Evangelicals are still searching for the elusive ideal of unity.
Douglas A. Sweeney | posted 10/01/2006 12:00AM
It is time that the evangelical movement sees itself for what it is: a lion on the loose that no one today seriously fears." So wrote Carl F. H. Henry in the very year Newsweek dubbed "The Year of the Evangelical" (1976). Harold John Ockenga was wont to be more optimistic. But two years later, even he was worried that the New Evangelicalism was fraying around the edges.
"Great visibility is being given today to the word 'evangelical' and to the evangelical movement," Ockenga wrote in a volume to honor Wilbur Smith, another erstwhile optimist. "Hopefully, it will not be vitiated by a division of the movement or by a loss of fidelity to evangelical content and practice." By the end of the 1970s, despite their notable fame and fortune, the New Evangelical leadership had several weighty reasons to fear that their movement had started to slip between their fingers.
Division and Diversity
During the early years of the movement, the New Evangelicals largely succeeded in their efforts to re-engage ...
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