The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The age of Spurgeon and Moody by David W. Bebbington (InterVarsity, 2005), 288 pp.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
There’s no mention of homosexuality in this excellent worldwide survey of mid-to-late 19th century evangelicalism – another volume in the prestigious series on evangelical history edited by the author and Mark A. Noll. Why no mention of it? Was there no homosexuality back then? The Religious Right would have us believe it’s been with us since Sodom. So why did evangelicals “dare not speak its name” until the late 20th century when, at least on the Right, there’s now no shutting up about it? Might it be that issues of homosexuality are not intrinsic fundamentals of the faith?
Bebbington, a major church historian, is known for what’s called “the Bebbington quadrilateral” – a well-received defining of evangelicalism in terms of high commitment to Scripture, the cross, conversion and missionary/social work. He asserts that, from the beginning of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846, allegiance to the Scriptures was coupled with “the responsibility of private judgment in their interpretation.” This is not today’s EA – especially on the Bible and homosexuality. He adds: “The Bible was the supreme source of information about ultimate issues, but it could never contradict new information about the natural world.” And even “the truths of the gospel, [the great evangelist] Finney believed, had been ‘hidden under a false philosophy.’” Does Falwell sound like Finney? How readily do evangelicals today read the Bible on “homosexuality” in light of social and psychological research on sexual orientation? “Prayer,” he says, “was the most obvious way in which evangelicals practiced their faith.” Prayer is probably not the most obvious identifier of evangelicalism today.
He points out that 19th-century evangelicals often strayed from the fourfold anchorage into distractive “novelties [that were] less than a hundred years old.” And we can and do so stray today. According to Bebbington, “the common features of the whole evangelical movement undergirded an immense variety of expressions. If the movement was recognizably one, it was also in several respects diverse.” While today’s stereotypes of 19th-century evangelicals may not grasp that conservative theological giants such as Hodge and Warfield could embrace “a Christian understanding of Darwin’s version” of evolution or that revivalists such as Spurgeon and Moody could “deliberately downplay” hellfire and brimstone, they are quick to grasp that “in the years before the Civil War [Southern] theologians generated an elaborate vindication of slavery that was powerful enough to persuade some Northerners of their biblical case” and buy into the fact that, in 1891, a Southern Baptist document rationalized: “colored people [show a] perfect willingness to accept a subordinate place.”
Evangelicalism is still diverse – but we miss this in the establishment media of both evangelicalism and secularism. While, for example, it would seem that all evangelicals are antigay, polls show that evangelicals span the spectrum, from hostility to all homosexuality to full support for marriage for same-sex couples. Over the years, the keynoters at EC conferences have been mainstream leaders in evangelicalism (e.g., Rinker, Smedes, Shedd, Lindskoog, Wolterstorff, Balmer, Dayton, Medema, Clements) while those at “ex-gay” conferences have tended to be intramural “ex-gay” movement personnel. And though philosopher W. Jay Wood at evangelicalism’s flagship Wheaton College obligingly adds “homosexual activity” to a vice list of “sexual encounters with minors, siblings, another person’s spouse, [and] sadomasochistic” activity [that] Christians consider immoral,” he grants, in Books & Culture from Christianity Today: “In-house disagreements remain among Christians regarding the appropriateness of sex that is not open to conception, between divorced persons, or even between members of the same sex.” (March/April 2005)
“By the middle of the nineteenth century, “ Bebbington notes, “it was normal for evangelicals to assume that the values of the Christian faith were equally those of progressive thinking.” Along this line, New York University historian Jonathan Zimmerman editorializes: “Evangelical Christianity powered every great liberal social reform in American history.” (The New York Post, October 24, 2005)
Now, of course, neither Bebbington nor Zimmerman – nor Wood, for that matter – is making a case for evangelical acceptance of homosexuality. They are taking note of the always-enlivening antidote of historical perspective – something that would be as useful for today’s evangelical denouncers of homosexuals as it could have been to 19th-century evangelical denouncers of abolitionists, Roman Catholics, and fancy-dressed Methodists. These latter denouncers advocated “come-outism.” That didn’t mean a call to “come out” as gay but to come out of their fancy clothes and ornate church buildings.
There was as much in 19th-century evangelicalism that would seem strange to evangelicals today as there is much in today’s evangelicalism that would seem strange to evangelicals of the 19th century. Who today would guess that it was postmillennialism rather than premillennialism that was the popular evangelical eschatology back then? Today’s ubiquitous dispensationalism (including the quirky Left Behind variety) was unknown in those “good old days” – as was Pentecostalism. Who today would think that altar flowers and church organs were controversial among evangelicals of yesteryear? Well, organs have come and – in today’s evangelical megachurches – gone! But that doesn’t mean these congregations have gone back to Psalm singing. Now they sing “off the walls” what sparks “worship wars.”
And evangelical pollster George Barna tells us that some 20 million evangelicals are coming out of their local churches in favor of “a first-century lifestyle based on faith, goodness, love, generosity, kindness, simplicity.” They’re moving into house churches, workplace Bible studies and even into a so-called “personal ‘church’ of the individual.” He cheers this while other evangelicals are appalled.
So: Evangelicalism evolves and diversifies? You bet! Oops – not all evangelicals bet, though 18th-century evangelical Anglican William Romaine wrote to his son reporting that a lottery ticket he’d sent him came up “BLANK. If you buy me another, perhaps it may be more successful.” Bet on it: evangelical gay people will be ho-hum in the future – but, sadly, that won’t be soon enough for the victims of evangelical prejudice today. Still, by God’s grace: We’re the church of reformation – and ever reforming.