Evangelicalism and the Gospel Coalition

The recently released November issue of Touchstone’s feature article is an interesting symposium on “Evangelicalism Today,” the participants in which are Russell Moore, Denny Burk, John Franke, Darryl Hart, Michael Horton, and David Lyle Jeffrey. I would not characterize most of the participants here as “Evangelicals” except in a broader sense than I customarily employ the term. Drs. Moore and Burk, for example, are Southern Baptists, Drs. Hart and Horton carry conservative Reformed credentials. Drs. Franke and Jeffrey seem closer-in, but in general, the view is from the periphery. That method of putting something under the microscope can be reasonably defended, but I would have found the piece somewhat more engaging if there had been more participation from the center.

When I speak of Evangelicalism without some kind of qualification, I am referring to the post-fundamentalist variety identified with admirable precision by Dr. Horton as having “moved beyond reactionary fundamentalism and built institutions that sustained a vital witness within mainline denominations and also provided an international network of parachurch agencies for cooperative mission.” The Southern Baptist Convention has a life and history of its own that touched upon all this, but operated quite independently; the same is true of Reformed confessionalism, which has always been very uncomfortable bedfellows with the Arminianizing revivalism that characterizes the mission of the groups Dr. Horton describes. As my grandmother complained from the other side about a member of her Baptist church that had apostasized to Westminster Seminary Presbyterianism, “they baptize babies and don’t believe in being born again.” In general, that’s not true of Evangelicals. And Southern Baptists are Southern Baptists.

Having spent the first half of my life with one foot in Evangelicalism and the other in fundamentalism (my grandfather, whom I loved deeply, was a pastor in the General Association of Regular Baptists), I wish to underline one of the principal differences between fundamentalism and Evangelicalism alluded to by Dr. Horton. The former is characterized by a morbid and triumphal individualism to which the founders of the Evangelical reaction (and Evangelicalism cannot be understood except as a reaction from fundamentalism) referred constantly, and condemned. It was hard for the fundamentalists to cooperate because this attitude was typical of its leaders. Like early continuing Anglicanism, or the Mafia, or the China of Confucius' day, or Europe between Charlemagne and the rise of the nation-states, or Germany in Kleinstaaterei, there was a kind of feudal mind at work that made large-scale combinations difficult.

Evangelicalism corrected this, set to dissolving old tribal barriers, including selected theological ones, and became a cooperative effort par excellence. In essence Evangelicalism was a liberalizing or opening movement, but this has been its own downfall--the antifundamentalist solvent it concocted for itself created a movement that had no confessional boundaries or identity with Christian tradition with sufficient depth or fiber to resist the egalitarian virus, an anti-Christian influence that neatly penetrated a defense system unequipped to handle it, so that the majority of Evangelicalism’s most prominent institutions are now thoroughly egalitarian. Evangelicalism finds itself reliving in our generation, under the influence of feminism, what Evangelical Protestantism of the nineteenth century found itself undergoing under the corrosive influence of biblical criticism--and it fell far more quickly completely.

While there has always been resistance to this, as there has been resistance to religious modernism within the Protestant mainline, it is interesting to note the emergence of a group within Evangelicalism that wishes to define the Gospel, the evangel upon which the movement is based, as “complementarian”--that is to say, an insistence that this is not just a point of view within Evangelicalism, as it has heretofore appeared in groups such as the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, but of the essence of the Gospel. The Gospel Coalition’s confessional statement says,

In God's wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that displays the caring, sacrificial love of Christ, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models the love of the church for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged to serve Christ and to be developed to their full potential in the manifold ministries of the people of God. The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and redemption and must not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments.

The challenge the Coalition lays before Evangelicalism is nothing less than the requirement of a thorough reformation of the institutional mind and life in which Evangelicalism rose in reaction to fundamentalist privatism, counteracting changes which those institutions eventually underwent in accordance with an influence that was at the heart of Evangelicalism as a liberalizing (not just a de-fundamentalist-izing, but an anti-fundamentalistic) movement. In that sense it is requiring something contrary to the essence of Evangelicalism itself.

Shall it succeed? I wish it well, noting, however, that its success depends on its ability not to reclaim a lost Evangelical distinctive, but to become something Evangelicalism has never been.

Comments

[Bill R]

" I wish it well, noting, however, that its success depends on its ability not to reclaim a lost Evangelical distinctive, but to become something Evangelicalism has never been."

