Post-Evangelicalism...? - Part 2 of 3

The Post-Evangelical
(Dave Tomlinson)

01 - A Symbol of Hope
...the lack of ready alternatives to evangelicalism-as-usual is a major reason why people give up the quest altogether, and consequently become ex-Christians.

Why "Post"-Evangelical?
Most people who contemplate the possibilities of being "post"-evangelical do so because of the difficulty they have reconciling what they see and experience in evangelicalism with their own values, theological reflection, and intuition.

...while evangelicalism is supremely good at introducing people to faith in Christ, it's distinctly unhelpful when it comes to encouraging a more "grown up" experience of faith.

What does grown up mean? Lots of things, so I will just mention the one definition I heard cited most often: the desire to interact on a more positive level with non-evangelical theologies and perspectives.

I would say that a new way of looking at Christianity is needed because of our current culture shift and not because of a change in maturity. - Holly Rankin Zaher

...alternative perspectives are mentioned in evangelical circles only to promptly dismiss them as rubbish or disgraceful compromises.

The culture war is part of our evangelical genetic code. - Timothy Keel

...a more "grown up" environment is one in which there are fewer predigested opinions, fewer categorical conclusions, and a lot more space to explore alternative ideas.

Faith is more than an intellectual buffet where we are given permission to try this or that. Faith is a relationship with Jesus complete with all the twists and turns that relationships bring. It's in the tussle of following this Jesus - during the process of getting to know God - that I am surprised, confronted, exposed, challenged, and pushed beyond my comfort zone. The word for this dynamic interaction with God is growth. Not only does my faith in Christ allow me more space to explore alternative ideas, my faith allows me the space to follow Jesus wherever he goes. I wish Dave would have argues that many of us have no choice about this; if we want to follow Jesus, and we do, then we must go where he goes, ignoring, as we should, those who say we can't go there. - Mike Yaconelli

...room to express doubt without having someone rush around in a mad panic trying to "deliver" them from unbelief.

Narrowmindedness and dogmatism are to be found in churches of all traditions.

All in all, swapping traditions is not necessarily a solution to the questions post-evangelicals are asking.

What Do We Mean by "Evangelical"?
Although one writer has described no fewer than 16 distinct strands of evangelicalism, we can, even from this simple historical outline, identify several major features common to most evangelicals across the denominational spectrum. Evangelicals recognize faith in Christ's atoning work as absolutely central. They assert that this faith must be personal, leading to an experience of conversion. They stress the importance of declaring the gospel to non-believers. They hold to the supremacy of Scripture over all other sources of authority. Some, like the fundamentalists, claim that the Bible is inerrant, (the belief that in its original form it contained no errors or mistakes), and most hold a position very close to inerrancy even though they do not like the word. Evangelicals also universally believe in the actual, historical nature of events like the virgin birth, the miracles, and the death and bodily resurrection of Christ.

...it's no longer possible to generalize about the movement. These criticisms are more representative of the fundamentalist wing than evangelicalism as a whole. The "post-evangelicalism" championed in these pages could more accurately be described as "post-fundamentalism" or"post-legalism". - Mark Galli

Evangelicalism must also be understood as a "culture" with a particular social ambience.

...distinctive social attitudes and behavioural expections, which at best might be interpreted as the right way for Christians to live, and at worst are criticized as being chritianized, middle-class conservativism. To be fair, evangelicalism is probably a mixture of both.

...individuals are expected to change, and generally do.

Evangelical culture is a ghetto inaccessible to all but evangelicals. While at first glance the ghetto suggests evangelicals are "in the world, but not of it," they have merely co-opted secular-speak into God-talk: "God's Gym" for "Gold's Gym," "This Blood's for You" for "This Bud's for You" on T-shirts, and "Testamint" breath mints (always an opportunity to witness). Tragically, life in this ghetto fails to address the larger issues of Western, consumptive materialism; worse, it thrives on the "trinket-ization" and trivialization of Christianity. - Timothy Keel [Yes yes yes!]

Dave has named what the real issue is in evangelicalism - power. Evangelicals are enamoured with power and control. That's why numbers and measures are so important to evangelicals, wnd why compliance is next to godliness. What's important to evangelicals is freeing you from the world that squeezes you into its mold so evangelicalism can, in turn, squeeze you into its mold. Evangelicals resist and dclare as enemy anything they can't control - including God, by the way. A post-evangelical is not a one-time evangelical who's given up on truth, she's an evangelical who's given up on control. - Mike Yaconelli [Beautiful!]

