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New Evangelicalism: It's History, Characteristics, and Fruit

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New Evangelicalism: It's History, Characteristics, and Fruit 1 New Evangelicalism: Its History, Characteristics, and Fruit Copyright 2006 by David W. Cloud This edition February 2012 ISBN 1-58318-100-8 Published by Way of Life Literature PO Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061 866-295-4143 (toll free) - [email protected] www.wayoflife.org Canada: Bethel Baptist Church 4212 Campbell St. N., London Ont. N6P 1A6 519-652-2619 (voice) - 519-652-0056 (fax) [email protected] Printed in Canada by Bethel Baptist Print Ministry 2 Contents About Way of Life’s eBooks ..........................................4 Introduction ....................................................................6 The History of New Evangelicalism.............................. 8 The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy .............8 A Rejection of Fundamentalism ...............................34 The Old Evangelicalism ...........................................38 The Influence of New Evangelicalism......................... 45 The Characteristics of New Evangelicalism............... 48 Repudiation of Separatism .......................................48 Dialogue ...................................................................56 A Love for Positivism............................................... 74 Exalting Love and Unity above Doctrine .................89 Pragmatism .............................................................100 Intellectualism ........................................................105 Anti-Fundamentalism .............................................112 Inconsistency and Contradiction ............................122 Essentials and Non-essentials................................. 126 A Social-Justice Emphasis .....................................132 Spiritual Pacifism ...................................................136 The Fruit of of New Evangelicalism .........................140 Apostasy in Doctrine ..............................................142 Apostasy in Ecumenism .........................................160 Apostasy in Christian Living ..................................183 Apostasy in Acceptance of Heretics....................... 186 Conclusion................................................................... 197 3 About Way of Life’s eBooks Since January 2011, Way of Life Literature books have been available in eBook format. Some are available for purchase, while others are available for free download. The eBooks are designed and formatted to work well on a variety of applications/devices, but not all apps/devices are equal. Some allow the user to control appearance and layout of the book while some don’t even show italics! For best reading pleasure, please choose your reading app carefully. For some suggestions, see the report “iPads, Kindles, eReaders, and Way of Life Materials,” at the Way of Life web site at the Way of Life web site www.wayoflife.org/ database/styled-3/ Which Format? Our goal is publish our books in the three most popular formats: PDF, mobi (Kindle, etc), and ePub (iBooks, etc). Individual titles, though, may not be available in all formats. The PDF version from our web site will always be the latest and most up to date version. The PDF editions are available either from the online catalog, for titles that must be purchased, or from the Free eBooks section for titles that are free. Way of Life, Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks? Many of the Way of Life titles can be found on Amazon.com, Apple iBookstore, and/or Google Books. The major advantage of obtaining your eBook 4 from the Amazon Kindle store or Apple’s iBooks store is that they provide syncing across devices (i.e.: a Kindle reader and Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac and iPad). If you read on multiple devices and use bookmarks or make highlights, consider a store download from the appropriate site. 5 Introduction I am convinced that few errors are as destructive to fundamentalist Bible-believing churches as New Evangelicalism. When people leave fundamentalist Bible-believing churches, where do they go? Do they join the Roman Catholic Church or a modernistic Protestant church, such as the United Methodist, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., the United Church of Canada, or the Uniting Church of Australia? Do they join a cult such as Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witness? That seldom occurs. Most people that leave fundamentalist churches go the positive-thinking, easy-going New Evangelical route. Few false philosophies more directly pull at members of fundamental Baptist churches than New Evangelicalism. Church members are confronted with it on every hand-- through popular Christian radio and television preachers, at the local ecumenical bookstore, through members of other churches, through ecumenical evangelistic crusades, through political and social activity, through interdenominational organizations such as Promise Keepers. It is therefore essential that we understand the nature of New Evangelicalism. We are concerned that many of the members of fundamentalist churches do not have a clear understanding of exactly what New Evangelicalism is, 6 nor of the history of the doctrinal battles that have been fought to preserve the Truth in the past 100 years. Many seem to think that New Evangelicalism is a problem that existed decades ago and that no longer is an issue. To be ignorant of the insidious and pervasive nature of New Evangelicalism is to be unprepared to identify and resist it; yet large numbers of Bible believers do not know anything about it. When a fundamental Baptist evangelist recently asked the students of a well-known independent Baptist school to raise their hands if they could define New Evangelicalism, only two could respond. Hosea 4:6 warns, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” 7 The History of New Evangelicalism The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy set the stage for New Evangelicalism. To understand New Evangelicalism, we must go back two centuries to the formation of theological modernism, which had its origin in Europe, particularly in Germany, in the 19th century and was the rationalistic thinking of that time applied to Christianity. It was the dawn of the “scientific era”; many believed that mankind was on the verge of discovering the secrets of the universe and solving mankind’s problems. Anti-Christian thinkers such as Darwin, Hegel, and Marx led the movement to dethrone God and replace Him with Man. Unregenerate “Christian” professors in many European universities and seminaries, having already rejected the Bible as the infallible Word of God, gladly accepted the humanistic thinking of the day and set out to apply evolutionary philosophy to the Bible and Christianity. The result was tragic: The Bible was brought down to the level of a mere human book, inspired only in the sense that Shakespeare’s writings were “inspired.” Jesus Christ was brought down to the level of a mere man: a great teacher, perhaps, but a mere man nonetheless 8 Theological liberalism spread like ivy, which first sleeps, then creeps, then leaps. This is precisely what occurred with modernism. It began in a seemingly insignificant way in the 18th century; it crept forward and expanded its influence in the 19th; and then it leaped from denomination to denomination and spread throughout the world in the 20th. It was introduced to American denominations by men who studied in prestigious, though apostate, European universities and by European professors and pastors who visited American schools and denominational churches. Nominal Christianity had paved the way for this apostasy. In Germany, the Lutheran state church was spiritually powerless. The nation’s citizens were members of the church by the rite of infant baptism, but for the most part they were not born again and the new birth was seldom preached. A similar situation existed in England, though to a lesser degree. The Church of England, which dominated religious life, largely represented a nominal Christianity, but unlike in Germany, there was a stronger evangelical movement within the state church of England. There was also a stronger independent church movement apart from the state apparatus, as represented by Baptists, Methodists, Brethren, Salvation Army, and others. Spiritual revivals had produced good fruit in England in the late 18th and early 19th century 9 Theological modernism arose in a day when heretical philosophies and doctrines were on the increase. It was the age of “enlightenment” in which rationalism was positively encouraged by Frederick II, the “philosopher king,” who reigned over Prussia for 46 years (1740-1786). The “age of enlightenment” should actually be called the “age of unbelief.” Frederick was “a thorough rationalist and patron of ‘free thought.’ The sight of a cross, it was said, was enough to make him blaspheme” (Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided, p. 5). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary of 1934 correctly defined the “Enlightenment” as “shallow and pretentious intellectualism, unreasonable contempt for authority and tradition.” H. E. G. PAULUS (1761-1851) of Heidelberg, Germany, devised naturalistic explanations for Christ’s miracles during the first half of the nineteenth century. He claimed, for example, that Jesus did not walk on the water but was actually walking on the shore and in the mist and fog it only appeared that he was walking on the water. Paulus devised the ridiculous hypothesis that Jesus did not die on the cross, but only swooned, and in the coolness of the tomb revived, and after an earthquake moved the stone he walked out and appeared to the disciples. (He did
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