The Disruption of Evangelicalism: The Age of Torrey, Mott, McPherson and Hammond by Geoffrey R. Treloar

Author:Geoffrey R. Treloar
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830890989
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2017-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

At the beginning of the post-war era evangelicals ventured to think their theology could furnish the spiritual and ethical basis of the new world order. In making this claim for social influence, they felt the rivalry of modernism that similarly sought to furnish the normative Christianity for the reconstructed world. Three main responses emerged among evangelicals as definite alternatives were enunciated on the left and right wings of the movement, leaving a broad centre to work out its position somewhere between them. Liberal evangelicals, a pervasive presence, endeavoured to assimilate modern culture while remaining attached to the evangelical tradition. Fundamentalists, also a pervasive presence but a force only in America and Northern Ireland, opposed those aspects of modern culture that seemed to require modification of received evangelical teaching. The modernizing evangelicals of the centre came under pressure to choose between these alternatives as they negotiated with modern culture to maintain the credibility of evangelicalism in contemporary society. Increasingly in the 1930s they moved away from fundamentalism and sought the intellectual respectability necessary for influence in the modern world. This trend overlapped with theological restatement on the centre-left of the movement intended to provide a modern expression of evangelical Christianity in the language of the day. Validated by the advent of Neo-orthodoxy and Christian Realism in theology at large and by a deteriorating world situation, these developments initiated something of an intellectual recovery in evangelicalism that gathered momentum in the 1940s, the distractions of the Second World War notwithstanding.

Although it had this positive side, the coexistence of these positions had several effects that limited the effectiveness of evangelicalism in the post-war world. Importantly the emergence of different standpoints furthered the diversification of the movement and brought the ‘divisiveness of diversity’ to a head in actual conflict and division. While conflict did not characterize the entire movement, different ways of resisting modernism and providing a normative Christianity for the contemporary world created the wariness between evangelicals themselves reflected in the increasing use of doctrinal statements on the centre-right of the movement. Accentuated doctrinalism also altered the balance between the components of the evangelical synthesis as the biblicist-crucicentric axis became more forceful. This development not only made the evangelical movement more inward looking than it had been previously, but, by further weakening the capacity of its ecumenism to contain the separatist tendency in evangelicalism, it was also counterproductive in the quest for cultural authority. Evangelical theology was already too diverse in 1919 for the hopes evangelicals entertained for their belief system to be realistic. But further differentiation and contestation meant that the movement fell well short of that clear and coherent connection with contemporary life felt to be necessary for evangelical Christianity to guide the post-war world with its ideals and principles. The weakness of the theological component vitiated the evangelical reconstruction project from the outset.

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