What Is a "Post-Evangelical"?
...to be post-evangelical is to take as given many of the assumptions of evangelical faith, while at the same time moving beyond its perceived limitations.

For the time being, we should note that during most of the twentieth century, evangelicals experienced and expressed their faith, and contended for the integrity and credibility of their faith, in the cultural environment of modernity. Post-evangelicals, on the other hand, live in an increasingly postpodern cultural environment. Consequently postmodernity influences the way they think about and experience their faith. Postmodernity has become the new context in which the integrity and credibility of their faith must be tested.

...our whole perception of the world - including our faith - is deeply influenced by culture and language. The way we perceive the being and person of God is influenced by culture, the way we think of redemption is influenced by culture, the way we imagine heaven is influenced by culture, and the way we approach the Bible is influenced by culture.

The idea that we can cimply pick up the Bible and read it, apart from any cultural conditioning is, quite frankly, nonsense. In fact, a great gulf lies between the cultural world of the Bible and our own world. We can (and do) seek to bridge that gulf, with the Spirit's illuminating help, through bilbical scholarship, but the gulf is there all the same. [It's the "baggage" thing. Interpretation is not (& cannot) be the same for all!] [*Kandinsky]

In his book Postmodernity, David Lyon cites consumerism and new information technologies as the reasons for this cultural shift. Our consumeristic attitude tward religion is a natural outgrowth of capitalism. What if we stopped marketing Christianity? Would it be more authentic? - Holly Rankin Zaher [Good question!]

The post-evangelical impetus, however, is to search for this fresh sense of spirituality, which they don't find in most evanglical circles, in the symbolic and contemplative traditions of the church rather than in the New Age movement. Celtic Christianity, as well as aspects of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, is often helpful. [This is my draw to the RCC. Not the rules, like Mom thinks.]

Post-evangelicals are more comfortable with the mysteries, ambiguities, and paradoxes of faith. [Duality]

For better or worse, our theology always informs our practices. - Timothy Keel

The only other thing I need to say at this point regarding the nature of the term post-evangelical is that it certainly doesn't describe a movement, as such. Drane says that the nature of the New Age movement is that relatively few people actually label themselves "New Agers," although an enormous number of people identify with some aspects of what New Age stands for. [Ana] It's fairly similar with post-evangelicalism: a lot of people who've never even heard the term - much less used it as a self-conscious label - will, I believe, identify strongly with much of what we are discussing. And they may not all be evangelicals. [Hah! Truth is here.]

Footnote: And This Is Me

Post-evangelicals must create the space where we can have these conversations, ask questions, muse, dream, laugh, and cry. - Holly Rankin Zaher [This is the purpose of me.]

02 - Just When We Thought We Had All the Answers... (Joseph R. Myers)
[A lot of historical stuff that - of course - isn't interesting to me...]
Revolution and Reformation
The Tectonic '60s
The Return of the Evangelical, Better Than Ever
The "Charismaticizing" of Mainstream Evangelicalsim
A New Generation of Evangelical Leaders Emerges
Piggyback Success
The Great American Pastime
[Ah, finally we get to some stuff I care about...]
Just When We Thought We Had All the Answers...

The fuel for evangelicalism is no so much running out as the increasing longing for God is making fuel unnecessary. What used to matter to evanglicalism doesn't matter anymore - not because it isn't true, but because it's obsolete. Instead of worrying about prepositional truth, biblical authority, and absolute truth, they're still concerned about dancing. - Mike Yaconelli

As a result, as evangelicals adapt to the new postmodern culture they find themselves in, they are beginning to shift on some of their traditional stances. The rest of the book explains how and why these shifts are taking place. At this point, however, it would be helpful to highlight some of the shifts:

• from propositional expressions of faith to relational stories about faith journeys.
• from the authority of Scripture alone to a harmony between the authority of Scripture and other personal ways God mysteriously and graciously speaks to Christians.
• from a theology that prepares people for death and the afterlife to a theology for life.
• from a personal individualistic, private faith to harmony between personal and community faith.
• from anti-Catholic and anti-nonprotestant perspectives to greater acceptance and curiosity about other approaches to knowing God.
• from the church being a place where people take up space to the church as a mission outpost that sends people out.
• from an approach to missions that emphasizes mass conversions by individuals to "share the good news with the whole world" approach.
• from arguing faith to the "dance of faith."
• from salvation by event to a journey of salvation.
• from a salvation of humanity to a salvation of all creation.
• from a Western, American understanding of the gospel to a worldwide view.
• from motivating through fear to motivating through compassion, community, and hope.
• from a search for dogmatic truth to a search for spiritual experience.

