Are Evangelicals Protestant?

Call the other group “evangelicals.” They have no creed but the ­Bible. They have no bishops or priests; instead, they have ministers and elders, who are rarely ordained. They baptize not infants but adults, who can make a public declaration of faith. They reject the interposition of anyone or anything between the individual and Jesus, who is known immediately in the soul and clearly through the Scriptures.

Imagine a world in which every Christian is either catholic or evangelical, with nothing in between. It is a world without Protestantism—for the religion of the magisterial Reformers in the sixteenth century did not desire, commend, or practice either of these options. Theirs was a via media. They baptized babies, recited the Creed, ordained pastors to the service of word and sacrament, practiced baptism and communion as sacraments (not as symbols), and insisted on the validity of the early councils.

The world I invite you to imagine, then, is one in which this middle way—neither Roman nor Anabaptist, both traditional and reformed—has vanished. Is such a world possible? It is. In fact, we are living in it right now. Ours is a world without Protestantism.

His point is that the “Protestants” that descended from the Reformation, that had specific confessional positions, and that comprised the “mainline Protestantism” that has been a major player in American culture, are no more.  This “Protestantism” has jettisoned its confessions and has become either liberal (effectively leaving Christian orthodoxy altogether) or it has become evangelical (adopting that movement’s worship styles, individualistic piety, and “non-denominational” theology).

So today, Christians tend to be either Catholics or evangelicals.  East himself laments this development.  He yearns for confessional Protestantism.  He says he can’t find it at all in Abilene, Texas.

Now there are two Lutheran Missouri Synod congregations in Abilene.  One of them has both a traditional service and a contemporary service, so maybe if East dropped in, he attended the latter, which indeed will be more like an evangelical service.  The LCMS, unlike the ELCA, avoided the liberal alternative, but it too has been pulled into the evangelical orbit.  Yet both of those congregations in Abilene, however they worship, almost certainly will uphold Lutheran confessional theology.  And there are a number of other still-confessional Protestant denominations, from the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) to the newly-formed Anglican Church of North America (ACNA).

But we should appreciate East’s point.  He says that the magisterial Protestant attempts at a via media, a “middle way” between high church and low church, Catholicism and–what would you call it?–evangelicalism (?), are unstable.  They result in a “Goldilocks Protestantism,” trying to find a combination of traditions that is “just right.”  But cultures, intellectual climates, and religious developments keep changing.  That means the balance is always teetering and inadequate.

Let’s see what happens when we inject confessional Lutheranism (a designation that usually includes traditional Lutheran worship as well as traditional Lutheran doctrine) into the model.  Lutherans have always rejected the via media approach, which was that of the Anglicans.  Instead, Lutherans have always embraced a theology of paradox.  That is, take both poles of the polarity and heighten them.

Lutherans do not look for a middle way between sacramentalism and Biblicism.  Rather, Lutherans are very sacramental and very Biblical.

Lutherans are arguably more sacramental than the Catholics.  They believe that Baptism not only forgives original sin and sins committed up to the point of Baptism, as Rome teaches, but that it forgives sin for all our days, uniting us to Christ.  They believe that babies have faith, but a faith that–like the baby’s physical life–must continually be fed so that it grows and does not die. Roman Catholics believe that the physical elements of bread and wine in Holy Communion are illusions, that they change into the body and blood of Christ.  But Lutherans believe in the sacramental union of the body and blood with the bread and the wine.  Roman Catholics believe that one’s sins must be forgiven before receiving the sacrament, lest one receive it unworthily and be condemned. Lutherans believe receiving Christ’s body broken “for you” ( 1 Corinthians 11:24) and His blood poured out “for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28) is the purest gospel, which gives forgiveness of sins.

Lutherans are highly Biblical in that they do not try to rationalize away seeming contrary teachings in the Bible; rather, they affirm both of them.  Their authority is the Word and they don’t try to sneak in the authority of human reason to exalt one of its teachings above another (which is the source of many distinctive Protestant theologies, as in the debates between Calvinists and Arminians).  More than that, though, they see the Word of God not only as a collection of inerrant truths, but also in sacramental terms, as the means by which the Holy Spirit creates, sustains, and grows our faith.

Lutheran theology is full of “both and” affirmations of what other traditions emphasize one or the other: Word and Sacrament, Law and Gospel, the Lord’s Supper as both Christ’s body and blood and ordinary bread and wine;  Baptismal regeneration and personal faith; Monergism and Universal Atonement.

Like the word “Protestant,”  the word “evangelical” also originally referred specifically to the Lutherans.  To their credit, evangelicals have a high view of the Bible and of the gospel.  In that, they are like the more confessional Protestants.

So, in my opinion, we Lutherans, being founding members of the Protestant club, should let the evangelicals in.  Even though we ourselves are not exactly in good standing.

Photo:   Mega Church by Mor, via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0