Leaving Evangelicalism, #1a: The Foundations Are Breaking Up

Leaving Evangelicalism, #1a: The Foundations Are Breaking Up April 28, 2015

This is the first post of a series I will be writing over the next few months in which I reflect on my theological journey through Evangelicalism and “out the other side.

I should begin this series with a qualifier: The “Evangelicalism” I will primarily refer to throughout this series is a particular manifestation of a broader and more diverse, global “evangelicalism.”  The Evangelicalism I am leaving is U.S. Evangelicalism (designated with a capital “E”), sometimes known as “neo-Evangelicalism”; a movement within (primarily) Anglo-American conservative Protestantism which emerged out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth-century. These Evangelicals–and Evangelical institutions–share with fundamentalism strong beliefs in several fundamental doctrines of Christian theology (with a few variations or nuances here and there), but were also organized around a strategic attempt to be more positively culturally engaged and more intellectually sophisticated than the fundamentalists had proved to be. Many of the most significant self-identifying Evangelical institutions  (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Fuller Seminary, Christianity Today, etc.) were a direct result of that strategic move toward positive cultural and intellectual engagement.

Now that the qualifier is over, I begin this series with a reflection about certainty.

When I was a senior at Wheaton college–a decidedly Evangelical institution–I (like many young Christians) underwent something of an existential and epistemological crisis of faith. I will spare you the details, but

Artwork by Stephanie Roberts
Artwork by Stephanie Roberts

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling helped me work through that crisis and to begin to think differently about faith. Faith, by definition, has no need for epistemic certainty. That’s what makes faith faith. We shouldn’t be looking for any secure “ground” outside of the experience of faith to secure our belief in God, our passion for the gospel, etc. This means the classical apologetic enterprise, and the quest for historical or rational proofs for the existence of God or the historicity of Christ and the resurrection, etc., are not only unnecessary, they are completely wrong-headed. For the very attempt to undergo a quest for certainty actually ends up undercutting the very thing you are looking to deepen and strengthen in the first place–which is faith. 

Fast-forward to 2005, and to my first year of a tenure-track position at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Questions about epistemology and certainty were swirling about throughout U.S. Evangelicalism. Postmodernism was still a pretty big deal back then, as it had been throughout the 80s/90s. Evangelicals were (somewhat) conflicted about how to think about postmodernism. It’s safe to say that the majority of U.S. Evangelicals saw postmodernism (with its tolerance for otherness and difference, its emphasis on the contextual and historical source of “knowledge” and “truth,” its highlighting of plurality, and its disavowal of the quest for certainty) as threatening to Christianity and to Christian faith.

On the other hand, some Evangelical theologians pushed for a more positive engagement with postmodernism and saw, in the postmodern critique of the modernist quest for certainty about knowledge, a hopeful way forward for Christianity. Foundationalism was an epistemological position that looked for an unquestionable and “self-evident” foundation which would buttress one’s theological beliefs and which could uphold one’s theological and belief system (or worldview) on the basis of an errorless, flawless, and self-evidently true “source” of knowledge. Interestingly, some evangelical theologians and philosophers are now distinguishing between “source” foundationalism–this early form to which I am referring–and “doxastic” foundationalism. which is a more modest and realistic expression. Doxastic foundationalism simply admits that we have some core beliefs which do function as more foundational than others. This is a relatively recent nuance, that I’m not sure has caught on yet. But there have long been more “modest” alternatives, within evangelicalism, to the more rigid “classical” versions of foundationalism.

In any case, one of the most important books in those days for the conversation was Beyond Foundationalism, by Stanley Grenz and John Franke. Grenz and Franke inspired a generation of younger Evangelical theologians to consider a more postmodern-friendly faith and one less hampered by the angst about epistemic certainty. There were debates aplenty during those days at the national Evangelical Theological Society meetings about the perceived merits of foundationalism versus postfoundationalism (as well as variations of each) as epistemological stances for shaping our theological methods.  It was also a topic of conversation during the faculty interviews for my first faculty position. The question reflected the larger conflict within Evangelical Christianity: “Where do you stand on the epistemology debate?” I knew then–as I know now–that I’m a postfoundationalist. Because Kierkegaard had saved my faith.

This post has already gotten too long. So I will close with this: The first reason I am “leaving Evangelicalism” is because I think that by and large, it is still too hampered by a desire for certainty about religious knowledge and for certainty about theology. This means that on the whole, Evangelicalism  (if I can think anthropomorphically for moment) evidences a unwillingness to rethink its embedded, fundamental positions. Examples of some of those positions will be considered in subsequent posts.

I will  follow up this post in coming days with a discussion about my shift from certainty to confidence, and the important role that recognition of context takes in shaping both our faith and our theological beliefs.

 

 


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