Children as Possessions Winter/Spring 1998

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Agility, says my dictionary, is the "ready ability to move with quick easy grace," and no modern Christian movement is more agile than evangelicalism. For would-be prophets, agility presents a problem: watch defensive ends try to predict a running back's next move on his way to the end zone, and you will begin to see how tricky it is to say anything about evangelicalism's next fifty years.

But agility is also a promise. Those who have adapted in the past may be poised to adapt to the future. So consider some clues from evangelicalism's past fifty years.

Evangelicalism adapted to modernity. The term "evangelical" was adopted by fundamentalists who had gone to places like Harvard and Yale and been impressed with the subtlety and potential of the modern project. Without entirely giving in to modernism (for contrast, see most any mainline Protestant denomination), they developed modern versions of the "fundamentals" of Christian faith, from biblical authority to salvation. "Just as there are natural laws, there are spiritual laws"—four, to be precise, according to Campus Crusade's booklet that "presented the gospel" to countless modern college students. In the age of science and technology that followed the Second World War, prepositional and linear thought was prized, and evangelicals had plenty to spare. Meanwhile, evangelical missionaries rode the wave of technology all over the world. Looking back, the transition from the quiet backwaters of rural fundamentalism to modern evangelicalism is stunning.

What happens next? It's a bit of a cliché, but it's true nonetheless: evangelicalism's next big adaptation must be to postmodernism. While some evangelicals shudder at the thought of giving the slightest ground to postmodernity, ...

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