The End of the Evangelical Experiment?
By Brett Lee-Price - Posted at Reformation21:
There is a certain irony in asking whether the evangelical experiment has come to an end at precisely the moment when evangelicalism appears, at least superficially, to be everywhere. Its language permeates Christian discourse; its institutions dominate the Protestant landscape; its instincts shape everything from preaching styles to publishing strategies. Yet ubiquity is not the same as vitality. Indeed, it may well be the mask behind which decline hides most effectively.The question, then, is not whether evangelicalism exists, but whether the particular form it has taken in the 20th and early 21st centuries has proven itself fit for purpose. And here, one suspects, the answer is far less comforting. For if the experiment was intended to produce a church capable of withstanding the pressures of an increasingly secular age while maintaining fidelity to the gospel once delivered to the saints, then the results thus far are decidedly underwhelming.
At the heart of the problem lies a paradox: evangelicalism, in its modern guise, has arguably sought unity at the expense of identity. And in so doing, it has rendered itself increasingly incapable of speaking with clarity, conviction, or authority to the world it inhabits.
The Older Evangelicalism: Unity with Substance
It is worth recalling that evangelicalism has not always looked as it does today. David Bebbington’s famous quadrilateral—conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism—remains a useful heuristic for describing the movement’s theological core. Yet what is often overlooked is the ecclesial context within which these commitments were historically embedded.
Earlier evangelicalism did not float free from confessional or denominational moorings. On the contrary, it assumed them. One could be an evangelical Anglican, an evangelical Presbyterian, an evangelical Baptist—and indeed, one typically was. The shared commitment to the gospel did not negate these identities; it presupposed them.
This older evangelicalism understood that unity required boundaries. The gospel itself is a doctrinal claim, not a vague sentiment. To confess Christ crucified is to affirm a set of theological propositions about sin, grace, atonement, and the nature of God. These propositions, in turn, require articulation, defence, and—crucially—institutional embodiment.
Thus, the evangelicalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not allergic to confessions or creeds. It did not regard denominational distinctions as regrettable obstacles to unity, but as necessary expressions of theological conviction. Unity was real, but it was not amorphous. It was unity in the truth, not unity despite it.
