186 - The Evangelical Movement: Growth, Impact, Controversy, Dialog

The Evangelical Movement: Growth, Impact, Controversy, Dialog
By Mark Ellingsen
Minneapolis, Augsburg, 1988. 496 pages. $24.95.

Mainline Protestants and Evangelicals have never gotten along very well, and Mark Ellingsen fears that relations have grown even worse given the relative successes of the Evangelical movement in recent decades. Indeed, for a mainline leadership increasingly interested primarily either in social action or management technique, the Evangelical movement has assumed a kind of catch-all "whipping-boy" status. This growing hostility is regrettable, Ellingsen feels, especially given that the relationship between Evangelicals and mainline Protestants may be the question for ministry and Christian unity in coming decades. The Evangelical Movement, then, is a call for mainline-Evangelical dialogue.

While mainline leaders have tended to interpret Evangelicalism sociologically, as a kind of agrarian and/or anti-intellectual reaction to modernity, Ellingsen argues that the Evangelical movement actually represents a cogent and principally theological protest against contemporary cultural decadence. Sociology and leadership styles may be factors in the Evangelical-mainline conflict, Ellingsen contends, but the decisive issues are theological. Thus, after reviewing the history of the Evangelical movement and describing the variety of Evangelical churches and institutions, Ellingsen focuses on Evangelicalism's distinctive theological affirmations and how these might be integrated with mainline-and particularly with Lutheran-positions in ecumenical dialogue. Ellingsen argues that the most critical issues dividing the Evangelicals from the mainline are those having to do with Scripture and theological method, and he contends that ecumenical dialogue will not get off the ground until mainline leadership rethinks the subjectivism and relativism of its own contextualized hermeneutic and until Evangelicals come to grips with the intellectual incredibility of such things as inerrancy and plenary inspiration. Given that the goal of this process is not consensus as much as peaceful coexistence, Ellingsen suggests that a narrative/ canonical hermeneutic, an approach which appears to take questions of truth and

187 - The Evangelical Movement: Growth, Impact, Controversy, Dialog

history seriously at the same time, may prove useful in bringing the two sides together.

While at times tedious, Ellingsen's overview of recent Evangelical history, of Evangelical institutions, and of Evangelical theology, is irenic and thorough and provides a valuable reference. This is particularly true of his coverage of the Evangelical movement outside of North America. The Evangelical Movement also provides a helpful corrective to those descriptions of Evangelicalism which have tended to reduce the movement to purely cultural and sociological factors. Ellingsen is correct to stress that, whatever else the Evangelical movement might be, it is theologically centered and must be interpreted primarily on that basis. For those in the mainline, then, Ellingsen's work should prove very useful.

Evangelicals, on the other hand, may have trouble with The Evangelical Movement for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Ellingsen's failure to make any kind of positive theological case for ecumenism. While the value of ecumenical dialogue is perhaps selfevident, the most he actually says on its behalf is that it results in a kind of "de facto respect" among those groups who engage in it, which prevents them from trying to convert each other's members. Even if this represents, as Ellingsen suggests that it does, the "triumph" of the ecumenical movement, one can hardly blame Evangelicals (or anyone else for that matter) for failing to stand up and cheer about it.

Evangelicals will undoubtedly be pleased with Ellingsen's serious treatment of their theology. Yet, in spite of this apparent seriousness, his case for ecumenical dialogue remains abstract and almost entirely sociological. Theological issues are raised, in other words, but they are discussed exclusively in terms of plausibility and utility and never in terms of truth. Indeed, Ellingsen's reluctance even to raise the issue of theological truth explains why he tends to misunderstand the significance of Evangelicalism's stress upon inerrancy as safeguarding the authority of Scripture. Scriptural authority is defended, not simply as a means of coping with societal instability, but as truth, as God's word. Evangelicals are therefore unlikely to be impressed by a hermeneutic that describes the theological task as a kind of "language game" and that, by Ellingsen's own admission, merely "seems" to take questions of truth and the historical reality of biblical accounts seriously. Ecumenically speaking, then, while this book may be useful on the mainline side of the contemporary debate, its dialogical effects upon Evangelicals may be somewhat disappointing. Insofar as getting the dialogue started, however, The Evangelical Movement may well serve admirably.

Craig M. Gay
Regent College
Vancouver, British Columbia