Why Evangelicalism's View of Essentials Produces Rotten Fruit

Ideas have consequences. I know that should seem obvious but we've so downplayed the importance of ideas today that a reminder doesn't hurt. I'm told there is a sign hung at the entrance to Auschwitz that reads, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It's a fascinating thing that most evangelicals are staunchly committed to their religious ideas concerning what is essential and what is not, but have little understanding of their own history concerning how they got those ideas. We've all heard the mantra that is falsely attributed to Augustine, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity." Certainly, in all things charity but what is assumed to be essentials and non-essentials is a matter of debate, and it is a vitally important debate at that.

The story, although severely oversimplifying, is basically this in a nutshell. Liberalism, which adopted the ideas of the Enlightenment, like egalitarianism and inclusivism, did not like the restrictions that Christian orthodoxy placed on the church in light of the philosophical and scientific fads of the day as well as the fatigue of religious infighting stemming from what were considered the "religious wars" and continuing through denominational splintering.  They desired a much more inclusive orthodoxy that had a wider base than what historic Christianity could offer so that everyone could join hands in order to fight the moral decay of the culture due to the undermining of Christianity by secular culture. Coupled with an egalitarian tendency to see authority as tyranny and an inclusive tendency to see doctrine as that which divides, many liberals taught that those who denied what was historically considered to be orthodox was not definitional for who could consider themselves a Christian, even though many of them held to traditionally orthodox tenets themselves.

In fact, one of J. Gresham Machen's points in Liberalism and Christianity is that Liberalism is not a different religion just because it denies certain doctrines. Liberals may affirm every one of what were called "fundamentals." Instead, what made it a different religion is the idea that one could still claim to be a Christian even though he rejected one or more of them. In other words, liberalism is not the denial of certain doctrines but the belief that doctrine should not divide.

Fundamentalism, historically named, was a counter-movement that often missed the mark by attacking liberalism by affirming those things that liberals often denied or claimed were unnecessary to believe as a Christian. Rather than understanding that liberalism was not a denial of orthodox doctrines but a redefinition of orthodoxy that placed a lesser importance on an affirmation of those doctrines, it spent most of its time defending these particular doctrines and not as much time defending the idea that these doctrines were necessary because they were at the foundation of a Christian worldview, which is what was really being attacked. Hence, the foundations were held but the rest of the house was allowed to fall into decay.

As a result, in the 1950's, the Enlightenment worldview displayed itself in the church's adoption of Neo-Evangelicalism in the West. Assuming the liberal ideas of inclusivism and egalitarianism, along with the fundamentals of their parents, Evangelicalism denounced the divisiveness of most doctrines but held to the importance of those their parents had called "fundamentals." In other words, both of the essential components of fundamentalism and assumptions of liberalism concerning doctrine were adopted in order to create what we now see as Evangelicalism. The only rejection of liberalism was that evangelicals did not apply this idea originally to the fundamentals. They just applied it to all other doctrines. 

During this time, what was left behind, was any sort of robust biblical thinking about orthopraxis. This has its roots in the fact that the original disagreement between liberalism and fundamentalism was not over morality, which each largely agreed upon. Over time, however, because of the corrosion of an orthodox Christian worldview within liberalism, its morality also began to change and be conformed to a moral system more consistent with Enlightenment principles of egalitarianism and inclusivism. 

With the advent of Margaret Sanger reversing the Comstock laws and convincing women to take upon more egalitarian roles, liberalism's inability to provide a worldview that stood against these ideas soon simply gave way to them. Quite a few years before Sanger's campaigns, the social gospel was making inroads into the church with its adoption of the universal fatherhood and brotherhood of man, arguing that Christians needed to think about a new view of orthodoxy simply because the old one was in the way of this new Spirit-led social movement.

