The Unbearable Lightness of Being Evangelical

A friend pointed me to a fascinating article in The New Republic profiling a handful of recent converts to the Orthodox Church. Not little-o orthodox, but Big-O Orthodox. You know, the ones that trace their doctrinal decisions and their lines of leadership back to the original apostles?

It’s interesting in part because the principal subjects of the article live in Wheaton, IL — the Rome of the Evangelical world, home do innumerable Christian colleges and publishers and organizations and churches. (Oh, man, the churches. Through the 80s, Wheaton was effectively a dry town — I believe one, perhaps two businesses in the entire city were allowed liquor licenses, and grocery stores were SOL. Instead of bars, there were large swaths of Wheaton that had two, even three churches on a single street. But I digress.)

It’s also interesting because the article keeps coming back to a central theme — a growing number of people are grappling with the relatively shallow experience offered by the Evangelical church. More specifically, the experience defined by culture rather than dogma or doctrine.

Since the late nineteenth century, when fundamentalism emerged as a response to the increasing cosmopolitanism of mainline Protestant denominations, evangelicalism has been an anti-modern movement. But, at the same time, with its belief in the importance of saving lost souls, evangelicalism hasn’t been able to completely divorce itself from modern culture…

The conservative trappings of the Evangelical world cover up beliefs that is anything but: they’re shaped by reactions and adaptations to decidedly modern ideas, defined by 50-year-old ideological alliances rather than 500 or 2000-year old principles. The article covers some really interesting ground; maybe I’ll have to poke around and see one of the services soon…