The promises of science and an evangelical approach to theology and truth modeled on science's success are being challenged by a new search for spirituality.

Even as the heart of the gospel remains the same, Christianity continues to affect the culture and be affected by the culture. God is still at work. Who can define what the future expression of the church will be?

03 - Worlds Apart
...the post-evangelical impulse often draws its initial strength from the sense of irritation many people feel with evangelical "culture".

The gospel of Jesus has always found its way in new cultural settings, and not only by changing its methods, by also making adjustments to the message. Those who hold to a biblical understanding of the gospel are keenly aware that the gospel Jesus proclaimed was Good News that began with the blessing of Abraham. The Good News is good in particular contexts. It is not the case, as some seem to wishfully say, that the gospel is always the same. Can you imagine Christianity if we were left only with an expression of the activity of God from a past culture and time?
Those seeking to be "post-evangelical" and not anti-evangelical will always seek to keep the best of evangelicalism. This should be the understanding that the gospel is living and active in our world and is as fitting to our setting as any point in history. - Doug Pagitt

Rereading Paul's letter to the Philippians, I'm intrigued and challenged by his confidence that the Holy Spirit will work in that community. He writes, "I hope all of you who are mature Christians will agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. But we must be sure to obey the truth we have learned already" (Philippians 3.15-16, NLT). Churches are God's domain, and not that of his disciples or apostles. Post-evangelicals are talking like Bediako, trying to identify how we've domesticated the gospel and how that kets in the way of proclaiming it. - Timothy Keel

The consequence of confusing Christianity with middle-class values is that people who don't identify with that culture reject the church and, in many cases, the gospel, too.

The expressions of the post-evangelical church around the world are often from younger people with hopes and dreams that extend beyond what their culture offers. ... Our post-evangelical sensitivity implores us to live beyond the American Dream that so strongly recruits the youth of America. - Doug Pagitt

And this doesn't simply affect African or working class people; it also affects a whole stratum of people - especially younger people - who do not identify with the status quo of the establishment at all.

We must stay quite aware that there is no "clean" version of Christianity. All expressions of Christianity are culturally affected, and that is a good thing. Therefore, we must resist any temptation to say that one understanding of Christianity is more pure or closer to that of Jesus'. Post-evangelicals are not expressing better Christianity, only a more fitting one for their setting. - Doug Pagitt

The Normative Nature of the Traditional Nuclear Family
The Confusion of Holiness with Respectability
Eat, Drink, and Be Compassionate

04 - Longing to Grow
People flock to evangelical churches after profoundly helpful evangelical encounters, only to become disillusioned further down the road. Why does this happen to some people while other evangelicals apparently remain perfectly happy? In this chapter, we shall explore the question with the help of two psychological models.

Stages of Personal Growth

My study of intentional Christian communities suggests that people are attracted to them because they offer a deeper level of faith. However, communities also tend to protect the "average" level of faith, and few encourage members to grow deeper than this average. This pattern holds true for local church communities. How will post-evangelicals create communities that offer a deeper level of spirituality and encourage different expressions of spirituality from people in different stages of faith? - Holly Rankin Zaher

Child's Play
A disturbing number of evangelicals seem neurotic and suffer from a poor self-image. People - sometimes even pastors - explain the most mundane details of their lives in terms of God or the Devil. When something good happens, it's the Lord. "He helped me find this job," they say, or "God showed me what I should do." Bad things, on the other hand, are either the Devil's fault or traced back to a personal spiritual fault. Thus, "The enemy was really attacking me," or perhaps, "I should have been obedient to the Spirit."

