In Praise of Evangelicalism

A Reformed Defense of the Best of American Evangelicalism

There is a progression that happens to a certain kind of Reformed guy.

He gets saved in a Baptist church. He goes to youth group. He plays some ridiculous game involving shaving cream and probably several violations of the fire code. He goes to church camp. He sings worship songs written sometime after 1997. He hears the gospel, reads his Bible, and tells his friends about Jesus.

Then somebody hands him Calvin’s Institutes.

Things get serious.

He discovers the doctrines of grace. He learns about covenant theology. He starts reading dead theologians. He discovers the Westminster Standards and realizes that Christians actually thought carefully about theology before his favorite pastor started a podcast.

All of that can be very good.

Then comes the danger.

The church that taught him the gospel suddenly seems embarrassing. He has all kinds of scruples and preferences that in his mind are hard principles. He wants to get as far from his upbringing as possible. On the way, he grows cold towards sharing the gospel. Before long, he has more pipes than people he has personally told about Jesus. This is theological hipsterism, and Reformed Christians should recognize the temptation.

I say that as a Presbyterian. I love Reformed theology. I teach my children the catechism. I believe the Westminster Standards faithfully summarize biblical doctrine. Becoming Reformed helped me understand Scripture more deeply and gave me categories I did not have before.

So this is no plea to abandon Reformed theology. I am saying that growing in theological maturity should make us more grateful, more faithful, and more useful to Christ. If our theological development mainly teaches us to sneer at ordinary Christians, something has gone wrong.

Remember Where You Came From

Many Reformed Christians came to Reformed theology through American evangelicalism.

Maybe you grew up Southern Baptist. Maybe it was an independent Bible church, an Evangelical Free church, a Calvary Chapel, or some giant nondenominational church where the pastor wore skinny jeans and the worship leader had more stage lights than a Van Halen concert.

There were probably weaknesses.

There may have been shallow preaching. You may have received little instruction in church history. The worship may have been driven too much by emotion. The youth ministry may have confused entertainment with discipleship. Some churches became so obsessed with attracting unbelievers that they forgot that the Lord's Day gathering belongs to Christ and must be governed by His Word.

Criticism of these things can be necessary.

But gratitude is necessary too.

Who taught you that the Bible was the Word of God?

Who told you that Jesus Christ died for sinners?

Who taught you to pray?

Who told you to read your Bible every day?

Who told you that your unbelieving neighbor needed Christ and that you ought to tell him?

For many of us, it was an evangelical.

Maybe it was a pastor whose theology was not as developed as yours is now (yours might not be as developed as you think). Maybe it was a Sunday school teacher who could not explain the finer points of covenant theology. Maybe it was your grandmother sitting in the same Baptist church she had attended for fifty years.

She loved Christ. She read her Bible. She prayed for her neighbors. She brought people to church. She told sinners about Jesus.

Don't become too sophisticated for Grandma.

What Evangelicalism Got Right

The word evangelical has become difficult to define. It gets used politically, sociologically, and theologically. Sometimes it seems to mean little more than "conservative American Christian."

But historically there was something substantial underneath the label.

In the episode, we discussed Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his description of evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals submitted themselves to Scripture. They believed the gospel. They emphasized the necessity of the new birth. They cared about personal holiness. They preached. They evangelized. They prayed for revival. Christianity was something that had to take hold of the whole man.

Those instincts are worth keeping.

Read your Bible. Pray. Repent of your sins. Believe the gospel. Pursue holiness. Tell people about Jesus. Raise your children to know Christ. Support missions. Expect God to work in the lives of actual people.

None of those things become less important when you discover covenant theology.

In fact, good theology should strengthen them.

The doctrines of grace should make us evangelists because we know God saves sinners.

The sovereignty of God should make us courageous because the success of Christ's Kingdom does not depend upon our cleverness.

The doctrine of election should humble us because we contributed nothing to our salvation except the sin from which we needed to be saved.

Reformed theology ought to produce sturdy Christians with open Bibles and open mouths.

When it produces men who can spend six hours debating the precise meaning of a seventeenth-century theologian but cannot remember the last time they told an unbeliever about Christ, we have managed to turn theological riches into religious vanity.

Don't Confuse Reaction With Reformation

One of the dangers in our day is building your Christianity around everything you disliked about your previous church.

The evangelical church had youth group, so youth groups must be bad.

They had church camp, so church camps must be bad.

