evangelical and emerging. According to Out of Ur’s latest post, I have to choose one or the other. It sounds to me like David Fitch is talking about fundamentalism rather than evangelicalism.
I haven’t let myself think publicly about theology and religion for awhile. But Ur got under my skin this morning.
In Faith in the Halls of Power, D. Michael Lindsay defines evangelicals as
- believing in the authority of the Bible
- a personal relationship with God through Jesus
- Â people who take an activism approach to their words and their public witness.
I doubt most emerging church folks deny these things. Yet, if we reject the term “evangelical” outright, we are doing much more than distancing ourselves from fundamentalists within the evangelical community.
At the religion newswriters association, Lindsay also shared a shocking stastictic about evangelicals (as defined by those three criteria). 70-75% of them do not identify with the political right. He also said a large number of these people were nervous about the term evangelical. (More on Lindsay this coming Monday.)
In that particular article, David Fitch says he wants to avoid the “We’re In, You’re Out” mentality. I understand that Christian legalism and fundamentalism often turns into hair splitting. Growing up in the Church of Christ, I remember everything getting reduced to an issue of salvation.
Here’s the logic I often heard. If the church was in error, it couldn’t be the body of Christ. If you weren’t a part of the body of Christ, you wouldn’t go to heaven. Of course, by “church,” many of them meant the building where people meet on Sunday morning–or at least the worship activities during that meeting. This logic led to some truly wacky teachings. If your church had a kitchen, it couldn’t be the body of Christ, because there was no example of church kitchens in the first century church.
In Enid, Oklahoma, the Church of Christ split over this issue. No kidding. I was there.
Many of them use the same logic to justify a capela worship by the way. No example of instruments being used to worship in the first century church. Therefore instruments could not be part of the church or the church would be in error.
David Fitch and other emergents are right about rejecting this kind of legalism and fundamentalism. But let’s not wad up all of evangelicalism just because the word has been appropriated for a few years. Let’s not throw out all forms of orthodoxy. Even emerging folks have a generous orthodoxy. D. Michael Lindsay calls it “elastic orthodoxy.” I call it a spirit of grace.