For many Christians, this language is the best they have to describe the spiritual dimensions of their lives. Many post-evangelicals might find it difficult to speak confidently about what God is doing in their lives, but that doesn't mean they have to disparage those who can. Granted, evangelical language is sometimes shopworn and robotic, but if we honour the spiritual experiences of skeptical post-evangelicals, we should also respect the more tangivle religious experience of many evangelicals. - Mark Galli

Parental Pressure
Some people drop out of evangelical churches because of their dislike for a parental voice insisting that church membership hinges on accepting prescribed doctrines or codes of behaviour. Sometimes the pressure to conform may be subtler - a look, a dropped invitation, implied criticism - yet no less powerful for that. Numerous evangelical churches and organizations will not allow speakers on their platforms unless they openly subscribe to an evangelical statement of faith.

The only decision that really counts is that which arises from genuine conviction, not coercion or the pressure of group dynamics. The apostle Paul speaks of sin reviving when the law comes, and he goes on to show that the law was powerless to affect real change (Romans 7 and 8).

A lot could be learned from modern management and teaching techniques in which old-style directional leadership has given way to an emphasis on facilitating people learning for themselves, making fully independent decisions - a much more Adult and, I believe, spiritual approach.

The Awakening Adult

... I would suggest that compliance and rebellion have their moments as healthy responses, and that experimentation, inquisitiveness, creativity, and constant questioning have their downsides.

When Jesus confronted the disciples about their handling of children, their mature and proper response was to comply. However, when Jesus was continually questioned about healing on the Sabbath, he rebelled against the laws of the Pharisees. Experimentation has its limits, inquisitiveness can turn to cynicism, creativity can easily get in the way of the simple, and constant questioning can become nothing more than grasping for attention. ...

... It seems to me that one of the ways we respond to dogmatism and the worship of authority is to resist people's attempts to make us conform. Resistance is worth choosing at times when we're pressured or forced to believe or to act in ways contrary to our beliefs. Resistance is one way our faith responds to narrowness, prejudice, and complacency. - Mike Yaconelli

St Paul's comments about being renewed in the mind are helpful here. All too often Paul's words are considered from a purely negative perspecitve, with the emphasis on what we should not be thinking. ... Of course we can interpret the renewed mind as one that's not paralyzed by greed, lust, and selfishness. But I think the term also suggests freedom to imagine how one might share, love, and encourage.

Why does the imagination scare so many evangelicals? Is it because it can't be controlled or measured? What if we really believed that God might, just might, be able to renew and sanctify our imagination along with our reason? Consider this prayer: "Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly devoted to you; and then use us, we pray you, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen." ("A Prayer of Self-Dedication," Book of Common Prayer) - Holly Rankin Zaher

The renewed mind has at least three qualities. First, it is an open mind willing to reconsider past positions. And oopen mind isn't gullible, but it thrives on doubts and questions, even when not governed by them. Open-minded people listen to even the most outlandish ideas in the hope of learning something.

Second, the renewed mind is sensitive to creative lateral possibilities. Edward de Bono argues that much thinking is locked into straight furrows and mental ruts. Lateral thinking breaks out of these ruts to consider unusual and obscure connections between different ideas. The potential for this sort of thinking is unleashed by interdisciplinary studies and religious ecumenism.

Third, renewed minds are reflective thinkers rather than merely repositories for new information.

Here Dave tackles one of the chief criticisms I often hear about postmodern culture. Many evangelicals believe postmodernism is just experiential and not intellectually reflective. Post-evanglicals will have to demonstrate that they don't treat the accumulation of experience the way modern evangelicals accumulated knowledge - and that they can be reflective and critical about both. - Holly Rankin Zaher

One final element we should expect of the renewed mind is that it be holistic. Renewed minds make emotion, intuition, and mystery equal partners of rationality. Critial reason alone produces a false consciousness that's inevitably reductionistic. As we shall see, this is an important area of divergence between post-evangelicals and liberals, whose reliance on reason discounts cognitive contributions from the non-rational.

05 - Liberals in Sheep's Clothing?
...while post-evangelical does mean something different than evangelical, it does not mean liberal.

"The Boogie Man Will Get You!"

Closed doors and crosses have always been the result of following Jesus. - Mike Yaconelli

Our tentative and imperfect doctrinal deliverances matter little to God, and labels less. A sincere search for truth, on the other hand, does matter a great deal to God!

"For those who think they have arrived have barely started out, but those who continue searching are closer to the destination than they realize."