Superb post, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with the conclusion. I agree that at least in part evangelicalism was a "liberalizing" movement with respect to fundamentalism. But it was also a "communitarian" movement, more concerned with the church as the community and focus for Biblical worship than was fundamentalism. The "church" for evangelicals was comprised of all believers (even those who may have disagreed on secondary issues), yet was much more than merely an aggregation of saved individuals. If my understanding is correct, then evangelicalism may still have the resources within to cure the egalitarian error now poisoning its soul.

[The Recusant]

Bill R,

The rub, at least as it seems to me, is what are the "secondary issues" to which you refer and, furthermore, who decides? This is the question that often leads to the egalitarian nature of many evangelical churches. The church in which I grew up, as wonderful as it was in so many areas, suffers from this tension by paralysis. Many, many issues &/or areas of the Christian life are effectively off limits so as to avoid friction or, worse, division.

[Fr. Bill]

At its root (wherever back in time you wish to go), evangelicalism has lacked two things that contribute to its undoing: it lacks an ecclesiology in any more than the most theoretical and abstract sense of that idea, and it lacks a common worship (until its recent capitulation to the models of secular entertainment for its worship forms).

Indeed, as a movement that happily forged alliances across denominational boundaries, it virtually discounted ecclesiology as a serious concern. And, when ecclesiology vanishes, many things vanish with it — discipline, the sacraments (or ordinances) as meaningful foci of unity, and coherent formation of future leadership (note the plethora of seminaries accountable to no church authority). And along with these good things that disappear, we find a luxuriant growth of parachurch initiatives that often outstrip entire denominations in terms of budget, deployed staff, and geographical scope (e.g. parachurch missionary endeavors). What “church” can compete with organizations which joyfully jettison activities (such as marrying and burying) that slow it down?

Same with worship: if old school Presbyterian rationalism, Baptist revivalism, Methodist social activism, pentecostal and charismatic enthusiasm, Bible-church scholasticism, and community church syncretism can all “worship” in ways that are not only disparate amongst them but also within any one of them … well, why are we surprised that after several generations of saluting this “diversity” evangelical worship is now a grab-bag of ad hoc boogaloos roughly modeled on the latest entertainment fads?

Go back to any place you please, and evangelicalism will still have the same lacunae in its makeup: nothing normative as ecclesial identity, nothing normative as worship. With these two factors in its immune system utterly missing, is it any surprise evangelicalism cannot resist a doctrinal virus as toxic as egalitarianism?

[Bill R]

I suppose at times I look as if I'm evangelicalism's defender here on MC, but those who have been here for a while know that I've made many similar complaints about evangelicalism. (Indeed, the ability to criticize your own is almost a requirement to being a regular hereabouts...) But for all of that, I'd simply quote Steve Hutchens from the "Seventy Thousand Fathoms" thread earlier today:

"Indeed, you will remember that as a Protestant I am free to believe all believers are wholly and unqualifiedly members of the One, True Church. This is why I will in all likelihood always be identified as such, which I find regrettable, but see no way of escaping. While there is much room for repentence from my sins and amendment of life, I can't really see anything to convert to. There are only churches that are dead and living, better and worse, more right and less. In this context I do what I can."

Amen.

[Fr. Bill]

Bill R.:

I came to faith and had significant spiritual formation (it was never called that, of course), within evangelicalism of the Carl Henry variety. DTS versions of Bible church ministry and Southern Baptists made their own generous contributions, which remain well represented within my spiritual DNA. I've watched, however, my seminary (Dallas Theological) slouch steadily toward egalitarianism, and my peers since those days (mid-Seventies) veer into one trendy ditch after another.

I'd concur heartily, therefore, that what ails evangelicalism today arises from what it never had or what it never was. Brother Hutchens is correct: if there is an orthodox future for anything that could call itself evangelicalism, it will come (Lord willing) by evangelicals as a group acquiring some things they never had and becoming what they never were.

Can they do this and still be called evangelicals? I suppose my children will know, if they're paying attention. I think they may, instead, have their attention well engaged by orthodox expressions of Christianity that no one would call evangelical.

[Bill R]

-"I think they may, instead, have their attention well engaged by orthodox expressions of Christianity that no one would call evangelical." - Fr. Bill

Well, perhaps, Fr. Bill. But I'd submit (with a wan grin) that no orthodox expression of Christianity can call itself anything BUT "evangelical" (small "e"). ;-)

[Thomas]

Bill R: which reminds me of the subtitle of Thomas Torrance's "The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church"

[Fr. Bill]

Bill R. and Thomas:

Your points are helpful to demonstrate how the word evangelical admits of a variety of meanings, some of them quite far removed from others.

