What Is Evangelicalism?
By Warren Cole Smith - Posted at MinistryWatch:
Published December 6, 2024
The Bible teaches us that what we call things mattersThe ancient parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant describes the predicament we face when we try to define the evangelical church.
In that parable, each blind man describes the elephant based solely on his experience. The man who grabs the elephant’s trunk experiences the elephant differently than the man who grabs its tail, or its ears, or its legs. Seven men in all, each grabbing the elephant in different places, describe the elephant differently.
Each man accurately describes what he experiences, but each man is also wrong in his description of the whole. In one version of the parable, each man is so fully convinced of his understanding of the elephant that he suspects the others are intentionally lying, and they end up resorting to violence and bullying to press their points.
No metaphor is perfect, but this story is instructive in describing the current state of evangelicalism. Evangelicalism has become the elephant. Journalists, pundits, politicians, theologians, ideologues, and even those who describe themselves as evangelicals have conflicting and sometimes mutually exclusive definitions for evangelicalism. Like the blind men in the parable, these various groups look only at the parts – the parts they personally experience – and fail to consider the whole.
So, what is evangelicalism? And why does the definition matter?
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