The Future of Evangelicalism, as It Looked in 1975

What will be the future of evangelicalism? In what directions will it fragment – or remain cohesive? And how should we define evangelicalism anyway? Does the term “evangelical” mean anything anymore?

These questions may seem very contemporary, since they have been the source of endless commentary and handwringing over the past few years, both within evangelicalism and outside of it.

But these were also the questions that evangelicals were asking fifty years ago. To get a sense of how evangelicals of a half century ago wrestled with these questions, I turned to David F. Wells and John D. Woodbridge’s The Evangelicals: What They Believe, Who They Are, Where They Are Changing, published in 1975 by Abingdon Press.

With contributions from some of the leading evangelical scholars at the time (such as Trinity Evangelical Divinity School dean Kenneth S. Kantzer and the then-young historian George Marsden), as well as a few non-evangelical historians of American religion, such as Martin E. Marty and Sydney Ahlstrom, The Evangelicals was a pretty wide-ranging ecumenical enterprise, as far as scholars of evangelicalism were concerned. And since the book turns fifty years old this year, it’s a good time to revisit what it said about evangelicalism half a century ago – and see if we can gain any insights for our own moment of an evangelical crisis of identity.

What “The Evangelicals” Tells Us about the Definition of Evangelicalism in 1975

The first thing I noticed in this book is that nearly every contributor who gave a definition of evangelical defined evangelicalism theologically rather than culturally or politically. Although David Bebbington would not propose his famous quadrilateral until 1988 (thirteen years after Wells and Woodbridge published The Evangelicals), most of the definitions presented in this volume closely presaged Bebbington’s quadrilateral, but with a particular emphasis on biblical authority and inerrancy.

The first essay, by John Gerstner, noted that when evangelicals in London created the Evangelical Alliance in 1846, they created a nine-point doctrinal definition of evangelicalism that began with “the inspiration of the Bible.” The other eight points, most of which would be readily accepted by nearly all evangelicals today, are: “The trinity”; “the depravity of man”; “the mediation of the divine Christ”; “justification by faith”; “conversion and sanctification by the Holy Spirit”; “the return of Christ and judgment”; “the ministry of the Word”; and “the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.”

Gerstner concludes that the English evangelicals of the 1840s, like the American evangelicals of the 1970s, “showed their common consensus with the past in proclaiming the trinity and other catholic doctrines, while insisting on the indispensability of salvation by grace alone.”

At approximately the same time that the British Evangelical Alliance created a nine-point statement of faith for evangelicals, the nineteenth-century German-American church historian Philip Schaff proposed a three-point definition of evangelicalism. Evangelicals, he said, believed in the “authority of the Bible as opposed to that of the Church”; they believed in justification by the “free grace of God through a living faith in Christ,” as opposed to the Catholic belief in faith plus works; and they believed in the “universal priesthood of believers.”

Gerstner himself seemed to suggest that the five points of fundamentalism that had been adopted in the early twentieth century – biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, Christ’s bodily resurrection, and the historicity of biblical miracles – would be a good way to differentiate between who was a genuine evangelical and who was not, because in his view, “all five relate to the person of Christ,” which was Christianity’s essence.”

Kenneth Kantzer reduced evangelicalism to one cardinal, non-negotiable principle: “biblical authority,” which he said was the “watershed” that differentiated “evangelicalism or conservative Protestantism” from “most other movements within the broad stream of contemporary Protestantism.”

Even the non-evangelical scholars who contributed to the volume seemed to agree. Sydney Ahlstrom argued that the term “evangelicalism” “does in fact refer to a fairly unified tradition” that can be traced back to seventeenth-century Puritanism. This tradition, he said, should be defined by a set of six beliefs that say “nothing of social or political attitudes of philosophical positions that many evangelicals might regard as extrinsic to their theological position.” The six beliefs that Ahlstrom said characterized all groups of American evangelicals from the seventeenth-century Puritans to the “new evangelicals” of the 1970s were: 1) A repudiation of “Roman Catholic polity, liturgy, piety, and doctrine”; 2) “Verbal inerrancy of the received biblical text”; 3) A belief in sola scriptura as “having very serious import for the devotional life of every Christian”; 4) An emphasis on “experiential” aspects of “being or becoming a Christian,” and a corresponding deemphasis on sacraments or a “sacerdotal clergy”; 5) A belief in fixed and unchanging ethical teachings of the Bible; and 6) A refusal to consider those who do not share these views true Christians.

