Evangelikale

Die neue Ausgabe des 9Marks eJournals setzt sich mit der »Evangelikalen Bewegung« auseinander. Carl Trueman, Professor für Kirchengeschichte am Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (U.S.A.), macht sich große Sorgen über die Zukunft der Evangelikalen Bewegung:

Finally, too few evangelical academics seem to have much ambition. Perhaps this sounds strange: the desire to hold a tenured university position, to publish with certain presses, to speak at certain scholarly conferences, to be in conversation with the movers and shakers of the guild—these seem like ambitions that are all too common. Yet true ambition, true Christian ambition, is surely based in and directed towards the upbuilding of the church, towards serving the people of God, and this is where evangelical academics often fail so signally. The impact evangelical scholars have had on the academy is, by and large, paltry, and often (as noted) confined to those areas where their contributions have been negligibly evangelical. Had the same time and energy been devoted to the building up of the saints, imagine how the church might have been transformed. This is not to say that high-powered scholarship should be off-limits, nor that the immediate needs of the man or woman in the pew should provide the criteria by which relevance is judged; but it is to say that all theological scholarship should be done with the ultimate goal of building up the saints, confounding the opponents of the gospel, and encouraging the brethren. The highest achievement any evangelical theological scholar can attain is not membership of some elite guild but the knowledge that he or she has done work that strengthened the church and extended the kingdom of God through the local church. The day is coming when the cultural intellectual elites of evangelicalism—the institutions and the individuals—will face a tough decision. I see the crisis coming on two separate but intimately connected fronts. The day is coming, and perhaps has already come, when, first, to believe that the Bible is the Word of God, inspired, authoritative, and utterly truthful, will be seen as a sign at best of intellectual suicide, at worst of mental illness; and, second, to articulate any form of opposition to homosexual practice will be seen as the moral equivalent of advocating white supremacy or child abuse. In such times, the choice will be clear, those who hold the Christian line will be obvious, and those who have spent their lives trying to serve both orthodoxy and the academy will find that no amount of intellectual contortionism will save them. Being associated with B. B. Warfield will be the least of their worries.

Phil Johnson, Director von »Grace to You«, stellt unverblümt fest:

The gospel’s most dangerous earthly adversaries are not raving atheists who stand outside the door shouting threats and insults. They are church leaders who cultivate a gentle, friendly, pious demeanor but hack away at the foundations of faith under the guise of keeping in step with a changing world.

Hier mehr: eJournal201071janfeb.pdf.

Jonathan Fitzgerald beschreibt für THE WALL STREET JOURNAL die Evangelikalen in den U.S.A. auf ihrem (nicht ganz einfachen) Weg zu einem intellektuell verantworteten Glauben:

On Dec. 8, some of America’s brightest contemporary intellectuals gathered at the New School to discuss the tenuous relationship between „Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual.“ Sponsored by Brooklyn-based literary magazine n+1, the panel featured The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell and James Wood and The Nation’s former associate literary editor Christine Smallwood. While these thinkers all grew up in close proximity to evangelicalism, there was one conspicuous absence from the conversation: an intellectual who still professes the Christian faith. The discussion was predictably thoughtful, though evangelical belief was treated as something necessarily dispensed with on the way to becoming a public scholar.

This feeling of intellectual distance from grass-roots Christianity is not new. It’s been almost 30 years since Charles Malik, a former president of the United Nations General Assembly and a devout Christian, gave a speech at Wheaton College called „The Two Tasks.“ To the audience assembled for the dedication of Wheaton’s Billy Graham Center, he said: „The greatest danger besetting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism.“ This idea was picked up by historian Mark A. Noll 14 years later in his 1994 book „The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.“ The „scandal“ of the title, he said, was „that there is not much of an evangelical mind,“ despite what he sees as a biblical mandate to better understand creation. Mr. Noll asserts that this lack is reinforced by the historical experience of evangelicals in America, whose churches and ministries have gained more adherents at the cost of fostering anti-intellectualism and bad theology.

Hier der Artikel: online.wsj.com.