Abstract
Evangelicalism, in the words of Brian Stanley, has become ‘one of the most powerful religious forces on the globe’ (p. 25). In this concise but masterful analysis, the capstone of Inter-Varsity Press’s five-volume History of Evangelicalism in the English-Speaking World, he surveys recent developments within the movement over the last half-century. He demonstrates the post-war shift away from fundamentalist pugilism towards the renaissance of conservative biblical scholarship and cultural engagement. The chapters range deftly across themes such as revival, preaching, theological education, apologetics, charismatic renewal, social action, hermeneutics and sexual ethics. Stanley shows how rapid communication in the aeroplane and email age has changed the shape of global mission; and how mega-churches often carry more weight than the old denominations. He notes several idiosyncrasies, like evangelicalism’s dependence on Enlightenment rationalism to defend scriptural revelation, and its willingness to ascribe to C.S. Lewis, a High Church Anglican, ‘a veneration that borders on the hagiographical’ (p. 146). There is already a substantial specialist literature on these topics, but Stanley’s wide-ranging exploration samples the best, with his own perceptive insights, and provides an excellent introduction. It is an even-handed treatment, mercifully free of the grinding of theological axes, and deserves to become the standard textbook on this period. The footnotes and bibliography alone are a treasure trove for the eager student.
Evangelicalism’s ‘global diffusion’ is a double entendre. In one sense the movement has spread across geographical and cultural boundaries, to the furthest flung corners of the globe. Church growth in the majority world since the 1950s, especially Pentecostalism, is unparalleled in two millennia of Christian history. Evangelicals are no longer typically well-educated white Anglo-Americans but live in poverty and under political oppression in the southern hemisphere. At the same time, the movement has become ‘diffuse’ in another sense because evangelical identity is increasingly hard to define. Who are the evangelicals, and what connection, if any, do they have with the party of yesteryear? These two concepts of diffusion are interwoven throughout the narrative.
There is a certain irony to the book’s subtitle, ‘the age of Billy Graham and John Stott’, presumably chosen by the publishers to appeal to the US and UK markets. But the joy of Stanley’s text is precisely that he takes the spotlight off Graham and Stott, and brings many lesser-known characters to the fore, especially those from the global south. The subtitle points to the old Western domination of the literature, from which the author is trying to emancipate us. Evangelical relationships have always been international, though until the Second World War primarily transatlantic. They have now become ‘multidirectional’ (p. 61), from East to West and South to North. Stanley shows, for example, how the East African Revival influenced evangelical spirituality amongst Australian aborigines and Pennsylvanian Mennonites. The Scripture Union movement has exploded across the continent of Africa in the last generation, autonomous and self-governing, no longer answerable to London. Indigenous evangelists have risen to prominence throughout the old empire, from Ghana to India, no longer dependent on missionaries from Europe and North America.
The centre of the book, and its pinnacle, is Stanley’s ground-breaking chapter on the International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne in 1974. The gathering was bank-rolled by Graham’s American friends, and Stott acted the skilful diplomat and mediator in drafting and re-drafting the Congress statement. Nevertheless evangelicals from the Western world woke up at Lausanne to the fact that they no longer controlled the movement. Invitations were issued according to national quotas, seven participants for every million Protestants in the population. Voices from Latin America and Africa, most famously Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar, called cogently for holistic mission, not just the saving of individual souls but bringing the gospel to bear on issues of economic and social injustice. Stanley’s archival research pays rich dividends with a nuanced analysis which reveals the theological tensions amongst the Lausanne organizers and that divergent interpretations of the congress began almost immediately. Contrary to standard histories of the event, Stanley convincingly demonstrates that it did not settle the debate over evangelical identity and mission, and that the Lausanne Covenant remains to this day ‘a contested text’ (p. 179).
There is plenty in this volume to bring triumphalistic evangelicals back down to earth with a crash. As Stanley observes, it is difficult any longer to say who does and who does not deserve the title ‘evangelical’. The movement has become ‘so diffuse as to be theologically unstable and incapable of definition’ (p. 237). The post-war shift in evangelical emphasis from the Bible to the Holy Spirit may have added ‘much-needed spiritual vitality’ (p. 210), but in so doing has removed one of the classic foundation stones and accelerated the loss of evangelical cohesion. Stanley’s tone is realistic but the long-term view of the historian gives him reasons for hope. He believes that predictions of evangelical disintegration are ‘premature’ (p. 239), because the movement has been in this situation before. Today’s vociferous and angst-ridden arguments over evangelical boundaries are paralleled by those in the 1780s-1820s and the 1890s-1930s. Evangelical identity, he rightly argues, has always been a contested and fluid category. So it would be wrong for evangelicals to look back with tearful nostalgia to a lost golden age of unanimity and doctrinal clarity, because it never existed. The current wrestling match between conservatives, post-conservatives and post-evangelicals bears striking resemblance to that between fundamentalists, liberal evangelicals and modernists before the Second World War. In the midst of these theological realignments, evangelicalism always somehow finds the ‘capacity to survive’ (p. 238) and will do again, Stanley predicts.
These twin themes of geographical diffusion and doctrinal diffusion are brought together in Stanley’s teasingly provocative conclusion. Some conservative churches in the West are alarmed that a few evangelical academics are pushing the hermeneutical boundaries too far in ways which undermine classic evangelical dogma and ethics. But as Stanley reminds his readers, that is the wrong direction to look. Evangelicalism’s centre of gravity is now in the global south, so that also is where the greatest threats are found, especially the burgeoning popularity of a ‘health and wealth’ gospel, which is neither Bible-centred nor cross-centred. If evangelical diffusion does lead to evangelical disintegration it cannot be blamed on a few radical professors or bishops in New York or Edinburgh. Stanley insists, ‘The battle for the integrity of the gospel in the opening years of the twenty-first century is being fought not primarily in the lecture rooms of North American seminaries but in the shanty towns, urban slums and villages of Africa, Asia and Latin America’ (p. 247). It would be instructive to see this theme developed, though that is perhaps the task of the prophet or futurologist, not the historian.