Big Questions Confronting Evangelicals

How we got where we are, how new groups are aligning, and how normal, everyday evangelical Christians provide a lot of reason for hope.

The last decade has confused a lot of us, as brothers and sisters who believe very similar things have seen things very differently. Some of the angst and division exists in a “very online” context, with keyboard warriors tweeting furiously at one another. Such online discussions don’t always touch the average evangelical, Bible-believing Christian in an average evangelical church. In this way, social media isn’t real life.

In another way, though, social media is a non-ignorable aspect of real life. Anyone who has lived through the turmoil around Covid protocols, racial justice conversations, or political conversations in general can tell you. This stuff touches “normal Christians,” and not just those who spend way too much time on Twitter/X.

We’re at another “very online” moment, yet I believe this one is filtering into conversations before and after church, at coffee meetings, and more. For example, a new book has claimed that many big-name evangelical leaders have sold their ministries or at least been wrongly influenced by progressive or “leftist” politics and funding. Whether or not you know the book, or agree or disagree with it, the book is a symptom of a much larger situation: evangelicals are realigning allegiances and new groups are forming. Old friends are becoming new adversaries. Old adversaries are becoming new friends. It’s confusing, but it’s happening.

I’ve been trying to make sense of this situation for years, because it disorients me in some ways. In this article, I want to explore how we got where we are, how these new groups are aligning, and how normal, everyday evangelical Christians provide a lot of reason for hope.

Fundamentalists

The fundamentalist movement started in the early 20th century, when Protestant Christianity split into two main groups: the fundamentalists and the mainline. In the 1800s and early 1900s, the mainline denominations began moving away from historic Christian beliefs. Christians who believed “the fundamentals” of the faith (like the virgin conception of Christ) started mobilizing in response. They were called “fundamentalists.” Unfortunately, the fundamentalists ended up turning inward, with a very narrow view of engaging the culture. In the middle of the 20th century, some pushed back, calling for more cultural engagement and sparking the current movement of evangelicals.

Evangelicals

The name “evangelical” comes from the Greek word “evangel” or “gospel.” Evangelicals are “gospel people,” who believe the Bible is a flawless book that tells the story of Jesus the God-man who died on the cross for people’s sins. This good news is life and death, so evangelicals try to tell everyone the story, so that people would turn from their sins and trust in Jesus for forgiveness and eternal life.

In 1947, Carl F.H. Henry wrote a book about the problem with fundamentalism, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. With former fundamentalist evangelist Billy Graham leading the charge, a new group re-formed around evangelism and engaging the culture with the gospel: the modern evangelical movement. This movement birthed institutions like Fuller Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Christianity Today magazine, the Lausanne movement, and more.

Now, seventy-five years after Henry warned about the uneasy conscience of fundamentalism, the conscience of the evangelicalism has become uneasy. Like then, the debate now surrounds how Christians who believe basically similar things should engage and respond to the culture around them. Evangelicals are realigning based not so much on theological beliefs as on “theological vision.”

In his book Center Church Tim Keller points to theologian Richard Lints’s definition of “theological vision” as the way that Christians apply their beliefs to the world around them. Two groups or two Christians can believe almost identical things, but still “see” the world, its problems, and the solutions very differently.

For example, several years ago, I attended a forum on religious liberty at a local secular college, less than a mile from the church I pastored. The panel discussed whether religious liberty gives those who oppose same-sex marriage the right to refuse certain services to same-sex couples. During the question-and-answer time, a man on the opposite side of the auditorium from me stood up and spoke. He was a Christian, and he vented angrily and emotionally about the issue. His posture seemed to me to fall into a caricature and stereotype of Christians, and I thought his approach would make my calling more difficult as a nearby pastor.

I also had a question for the panel, but I wanted to approach it differently. I stood and said, “I probably believe 98 percent of what my brother believes, but I disagree with his approach.” I asked a question as respectfully and persuasively as I could. In this case, it bore fruit. After the forum, the dean of the college gave me his card, saying he wanted to collaborate in the future. Later, he invited me to speak on a local public TV roundtable, at a forum on similar topics, and more.

I don’t say all of this to pat myself on the back. In fact, some might say that my approach wrongly tried to gain the favor of the world, rather than speaking “boldly.” Some have recently argued that our “negative world” requires new approaches, because the culture views Christianity in a negative light, rather than a positive or even neutral one.

But my approach wasn’t based on winning the favor of cultural elites who hate my faith. Instead, as a local pastor, I was trying to faithfully engage in a difficult and hostile cultural situation.

To summarize it simply: my brother across the room seemed to view the culture as an enemy to fight while I was trying view the culture as a mission field to engage. The evangelical church in this moment is wrestling with the same issue: whether our culture is primarily a battle field or a mission field.

Battle Field Evangelicals

Battle Field Evangelicals see real insanity and immorality in our culture, and they understandably want to fight against it. They then tend to engage in “the culture war.” The culture war can be traced to Pat Buchanan’s 1992 Republican National Convention speech. I remember watching this speech as an elementary school kid. In the speech Buchanan conceded his run for the Republican nomination for President to George H.W. Bush. In his remarks, Buchanan aimed to mobilize conservatives to fight against the erosion of morality on the cultural left.

