Review: A New Evangelical Manifesto

This collection of essays by notables such as Brian McLaren, Richard Cizik, and David Gushee hopes to lay out a new vision for the evangelical movement. At first glance, the title made me wonder the essays would simply rehearse familiar emergent church themes. And when I saw that Brian McLaren, patriarch and chief spokesman for emergent, had written the opening essay, my first thought was that I was right.

But as I read, I realized I was only half right. Whereas emergent is primarily concerned with theology and ecclesiology, A New Evangelical Manifesto expands on emergent’s concern for social justice. In that sense, its contents are predictable: against the death penalty, against nuclear energy, concerned about global warming, human trafficking, healthcare, race, abortion, nuclear weapons, war and global poverty – themes that will certainly resonate with younger evangelicals.

There is no question that we are witnessing a seismic shift in the American church, a shift we haven’t seen since the 1960s. Young Christians -- hyper-connected, socially concerned and cynical about polarizing ideological squabbles -- are either leaving the church (ala Gabe Lyon’s unChristian) or leaving the faith altogether (“spiritual but not religious”).  What we are seeing in response to this exodus of the young is a whole slate of bold new initiatives, including not only the emergent church movement but also the backlash of the “young, Reformed and restless.” 

McLaren’s introductory essay, “The Church in America Today,” outlines the cultural shift we are witnessing, and he correctly identifies the problem. The old intramural debates that used to occupy the church -- sequence of end-times events, role of sign gifts in the contemporary church -- those debates are simply irrelevant to the young evangelicals. Those old doctrinal questions have been supplanted by more basic questions of apologetics, soteriology and evangelism. They want to know how it is possible to insist on the uniqueness of Jesus in a multicultural environment and how Christians can insist on salvation through Christ when Muslims and Buddhists are not just exotic characters in movies but devout and kind-hearted next door neighbors. “The question isn’t, ‘Are we saved by faith alone or by faith plus works?,’ says McLaren. “The question is, ‘What is salvation in the first place? What are we being saved from and for?’” 

I have seen the same transformation in the students in my Christian high school classroom over the past three decades. Time was when students would get into heated arguments at lunch over sign gifts or eternal security and come steaming into my classroom needing mediation. Now they scarcely even know what their churches teach about such doctrinal niceties and care even less.

McLaren labels the old evangelicalism “nostalgic,” “nativist” and “negative.” Although his summary applies only to the worst of evangelicalism, it is true that this is largely the perception of the many young Christians fading from our churches. And the cliche is true: perception is reality. The new evangelicalism, says McLaren, is characterized by “hope,” “diversity” and “creative collaboration.” He paints a rosy picture of the alternative to the straw man, and it is an attractive vision for many young Christians looking for something to believe in.

Richard Cizik, formerly Vice President for the National Association of Evangelicals, offers a fascinating story of his forced resignation from the organization in his essay "My Journey toward the 'New Evangelicalism.'" His understanding is that he lost his post because of pressure from the Religious Right. In essence, he says, the NAE told him that they will do whatever it takes to avoid criticism from politically connected conservative groups.

Some readers will be provoked and disturbed by Scott Claybrook's essay, "The Dying," which explores euthanasia and medically assisted suicide. In language that might be channeling the Hemlock's Society's Derek Humphry, Claybrook suggests that "uncritical rejections of assisted suicide and euthanasia for the terminally ill fail to accurately comprehend the multilayered experience of pain and suffering as one with a terminal illness begins the walk toward death."

Other essays, “Where the Church Went Wrong” by Steve Martin and “A Disenchanted Text: Where Evangelicals Went Wrong with the Bible” by Cheryl Bridge Johns, take aim at weaknesses in the evangelical subculture. 

While I understand their critique, I do wonder: If they are talking about the old models of the Moral Majority and Religious Right, they are right. Those movements have seen their better days, and there were problems in their perspective and methods. (I never did understand, for example, what support for the B1 Bomber had to do with a Christian/moral political stance.)

But I don't believe these same criticisms could be made of the resurgent new voices leading evangelicalism today: John Piper, Tim Keller and Albert Mohler, for instance. An evangelicalism that follows their lead would look very different from McLaren's vision for our future. And therein lies our choice.

The deeply entrenched ideological debate we see today is nothing new. Protestantism has been divided for decades, ever since the Great Divide of the 1920s, when the modernists and fundamentalists went their separate ways, and the social justice v. doctrinal purity wars were born. Those wars have scarcely let up over the past nine decades. A New Evangelical Manifesto proposes to point the way out of these paralyzing debates, but it looks to many as if the new evangelicalism is not, as it claims to be, more faithful to the entire biblical witness. It seems instead to merely compromise biblical truth in order to pursue a more robust social justice.

So what does the future of evangelicalism look like? Does this manifesto describe the third way forward, or does it merely rehash old liberal diatribes against the right? Or perhaps Mohler, Keller, et al provide the new way forward for evangelicalism? Both movements are robust, both are more thoughtful and more socially engaged than the old evangelicalism, but both cannot lead us forward. They are not going in the same direction. 

It's clear enough that we are witnessing in American evangelicalism the death of something old and the birth of something new. What that new thing looks like remains to be seen. A New Evangelical Manifesto does provide a clear articulation of one possible future for the American church. This reviewer would love to see a comprehensive response from the other version of the new evangelicalism.