In this context, I'm using the term as Brother Hutchens has focused it, what Dr. Horton described, incorporating as well the elaborations on Horton's definition made by Dr. Hutchens in this particular blog.

In that sense of the term evangelical, evangelicals are confined to the very latest scenes of Church history, particularly a stream of American Protestantism dating from the 1940s. To speak of the evangelicalism of the ancient catholic faith is to speak anachronistically. There is much in evangelicalism's DNA that is overtly hostile to whatever is properly denoted by catholic.

[Wordlover]

Dr. Hutchens,

I found it a little surprising but very encouraging that you would put egalitarianism in the same class as biblical criticism with regard to its "corrosive influence." In a sense, of course, the earlier "virus" laid the groundwork for the latter, not just in its liberalizing momentum, but in the undermining of an authority that could counter the human instinct. Now our instincts too often prevail, and we are very inclined to follow the rebellion of Adam, who chose to heed his wife rather than his God, and of Eve, who subsequently desired to rule rather than submit.

With you, I am skeptical of our ability to reverse the damages. We can only build so much on the now-fractured scaffolding of scripture. What will also be required, I believe, is a deep and dramatic grasping of God's purposes for hierarchy in general and gender distinctions in particular.

Said another way, men must discover and live an uncompromising masculinity modeled by God Himself (which includes, but I think also goes beyond, the "caring, sacrificial love" referenced in the Coalition's statement). Meanwhile, women need to willingly and graciously step out of those domains into which we have been lured (or shoved).

And, we must learn to do these in a culture that will detest us for it.

Diane

[smh]

Evangelicalism was borne in the womb of fundamentalism, which was originally itself a manifestation of conservative resistance to a Protestant liberalism that used biblical criticism as the principal part of its intellectual justification for adoption of religious modernism. The process began in earnest in the 1860s and 1870s in the United States' mainline denominations, which by the 1930s had become dominated by it. The movement was from a religion in all these groups that would be considered "conservative Evangelical," to today's mainline liberalism. In the early 1920s J. Gresham Machen observed, and correctly, I believe, that this liberalism is simply not Christianity, but another religion appearing in Christian habiliments.

The same is true of egalitarianism. It is a new religion, as as theologically comprehensive as liberalism, and every bit as unChristian. It begins, of course, in anthropology, with beliefs about the equality of men and women, but of necessity reaches from there into Christology and thus to Trinitarian theology, since all are connected at the Christological root. Evangelicalism, which had by the 1970s begun to replace an increasingly moribund mainline Protestantism, at the same time began to absorb egalitarianism, which de-Christianized it as thoroughly as liberalism had de-Christianized the former, and much more quickly.

Both mainline liberalism (also now thoroughly egalitarian) and Evangelicalism retain strong forms of piety that remain attractive to their respective adherents, but the Christ preached by the mainline churches is the non-Christ H. Richard Niebuhr so accurately described, and the one preached in Evangelicalism as the object of the faith into which one needs to be reborn is increasingly an egalitarian invention with only a superficial connection to the Christ of apostolic Christianity.

[Fr. Bill]

Thank you, Brother Hutchens, for this succinct summary of the situation. You've put pithily what I have been tearing out my diminishing store of white hair trying to show my orthodox but clueless evangelical comrades. While embracing egalitarianism as a refreshing breeze, they are oblivious to the way their communities' apprehension of the incarnation and Trinitarian doctrine is transmogrifying into notions that at best mimic ancient gnostic fantasies.

Is all this, from an evangelical's perspective, a "gospel issue?" Well, the male headship of Adam is how we got into the web of sin, corruption, and death. And, Paul insists that it is by the male headship of the Second Adam that we escape this web into eternal life. It is the male headship of our father Abraham that confers on male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, the promsise God made to our father Abraham. Reject the headship of the male, as egalitarianism enthusiastically does, and you unravel the economy of our salvation. Is this a gospel issue, or what?

[Ethan C.]

That's an interesting summary of the position, Dr. Hutchens. But may I ask you what you see as the differences between liberalism and egalitarianism? It seems to me that the latter is a species of the former. In your view, are the tenets or origins of the two movements sufficiently different to call them separate things?