Very few post-evangelicals I know are paralyzed by questions. The opposite is true. They have doubts about God and about Jesus, but the source of their doubts is the narrow evangelical definition of God and Jesus. Most post-evangelicals are evangelicals, but they can't fit their faith into the narrow, rigid mold evangelicals have constructed. They believe God is a mystery, which means he can't be contained or captured. They also believe God is a God of questions as well as answers, and post-evangelicals I know see questions as important as the answers. They believe in guarding the questions as well as the answers. This isn't belief in a vacuum, but belief that's alive, adventurous, and mysterious. This is belief that's passionate about what it knows, and equally honest about what it doesn't. These post-evangliecals believe that not knowing as as important to faith as knowing. - Mike Yaconelli

We stand at the end of a long Christian tradition in which pharisaism is seen as synonymous with self-righteousness and hyocrisy.

How do creedal affirmations function for post-evangelicals? Some hold that creeds should be public reminders of important confessional milestones for the Christian community. Pthers simply dismiss them as limiting and unhelpful tools for responding to God's work in their lives. I wonder whether ancient creeds birthed in response to ancient heresies call us to craft contemporary creeds in response to today's heresies? - Holly Rankin Zaher

The Parting of the Ways
Eventually, things began to change. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), one of the fathers of modern thought, sat down one chilly night, huddled up to the fire, and decided to question everything in his world - including his own existence. His momentous conclusion was that doubting his own existence was the only plausible demonstration that he really did, in fact, exist. Hence his famous dictum: cogito ergo sum ("I think therefore I am"). Modest as this declaration sounds, it shifted the whole basis of epistemology - the study of how we know things - from old certainties dictated by the church to a new process of independent reason and doubt.

Epistemology is key. For modernists - whether conservative, evangelical, or liberal - faith is usually reduced to the cold, hard facts. For post-evangelicals, faith is integrated into all of life. Thus, in my context, I often hear conversations about social justice, the environment, simplicity, innovation, and the arts as we discuss faith. - Holly Rankin Zaher [Well, now that we've explained Bethany & myself...]

• The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Enlightenment gave birth to what's known as modernity, the modern cultural outlook. Modernity looks at the world in a critical way that takes nothing for granted. This approach is closely identified with the scientific method, which attempts to examine the world objectively, that is, free from preconditions or dogma.
• The term premodern refers to the outlook that prevailed before the Enlightenment; it's sometimes also called precritical, since the prevailing religious, mythological, and superstitious attitudes of the day went virtually unchallenged.
• Postmodernity is a movement that's developed over the last few decades (although its roots go back much further) as a reaction to the exalted position modernity has given to reason and objectivity.

We could alternately express this as:
Premodern - Precritical, Superstition, Mythology
Modern - Critical, Reason, Dymythologizing
Postmodern - Postcritical, Intuition, Remythologizing

At the 2003 Emergent convention, Chris Seay suggested that the Reformation may well have unnecessarily annihilated certain prevailing ideas and practices. He wondered whether or not we might be doing the same during the current cultural shift. Dave's chart suggests that two notions the Reformation did away with - myth and intuition - are now being rediscovered by postmodernity.

Friends of mine recently attended a "famine" weekend with their youth groups. The teaching was amazing, and working with the homeless was a powerful lesson, too. But the most powerful part of the weekend was doing lectio divina in an urban and poverty-stricen space that allowed for reflection, imagination, prayer, and, dare I say, intuition. - Holly Rankin Zaher

The Enlightenment transformed both Christian theology and European culture. ...in the nineteenth centurey liberalism rose to the challenge of modernizing Christianity.

Conservative believers in all denominations reacted to what they saw as the liberal sellout to modernism with a powerful backlash. ... Early in the twentieth century one group of conservative Christians even made a name for themselves - fundamentalists - by defending the doctrines that they believed constituted the irreducible fundamentals of the Christian faith.

Although fundamentalists are evangelicals, over time it became clear that not all evangelicals wanted to be seen as fundamentalists. ..."new enavnelical theology" that wasn't fundamentalist but did affirm historic evangelical doctrines. Many evangelicals continue to hold a similar position.

The Evangelical Option
Evangelicals have a deep love of and respect for the Scriptures. ... Evangelicals also have the acute expectation that God will speak to them through Scripture; that it is God's Word for them. ... Scripture is a sacrament, God's means for communicating to us.

...the heart of the gospel can be simply expressed while also challenging us on a personal level. ...the importance of presenting the gospel in a cogent manner to a world that still needs to hear it.

