“Back to the Bible” summarizes one of the central features of American evangelicalism. Another word for this is the desire to restore the church to its New Testament origins; one might say it is a form of retrieval. One more way of saying the same: “no creed but the Bible.” In his excellent new book [Read More…]

When it comes to institutions aligned with evangelical progressivism it is not as easy to say “there it is” but when it comes to people, one can point directly at Jim Wallis. While I’m not convinced many Christians who seek to influence the state have an explicit teleology, an activist commitment to influence forms the heart [Read More…]

By David George Moore.  Dave blogs at www.twocities.org I became a Christian at Arizona State University through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru).  A few months later, I was browsing the shelves in a Christian bookstore.  I stumbled upon a booklet which immediately caught my attention: Campus Crusade Examined in Light of Scripture. [Read More…]

If you haven’t seen the series, Patheos has asked a horde of bloggers to prognosticate on the future of evangelicalism — and it’s an admirable set of sketches from a variety of angles. I didn’t have time to read them all, nor do I pretend to know each author, but there’s a problem when it [Read More…]

The standard narrative: the fundamentalist movement turned American evangelicals/fundamentalists away from cultural, political and social involvement and Carl Henry’s famous The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism called evangelicals back into the engagement. In Matthew Avery Sutton’s new book, American Apocalypse, that story is challenged, and here are three lines then the pertinent paragraph calling Henry to task, [Read More…]

I was nurtured in the kind of American faith that was utterly convinced that the Rapture or the Second Coming — in essence, Judgment Day — was coming soon, if not very soon, and it was a good thing to be on the right side, which we were. While our pastor did not regal us [Read More…]

By David George Moore.  Dave blogs at Two Cities. Bear with me a bit, but some personal background is needed.  Theologically, I have sympathies with a “Calvinistic” understanding of salvation, but a deeper commitment to the “consensual Christianity” that theologians like Wesleyan Tom Oden have written about.  This is the Christianity which finds its anchor [Read More…]