[Kamilla]

Hi Ethan,

I think you are right about egalitarianism being a species of liberalism. Given that modern liberalism majors in "social justice" (an ever-changing concept as new "oppressed" groups crop up) and personal rights, I don't know how it can be seen as anything else.

They won't admit it, and will take umbrage (love that term!) if you say it out loud. But you could put a liberal's quotes side by side with an egalitarian and I challenge anyone to tell the difference.

It's because they won't admit God is sovereign. He turns our wisdom on its head and makes fools of us who think we have caught in out.

Kamilla

[smh]

The species of theological liberalism is more like a religion, that of egalitarianism more like a heresy. The former rests on modernist suppositions and transforms Christianity by subjecting its doctrine to modernist critique and reconstruction. The Resurrection of Christ, for example, is no longer viewed as an historical event because modern science will not recognize it as such. The concept of "resurrection" retains "religious" value, however, and can be exploited within the confines of the human desires and aspirations that modernism cognizes in the sphere to which it confines religion. Every Christian doctrine is subjected to this critique and reconstruction in religious liberalism, but the essential philosophical impetus behind it is a exotic worldview inimical to doctrinal Christianity, which, when it is allowed to work upon it, produces another religion that expresses itself with the use of Christian symbols.

Religious egalitarianism has the classical form of a heresy: it owns a truth found in the scriptures and believed by Christians--the equality of the sexes arising from the creation of man as male and female, and hyperextends it so as to deny or efface something equally true: the ordinal primacy and headship of the male over the female, "the man formed first," in St. Paul's economical expression.

Unlike a foreign ideology or religion, such as liberalism, which deforms from without, heresies deform virally from within. Once the egalitarian alteration is made with regard to the relation of the sexes, a hierarchy of creation is overthrown in which the incarnate Son of God is involved as "head of the man," which then, because the very concept of headship as both origin and "priority-over" has been brought into question, the teachings that concern those relations in the Godhead which are of the same sort are likewise affected.

Liberalism as an exotic religion infected the mainline churches and made them easy prey for the egalitarian heresy when it appeared on the scene. The effect was something like that of an opportunistic infection that attacked and destroyed an already radically weakened and compromised body. A heresy is "another religion," too, and so liberalism and egalitarianism are alike in that regard. But the starting point for the attack on the church is different. When orthodox Christianity opposes liberalism, it is more like it is resisting the attack of an external enemy; with egalitarianism, it's more like a cancer that starts with an inward distortion, followed by the growth of a destructive tumor.

Evangelicalism fell to egalitarianism through the desire of the intelligentsia that both defined and led it from its earliest days, and which is its highest religious authority, to ingratiate itself with the secular academy. The latter, having become dominated by doctrinaire feminism in the last 30 years or so, required egalitarianism of all its tributaries, and the people who ran the Evangelical academies for the most part happily delivered. I have said it many times: one cannot understand postfundamentalist Evangelicalism without understanding the dynamic of fear and desire that moved its intelligentsia: fear of being considered fundamentalist, desire to be considered smart by the people whose opinions matter.

[Bill R]

"I have said it many times: one cannot understand postfundamentalist Evangelicalism without understanding the dynamic of fear and desire that moved its intelligentsia: fear of being considered fundamentalist, desire to be considered smart by the people whose opinions matter."

Alas. True. So true.

[Judy Warner]

It's a dynamic that works in many areas of life, for anyone who comes in contact with those "whose opinions matter." Many a politician has moved to the left in fear of the Washington Post. Many an actor has adopted a fashionable cause, usually environmentalistm, in order not to seem like an unsophisticated boob to the ruling powers of Hollywood.

[GL]

What is most frightening about the scenario SMH points out regarding modern Evangelicalism is that it is so easy to see where it will lead. We have already seen where liberalism and egalitarianism led the mainlines, we now have many Evangelicals adopting environmentalism, and young Evangelicals are beginning to become more accepting of same-sex relationships. I am convinced that the adoption of contemporary Christian music in worship is not just about attracting "seekers," but also about wanting to be viewed as "with it," and not "fuddy duddy." Having forgotten what worship is about, or rather Who it is about and for, Evangelicals have succumbed to worship styles which demonstrate "whose opinions matter" most to them. It is all very sad.

