{"id":2399,"date":"2019-10-14T02:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/?p=2399"},"modified":"2019-10-11T20:26:19","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T04:26:19","slug":"postfundamentalist-evangelicalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2019\/10\/14\/postfundamentalist-evangelicalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Postfundamentalist Evangelicalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
You may wonder what this is: \u201cpost-fundamentalist evangelicalism.\u201d The term, as far as I know, belongs to Roger Olson, a prolific author and theology professor. I believe that he subscribes to Arminian theology. His specialty seems to be historical theology. I am reading a little book he put out called the Pocket History of Evangelical Theology<\/i>, published by InterVarsity Press and apparently is drawn from a larger work, The Westminster Handbook to Evangelical Theology<\/i>. Olson writes well, I think anyone could follow what he has to say. The book helps in several ways. For one, it defines evangelicalism today, and I think does so quite well. It demonstrates a clear understanding that evangelicalism and fundamentalism are not the same thing. This is also helpful. In addition, it traces the roots of evangelical theology that provides an excellent summary of antecedents. This helps our understanding of both<\/i> fundamentalism and evangelicalism, since prior to the 1950s, evangelicalism wasn\u2019t \u201cpost-fundamentalist\u201d it was coincident with fundamentalism. In other words, prior to the sea change of \u201cnew evangelicalism,\u201d fundamentalism and evangelicalism essentially meant the same thing.<\/p>\n
All of this gets ahead of ourselves a little bit. For this post I\u2019d like to summarize some of Olson\u2019s work on defining evangelicalism, the subject of his first chapter. He starts out by pointing out seven \u201cjustifiable uses\u201d of the term. (Page 8) The next few pages outline the seven uses. I\u2019ll summarize them here:<\/p>\n
Olson wants to describe the theological development and unique contributions of postfundamentalist evangelicalism. He defines it further with this:<\/p>\n
\u201cEvangelicalism is a loose affiliation (coalition, network, mosaic, patchwork, family) of mostly Protestant Christians of many orthodox (Trinitarian) denominations and independent churches and parachurch organizations that affirm\u2026<\/p>\n
Olson says, \u201cmany evangelicals affirm more; none affirms less or deny any of these basic belief commitments.\u201d (15)<\/p>\n
Of the list above, most fundamentalists would likewise affirm these ideas, except perhaps \u201cthe urgency of \u2026 social transformation.\u201d This tenet is a defining mark of evangelicalism. It is what Carl Henry called for in his book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism<\/i>. Fundamentalism also insists on separatism (as noted above), which evangelicals specifically reject. Olson quotes Donald Bloesch in The Future of Evangelical Christianity<\/i> as saying,<\/p>\n
\u201cEvangelicalism unashamedly stands for the fundamentals of the historic faith, but as a movement it transcends and corrects the defensive, sectarian mentality commonly associated with Fundamentalism.\u201d (Bloesch, 15, cited in Olson 20)<\/p>\n
I have to say that Olson\u2019s definitions seem accurate to me. Evangelicalism (i.e.<\/i> postfundamentalist evangelicalism) and Fundamentalism depart at this point: Evangelicalism rejects separatism while Fundamentalism embraces it; Evangelicalism embraces social transformation, while Fundamentalism rejects it (without rejecting compassion for others \u2014 the key word is transformation<\/i>).<\/p>\n
There is a lot more of interest in Olson\u2019s book. I plan to produce a few more blog posts from his little book. I recommend it to those interested in our subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You may wonder what this is: \u201cpost-fundamentalist evangelicalism.\u201d The term, as far as I know, belongs to Roger Olson, a prolific author and theology professor. I believe that he subscribes to Arminian theology. His specialty seems to be historical theology. I am reading a little book he put out called the Pocket History of Evangelical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[105,37,77],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-CH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2400,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions\/2400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}