This
is my first post for my new blog Abandoning Evangelicalism. I hopefully will be
trying to post regularly on here. It will mostly be my theological thoughts and
observation of Christianity present and past. I have gone through allot of
theological changes the last several years, I went from being a theologically
broad Baptist to a Confessional Reformed Presbyterian, and some people might
notice that I’m now in favor of things that I once was strongly against. Looking
back I see myself as being liberal on a lot of theological topics in my past,
people who know me will notice I have a very specific statement of faith now. I
certainly love my Baptist brethren but I hope they can respect that my Biblical conviction's have led me to where I now am.
So
why is this blog called “Abandoning Evangelicalism” you might ask. Well it’s
because evangelicalism I have observed is departing from the Bible, added to
the fact evangelicalism really has no meaning anymore. Everyone claims to be an
evangelical you have the liberal postmodern emergent liberals like Brian McLaren,
Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans and on another side you have Mark Driscoll, John
Piper and then every degree in between. It’s now easier to find a needle in a
hay stack then it is to define evangelicalism. It’s a word every Christian
wants to claim, but what is it?
The
radio program “The White Horse Inn” has dubbed evangelicalism the new liberalism
and the more a watch the modern church the more I have to agree. This is not to
claim anyone who calls themselves an evangelical is a liberal, I know many who are
far from it, but through the years evangelicalism has put more and more
emphasize on theology and being able to articulate the faith. The end result is
a boiling down of Christianity to all lowest common denominators. As time goes
on this erodes most truth of the Bible the authority, inerrancy and infallibility
of scripture. “As long as we love each other who needs theology”, “who needs
theology I have Jesus”. This is the tangled road that I see evangelicalism going down, I
was part of a liberal church for a while and it unnerves me when I see less and
less of a difference between Liberal Christianity and modern evangelicalism.
So
I have abandoned modern evangelicalism, but what for? Well I have abandoned it
for Confessional Reformed Christianity which is really the historic evangelicalism,
I now hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith as a wonderful summary of what scripture teaches, Catechism is the way to go, I believe in baptizing baby’s, and in
the Sacraments, that when I take the Lords Supper every week there is more than
a memorial going on. Yes I still believe in Jesus, yes I still read my Bible in
fact more so. Really I have abandoned
modern evangelicalism for the real evangelicalism and the real historical and biblical
Christianity.
That was a good read.
ReplyDeleteWhat ever happened to regular evangelicalism where you told people about Jesus instead of worrying if they were offended or not?
Thanks for reading Brian, it got lost along the way. The original evangelicals were actually the Lutherans. it was because Luther and Calvin later on emphasized the Gospel. In Europe the Lutheran Churches are called the Evangelical Church's, Despite the fact there very very liberal. Luther never actually wanted a Church named after and so pushed EC.
ReplyDeleteI think part of it is so many churches even of the "conservative" type don't have a proper grasp of who Jesus or even what the central concepts of Christianity. There told to focus on there "relationship with Jesus".