Evangelicalism is a renewal movement within Protestant Christianity which arose from the eighteenth-century revival movements of John Wesley and George Whitefield. Committed to historic Christian orthodoxy, evangelicalism has four main characteristics: biblicism (affirming the supreme Authority of Scripture), conversionism (affirming the need for personal conversion to following Jesus in order to be saved), activism (affirming the importance of evangelism and good works), and crucicentrism (affirming the salvific significance of Jesus’s death on the cross).
Theologically liberal and “progressive” Christians, who reject one or more of these characteristics and are not committed to historic Christian orthodoxy, frequently try to paint evangelicalism as corrupt, associated with sexism, racism, militarism, and the support of wicked political candidates and policies.[1]For example, see Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (New York: Liverlight Corporation, 2020). Above all, they pride themselves for their support of “social justice,” which, they claim, evangelicals reject.
There is, unfortunately, some truth to these criticisms (although the fact that many who currently label themselves “evangelical” do not actually fit the definition of an evangelical makes some of the evidence supporting these criticisms suspect). Nevertheless, I firmly believe that the best hope for the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church lies in evangelicalism, while liberal/progressive Christianity is simply a dead end.
Theologically liberal Christians want us to believe that we must abandon historic Christian orthodoxy in order to focus on promoting social justice. This is a very bizarre claim. As the Catholic author G.K. points out, “Orthodoxy. . . is the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation, and advance. If we wish to pull down the prosperous oppressor we cannot do it with the new doctrine of human perfectibility; we can do it with the old doctrine of Original Sin. . . If we wish specially to awaken people to social vigilance and the tireless pursuit of practice, we cannot help too much by insisting on the Immanent God and the Inner Light: for these are the best reasons for contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the transcendent God and the flying and escaping gleam; for that means divine discontent. If we wish particularly to assert the idea of a generous balance against that of a dreadful autocracy we shall instinctively be Trinitarian rather than Unitarian. . . And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmans.”[2]G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy. Biblical theological orthodoxy provides a much stronger rationale for the pursuit of social justice than its theologically liberal alternative.
Not only in theory, but also in practice, orthodox Protestant Christians have always had a concern for the pursuit of social justice. In the modern period, evangelical Protestants have been at the forefront of many initiatives for social justice, most notably the movement to abolish slavery. Of course, there have been failures to promote social justice as well. The Church always contains a mixture of both faithfulness and unfaithfulness. But in its most authentic expression, evangelicalism has always included a biblical concern for social justice as an integral part of its identity.
In early twentieth century America, theological liberalism, which rejected biblical orthodox Christianity in favor of a vague, moralistic theism, began rising to prominence. Many theological liberals, abandoning the biblical gospel of salvation from sin, advocated a “social gospel” entirely focused on reforming society to be more just. When the great theologian, pastor, and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer encountered this during his visit to America, he was unimpressed: “the entire protest must repeatedly be raised if that is preached as real Christianity while abbreviating all the crucial Christian ideas. In many discussions and lectures I tried to show that Reformation Christianity does indeed include rather than exclude all these things. But people basically just didn’t want to believe that.” The situation today is very similar. Progressive Christians think they are justified in abandoning crucial, vitally important Christian theological truths for the sake of focusing on social justice. They basically just don’t want to believe the fact that the pursuit of social justice is and always has been an integral part of theologically orthodox Protestantism.
A narrow focus on promoting social justice in society is not authentically Christian because it abandons many other equally important aspects of Christian ethics. The central point of Christian ethics is not social justice, but holiness: Christians being transformed in every aspect of their character into the image of Christ. Furthermore, when social justice is narrowly focused on at the expense of all the other aspects of Christian ethics which it is supposed to be inextricably interconnected with, this inevitably leads to a distorted, pseudoChristian concept of social justice. For example, when Christians advocate using the violent, coercive power of the government to forcibly take other people’s money and redistribute it to the poor, this is clearly contrary to the way of Jesus: nonviolence, simplicity, servanthood, and radical generosity. Or when Christians advocate having the Church encourage people to practice sexual immorality, on the grounds that this must be done for the sake of “justice,” this is clearly contrary to what Jesus and His apostles have to say about both justice and the importance of chastity.
Progressive Christians insist that the Church must abandon biblical church discipline and be inclusive of everyone, no matter how they live, while insisting that the only thing that matters ethically is social justice: transforming the surrounding society to be more just. But this is the exact opposite of what God’s word tells us: “It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning” (I Cor 5:12). According to Jesus and the apostles, the Church is supposed to be holy, and then let that holiness be salt and light that hopefully may bring about transformation in the surrounding society. The pursuit of social justice is one vitally important aspect of holiness. But when social justice is allowed to replace holiness, there is no longer a true Church.
American evangelicalism, especially in its embrace of militarism and nationalism, is deeply corrupt, unfaithful, and all too often allied with godless secular political forces. But progressive Christianity, too, is often allied with godless secular political forces that are just the other side of the same coin, a coin that is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of God’s Kingdom. American evangelicalism is, to a significant extent, a corrupt form of Christianity. But progressive Christianity is not truly Christianity at all. At least in evangelicalism there is a vestige of true holiness, which is what the Church is truly all about. This is why, in spite of everything, I identify as an evangelical Christian, believing that the best hope for reformation and revival for the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church lies there.