So where do Protestant Christians go who are not fundamentalists, nor liberal mainline, nor contemporary Evangelicals, nor willing to accept all the claims and teachings of the Bishop of Rome or the Ecumenical Patriarch? Fortunately, I have found a church which has avoided the extremes, adheres to the ancient creeds, actually believes the confessional statements of the Reformation, follows the calendar of the Christian year, and practices liturgical worship and weekly communion. Such churches are few and far between and not available to many Christians because of their geographic location. What about those Christians? Where should they go? My questions are not rhetorical; I would really like SMH's opinion.

[Wonders for Oyarsa]

Contemporary Christian music in Church has a different source. It is an imitation of the Charismatic movement.

[Ethan C.]

I think Dr. Hutchens has a good point about the difference between liberalism and egalitarianism. However, it seems to me that as the animating spirit of egaliatarianism is the second-wave feminism of the '60's and '70's, there is an element of foreignness in the phenomenon. I think he's spot-on about the reason why Evangelicalism has been vulnerable to it. I would add that the Evangelical doctrine of "sola fide" (which is rather different from the Lutheran and Reformed doctrines thereof) also left us open to the attack. We do not have a deep enough understanding of tradition to be able to distinguish the true meanings of scripture from our culturally-fashioned interpretations.

One of the reasons this leads to further distortions beyond egalitarianism (on homosexuality, life issues, definitions of justice, etc.) is that the Biblical text ceases to cohere once some part of it is misinterpreted. As one of my friends at Wheaton once said, "I like Paul, but sometimes he gets a little off." In the mainline churches, liberalism undermined the trustworthiness of the Bible, but the Evangelical impulse is still to try to get the text to make some kind of coherent sense to which we can give assent. So other passages then get reinterpreted in light of our false supposition. The cancer spreads.

Eventually, I think an honest intellectual embarked upon this path comes to a point where he can no longer force the text through his filter. Most of the gospel really is pretty easy to understand, after all. At that point, he must choose whether to abandon Biblical authority or reconsider his suppositions.

At that point, unfortunately, he has usually found a nice, comfortable groups of like-minded Christians, and he enjoys the comparative approval of the secular powers that be. He needn't be embarrassed to admit that he is a Christian in polite company, for he can quickly add a list of the subjects on which he's "on their side" against those crazy fundamentalists. So it's a lot easier to chuck aside an attenuated idea of Biblical authority than to risk one's reputation by questioning one's premises.

[smh]

To GL:

I have no satisfying answer to your perplexity. One does the best one can in present circumstances. Although I do not, for example, accept all the claims of Rome or Orthodoxy, I would not hesitate to attend a Catholic or Orthodox church, if they were the best locally available. (Of course, a Protestant could not join those churches, or take communion--but he COULD worship in one of them, something like the God-fearers worshipped in temple and synagogue.) The problem with Catholic churches is that most of them in point of fact seem to be liberal Protestant churches; the problem with Orthodox churches (with respect to the instant concern) is that there aren't many of them around--secondarily, they tend to be private ethnic clubs. But that in itself should not be a bar to attendance and worship at the divine liturgy.

If one's principal purpose in attending church is to worship God, it would seem to me that the prime requisite for a church is that it (1) provide a way to do that (2) and not interfere. Primus non nocere. This means there are certain things a "serviceable" church cannot do, and there is an acceptable minimum with respect to what it does. How much we like it or how comfortable we are with rites or music that are foreign to us should not matter--whereas we usually make our judgments as if these were the most important things.

No acceptable church will, for example, have female presbyters presiding or have heresies engrained into a liturgy or into music in which the worshiper is expected to defile himself by participating. Several months ago I quietly walked out of a church--much to the anger and embarrassment of my host--before its service began because the bulletin indicated in the congregational prayers that an androgyous god was the object of its worship. Almost all mainline Protestant churches are nowadays off limits to Christians for that reason.

If the problem is that there is no local church that does not promote heresy, only then do I think one is justified in helping in the formation of a new congregation, and please God, it will be a new congregation of an already existing faithful group. We don't need any new denominations or "independent" churches. I know this isn't too helpful, but it's the best I've got.

[GL]

SMH,

Thanks. That pretty much is my view as well. My family may be moving in the next few months. I have reason to believe that I can find an orthodox Protestant congregation in the new city, but it pains me to leave a congregation and elders who "get it," that is, who understand what and Who worship is all about. It took a long time to find. If we decide to move, I will certainly be asking for prayers in finding such a congregation in our new home.

