Orthodox ethicist Vigen Guroian suggests that conservative Protestantism in the US has relied on American Christendom to buttress itself. American Christendom was the body for bodiless evangelical churches. Now that Christendom is gone, there’s little holding evangelicalism up.
Guroian’s observation suggests that we’re not simply talking about the end of an American experiment but the end of a form of Protestantism that goes back to Luther. Put it like this: Can there be a magisterial Reformation without the magistrate? Or, to get at the same reality from another direction: Is it any wonder that Protestants from various traditions now find the radical reformation so attractive?
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