New Style "Evangelical" Liberals

NEW-STYLE LIBERALS

So what's changed? Today, many of those I would call liberals would proudly call themselves "evangelical." So why aren't they evangelicals? After all, they affirm miracles, Jesus' physical resurrection, the need for conversion, and the centrality of the cross. Aren't those things what evangelicalism is all about?

Recently, we in Britain have had to confront that very question, with prominent evangelicals denying penal substitution but claiming they are still evangelical. On what grounds? Because (they say) they simply teach what they find in the Bible. They want to live under the Bible. How then, they ask, can they be called liberal? This has come up time and again—over penal substitution, over Clark Pinnock and open theism, over questions of practicing homosexuality. These are said to be possible evangelical views, because evangelicals in good conscience hold them as biblical teaching.

You can read Ovey's complete article at Notes from the Future: Evangelical Liberalism in the UK

Is Evangelicalism Fighting for Its Life?

In recent headlines the debate has been rekindled about whether or not Evangelicalism is a dying faith. Rick Warren commented on CBS News that the moral majority and the religious right might die off but the church will never die. The demise of Christianity has been predicted since the rebirth of the Old Testament church on the day of Pentecost but God has sovereignly protected the church and has always kept a remnant of true believers.

Unfortunately, folks like Rick Warren are part of the problem. The dumbing down of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformation has led to all sorts of heterodoxy and heresy within the Protestant mainline churches and that principle is now being reduplicated in Evangelicalism because of the spread of Christless Christianity through the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement and its illegitimate child, the church growth movement.

This video clip reveals the symptoms of such compromises and points us back to the Bible and to the Gospel.

May God grant us the grace to believe!

Charlie