[David Gray]

>I have reason to believe that I can find an orthodox Protestant congregation in the new city, but it pains me to leave a congregation and elders who "get it," that is, who understand what and Who worship is all about. It took a long time to find. If we decide to move, I will certainly be asking for prayers in finding such a congregation in our new home.

That is one reason I'm looking forward to retiring from the military is having to find a church on a regular basis. I think for an orthodox Presbyterian if one cannot find a good reformed church the next best option, frequently, is Missouri Synod Lutherans.

[James A. Altena]

"I think for an orthodox Presbyterian if one cannot find a good reformed church the next best option, frequently, is Missouri Synod Lutherans."

David, I devoutly hope it was atypical, but the one time I attended a service at an LCMS parish (in Chicago, as an experimental departure from my usual Anglican observance), an androgyous god turned out to be the object of its worship. The service opened with a responsorial reading of a "paraphrase" of Psalm 92. Instead of opening with

"It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High"

it opened with

"I feel like singing today, God!"

and went downhill from there. I suspect that it was a parish indebted to the pietistic rather than the strongly doctrinal strain in the LCMS.

It was quite a contrast with the Lutheran parishes I occasionally attended in East Germany durning 1989-1990 (I mostly alternated between a C. of E. parish in W. Berlin and an RC parish in E. Berlin for eight months), where the services were orderly and reverent (albeit the sermons having a heavy political subtext). The place that most felt like "home" was a Sunday afternoon communion service in J. S. Bach's own parish, the Thomaskirche in Leipzig.

[David Gray]

>David, I devoutly hope it was atypical, but the one time I attended a service at an LCMS parish (in Chicago, as an experimental departure from my usual Anglican observance), an androgyous god turned out to be the object of its worship. The service opened with a responsorial reading of a "paraphrase" of Psalm 92.

We've had very good experiences with the LCMS when traveling. But we do usually scout their websites to find ones that look like traditional Lutheran congregations.

[Michael]

>>David, I devoutly hope it was atypical, but the one time I attended a service at an LCMS parish (in Chicago, as an experimental departure from my usual Anglican observance), an androgyous god turned out to be the object of its worship. The service opened with a responsorial reading of a "paraphrase" of Psalm 92.<<

Labrialumn could speak to the systemic issue better than I, but I wouldn't categorize your experience as typical or atypical. The Synod is in a fascinating position at the moment, and you seem to have witnessed the vanguard of one political arm within the church--the "missional" Lutherans.

The LCMS has a history, and in most smaller parishes a still-present, habit of being a tad incestuous and closed. After years of being in a parish, one might still be an "auslander." I'm one of a long line of Lutherans, and my family has been attending the same parish since my grandparents first moved out to Washington 40 years ago when the church was still a "plant" with less than 100 members, so I've never known the feeling personally, but it was obvious attending a service in Pullman, WA, that my friend Rob and I were something of pariahs. The "greeting" portion of the service--in hardcore Lutheran circles, it would still be the "passing of the peace"--was very mobile, people crossing the sanctuary to speak to old friends. Yet only one family acknowledged our existence, and it wasn't the pastor's. This is the LCMS' biggest weakness (I know you disagree theologically).

In order to remedy that, you see a general sacrifice in theology in order to be more "open" in the growth movement parishes. The Pastoral Leadership Institute states that the their vision is to form pastors that will be capable of leading their congregations into "connecting people with Jesus Christ," and that they hope to form leaders for "the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and beyond." The problem with mere "connection" and going "beyond" is that it sacrifices confessionalism in practical application. Though theologically PLI holds to the Lutheran confessions as understood by the Synod (cf. the "confessional standards" page in the About Us section on their website), a church's program and purpose to reach beyond its walls cannot maintain the "auslander" mentality. Instead of funneling people deeper into the theology (which is what should happen), you tend to lose the theology in presentation in order to "connect" and be relevant "beyond" the walls of the Synod. Thus, you see the congregations to "get it" and the congregations--like your Chicago one, apparently--that only see part one and not part two.

I would encourage you, therefore, to seek out a confessional Lutheran parish. For the record, if you're ever in south King County, that would not be mine. At least not for another 6 months...

David,

My paternal grandparents would fervently disagree. There are three standard "dinner table don'ts" in the world: Politics, Philosophy and Religion. The Harrells discuss politics and occasionally philosophy, but never bring up religion, or my Presbyterian grandmother and my Lutheran mother are prone to kill each other.