The Evangelical Undertow

"There is a mounting tide of conservatism in Protestantism," argues Dr. Ilion T. Jones, retired professor of San Fran cisco Theological Seminary. "I am convinced that an 'evangelical undertow' is rapidly building up in our century and that it must be reckoned with sooner or later."

Dr. Jones' undertow is a hard-to-map third stream in American Protestant ism, running midway between the simplistic fundamentalism of small Christian sects, and the sophisticated faith espoused by a majority of the nation's best-known theologians and denominational leaders. It is best known as evangelical conservatism, and it stands for a strictly orthodox Protestant faith that summons scholarship to the defense of traditional Reformation doctrine.

The Creed: Yes or No. Evangelical conservatism makes open war on secularism; it distrusts Rome and opposes any movement toward union with Catholicism; it stands opposed to the "liberalism" and ecumenical spirit of the leaders of the mainstream Protestant denominations in the National Council of Churches. "Conservatism holds to the necessity of recognizing an absolute deity," says the Rev. Curtis Nims of San Francisco's First Baptist Church. "The conservative accepts the Bible as the authoritative rule of faith and practice. The corporeal Resurrection and the Virgin Birth are firm parts of conservative doctrine." In theology, according to Dr. Roger Nicole of Massachusetts' Gordon Divinity School, the new conservatism does not favor "the evasion of the manifest meaning of the creed on the pretext of a nonliberal interpretation. You either subscribe to the creed or you don't."

The Darwin-hating Baptists of the early 20th century attacked modernism with simple faith and simple anathemas. The evangelical conservatives, by contrast, strive for a consistent, logical theology; their best-known writers--such as Editor Carl Henry of Christianity Today and Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary--challenge Barth, Bultmann and Tillich on the ground that these men propose as truth personal heresies and unwarranted distinctions that are incompatible with essential Biblical faith and Protestant tradition.

"Articulate Minority." The size and strength of the movement are hard to measure. Dean Jerald Brauer of the University of Chicago Divinity School argues that the movement appears impressive because of "an articulate minority talking at the top," but is "not as strong, relatively speaking, as it was five years ago." Conservatives claim that they represent about 70% of the nation's grass-roots Christians. As evidence of health, they point to the undiminished appeal of Billy Graham, the growth of such conservative groups as the National Association of Evangelicals (which claims to speak for 10 million Protestants), the spread of the movement within ecumenically oriented churches.

A case in point is Lyndon Johnson's church, the Disciples of Christ; about half of their churches (but not Johnson's) belong to the conservative North American Christian Convention, which could, in a matter of years, formally break away from the parent body. In Oakland, Calif., 18 months ago, the Melrose Baptist Church withdrew from the American Baptist Convention in protest against the ecumenical outlook of the denomination's leaders and the kind of theology taught at Eastern Baptist seminaries.

Toward Maturity. "Basically, there is a conservative group in practically every congregation and every seminary and every Christian organization today," says Dr. Earl Kalland, faculty dean of Denver's Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary. Critics of evangelical conservatism charge that the real sources of its strength are desire for the sustenance of a simplified faith in an age of turmoil, wistful yearning for the good old days when Protestantism was in fact if not in name the American established church. Conservatives answer that they express the general belief of U.S. Protestants, who are indifferent to the complex insights of modern theologians and to the church-joining concerns of denominational leaders.

Even some progressive churchmen agree that evangelical Christianity represents a step toward maturity of the conservative impulse. "Conservative Christianity is growing by trying to become respectable," says Dr. Nels Ferre of the liberal Andover Newton Theological School, and he credits it with seeking "an intelligent evangelical faith. The conservative movement is neither an obscurantist fundamentalism nor a negative modernism--and it is making inroads everywhere."

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