Ranald Macaulay asks if the 1974 Congress missed something vital
When the Lausanne Congress opened in 1974 the global community was being treated to searing images of the Ethiopian famine.
Also the world-wide level of social-disruption, poverty and oppression couldn’t be ignored. The question of how evangelism relates to this level of suffering was unavoidable. Delegates from the developing world were also insistent that it be addressed. The result was the Lausanne Covenant’s call for ‘a more holistic view of mission’: it clarified the fact that evangelism and social action have always to be carefully distinguished, but never split apart.
Challenging scientific materialism
Our title relates to it like this: if 20th-century evangelicalism in 1974 had to pause and take stock of its neglect of the socio-political aspects of biblical mission (summarised helpfully in Julia Cameron’s article, Feb en) 21st century evangelicalism now needs to face up to what was even then, 42 years ago, a far more serious neglect, namely the need for an intellectual challenge to scientific materialism. After all, wasn’t that the very thing which had undermined the western Church in the first place?
Thankfully, evangelicals refused to be dislodged from their commitment to the Bible as the only reliable (though never exhaustive) truth about the universe in which we live – the Reformation’s ‘sola scriptura’ principle. But from the 19th century their intellectual response was far from adequate. They faithfully preached Scripture ‘truths’, for sure, but they failed to prosecute ‘Truth’. It was as if Paul’s injunction to ‘destroy every argument which raises itself up against the knowledge of God’, had never been written (2 Corinthians 10.5). As a result the institutions of western society fell prey to the juggernaut of scientific materialism – its schools, universities, newspapers, films, radio, television etc. Only C S Lewis and a few other 20th century apologists raised their voices in protest.
Then and now
A lot has happened since and we now face a scepticism in Britain ten times worse than when Billy Graham arrived at Harringay in 1954. The New Atheism is evidence enough: supernatural facts are even more strenuously denied; the idea that Adam and Eve were the progenitors of the human race is derided; a God who judges sinners is considered offensive, even repulsive; condemnation of certain sexual acts is repressive; worst of all, exclusive Truth has to be anti-social – perhaps even criminal!
Ironically, within a century and a half of the enthronement of Human Reason the philosophers had concluded that reason itself could not be accounted for! They admitted that the finite mind can never arrive at anything like the traditional view of ‘objective Truth’, since it is of necessity limited. Ideas and propositions can never be absolute: so ‘Truth’ disappears.
‘Just spread the gospel’?
But most evangelicals weren’t even remotely aware of this development. They saw the ‘breakdown of society’, the decline in standards, the rise in crime and so on but the most important part of the Modernist narrative, its advancing bankruptcy, was a closed book to them. Interestingly, some of the world’s leading non-Christian commentators couldn’t have been clearer: ‘What concerns me’, said Niall Ferguson in 2005 ‘…(is) the moral vacuum our de-Christianisation has created…Heaven knows how we can rekindle our religion, but I believe we must’. True, a few prescient Christians understood the significance of this curious volte face, but few church leaders paid much attention. Intellectual concerns like this weren’t on their agenda. The need of the hour, as always, was to mobilise the church for ‘the spread of the gospel’. As one leader put it in a university mission, ‘bypass the mind and strike at the will’.
Some attempts to redirect things were made but many were too little and too late. Tyndale House in Cambridge, for example, was founded in 1944 and was a blessing then and now. But its focus was biblical studies only – which yet again left the naturalistic epistemology undermining all religious claims unchallenged. Even Lausanne 1974 seemed unable to address it properly. The focus was evangelism and its relation to social action, as we saw.
Central issue overlooked
After 42 years the irony in all this is almost unbearable. Even though our chief opposition since the Enlightenment admits its own bankruptcy we seem unable to press home our advantage. Thankfully an apologetic groundswell has helped, but ordinary church-members know little about it. No surprise, then, that Daniel Bourdanné (General Secretary of IFES worldwide) makes the observation that ‘the university is…a strategic place where the ideologies, philosophies and scientific theories of our modern societies are formed. Yet the impact of evangelicalism is declining considerably in its midst. Are we losing the battle for the mind?..I strongly suspect that there might be a significant correlation between our inadequate approach and the limited impact we are having on society.’
The Covenant of 1974 was right to correct the earlier mistakes and introduce a more holistic view of mission; but surely, even back then, the failure to challenge Naturalism was an even greater omission. Lausanne didn’t deal with it because the same mind-set which neglected a holistic view of mission also neglected intellectual engagement. Lausanne strengthened our biblical vision up to a point, but failed to deal with the more glaring weakness - our loss of a Christian mind.
Nurturing intellectual champions
Only one thing now will make the difference we need. Antonio Gremsci, an Italian communist who died in 1937, called it the deliberate nurturing of ‘organic intellectuals’. Realising that armed revolution wouldn’t bring about a Marxist take-over in Western Europe he reached back, interestingly, to the 16th century Reformation. There he saw that the Protestant churches had developed men and women of sufficient intellectual ability and training to be able to infiltrate and, in due course, re-order the institutions of cultural influence.
What he had in mind, no doubt, were men like Roger Ascham and William Cecil, both undergraduates at St. John’s College Cambridge who converted to Protestantism by the mid-1530s. Ascham tutored Elizabeth and her younger half-brother, Edward. When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558 she immediately appointed Cecil as her principal Secretary. There his influence touched almost every aspect of late Tudor society. Ascham and Cecil were what Gremsci would have called ‘organic intellectuals’ – to distinguish them from ‘traditional intellectuals’. They were critical of the prevailing establishment and able to argue their case so attractively and plausibly that the whole society was turned around. Central to their success was a polemical imperative. They realised that the Catholic and Protestant worldviews were irreconcilable and so had to ‘fight it out’ to the end, not with physical arms, of course, but through a war of ideas (polemos = war).
New Reformation
Recent steps to produce organic intellectuals within Evangelicalism have made some difference: atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens have been challenged in public; a few philosophy departments have ‘changed hands’; student evangelism has been emboldened; many apologetic aids have been produced.
My conclusion is this: Cape Town Lausanne in 2010 could have been a lot clearer in this area. The Gremsci / Reformation model is already long overdue and now a matter of survival in my opinion – especially for evangelical churches where the idea of an intellectual challenge to the sta- tus quo is often dismissed as suspect, just as the idea of social action was after Lausanne 1974. The harsh reality, however, is that Scripture demands both these ingredients (the Christian Mind and Social Concern) and our evangelism will continue to suffer until we stop pretending it doesn’t. But the intellectual barrenness around us does open up a new possibility. Scientific Materialism has nothing to say. It is as intellectually bankrupt as the Catholic Church was in the early 16th century. A shift of gear on our part really could bring about a new and unquenchable Reformation which would evangelise the globe. That was Lausanne’s original dream in 1974. Sadly the ‘polemical imperative’ was overlooked – and Cape Town 2010 didn’t do enough to make it centre stage. It can be ignored no longer.
