When Piety Prevails

Every age brings problems that hinder genuine Christian faith and produce aberrations that lead to further difficulties. The Christian Church in our generation has been beset by the flight from reason and by subjectivity. The same sort of situation occurred in German Lutheranism after the Reformation.

In the age of orthodoxy following the Lutheran Reformation such able theologians as Calov, Chemnitz, Dannhauer, Gerhard, and Quenstadt wrote monumental works of scholarship. Their comprehension of the theology and their breadth of biblical knowledge probably has never been surpassed. But despite that the Lutheran Church suffered from a lack of piety and spiritual warmth. A Christianity of the intellect prevailed over a faith of the heart—“hair-splitting disputatiousness,” one writer put it.

A sterile Lutheranism needed reform and it came in pietism that moved, pendulum-like, in the opposite direction. Scholarly Lutheranism had stressed doctrine; pietism stressed life. And it stressed sanctification more than justification. Pietists emphasized experience rather than liturgy and the sacraments or ordinances. Personal feelings, private piety, and small Bible study and prayer groups (not wrong in themselves) produced an unhealthy subjectivism. Scholarly Lutheranism had been strong on the objective; pietism was strong on the subjective. With the Enlightenment pietistic Lutheranism could not answer or ward off the onslaughts of a new rationalism. Some churches still have not recovered.

In Christendom today we find similarities with that earlier age. Churches emphasize practical Christianity and relational theology. Heart dominates head; experiencing Christianity is more important than knowing doctrine. As in the age of pietism we find many home Bible study and small prayer groups replacing liturgy and the sacraments. Ministers preach “how to” sermons rather than exegetical ones. We can also mark the trend by the rising number of how-to books on marriage, raising children, sex, and the like. Once preachers were authentically prophetic; they told people what they should be, and what they should and should not do. The sanctity of marriage was assumed and divorce was disgraceful. Fornication and adultery were called sins. Homosexuality was not condoned by psychological whitewash. Because the church stopped preaching doctrine it lost its influence for good in people’s lives.

A group of evangelicals, who issued “The Chicago Call” (see June 17 issue, Page 27) want to return to a concern for liturgy and sacrament. They recognize the need for authority in the Church. And they want evangelicals to be conscious of the history of the Church. The signers of the Chicago Call long for spirituality and sacramental integrity.

Over-emphasis on precise doctrine leads to spiritual loss. Over-emphasis on personal experience leads to loss of theological moorings. The Church needs both true biblical doctrine and deep spiritual fervor. When these meld the Christian Church will recover the vitality that has marked each great age of its long history.

Welcome to Blandings Castle

“It’s too hot to do anything.” Sound familiar? That mournful cry was particularly apt as the staff members of Christianity Today put their first issue together in the new Carol Stream offices. The temperature shot up to the 100-degree mark the way a strong man and his mallet rings a circus gong. For those readers who think the only solution to such heat is an air conditioned house or a prolonged swim we suggest P. G. Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse). His frivolous tales of Blandings Castle and prize pigs or of London and the Drones Club can help you beat the heat and perhaps save some energy. A Wodehouse character is unforgettable. Jeeves the gentleman’s gentleman who rescues his employer Bertie Wooster from many a soup. Or Roberta Wickham who lands him there. For Wodehouse-fans-to-be we suggest biting into Plum Pie or deciphering The Code of the Woosters. He produced two humorous books a year for over sixty years, enough to keep even the fastest reader cool for many a heat wave to come. Everyone needs a little whimsy.

Others Say…

Yes, There Are Semi-Evangelicals

Joseph Bayly, Vice President, David C. Cook

Martin Marty, who is the Christian Century’s church historian, theologian, and conscience all rolled into one (and a most impressive one), recently objected to what he said was a description of an outstanding sociologist-theologian as a “semi-evangelical.” (Actually the statement appeared in a book review by John Warwick Montgomery in the April 1 issue of Christianity Today.)

What, asked Dr. Marty, is a semi-evangelical? Is it someone who goes halfway to evangelical events (“Key 36.5, Lausane 37”)? Is it a “born-again” person whose conversion turns him around 90 degrees instead of 180? Is it a “half-dipped” immersionist?

I’d like to try to answer Marty’s question, because I think Montgomery used a proper descriptive term when he spoke of a semi-evangelical. I do not speak to whether the term accurately fits the person thus described.

“Semi-evangelical” is rather akin to such words as semi-literate, semi-conscious, or semi-precious, all of which are given in Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1976. The prefix semi indicates “partial, incomplete, having some of the characteristics of” the modified word.

What is a semi-evangelical?

It’s a person (or institution or movement) who calls himself evangelical today because that’s where the action and growth are, although he looked down on the term—and the people—a few years ago.

A semi-evangelical is one who turned from traditional liberal Christianity with its near-total concern for social causes during the disillusionment of the late sixties and is giving uneasy and uncertain lip service to the concept of personal salvation in the seventies.

A semi-evangelical sees only the sacramental element in the Chicago Call, that it is “friendly to the Catholic tradition” and that it will strengthen “mainline” religion (Christian Century, June 1).

A semi-evangelical sees “mainline” religion as the major denominations themselves, rather than the stream of believers in Jesus Christ, Risen Saviour and Living Lord, that started with the Day of Pentecost, resurfaced in the Reformation, gained strength in the Wesleyan Revival, and has continued to be a strong force both in and out of the major denominations ever since.

A semi-evangelical may not understand, or may be puzzled at, the fact that “mainline” (denominational) evangelicals feel closer to non-mainline evangelicals than to mainline non-evangelicals. But it doesn’t surprise a full evangelical that an evangelical United Presbyterian relates spiritually to an evangelical Lutheran—or Plymouth Brethren—much more easily than to a non-evangelical United Presbyterian.

There is an ancient ecumenism, denied by the separatists and never recognized by the National Council of Churches, that unites evangelical Christians in what they perceive to be a movement rather than an organization. This ecumenical movement is represented by colleges, Bible institutes and seminaries, missionary and welfare agencies, rescue missions, campus ministries, camps and conferences, and publishing houses. And through the charismatic movement—which is first of all evangelical—it goes beyond Protestantism to embrace Roman Catholic believers.

Marty speaks of running into a convention of Christian truckers at a hotel where he was staying. “You won’t believe this,” he says, “but there’s a whole organization of people who want to keep on truckin’ for God. Their journal is Wheels Alive.”

But it’s not hard for an evangelical to believe that Christian truckers want to evangelize other truckers—or that Christian doctors, nurses, lawyers, and business people want to do the same thing, for that matter—just as Christian fishermen and tax collectors once wanted to evangelize their fellows.

A semi-evangelical tries to move evangelicalism away from a strong view of the Bible’s inspiration and authority, away from Jesus Christ as the only hope for reconciliation with God, toward humanism or universalism.

A semi-evangelical tries to move evangelicalism away from a strong view of the Bible’s inspiration and authority, away from Jesus Christ as the only hope for reconciliation with God, toward humanism or universalism.

A semi-evangelical claims to be able to preserve belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ “even if the bones of Jesus could be produced today” (as a recent article put it).

As an evangelical, I hope that with our growth in numbers and influence in recent years, we’ll improve in manners and morals. Then the semis may want to become full members of the movement.

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