Part 7: The Evangelical Church’s Response to Gospel Substitutes
“We have been transformed from being an inconsequential religious player to one of some consequence during this time, but the costs are now becoming plain. Twenty-five years ago [1970], evangelicals were outside the religious establishment. That establishment was made up principally of the mainline denominations. But today evangelicals have become the religious establishments, however informally.”(1)
– David F. Wells, “The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church”
The National Association of Evangelicals (1995)
In 1995, the theologian Dr. David F. Wells spoke before the annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals. Wells is a beloved senior research professor of systematic theology at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, and his unique perspective as an established first-generation immigrant and trained cultural intelligence allowed him to detect the trends in American Evangelicalism during the 1970s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s. Similar to Machen’s invitation to speak before a large gathering of elders nearly seventy-five years prior, Wells was cordially invited to speak on the dangers facing the Church of his own day. He called his speech “The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church.” Much like an open wound that needs to be treated immediately before shock and paralysis set in, the Church was in dire need of the salve the Spirit of God through Holy Scripture affords us.
Consumeristic appeal.
Pragmatistic behavior.
Methodological emphases.
Public persuasion.
Conformation to the culture.
These were all widespread marks of the Evangelical Church in the early 1990s. Whereas the mainline churches within Protestantism had long succumbed to Theological Liberalism, and the Fundamentalist churches had segregated themselves from the culture, the Evangelical Church had initially sought to walk the fine line between the errors of either conforming to the culture or canceling the culture. With good intentions, the Evangelicals had by and large sought to gain a footing within culture by offsetting it with right Christian living that would, in theory, be attractive to unbelievers. As a pastor’s kid growing up in the ’90 (who attended far too many conferences and Christian concerts to remember with any amount of accuracy), it was not at all uncommon to hear the phrase “counter-cultural” from the pulpit or the podium—and from the speaker or the loud speaker.
Talk about God was not all too unusual, even in secular Seattle, WA where I was raised. Nor was the leading question “What has God done for you?” The sharing of public testimonies and pledges of sexual purity—preached to us even before we hit puberty—was characteristic of the day. But the substance of the gospel message was largely absent from our broader Evangelical world. We spoke much in our churches of God’s movement in our lives, of his gifts, and how he was blessing us because of our obedience. But this was not merely an isolated incident. Rather, self-centered Consumerism had become endemic of Evangelicalism leading up to the great “Y2K.”(2) And it would only lead to our undoing if left unchecked.
In the wise words of David Wells before the National Association of Evangelicals in '95, “The importance of theology is eclipsed by the clamor for management skills, biblical preaching by entertaining story-telling, godly character by engaging personality, and the work of the ministry by the art of sustaining a career. I believe that these are all unhappy exchanges.”(3)
As evidenced by our words and in our actions, our misplaced religious affections upon the god of Self and our felt needs (i.e. Consumerism) was indicative of our greatest blunder: we Evangelicals had so profaned the holy name of the LORD our God by substituting him and his glorious gospel of grace with idols made of stone and wood that we could handle, taste, and touch.
The words of the Apostle Paul to such gospel substitutes are especially fitting:
“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (Colossians 2:20–23, ESV)
In the biblical context, the Apostle Paul spoke these words to the believers in Colossi who had tried to syncretize Christianity with the religious cults and legalistic Judaism of their day.
We as Evangelicals had made a practice of doing the same thing in an effort to be all things to all people, in the negative sense.
We emphasized parachurch organizations over the ministry of the Word and Sacrament.
We promoted megachurches which popularized spirituality, health and wealth, and man-made religion (cf. Colossians 2:23).
We invented the Seeker-Sensitive movement in order to win over the crowds instead of worshiping the Lord in spirit and in truth.
Each of these phenomenons and more were alive and well by the 1990s.
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (1996)
However, and thankfully, the Church would experience an awakening of sorts in 1996. Largely in response to David Wells’ speech, Dr. James Montgomery Boice (the late pastor of Tenth Presbyterian, PCA) invited him along with other Reformational pastor-theologians such as Phillip Ryken, Richard Phillips, Carl Trueman, Alistair Begg, D. A. Carson, R. C. Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson, John MacArthur, John Piper, and Albert Mohler to discuss a biblical resolution to these problems surmounting.(4) Every one of these men continued Machen’s historic battle for the gospel. On April 20, 1996, they banded together under the name of The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals in order to 1) personally recognize the pervasive sins of the Evangelical culture in which they ministered, 2) confess their utter dependence upon the Lord and his gospel of grace for the furtherance of the kingdom, and 3) to call the Church to repentance and recovery of the gospel.
Their words speak for themselves with the following introduction:
“Evangelical churches today are increasingly dominated by the spirit of this age rather than by the Spirit of Christ. As evangelicals, we call ourselves to repent of this sin and to recover the historic Christian faith.
In the course of history words change. In our day this has happened to the word "evangelical." In the past it served as a bond of unity between Christians from a wide diversity of church traditions. Historic evangelicalism was confessional. It embraced the essential truths of Christianity as those were defined by the great ecumenical councils of the church. In addition, evangelicals also shared a common heritage in the "solas" of the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation.
Today the light of the Reformation has been significantly dimmed. The consequence is that the word "evangelical" has become so inclusive as to have lost its meaning. We face the peril of losing the unity it has taken centuries to achieve. Because of this crisis and because of our love of Christ, his gospel and his church, we endeavor to assert anew our commitment to the central truths of the Reformation and of historic evangelicalism. These truths we affirm not because of their role in our traditions, but because we believe that they are central to the Bible.”(5)
The full declaration is provided on the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals’ website. I cannot highly enough recommend reading this in full!
In closing, I would like leave you with David Wells’ words from his speech in 1995: “If we do not recover the sufficiency of the Word of God in our time, if we do not relearn what it means to be sustained by it, nourished by it, disciplined by it, and unless our preachers find the courage again to preach its truth, to allow their sermons to be defined by its truth, we will lose our right to call ourselves Protestants, we will lose our capacity to be the people of God, and we will set ourselves on a path that leads right into the old discredited liberal Protestantism.”
Application Questions:
1. What has shaped our Evangelical culture, historically speaking?
2. What about the secular culture?
3. Where do we go from here? What do we have to lose if we do? What do we have to lose if we don’t?
For Christ and his Kingdom of Grace,
Rich
Footnotes:
David F. Wells, “The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church,” Monergism, accessed September 16, 2022, https://www.monergism.com/bleeding-evangelical-church.
Shorthand for “Year 2000.”
Wells, The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church.”
The original council included the following members: Dr. John Armstrong; Rev. Alistair Begg; Dr. James M. Boice; Dr. W. Robert Godfrey; Dr. John D. Hannah; Dr. Michael S. Horton; Mrs. Rosemary Jensen; Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr.; Dr. Robert M. Norris; Dr. R. C. Sproul; Dr. G. Edward Veith; Dr. David Wells; Dr. Luder Whitlock; Dr. J. A. O. Preus, III.
“The Cambridge Declaration Heritage and Resources,” The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, accessed September 16, 2022, https://www.alliancenet.org/cambridge-declaration.
Wells, “The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church.”
