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Perhaps the most significant development of all is that, this time around, the renewal movements within the denominations are being fueled by evangelical parachurch movements that stand outside the denominations.

The current evangelical renewal began in the mid-1960s. A ministerial student named Charles Keysor, dismayed by the hostility to orthodox Christianity he encountered at his Methodist seminary, published an article in New Christian Advocate, a journal for Methodist ministers; he called on Methodist evangelicals to come out of the closet. The article drew a huge response—over 200 letters and phone calls. Most were from pastors who were frustrated at lack of contact with other evangelicals and at feeling "cut off from the leadership of the church." So to encourage, connect, and inform orthodox Methodists, Keysor founded a magazine he called Good News.

At about the same time over in the United Presbyterian Church—which became the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in a 1987 merger—a group of wealthy evangelical laymen was startled into action by a proposed new confession that would declare "the Scriptures are nevertheless the words of men." They formed the Presbyterian Lay Committee, and sought to oppose the new confession through articles in denominational publications. When UPC leaders refused to print the articles, the Committee offered to buy advertising space in the magazines. Again it was rebuffed. So in order to bring its case to the church at large, the Committee resorted to buying ads in The New York Times and other major newspapers. Despite these efforts, the new confession was adopted in 1967. Then the Committee, like Keysor, took its cause to the people in the pews by founding The Layman, a magazine to rally Presbyterian evangelicals.

Today the largest of the renewal groups is the United Methodist Confessing Movement, with more than 630,000 members and 1,400 churches. The fastest-growing group is the Confessing Church Movement of the PCUSA. In just two years it has enrolled over 420,000 people—fully 17 percent of the denomination's membership. Evangelicals have also formed renewal groups in the American Baptist Churches, the Disciples of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the United Church of Christ.

Common commitments and problems have led the groups to cooperate across denominational lines. The Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD) serves as a clearinghouse for the entire movement, and it helped form the Association for Church Renewal (ACR) in 1986. The ACR quickly became the umbrella organization for the entire movement. Altogether, publications and mailings of the member organizations of the ACR reach an estimated 2.4 million mainline church members.

Renewal organizations work from within their denominations, calling for reform. Their goal is neither schism nor takeover, but to mobilize evangelicals in the pews to change their churches' mission, polity, discipline, theological education, worship and educational ministries. As the Confessing Movement proclaims, "We are United Methodists within the United Methodist Church. We intend to stay within the United Methodist Church."

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August 2003, Vol. 47, No. 8