...there are also downsides to evangelicalism. ... Evangelicals tend to make an idol out of the Bible. ... While the Reformation also affirmed the uniqueness of Scriputer - sola Scriptura - it did so in a different context - Catholicism's emphasis on the authority of church tradition rather than on Scripture's authority.

I believe the main battleground is shifting for evangelicals. More and more are using the words Dave uses ("deep love of" and "respect for") when Scripture is concerned. Evangelicals are moving away from seeing Scripture as a battleground and to seeing it as a place where they meet God. They're moving away from understanding the word of God as a defense for doctrinal truth and toward understanding it as a living, interactive dialogue with the God of the universe. Not only do evangelicals gain understanding about God through Scripture, they also encounter God in the Scriptures. Not only do evangelicals read about how Jesus' followers lived differently, they are empowered to live differently. More and more evangelicals are experiencing the Bible as a friend rather than a proof text. - Mike Yaconelli

Sadly, there's a huge gulf between evangelical scholarship and evangelical churches. Evangelical scholarship generally accepts the necessity of biblical criticism and utilizes its insights and methods. In evangelical churches, however, one will often find an anti-biblical chriticism attitude.

...prevailing sense of certainty and absoluteness with respect to the evangelical understanding of just about anything. ...the lack of gray areas in evangelical churches. Virtually everything is taught in black or white terms. Preachers frequently denounce critical thinking as unbelief or a tool of the devil. This anti-critical credulity also shows up in the area of prayer. People thank God when prayers are "answered" and either forget their prayers or blame the devil when they go unanswered.

We ought to respect the spiritual experiences many evangelicals profess, even when they don't match our own. - Mark Galli

The Liberal Option
...liberalism has its own kind of fundamentalist problem. ...S.W. Sykes, ...liberal fundamentalist approach:

Liberalism in theology is that mood or cast of mind which is prepared to accept that some discovery of reason may count against the authority of a traditional affirmation in the body of Christian theology. One is a theological liberal if one allows autonomously functioning reason to supply arguments against traditional beliefs and if one's reformulation of Christian belief provides evidence that one has ceased to believe what has been traditionally believed by Christians.

...influenced and shaped as much by its conflict with conservative Christianity as fundamentalism has been by its conflict with liberalism.

John Habgood, ...conservative liberal...:

...for me [liberalism] represents an openness in the search for truth which I believe is profoundly necessary for the health of religion. We grow in knowledge, only insofar as we are prepared to criticize what we think and know already. True knowledge is tested knowledge, just as true faith has to be sifted with doubt. Openness in the search for truth also entails a positive, but again critical, approach to secular knowledge... It is essentially about honesty, but an honesty rooted in what God has given us, both in revelation and in the created world.

...positive yet critical approach to secular knowledge.

One little-acknowledged attraction of liberalism for many believers i that it offers an escape from the harder edges of discipleship. When I was a pastor, I had more than one conversation with former fundamentalists who became Presbyterians so that they wouldn't feel guilty about not reading their Bibles or giving a tithe or whatever. These people were also not receptive to my preaching about the cost of discipleship. - Mark Galli

...post-evangelicals accept the supernatural nature of the gospel and the possibility of miracles. The Bible plays a normative part in their understanding of doctrine and practical Christian living, and they readily affirm the Apostles' Creed.

Two Sides of the Same Coin
Actually, both evangelicalism and liberalism are rooted in modernism, which is why post-evangelicals oriented to postmodernism don't feel comfortable with either option.

In their lectures and books, many evangelicals offer a "solution" for the "problem" of postmodernity. But postmodernity isn't a problem; it's a culture. As any missionary can tell you, every culture is full of great opportunities for God to be revealed and areas that need God's redemption. When it comes to postmodernity, we need to ask "What, exactly, needs redemption?" and "Where is God already at work?" The goal is answering those two questions. - Holly Rankin Zaher

In order to accomodate critical reinterpretation of the Bible, evangelicals also increasingly oscillate between literal and non-literal interpretations. Far from being arbitrary, this oscillation is controlled by the need to defend the modernist presupposition that for the Bible to be "true" it must not contain any factual errors. With the increase of scientific knowledge that undermines traditional beliefs about the nature of the universe or evolution, evangelicals have shifted more and more of Scripture from the "literal" category to the "non-literal" one.