EVANGELICALISM:
A Very Short Introduction.
By John Stackhouse
Oxford University Press. 138 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 0 190 079 680
John Stackhouse ‘wrote this book as an evangelical, a faithful and critical member of a family that … has both blessed and wounded me.’
In a key chapter, he considers the marks of evangelicalism. One option, which he rejects, ‘is to view evangelicalism the way that many evangelicals themselves see it, as denoting the true faith’.
His preferred position is to see evangelicalism as a style. The difficulty with this essentially social definition of evangelicalism is that is can potentially apply to all manner of social manifestations. But it does allow him to helpfully insist that ‘ “Conservative” should not be used … as a synonym for evangelical. Conservative churches are conservative. Evangelicals, by contrast, have been only selectively conservative’, and are ready to be radical in certain areas.
Evangelicals are, he suggests ‘fully Trinitarian’, ‘Biblicist’, ‘conversionist’, ‘missional’, ‘populist’ and ‘pragmatic’ – by which he means a concern to get things done. He identifies modern challenges, but regards the main issue threatening evangelicalism as same-sex marriage.
He brings a careful observation of historical detail and does not limit himself to the English-speaking church. He makes the persuasive suggestion, for example, that ‘The eruption of indigenous evangelicalism … came largely with the rise of … Pentecostalism’, and gives a helpful account of the forms of ‘holiness’, ‘second blessing’, and ‘Pentecostal’ movements, that well repays reading.
He illuminates when he observes ‘it is Pietism as a renewal movement and Puritanism as a reform movement that provide the two main modes of evangelical life’, but less helpful when he suggests ‘the Puritans agreed on what they did not want – a temporising Church of England – but they did not agree on what they did want. And once they were in charge, their differences erupted into fractious competition’.
The author is revealing for what he thinks of as ‘second order questions’: the meaning of hell; the final destiny of those who do not hear the gospel; whether Adam and Eve were literal direct creations of God; and the ordination of women. We can understand Stackhouse’s position by recognising his ‘Biblical feminism’ stance, which for him means, he tells us elsewhere, a doubleness in Scripture, both patriarchal (including, controversially, Jesus’ ministry) and egalitarian. He explains this as ‘Holy Spirit pragmatism’, whereby God works with people, including whole cultures, according to our capacity for change.
A ‘very short’ history of evangelicalism leaves inevitable gaps. The names that recur most often are the Wesleys, Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Billy Graham and, to a lesser extent, John Stott. Key figures are absent, such as Jim Packer, despite Stackhouse having succeeded to the position Packer held at Regent College. The contribution of the people associated with Princeton is largely absent. His reliance on passing remarks risks caricature, as when we have Francis Schaeffer’s work dismissed as ‘mere tracts for the times, largely forgotten a single generation later’.
Readers most likely to find it helpful are those who count themselves as eclectic in regard to the issues covered in this book. Evangelicals of the J.C. Ryle sort – who remarked that ‘without Protestant and Evangelical principles, a church is as useless as a well without water’ – will find it somewhat equivocal.
