True Evangelicalism

Mark Noll, interviewed in Christianity Today about a new book he's authored, "The Rise of Evangelicalism," says of Evangelicalism:

Almost universally, what evangelicalism has been great at doing is bringing life back to cold religious form. But, evangelicalism is a parasitic movement. The great evangelical leaders are not theoreticians of institutions. Some of them are very good theologians on questions of personal salvation. They're not theologians of culture, they're not theologians of society. There are problems with the Christian outreach that is just the theology of society, but there are also problems when the individual attention is so strong that culture and society is lost sight of.

Why people continue to pay Dr. Noll to describe Evangelicalism remains a mystery. He's long cast himself in the role of Evanglicalism's arbiter elegantium. But as he so frequently reminds us, there's little of elegance about Evangelicalism. We're simple people, easily led. And for the masses there is the indefatigable Ron Sider who has faithfully plucked our consciences since before Dr. Noll received his PhD. What more can Dr. Noll provide?

Did someone mention parasitism?

Noll's description, in brief, of Evangelicalism's provenance is 1) Anglicanism; 2) Calvinistic Protestantism, and; 3) European pietism.

I haven't read the book, but I suspect Dr. Noll accuses Evangelicalism's crowning dollop of "European pietism" of lying at the core of her parasitic nature.

Pietism has become everyone's bogeyman. Noll, ever the academic, probably finds certain things of measured good to say about pietism--I suspect he plays pietism against Calvinism, finding value in pietism's blunting the corners of Evanglicalism's Calvinism. But on the whole, Noll will inevitably treat pietism with condescension.

I wonder if Dr. Noll thinks Jesus shares his disdain for pietism? Was Christ a "theoretician of institutions" or did He concern Himself primarily with "questions of personal salvation"?

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, speaking to an IFES audience in the early 70's (in series of talks published by Banner of Truth under the title, "What is an Evangelical") said of pietism:

The evangelical...is not merely interested in the need for life and power, he emphasizes it with the whole of his being. Take the question of pietism. Pietism has almost become a pejorative term at the present time and a term of abuse. I am getting very tired of evangelicals attacking pietism. I maintain that the true evangelical is always pietistic and it is the thing that differentiates him from a dead orthodoxy. I referred earlier to the origins of pietism on the continent of Europe. Arndt, Spener, and Francke, and people who followed them - this pietistic movement - arose as a protest, because, unfortunately, within a hundred years of the Protestant Reformation, both the Lutherans and the Reformed people had settled down into a dead orthodoxy. The same recovery happened in England under a man called William Perkins. Calvin himself was known and described as a theologian of the Spirit, and that is right. In true evangelicals, as you find in the Puritans and in a man like Jonathan Edwards in America, the pietistic element is very prominent in their teaching, and it always must be. The evangelical is not merely an orthodox man. You can have men who are quite orthodox but who are dead, and you really do not feel you can have any fellowship with them; their religion is all intellectual. Now that is not evangelicalism.

The evangelical has a true and a correct evangelical belief, but he does not stop at that. He has this great emphasis upon life, so you will always find in evangelical circles that there is great emphasis on the study of the Bible, personal and corporate, that great attention is paid to expositions of the Scripture and to prayer. Prayer is vital in the life of the evangelical.

I can't help reading Dr. Noll's ever-so-carefully-nuanced disdain of Evangelicalism in light of the death of Tim's father-in-law, Ken Taylor. Mr. Taylor was one of the great men not only of Evanglicalism, but of the Church. And he was fundamentally a pietist--as were the rest of the great Evangelical leaders of his generation.

In 1984 God brought me alive in Christ by first, enabling me to quit drinking (a deliverance I remain thankful for to this day) and then, as a summer missionary in Alaska, granting me the gift of repentance. My drinking had never risen to the level of public scandal--at least I never considered it such--but it was a very real concern to my family.

I will never forget meeting Mr. Taylor my first Sunday home as a newly-alive Christian. I ran into him after church in the middle of College Church's old narthex--not an environment conducive to privacy. Nor did Mr. Taylor seem to think there was any need for privacy. He told me how happy he was that God had granted me the gift of repentance, and without lowering his voice added that he had been praying for me to quit drinking for a long time.

I didn't know whether to cringe or beam. I probably did both.

Thank God for pietism.... If pietism is pursuit of power through prayer, if it is emphasis on personal devotion to the Word, if it is a life characterized by zeal for personal holiness, if it longs for and emphasizes the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit, then Mr. Taylor and my father, and a whole raft of now-dead Evangelical leaders were pietists. And we're better for it.

If Evangelicalism is, as Mark Noll says, an inability to think institutionally or to impact culture, then perhaps Mr. Taylor and the rest of his generation weren't Evangelicals. Or perhaps Dr. Noll has confused Evangelicalism with Liberalism. Because the truth is, quite the opposite of what Dr. Noll claims, the history of Evangelicalism in the United States and elsewhere is one of marked institutional proficiency and cultural engagement preyed upon by a parasitical liberalism which subsumes Evangelical institutions (Harvard, Dr. Noll? Princeton? Ever heard of these?) and diminishes Evangelical cultural potency (Blanchard, Dr. Noll, of Blanchard hall, just another of those Evangelicals who didn't give a lick about engaging culture?) by substituting cultural sycophancy for cultural engagement.(Is Bono cheered at Edman Chapel your idea of a better form of cultural engagement, Dr. Noll?)

The Evangelical world needs more men of piety like Mr. Taylor. An Evangelical generation which disdains pietism is a generation like that in Israel which knew not the days of Joshua.