Something I read today- John Piper

Evangelicalism was birthed as a response to liberalism.

The validity of Scripture began to be questioned. Evangelicalism offered a renewed passion for the Bible. But an unfortunate tendency arose to remove texts from the larger context, even as pastors tried hard to remain faithful to the Bible.

This led to an imbalance between the how and the why of our lives as Christians. We have gotten very good at teaching the how, but we struggle with the why.

Unfortunately, even if we are spot-on with the how but we ignore the why, it won't work. Because even if we stress the literalness or inerrancy of an individual text, it's still possible to ignore the larger setting, that it's all about Jesus.

There is a thriving evangelical head, but a shriveling heart.

Liberalism often paints evangelicalism as morons. In response, evangelicalism seems to have over-emphasized the head at the expense of the heart. There are too many smart believers without the grace to try to overcome the baggage that comes with evangelicalism.

Evangelicalism has withdrawn where liberalism took over, and has its own institutions. Now we're trying to re-engage. But the disengagement we want to come back from has created a lot of baggage. We who want to be missional try to engage, but when we interact with unbelievers we have to overcome that we're from the church that has hurt people.

But even if this difficulty arises from the way the church acted over the last decades, we must still diligently love fundamentalists. Without them we wouldn't be here. If they hadn't stood up to liberalism like they did, we would be Europe.

Instead, when we encounter fundamentalists who seem hard toward the work of Christ nowadays, we should be like the father who goes out and entreats the older brother. He doesn't stay in at the Prodigal's party and ignore him.

On the flipside of being a stubborn fundamentalist, you don't have to be the guy who drinks beer and cusses to engage culture.

Evangelicalism has been shaped by pop culture.

Religion entered the free market when the US said no to having a state religion. So now popular culture votes on what religion will be. It went the way of entrepreneurialism. This is why evangelicalism nowadays is democratic, moralistic, and individualistic. That's the way popular culture has shaped it.