While most contributors to this volume – especially Kantzer – seemed to define evangelicalism in opposition to theological liberalism, Ahlstrom’s view that American evangelicalism over the course of its 300-year existence should be seen primarily as a reaction against Catholicism (with evangelicalism’s emphasis on biblical authority and individual conversion functioning as ways to differentiate itself from Catholicism) is especially interesting. But what is perhaps even more interesting is that all of the writers saw close parallels between their own theological project and the theological project of conservative Protestants in the nineteenth century and earlier who could also be described as evangelicals and who may have described themselves that way. Bebbington’s attempt to define evangelicals in both Britain and America with a four-point set of doctrinal descriptions was thus perfectly in keeping with the spirit of what the scholars who contributed to this 1975 volume were attempting.

This emphasis on defining evangelicalism by its doctrinal commitments did not originate with the contributors to this volume. Two years earlier, in 1973, Richard Quebedeaux (a politically left-leaning member of the United Church of Christ who was not necessarily sympathetic to conservative evangelicalism) defined an evangelical as a person who believed in “the full authority of Scriptures in matters of faith and practice”; 2) “The necessity of personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord (conversion)”; and 3) “the urgency of seeking the conversion of sinful men and women to Christ (evangelism)” (Quebedeaux, The Worldly Evangelicals, p. 7).

In other words, almost no one in the 1970s – not evangelical seminary professors, not Sydney Ahlstrom or Martin Marty, and not political liberals in the UCC – thought of defining evangelicals by their politics or culture, as some historians today say we should do. All believed that evangelicalism should be defined by its theology, and all came up with a similar list of doctrinal points of emphasis, even if they might have used slightly different words to describe it. And all of them cited a belief in the supreme authority of the Bible as the most important pillar (or nearly the most important pillar) of evangelicalism.

That did not mean that evangelical theology was static – far from it. As Gerstner pointed out, American evangelicalism of the mid-twentieth century was focused on a very different set of issues than it had been in the mid-nineteenth century, before the rise of biblical criticism had prompted evangelicals to focus so monolithically on a defense of biblical authority. That was to be expected. Even in his own lifetime, conservative Protestantism had become less separatist. Evangelicalism could continue to evolve, even as it held on to the doctrinal distinctives that were its essence – the chief one of which in the twentieth century was undoubtedly biblical authority.

This strong emphasis on biblical authority – which some codified as “verbal inerrancy” – also helps us understand what the evangelicals who adopted the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy in 1978 were attempting to do. Contrary to what some have recently suggested, I don’t think that the Chicago Statement was an attempt to shore up doctrinal support for the exclusion of women from pastoral ministry. While some evangelicals would appeal to biblical inerrancy in arguing against gender egalitarianism, the primary reason for writing a statement on inerrancy, I think, was to reaffirm the traditional evangelical view of biblical authority that many conservative Protestants in the 1970s believed was the most important defining principle of their movement – and without which there would be no evangelicalism, in their view. It was designed to exclude ideas of “limited inerrancy” or neo-orthodoxy that they believed were creeping into their movement – and that they wanted to make sure would be defined as outside the bounds of orthodox evangelicalism.

As several of the contributors to The Evangelicals noted, the theological definitions of evangelicalism that they believed operated unofficially within the movement allowed for a wide diversity of opinion on a wide variety of opinion that had once divided Protestants. The evangelical coalition included both Calvinists and Wesleyan Arminians. It included Pentecostals and those who embraced the new charismatic movement, as well as cessationists who rejected the idea of modern revelation and the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. It included premillennial dispensationalists and those who rejected both premillennialism and dispensationalism. It included Baptists and paedobaptists. It included political conservatives and left-leaning “Jesus people.” It included those who believed in separating from the liberal mainline denominations and others who were willing to stay. In short, as long as evangelicals agreed on the authority of scripture, they felt free to disagree on what exactly scripture required. But because of that, they considered it vitally important to affirm the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy (or, as some in the movement phrased it, infallibility), because without it, they feared that there would be no evangelical unity at all and no way to differentiate evangelicalism from any other part of Protestantism.

