Parts one and two can be found here and here.
Part two of Warner's book is a detailed discussion of the biblicist-crucicentric axis. Here Warner takes a close examination the different bases of faith within evangelicalism. The subtitle for this part of the book sumarises neatly Warner's argument: 'From pre-critical inclusivity to the self-attenuated calvinistic hegemony, and the subsequent emergence of post- and neo-conservatism, with bifurcatory prospects' (147). Some evangelicalism starts fairly inclusive and then through the first sixty years of the 20th century becomes increasingly exclusive - 'from the 1920s, fundamentalism appears to have had a magnetic influence upon evangelicalism, drawing each revision of a basis of faith rightwards' (207). The late 60s and 70s (Keele, 1967 Lausanne, 1974 and Nottingham, 1977) saw a reversal of this conservative turn. During the 1990s and early years of the 20o0s, this rightwards shift has been lessened - so the statement of faith adopted by the Evangelical Alliance in 2005 'exemplifies the pan-evangelical rejection of the fundamentalist undertow' (219). However, Warner claims that the 2005 statement 'represents a rather limited achievement' that 'fails to recover the pre-fundamentalist pan-evangelical inclusivity or sustain the late twentieth century post-conservative trajectory' (219). Warner makes three conclusions from his analysis:
First, any attempt to characterise the entire evangelical movement as infallibist and centred upon penal substitution proves in light of the evident diversity among the bases of faith to be more of a caricature, or a misunderstanding of one trend within twentieth century evangelicalism, than a precise and historically justifiable conclusion. Second, the three evangelical eras we have been examining have had markedly different opponents: the primary mid-nineteenth century opponents were Popery and Puseyism; for the mid-twentieth century, it was liberalism; but in the post-liberal context of the late twentieth century, progressive and neo-conservative evangelicalism increasingly defined themselves over and against one another. Each to the other has become the enemy within, to be disputed if not disowned. Third, the breadth of the coalition is coming under growing strain, with an assertive, narrowing dogmatism on the Right and an increasingly rigorous questioning of conventional evangelical presuppositions on the Left. (228-229)
There is so hard reading here - not in the sense of it being difficult, but a little boring - as Warner compares and contrasts the different bases of faith. There was a tendency in this reader to jump to the conclusions, which like this whole book make for some interesting reading. My conclusions are that you see an evangelicalism that starts out with the positive intention of wanting to be faithful to the Bible, but has increasingly become stuck in the ways of modernity and prone to throwing stones at each other. One of my favourite examples of this is Stanley Grenz's Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era (2000) followed later by the conservative Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accomodation in Postmodern Times (2004) (See also Elaine Storkey's current attempt to define her evangelicalism as different to that now found in Wycliffe Hall). It leaves many thinking why bother with the label evangelical at all. The future certainly doesn't look to any less divisive.
I'll follow this post with one more, assessing the conclusions that Warner makes.
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