Evangelical Christians will either stand upon the authority and total truthfulness of the Bible, or we will inevitably capitulate to the secular worldview.

Who is and is not an evangelical? With whom should evangelicals cooperate in gospel efforts, and with whom not? Which theological expressions are truly evangelical, and which are beyond the pale?

Evangelical Christians are gravely concerned about the family, and this is good and necessary. But our credibility on the issue of marriage is significantly discounted by our acceptance of divorce. To our shame, the culture war is not the only place that an honest confrontation with the divorce culture is missing. Divorce is now the scandal of the evangelical conscience.

We are entering a new phase in the battle over the Bible’s truthfulness and authority. We should at least be thankful for undisguised arguments coming from the opponents of biblical inerrancy, even as we are ready, once again, to make clear where their arguments lead.

John T. Elson’s most famous article for TIME magazine appeared over 40 years ago, and it largely defined his journalistic career.  His April 8, 1966 cover story, “Is God Dead?,” became an icon of the rebellious and increasingly secular sixties.

A Memorandum Prepared for the Great Commission Council of the Southern Baptist Convention

“I know what constituted an evangelical in former times,” said the seventh Earl Shaftesbury, “I have no clear notion what constitutes one now.” The confusion Lord Shaftesbury saw a century ago is now fully apparent. Millions of Americans claim to be evangelicals, but few seem to know what the word means.

“The sense of an ending is not a fact of nature,” observed Frank Kermode, it is a feature of human consciousness.1 We ascribe meaning to the turn of a new century, and feel a sense ending as the twentieth century comes to a close. If a sense of ending is not a fact of nature, it is certainly a fact of our experience.

Is this evangelicalism’s terminal generation?  Without doubt, we are facing an unprecedented set of challenges to evangelical identity.  The rise of a postmodern culture has produced an intellectual context in which the very concept of truth is held under suspicion, and claims to revealed truth are simply ruled out of order.

Looking at data from a massive survey taken in 1990, Barry Kosmin argued that many Americans saw religious beliefs as “a personal hobby.”  Now, with fresh data in hand, he asserts that contemporary Americans increasingly see religious faith as “more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment.”