In Praise of Evangelical Identity

Of all the back-and-forth that came from the World Vision
imbroglio this week, there’s at least one other reason to be encouraged about
their reversing course, aside from their board
taking the necessary steps to correct a gravely wrong error.

World Vision says something about evangelical identity.

Criticisms of evangelicalism are unending. For some, we’re mired
in whatever is the latest “scandal” of the evangelical mind. We lack a
gravitational center; at least we’re told. The minimalism of the Bebbington Quadrilateral
remains helpful, despite mocking from Catholic friends.

But once in awhile, we get our movement and ourselves right.
Leaving aside the (valid) criticisms of para-church ministry structure and its
lack of ecclesiological grounding, World Vision’s decision to reverse course
from a patently unbiblical and patently unhistorical position, demonstrates
that evangelicalism has boundary markers. We have core
beliefs about authority. We may not always agree on what the precise
boundaries are, but the World Vision event this week helps us identify
the approximate boundaries, and when it has been crossed.
Evangelicalism did triage this
week, and did it well. We saw through the malaise of theological indifferentism
and insisted that while evangelicalism remains a big tent, at some point, the
canopy ends.

In American evangelicalism, you can’t believe in anything
you want and call yourself an evangelical. That what Mainline Protestantism is for. That’s the route that “professional
dissidents ” like Rachel Held Evans want evangelicalism to become,
but that only leads to eternal pottage.

World Vision reversed course, ostensibly, from an outpouring of
criticism from conservative Christians all over the United States. To the lot
of us, there seemed to be something inconsistent about a Christian organization
making marriage an adiaphora—something up for negation, or compromise. And
that’s why I remain skeptical at trend lines that suggest that younger
evangelicals will embrace same-sex marriage. It defies precedent. In each age, intellectual
surrender and compromise has stood before the church, yet she keeps on
going. The faith persists. As G. K. Chesterton said that bears
repeating: “Time and again, the Faith has to all appearances gone to the
dogs. But each time, it was the dog that died.”

In a day
where American views of sexuality are fracturing, the World Vision episode reveals that
the gravitational center of evangelicalism remains decidedly biblical. The challenge before us today is to keep it that way. 

Modes of baptism may be negotiable, but
even then, we all insist that it is water that must be present. The same
couldn’t be said about the bitter pill World Vision was asking evangelicalism
to swallow. Evangelicals know that the structure and design of human embodiment
has a biblical telos to it, that marriage is
something, but World Vision was saying something different.

We
weren’t having it. But there were no Papal Bulls. There were no Councils. There
were no Synods. There was only evangelicalism with Bibles open, recognizing
that a line had been crossed.

Good
for World Vision in correcting course. This episode will subside, and wounds
will heal. Their integrity remains intact. Their steps to reverse a
horrifically wrong stance are commendable. And good for evangelicalism to have
the identity it does to know what its identity is and isn’t.