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Thursday, December 24, 2009

Younger Evangelicals: Earnest and Contradictory

You should read Matthew Lee Anderson’s "The New Evangelical Scandal" in Houston Baptist University’s celebrated new periodical, Civitate:

Even though the sociology has not yet caught up, the narrative of a new breed of evangelicalism has taken hold among the media and political elites. The narrative is doubtlessly popular in part due to wishful thinking by Democrats and their media-savvy friends; yet as a young evangelical myself, it is impossible to discount entirely. Even if the outline of our theology is broadly the same as our parents, as it is for an increasing number of conservative evangelicals, our ethos is different. And the differences are not strictly political—the political trends among young evangelicals that have received so much attention are grounded in different concerns and emphases that undergird younger evangelicals’ approach to culture and spirituality as well. This new ethos is largely a reaction to the abuses, failures, and excesses of our parents’ generation and contains significant clues as to the future of evangelicalism in America.
It’s a thoughtful critique from a young evangelical about young evangelicals’ contradictory politics (both libertarian and paternal), social mores (“faith-soaked libertines”), eschatology (we don’t wait for Christ to bring the kingdom; it must be brought in by our actions), and faith struggles (“they are about questioning, not necessarily answering”). “Fundamentally,” he writes, “young evangelicals want an evangelicalism that is respectable—and more often than not, that means distancing themselves from it when it isn’t….Young evangelicals frequently care more about being ostracized than they do being correct.”

Among younger evangelicals at the church I serve I see the potential, the earnestness, and the contradictions that Anderson describes.

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