Abram's Kin

15 December 2006

Evangelicalism


Per our discussion 2 weeks ago, I thought I would link you to Wikipedia's comments on Evangelicalism. I found this section especially interesting:

Post Evangelicalism
((The following contains argumentative, proselytizing, and non-academic views which should best moved to a discussion board.))
The Post-Evangelical movement is rather new and is a response against the weaknesses of evangelicalism.
Post-evangelicals view the church as fundamentally flawed by human activity, yet still a divine institution. They still hold the same authoritative view of the Bible as do evangelicals, but reject bigoted interpretations which have caused denominationalism. Post-evangelicals view their relationships with God and fellow humans as more important than their relationship to a particular church. They prefer living Christianity throughout the week, rather than what they perceive to be often empty rituals once a week. For instance, post-evangelicals often prefer to share communion in a home environment, and see the communion in a church building as less meaningful, because of its connection to church politics and power struggles.
Post-evangelicals reject what they see as a materialistic health-wealth, miracle-chasing gospel of Pentecostal evangelicalism, and the man-made legalism of "touch not, taste not" of conservative Protestant evangelicalism. Post evangelicals reject both empty, meaningless preaching and overly legalistic preaching. They prefer meaningful biblical content to excessive melodrama and empty content covered up by shouting and stage dramatics.
By and large, Post-evangelicalism rejects the institutionalism, politicized, bigoted, power struggles of the overly-structured church and is an attempt to rediscover the less structured Christianity of the early church. It focuses more on individual responsibility to live Christianity and sees much of what occurs in churches as vain ritual without real meaning.

2 Comments:

  • I found myself rapidly agreeing in sentiment, but bothered by the tone* of this article. Don't get me wrong, I harbor these tones* as well--but they are accusatory and proud. They are a "violent reaction" in spirit, rather than a peaceful one...or so it seems.

    Regardless, the definitions of post-evangelicalism (?) are lovely.

    By Blogger Josh, at 9:49 AM  

  • I agree with you about the tone in the 'post-evangelicalism' part (but not the rest of the article). I appreciate that Wikipedia has tagged that disclaimer at the beginning. I was certainly disappointed there wasn't more depth and some sources quoted about post-evangelicalism. There are plenty out there.

    Still, some of the reaction is worth considering, if one hasn't already.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 11:27 AM  

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