We have moved to www.theprognosis.org

“WHY I WAS AND NOW AM A (closet) EVANGELICAL”

For a long time, I’d been trying to disassociate myself with the word evangelical. Whenever anyone asked me ‘what sort of christian are you?’ My immediate response would be to use ‘a christian christian’ or ‘bible believing christian’ as an answer. For a long time I’ve had a real problem saying evangelical, or especially ‘born again’. Not so much on theological grounds, but more on cultural/dispositional ones.

You see, I couldn’t help but make a connection between the word evangelical and a stiff, joyless and morbid christianity - a christianity that was too scared to realise that it existed in the 21st century. Anything ‘new’ was looked upon with concern or even a type of proud fear. Evangelicalism for me had become an exclusive gang that was only going to be ablt to attract the boring, the bored, or the social cameleon. This was not a selling point. My problem with using the word came from within the big C Church.

And even though I couldn’t disagree with the doctrine, I found myself mightily disagreeing with the attitudes.

But was my problem with the word? No, of course it wasn’t. By definition, I was an evangelical - I believed in the final and full authority of the Bible. I believed that without God coming after me, him giving me life, him saving my soul, by grace, through faith in the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ then I would be dead and without hope. Whether I liked it or not, I was a historical evangelical. I stood for all it stood for.

But in spite of my entymological pilgrimage, I’ve now realised that things have got to change. It’s not important what I mean when I use the word. What’s important is how it’s heard. In the current culture, it doesn’t matter what the historical evangelicalism is, because one man’s evangelicalism might be another man’s beret wearing, fake tan donning, cross-less, original sin-less, Christ-less, salvation-by-group hug, bring twenty quid and raise the dead Sunday club. Death by association anyone?

So am I an evangelical? Yes and no. What exactly do you mean by evangelical?

Jonny. I’m with you. Just call me Christ’s.

The subtitle to Brian McLaren’s book, A Generous Orthodoxy, is this:

“WHY I AM A missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN”

Although I’ve not read the book, I understand his point, that the Christian ‘religion’ is far too divided and that actually there are things we can unite over, fair enough.

But that got me thinking about how we label ourselves as Christians, and here’s how I would now label myself:

I am not an emergent, nor a catholic, nor and orthodox, nor a methodist, nor an anglican, nor an anabaptist, nor a presbyterian, nor an arminian, nor a liberal, nor a fundamentalist, nor a calvinist, nor a charismatic, nor a conservative, nor a reformed, nor a protestant, nor an evangelical.

You may have been thinking “Amen” up until you got to calvinist, but let me explain why I am saying that I’m none of these things. I wonder if labels have become unhelpful. Even the label “Evangelical” which used to be so helpful in segregating those Christians of a true Biblical foundation from those who wouldn’t be convinced that the Bible is the Word of God. In his book The First Fifty Years: The History of the Evangelical Movement of Wales, Noel Gibbard says that

“Many attempts have been made to define the characteristics of evangelicalism… [Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, George Marsden, David Bebbington and Dr R. Tudur Jones] are agreed on the centrality of the Bible and recognise its unique authority”

But that’s not really an essential characteristic of all those who call themselves evangelical these days.

So why am I not a calvinist, nor a conservative nor any of those other ‘good ones’? Well, labels carry bagage. So if you say that you’re a calvinist then people think you don’t believe man can have free will or that you don’t believe in evangelism. Or if you say you’re a conservative, people think that you’re stuck in your ways, rigid, arrogant and closed-minded in your views and beliefs.

Here’s what I would say positively though:

I am evangelical, I am reformed, I am conservative, I am calvinistic, I am emerging, I am catholic (meaning of the one universal church) and I am orthodox (meaning of the original church).

Notice the difference: no “a” or “an”. If my grammar is right then I think that changes it from a noun to an adjective thus making it not so much a label but a description. What do you guys think? Are labels past their sell-by date?