They divided people by age, so every moment of church life must involve the entire family sitting together.

They sang contemporary music, so anything written after 1850 is immediately suspicious.

They neglected church history, so now we start treating historical practices as if age itself establishes biblical authority.

That is reaction, not reformation.

The question must always be: What does Scripture require? What does Scripture forbid? Where has Scripture given Christians liberty and wisdom?

Take the discipleship of children.

I strongly believe fathers have a serious responsibility before God to disciple their households. Fathers should teach their children Scripture. They should pray with them. They should catechize them. They should lead.

But that responsibility does not mean your children can never learn from another faithful Christian.

I remember the Sunday school ladies who taught me the Bible when I was a boy. They loved Jesus. They loved children. They faithfully taught us what they knew.

I thank God for them.

I also thank God for church camp. Some of it was cheesy. Some of the songs probably deserve to remain permanently buried in the 1990s. But I would come home from camp wanting to read my Bible. I would read through Scripture. God's Word was being stored in my mind.

Years later, I can see the fruit.

A father who wisely enlists pastors, elders, teachers, camps, friendships, and other Christians to help disciple his children has not surrendered his responsibility. He is exercising it.

Our goal should be biblical faithfulness, not winning trying to build an impenetrable fortress around our family.

Theology Should Produce Love for Ordinary Christians

There is another danger here.

Knowledge can become a status marker.

You know the terminology. You have read the right books. You know why the popular preacher is wrong. You can explain the regulative principle. You know the difference between Lutheran and Reformed understandings of the sacraments. You have strong opinions about liturgy, vestments, weekly communion, Psalm singing, and church architecture.

Fine.

But do you love Christ's people?

The ordinary Christian sitting in a small Baptist church who believes the Bible, loves Christ, raises his children in the faith, gives generously, prays faithfully, and tells his coworkers about Jesus is your brother.

You may believe he is wrong about baptism. I do too.

He is still your brother.

Christian maturity requires enough conviction to say that error really is error and enough humility to recognize genuine faithfulness outside our own ecclesiastical circles.

That balance matters.

We do not strengthen the Reformed church by cultivating contempt for everyone outside it. We strengthen the church by taking the theological riches God has given us and putting them to work in love, evangelism, worship, discipleship, courage, and obedience.

Beware the Search for Something More Ancient

Theological hipsterism can eventually lead somewhere darker than smugness.

A man discovers that his evangelical upbringing was historically shallow. Fair enough. Then he discovers the Reformers. Then the church fathers. Then ancient liturgies.

Soon "old" begins to function as a synonym for "true."

He starts wondering whether Christianity somehow disappeared until he found the right historical tradition.

Some men eventually leave Protestantism altogether for Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy, attracted partly by the appearance of antiquity, stability, ceremony, and historical rootedness.

There is a lesson here for Reformed Christians.

Give men roots.

Teach church history. Teach the creeds. Teach the confessions. Show Christians that their faith did not begin with Billy Graham, John Piper, their favorite YouTuber, or the founding pastor of the local megachurch.

But roots must remain planted in Scripture.

We are Reformed because we believe the church must always be brought under the authority of God's Word. Antiquity can teach us. Tradition can serve us. Neither sits above Scripture.

And we should be careful that our desire for historical rootedness does not become another form of theological fashion.

You can be a hipster in skinny jeans.

You can also be a hipster in vestments.

Keep the Fire. Add the Depth.

There is much in modern evangelicalism that needs reform.

Give me deeper preaching. Give me serious worship. Give me robust doctrine, confessional Christianity, fathers leading households, children learning catechisms, Christians who understand church history, and churches willing to confront the sins of the age.

But give me evangelistic zeal too.

Give me Christians who actually expect unbelievers to become Christians.

Give me people who invite their neighbors to church.

Give me Sunday school teachers who love children.

Give me missionaries willing to cross oceans.

Give me men who know their Bibles because somebody drilled into their heads that Christians ought to read the Word of God every day.

Give me Christians who believe conversion is real, prayer matters, holiness matters, and the gospel remains the power of God unto salvation.

We don't need to choose between theological depth and evangelical zeal.

Take the depth.

Keep the fire.

And the next time you are tempted to sneer at the little evangelical church down the road, remember that God has been pleased to save a great many sinners through ordinary Christians in churches just like it.

Maybe they could learn something from us.

We might still have something to learn from them.