What amazes me is not that Jimmy Carter still holds to the same, tired, truthless ecumenical agenda that one had hoped had passed with the old century, but that the Evangelical Alliance should have printed his views without casting a single doubt upon them. Worse, the editor of Idea appears to endorse them. In his notes, he describes Carter as ‘a strong evangelical leader who pulls no punches in his comments on diversity and unity’. He goes on to say, ‘We’re proud to feature his only UK print interview this year on our pages. We also heartily recommend his new book…’
If the Evangelical Alliance actually believes that true Christian and church unity lies down a route that treats the clear teaching of Scripture with such superficial disdain, then they will rapidly lose all credibility among those determined to remain Bible-centred. Here is just another indication of how the professing evangelical constituency is pulling itself apart. What liberal evangelicals need to understand is that a truly radical evangelicalism must be utterly faithful to scriptural imperatives and principles.
But just to show I am not a time-warped evangelical dinosaur, I agree that conservative evangelicals need to understand that the truly radical evangelicalism must be totally engaged with the concerns of the world it inhabits. Thinking about Jimmy Carter reminds me there is an unhealthy correlation between particular political allegiances on both sides of the Atlantic. Conservative Christians tend to be right wing and those with more liberal Christian inclinations left wing. A genuinely Bible-centred evangelicalism would need to set itself above current party political interest and show that God is equally concerned with all matters of morality and justice, both public and private.
