Touchstone has convened a symposium to look at the current state of the evangelical movement in the United States. Six Evangelicals from across the movement's spectrum (Russell D. Moore, Denny Burk, John R. Franke, Darryl Hart, Michael Horton, and David Lyle Jeffrey) assess where Evangelicalism is today.
Sociologist Christian Smith has recently described American spirituality as “moralistic, therapeutic deism,” and he says that this fits those raised in Evangelical churches as well as any others. If Fundamentalism reduced sin to sins (or at least things they considered vices), contemporary Evangelicals seem to have reduced sin to dysfunction. In this context, Jesus is not the savior from the curse of the law, but a life coach who leads us to a better self, better marriages, and happier kids.
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If we define Evangelical as ainnhytg at all other than at it's core, Christocentric, I believe we perform a disservice to the commission of Christ. The Reformation for that matter is best defined as a Christocentric or Evangelical movement intended to restore the Gospel from the confines of ecclesiastical bondage. We might differ with regard to specific doctrines i.e. the unessentials, but to be evangelical should be to agree on the Gospel truths of salvation by the grace of God through faith and not of merit or works by our hand. Beyond being Christocentric, evangelical is both Protestant and ecumenical.
Posted by: ChEsster | April 19, 2012 at 06:09 PM