Whether African Americans were part of the evangelical coalition was the subject of two full chapters in the volume, both written by Black evangelicals (Fuller Theological Seminary professor William Pannell and National Black Evangelical Association president William H. Bentley, a Chicago-based Black Pentecostal). Both concluded that many African American Christians shared evangelical beliefs and thus were evangelicals, even though most of them might have preferred to describe themselves as “Bible-believing” rather than as “evangelical,” a term that was more likely to be identified with whites. Both also acknowledged the common Christian history that both Black and white evangelicals shared, since both could trace the origins of their traditions to the same revivalist tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But both of these authors also suggested that it might be best for Black evangelicals to worship in their own churches connected to the Black Christian tradition instead of becoming adjuncts of white evangelicalism. Their efforts toward racial “healing” must not come at the price of “negating blackness,” Bentley said.

White evangelicals could acknowledge the genuine evangelical faith of others (like African American Christians) who were not formally a part of their movement because of their emphasis on the “invisible” church rather than the visible, as Gerstner argued. “To them, the most fundamental unity is not an organizational one but a spiritual one,” Gerstner said. But because evangelicalism was defined by an idea rather than by an organization, “to the evangelical, theological precision at least on essential matters is vital.” There could be “different expressions” of this theology – and many disagreements about application – but on the points that evangelicals considered non-negotiable (especially biblical authority) there could be no compromise.

What “The Evangelicals” Predicted about the Future of Evangelicalism

As most of the contributors to the volume noted, evangelicalism was becoming increasingly diverse, and it was growing, even as the Protestant mainline was beginning to shrink. At least by conventional measurements, there were still more mainline Protestants than evangelicals, but the writers envisioned a moment in the near future when that would change and evangelicalism would become the dominant contingent in American Protestantism. What would happen to evangelicalism then?

Because evangelicals had always defined themselves in opposition to what they were not – that is, they were not secular, they were not Catholic, they were not separatist fundamentalists, and, above all, they were not theological liberals – they were not going to easily adjust to being the Protestant majority. Martin Marty worried that their faith’s evangelical distinctives would be lost once they became a generic “culture-religion.” He cited a warning from the University of Dubuque theology professor Donald Bloesch about the “carnality and frivolity in much modern-day popular evangelical religion. “This can be seen in the glorification of beauty queens and athletes who happen to be Christian,” Bloesch said. “It is also noticeable in the fascination of many evangelicals with public relations and showmanship. In some schools and churches technique and method are valued more highly than right doctrine, and group dynamics is given more attention than prayer and other spiritual disciplines. The popularity of gospel rock groups that appeal to the sensual side of man is yet another indication of accommodation to worldly standards. Culture-religion is also evident in the camaraderie between some evangelical leaders and right-wing politicians.”

How Well Did “The Evangelicals” Predict the Evangelical Future?

The predictions made in The Evangelicals got a few things right about the evangelicalism of the late twentieth century and beyond. The authors were right in foreseeing that evangelicalism would become the numerically and culturally dominant form of Protestantism in the United States. Presumably those who worried that evangelicals would become fascinated with “showmanship,” “gospel rock groups,” and “right-wing politicians” found plenty of confirmation of their fears in the televangelism, megachurches, and contemporary Christian music of the 1980s and beyond. And the strong emphasis that The Evangelicals placed on biblical authority as a defining feature of evangelicalism helps us understand the conversations on inerrancy that took place in the late 1970s and that shaped evangelical theology’s more conservative trajectory in the 1980s and afterwards.

But the book also clearly missed a few trends. From a contemporary perspective, one of the strangest features of this book is its exclusive focus on the North. Of the fifteen contributors, only one – H. Vinson Synan, a Pentecostal who was originally from Virginia but who at the time of the book’s publication was teaching at a college in Oklahoma – was a southerner. Every other person writing for this book was based in the Northeast, the West Coast, or above all, the Midwest. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Midwest was the center of evangelicalism in the 1970s. Today it would be unimaginable to write a comprehensive volume on evangelicalism that does not include a Southern Baptist contributor, but in this book, “Southern Baptists” appears in the index only five times – the same number of mentions as the “Evangelical Alliance” and “Episcopalians,” respectively. By contrast, “Carl F. H. Henry” appears in the index fourteen times, the term “Lutherans” appears nine times, and “National Association of Evangelicals” appears sixteen times. As the relative frequency of these terms suggest, the authors conceived of the story of American evangelicalism as primarily a northern story in which Southern Baptists occupied only a marginal role at best.

What they didn’t anticipate, of course, was that in 1976 the southern governor Jimmy Carter would become the most famous evangelical in public life and that three years later, in 1979, there would be a conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that would accelerate the shift of evangelicalism from the Midwest to the Sunbelt. (Carter, of course, does not appear in the book’s index, but the northern evangelical politician Mark Hatfield is mentioned a couple times).