Fundamentalism had largely adopted a social gospel because it had often had a similar morality to its own, even though its assumptions were largely that of the Enlightenment. It had been against prostitution, contraception, drunkenness, etc. so that fundamentalists felt they could join hands with those who had similar goals of orienting society toward moral purity. 

What this ultimately led to is that even though fundamentalists countered liberalism in its doctrines, it did not largely counter it in its morality until it was too late. This is largely because its morality looked the same for awhile. But its worldview was clearly a foundation that would later give rise to a completely contrary morality to that of historic, Christian orthopraxis. This would soon be understood by fundamentalists to a degree but it would largely be too late. 

This is important to understand because Evangelicalism adopted no view of orthopraxis due to their parents giving to them no idea that there even was one. Orthopraxis was the culture's orthopraxis. Hence, to this very day, evangelicals argue over whether a homosexual can be a Christian because Christianity to an evangelical is defined by the doctrinal essentials and not any ethical essentials that would stem from a necessarily definitional biblical worldview.

What happened as a result of teaching that Christianity could be reduced to these particular doctrinal "essentials" is that evangelicals were left with a vacuum where they needed a worldview in order to make life decisions. In absence of a Christian worldview, of course, the worldview of the Enlightenment, which is the primary religion of our culture, filled that vacuum.

The sexual ethics of evangelicalism became secondary to one's identification as a Christian. As such, people calling themselves Christians could simply disagree about these things. Homosexuality, transgenderism, birth control, and even abortion were all considered in-house debates. In fact, when asked whether abortion should be included as a part of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority agenda, Falwell replied, "Isn't that a Roman Catholic issue?" Most evangelicals rejoiced a the decision of Roe vs. Wade, as they were as convinced of the social good of abortion as liberalism's social gospel was simply because evangelicalism was void of an orthopraxis when it came to sexuality. Eventually, evangelicals were swayed by an article by John Warwick Montgomery in Christianity Today that argued that abortion was murder and came to adopt, for the most part, that abortion was wrong. Due to the promiscuity created by this void of a Christian worldview in evangelicalism and liberalism, the sexual revolution found its pinnacle in the promiscuity of the 60's and 70's so much so that evangelicals began a counter-campaign of purity culture that attempted to argue that people should wait until marriage. Even with this, however, no robust worldview was offered as to why one should wait. 

Hence, the rebellion of our teenagers, the promiscuity of our culture, and the overall confusion over sexual ethics and the lack of any distinguishable behavior between evangelicalism and the pagans in our culture is directly a result of the thinking that Christianity can be reduced down in its essentials to some core doctrines absent of a fuller biblical worldview that includes both historic orthodoxy and orthopraxis. And as Jesus warned us, bad fruit comes from bad trees, not good ones. You will know the false prophets by their fruit. 

So what I would propose instead of this disastrous experiment that has claimed the souls of so many of our families and bound God's people in so many vices is that we adopt the motto, "In historic Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxis, unity. In historic disagreement within Christianity, patience and tolerance (which deals with the divisiveness issue biblically rather than as Enlightenment inclusivism would). In all things, working toward a biblical worldview with charity." 

The Bible, as adopted by historic Christianity, has given us our essentials (Acts 15:28-29) and they include both doctrines pertaining to worshiping the right God with the right means and practice pertaining to sexuality.

For it seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us not to place any greater burden on you than these essentials: that you abstain from meat that has been sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality.

These two components set an essential foundation of orthodoxy and orthopraxis for the substructure of a robust Christian worldview upon which a Christian can build a life of godliness as he understands more and more of God's Word. We must not return to the black hole of evangelicalism simply because it creates an immediate, yet artificial, unity. We must strive toward the slower and more difficultly achieved unity of the faith by speaking truth to one another in love until we are all built up in the truth and love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The worldview of the Enlightenment is a tree that bears the fruit thereof. It cannot bear the fruit of Christianity even when a few doctrines are thrown on top of it. As the sign says, however, if we fail to know our history, we will in fact be doomed to repeat it.