Some sneer at conservatives fighting “the culture war,” but such sneering misunderstands why Buchanan’s vision resonated. Conservatives in general and conservative Christians in particular didn’t pick the fight The culture war from the right reacted to culture warring from the left during the sexual revolution. Cultural war was upon evangelicals, whether they liked it or not.

But things got muddy, because many identified the adversaries in the war as the Democrats and the allies as the Republicans. For decades, politics has been a main way—maybe the main way—that evangelicals have fought the culture war. So when Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for President, many evangelicals supported him. He said he would appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices (which he did). He was running against Hillary Clinton, the wife of the culture war’s enemy from the 1990s, Bill Clinton.

In many ways the new evangelical realignment started in the wake of Trump’s election and term as President. Trump projected an adversarial and brash persona, making fun of his opponents and treating them as enemies. Everything became about winning. Evangelicals began grouping and dividing. While some divided over the question of voting for Trump itself, I don’t think that was the main issue.

Instead, evangelicals have divided over whether they would fight like Trump or not. Whether they would see the world like Trump or not. Some began even more to prioritize cultural victory. The world became even more than before a battle field full of enemies rather than a mission field full of neighbors.

Mission Field Evangelicals

In contrast to the Battle Field vision, other evangelicals have pushed back, arguing that the world is a mission field. The Mission Field vision argues that Battle Field Evangelicalism destroys more than it builds, in a somewhat parasitic way. Instead of a field for war, Jesus calls us to view our world primarily as a place for building for the sake of mission. We build families, because they display the gospel. We build churches, because they proclaim the gospel. We build institutions, because they support the work of the gospel. Even “secular” institutions that contribute to the common good of our society cultivate the field as the seeds of the good news bear fruit.

A theological vision focused on building for mission will seek God, invest in building families and churches, and invest in building institutions that serve the mission and the common good.

I resonate deeply with a Mission Field Evangelical vision. For example, I’m a Southern Baptist largely because of the institutional infrastructure built over centuries for the sake of mission. As I’ve said before:

Rather than loosely associating with “like-minded” ministries and churches, Southern Baptists have institutions and structures to effectively work in obedience to our Great Commander’s mission of making disciples of the nations. Yes, systems and structures inevitably create systemic and structural problems….But as Yuval Levin in A Time to Build has pointed out, such institutions at their best have a good and formational power for those inside of them; and this, in turn, has a positive impact on those outside of those institutions. It’s said that you can’t make old friends. Likewise, you can’t build old institutions.

Yet a Mission Field vision can misfire, yielding to passivity or becoming so concerned about engaging the world that it never contends for God’s Word. People falling over themselves to explain away the blasphemy of the Olympics Opening Ceremony or assembling “Evangelicals for Harris” coalitions come to mind as examples.

Wheat Field Evangelicals

Most evangelicals, though, don’t align neatly with the theological vision of either the Battle Field or the Mission Field, especially when we rightly define evangelicalism to include minority ethnic groups and the global church. Most evangelicals don’t engage the world as either an epic scene of political or cultural conflict or an ongoing missionary assignment. They may vote like Battle Field Evangelicals and they may do mission like Mission Field Evangelicals.

Most evangelicals are what online folks would call “normies”—normal people trying to follow Jesus, provide for their families, and live in their neighborhoods and networks. Maybe we can term the theological vision of this large majority of evangelicals “Wheat Field Evangelicalism.” A Wheat Field is a place of normal and mundane labor and life, a place of digging and watering, planting and providing.

The Bible paints pictures of both battle and mission for us. We are at war, so we put on the armor of God. We are on mission, sent by the Great Commander, so we make disciples of the nations. The question about “battle field” or “mission field” in some ways divides what the Bible keeps together. After all, we’re called to battle and we’re called to mission.

Wheat Field Evangelicals intuitively integrate the best parts of both visions, battle and mission. As Charles Spurgeon pointed out from Nehemiah 4:17, the people rebuilding Jerusalem’s wall had to work with a shovel in one hand and a sword in the other. Wheat Field Evangelicals are evangelizing in Lagos, changing diapers in Cairo, and running after school programs in Des Moines.

In the mundane work of the Wheat Field, Battle Field Evangelicals may engage faithfully in mission and Mission Field Evangelicals may engage faithfully in battle. Likewise, Battle Field Evangelicals remind “average Christians” that we are at war with Satan, sin, and death, and Mission Field Evangelicals remind them that the Great Commander has commissioned us to make disciples of the nations.

Evangelicals in the Wheat Field intuitively understand that Battle Field Evangelicals and Mission Field Evangelicals both play a part in God’s larger purpose. In grace, he even redeems many of our misfires when we choose the wrong tool, whether sword or shovel. Remember, Jesus healed Malchus’s ear when Peter wrongly swung the sword, and he answered as Gideon passively put out the fleece yet again.

Conclusion

I could add a dozen paragraphs with different caveats and clarifications. I don’t consider this a final word on the subject, but another part of a continuing dialogue, both with others and with my own thoughts. In some ways, I’m just trying to get my bearings and work through what has been happening. This is an exercise in getting my theological vision checked to make sure I’m seeing things clearly.

I resonate with the Mission Field vision, I believe Battle Field Evangelicals are my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I also believe that most of the nitty gritty and God-glorifying work of the church happens in the Wheat Field heartland where normal Christians and churches love God and their neighbors.