The book also largely failed to predict the rise of the Christian Right. Although there are occasional passing warnings about the dangers of an alliance between some evangelicals and the political right, there is no suggestion that evangelicals could upend American politics. The warnings about getting too comfortable with the political right are given in the context of becoming too accepting of the mainstream culture at large, as some of the contributors may have thought that evangelicals had done with Richard Nixon only a couple years earlier. But there is no suggestion that evangelicals would be capable of launching a political movement to take over the Republican Party or that they would begin to make political conservatism a litmus test for evangelical fellowship in their churches.

And there is no suggestion that evangelicals would divide over gender issues or that issues such as abortion or homosexuality would captivate their attention. None of the contributors were women, and they didn’t say anything about gender issues. The term “women” never appears in the index. But maybe because they were still operating in an all-male space, the authors of this book didn’t sense that gender issues could divide evangelicalism. They knew that race was a hot-button issue that needed to be addressed – but they didn’t seem to think that the debates about the Equal Rights Amendment and second-wave feminism that were engulfing the nation had anything to do with evangelical theology.

Within five years of this book’s publication, the picture of evangelicalism presented in this volume would be outdated to some extent. By 1980, Fuller Theological Seminary, which had supplied some of the contributors for this volume, had already become the center of an evangelical firestorm because of the publication in 1975 of Fuller professor Paul K. Jewett’s Man as Male and Female (a book that not only advocated gender egalitarianism – which might have been okay in some evangelical circles – but that also openly questioned biblical inerrancy, which was much more taboo). Christianity Today editor Harold Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible (1976), which was partly a reaction to trends at Fuller – and which also led to the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy – had delineated new divisions in evangelicalism that were not yet fully evident when The Evangelicals was published. By 1980, the New Christian Right was in full swing, with the formation of the Moral Majority and other Religious Right organizations in 1979. And the Southern Baptist Convention had just experienced a conservative takeover and had passed a bevy of resolutions on hot-button political issues, including abortion. The picture of evangelicalism as a northern-based, nonpolitical, theologically defined movement around inerrancy that could comfortably include both Fuller Theological Seminary and more conservative Reformed evangelicals like John Gerstner – which was the picture suggested in The Evangelicals – now seemed terribly naïve.

It may be tempting at this point to reinterpret evangelicalism of the mid-1970s in light of what happened afterwards and to suggest that maybe evangelicalism really was about conservative politics all along. But to do so would be a grave injustice to the writers of this book. The evangelical movement they described really existed – it just wasn’t the complete picture. They didn’t see the possibility that their own views of evangelicalism were colored by their own northern, mostly white, male parochialism. They didn’t understand that the evangelicalism of northern seminaries might not be the only part of the evangelical story that they needed to pay attention to – and that it would not be the dominant strand of evangelicalism of the future. Evangelicalism changed after the 1970s primarily because American politics changed and because new groups of people – especially conservative southerners – entered the movement and quickly came to dominate it. Northern evangelical seminary professors were, for the most part, blindsided by these changes.

When making predictions about the future of evangelicalism, we could easily make the same mistake today. We may be so constrained by our own particular regional, racial, socioeconomic, or educational perspectives that we fail to imagine what alternative strands of evangelicalism we need to be paying attention to in order to accurately predict what American evangelicalism will look in the future. We may be so constrained by our present moment that we imagine that evangelicalism’s particular set of political and regional patterns have always existed – or that they will always exist in the future. By reading a book on evangelicalism published in 1975, we can transcend our current moment and realize what parts of evangelical culture might be very recent creations.

But we can also see what has not changed in evangelicalism. As Wells and Woodbridge’s book emphasizes, evangelicals are ultimately defined not by their institutions, their culture, or their politics, but by a theological idea. And while that theology has had very different expressions over the years, it is still a guiding force in evangelical history. Evangelicals will not always be debating Trump – but I hope that if the world continues for another fifty years, a half century from now theologically conservative Protestant Christians will still be discussing the authority of the Bible, just as they were in 1975.

Elsewhere on the web:

Today Mere Orthodoxy published my article “The Greatly Exaggerated Death of Protestantism.” If you want my take on the present (and possible future) state of confessional Protestantism, you can read this piece for free on the Mere Orthodoxy website.