Ex-Evangelicals and the Search for a Deeper Faith

Fashionable Christianity

Why do evangelicals turn into ex-evangelicals? The solutions differ: some go away as a result of they’ve been wounded by unwise and even abusive leaders; others depart as a result of they arrive to doubt the truthfulness of Scripture; for nonetheless many extra, there is no such thing as a one apparent purpose, only a lengthy, gradual drifting away. However for a big variety of ex-evangelicals, their disillusionment will not be about non secular apathy or aversion however, quite, fairly the other. The ex-evangelicals I’m considering of listed below are those that starvation for one thing extra of their non secular expertise—extra depth, extra seriousness, extra religious engagement—and turn into satisfied that such issues are to not be discovered throughout the evangelical custom. They need real religious formation however worry that the evangelical cabinet is naked. So as a substitute of turning into agnostics or becoming a member of liberal mainline Protestant church buildings, they flip to different traditions—notably Roman Catholicism or Jap Orthodoxy—satisfied that these traditions foster the form of religious development that had eluded them as evangelicals.

This phenomenon was lately highlighted in a extensively shared article within the New York Put up, which profiled converts to Jap Orthodoxy. One such particular person is Elijah Wee Sit, who was raised as an evangelical however now dismisses “trendy Christianity” as unacceptably “watered down.” Reflecting, presumably, on the evangelicalism that he skilled rising up, he describes this “watered down” religion as follows: “Folks go to church on Sunday, they sing a couple of songs, they hearken to an hour-long sermon that appears extra like a TED speak, after which they go dwelling, and so they simply go on with their lives.”¹

Equally, in his current e-book Dwelling in Surprise, bestselling Jap Orthodox writer Rod Dreher muses on the expertise of American Christians who turn into dissatisfied with a felt lack of religious depth and start questioning whether or not the traditional and medieval traditions of Roman Catholicism and Jap Orthodoxy may level towards a extra wonderful means:

On summer season holidays, People typically enterprise to Europe, go to the good medieval cathedrals, and surprise concerning the type of religion that might increase such temples to God’s glory from societies that had been poorer than our personal. We learn outdated tales of miracles, visions, pilgrimages, and spiritual feasts and really feel the poverty of our personal non secular expertise. We dutifully drag ourselves to church on Sunday, we learn our Bibles, we comply with the legislation, we work to serve our nation or our group, we keep present with our studying, however we nonetheless might surprise, Is that this all there’s?²

That final query captures the sense amongst some evangelicals that there’s something missing, paltry, and underdeveloped throughout the evangelical religious custom: Is that this all there’s? Does evangelicalism truly possess the assets and instruments to assist a strong and sustained expertise of religious formation and Christian development?

And no matter one makes of the various solutions given in response, one can’t dismiss the importance of the query itself. One of the fundamental biblical assumptions concerning the Christian life is that it will likely be a rising life. Whether or not depicting the blessed life as that of “a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season” (Ps. 1:3) or portraying believers as “new child infants” who “lengthy for the pure religious milk” of God’s phrase so “in order that by it” they “might develop up into salvation” (1 Pet. 2:2), the Bible assumes all through that genuine religious life is marked by growth, maturation, and development.

The How Query

However as clear as that is likely to be, what typically feels much less clear is the how query: How do I nurture and maintain the form of religious formation that the Bible clearly calls me to? Amongst evangelical Christians, answering such questions on private religious development has typically been sophisticated by the motion’s frequent emphasis on development of different kinds, specifically numerical development and geographic unfold. Rooted within the Nice Awakening of the eighteenth century, evangelical Christianity has all the time prioritized a zeal to see the gospel unfold to extra individuals and extra locations. Modern evangelists like John Wesley (1703–1791) and George Whitefield (1714–1770) took their sermons exterior the church partitions to achieve constituencies that their extra conventional contemporaries had been neglecting. And in our personal day, evangelicals proceed to work tirelessly and creatively to achieve ever-wider circles with the gospel.

This, in fact, is an efficient factor. The risen Jesus informed his disciples, “You may be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Evangelical Christians have taken that mandate significantly, and we should always thank God for his or her witness. And but, as is so usually the case in a fallen world, even insights which are good and proper and true can fog up our home windows when they’re emphasised to the exclusion of different insights which are likewise good and proper and true. Within the case of evangelicalism, the motion’s zeal for enlargement and outward development has typically come on the expense of discipleship and inward depth.

One of the fundamental biblical assumptions concerning the Christian life is that it will likely be a rising life.

The famed evangelist Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) captured an essential facet of evangelicalism’s historic DNA when he declared, “It makes no distinction the way you get a person to God, supplied you get him there.”³ Absolutely one can applaud the evangelistic ardour in that assertion whereas nonetheless recognizing that an unrestrained and in the end counterproductive pragmatism lies shut at hand. When pragmatism pushes out precept, the result’s a Christianity lengthy on pleasure and brief on religious maturity. As evangelical theologian and writer David Wells has put it, “What outcomes, all too usually, beneath all of the smiling crowds, the packed auditoria, is a religion so cramped, restricted, and minuscule as to be totally unable to command our life, our energies, or, as a matter of truth, even a lot of our consideration.”⁴ If that description precisely displays the evangelical expertise of the ex-evangelicals who now search religious depth via Jap Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, then one can’t assist however sympathize with their resolution to go away, even when we in the end disagree.

I don’t query that some expressions of evangelical Christianity lack depth. However what I do query is the belief that such shallowness is in any means intrinsic to the logic of the evangelical custom itself. My confidence on this level comes not from surveying present practices amongst up to date evangelicals however, quite, from wanting backward to the Protestant Reformation custom out of which evangelicalism arose and to which evangelicalism is theologically indebted.

The Reformers and their heirs had been dedicated to reforming not simply theology but additionally their strategy to the observe of the Christian life. They sought an strategy to religious formation that was deeply rooted in Scripture, understanding each that any God-honoring religious practices have to be derived from Scripture and that God’s phrase itself is the first means via which the Lord shapes his individuals. Over and in opposition to a medieval custom that successfully sidelined private engagement with the Bible in favor of pilgrimages, relics, and a bunch of practices that had been, at finest, extrabiblical, the Reformers understood that dwelling, rising religion was a word-based affair: “Let the phrase of Christ dwell in you richly, instructing and admonishing each other in all knowledge” (Col. 3:16).

In assist of this finish, Reformers like John Calvin (1509–1564), post-Reformation pastor-theologians just like the English Puritans, and later exemplars just like the eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) all wrote extensively on the how query that typically feels so elusive. Our downside, then, as evangelicals will not be that we lack a practice of religious formation however, quite, that we regularly have failed to note that it was there. Because the secular tradition turns into more and more hostile to the historic Christian religion, believers who want to stand agency might want to turn into extra intentional than ever of their pursuit of genuine religious formation. For some evangelicals, this need for depth will sadly lead them away from Protestantism and in direction of non secular practices that discover no foundation in Scripture. However for many who want to discover it, there’s a wealthy heritage of word-based spirituality proper right here at dwelling.

Matthew Bingham is the writer of A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation.

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