Key 73: Blessed Blasphemy
Before 1993 slips away, I can't forfeit the occasion for
pontificating provided by the historic resonances of the year.
I used to be involved with the Evangelical movement. I am not
anymore. Recently someone asked me just what an Evangelical
is. The answer: an Evangelical is a fundamentalist who'll let you
go to the movies. Well, 1993 marks the twentieth anniversary of
two events of note in the Evangelical Christian community.
The first was the much-balleyhooed evangelistic juggernaut Key 73;
the second was the issuing of the Declaration of Evangelical
Social Concern. In retrospect both events may be seen as tokens
of failed religious triumphalism (and other
ironies).
After the Second World War a new generation of
Evangelical churchmen arose, heirs to the fundamentalists who had
fought the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversies at the turn of the
century and in the 20s. These men, Carl F.H. Henry, Harold John
Ockenga, Edward John Carnell, Harold Lindsell, Gordon Clark, Billy
Graham, and others, wanted to repudiate the reputation the older
fundamentalists had earned for themselves of obscurantism,
fissiparousness, and biblicist fanaticism. They dubbed themselves
"New Evangelicals" or "Neo-Evangelicals," sort
of a counterpart to Neo-Orthodoxy which still dominated the Mainline
Protestant consensus.
While hastening to aver themselves at one theologically
with the more intellectual of the old fundamentalists like
Warfield, they were willing to renegotiate the fine print of doctrines
like the inerrancy of the Bible. They professed a new humility,
inviting mainline Protestant theologians to dialogue instead of
polemical debate, even though as Neo-Orthodox Episcopalian Daniel
P. Stevick observed in Beyond Fundamentalism, it was a little
hard to see the profit in "dialogue" with people who
wanted it clearly understood that they and no one else possessed the
copyright on Orthodox Christianity.
Henry, Carnell and the others wanted to shed the
backwoods image that stigmatized their uncles the fundamentalists. So,
among other things, they called for new, dignified hymnody (and
for their trouble eventually spawned the twin abominations of
John Peterson's whitebread gospel jingles, too bland for
Lawrence Welk, and the Biblegum sound of Ralph
Carmichael).
They wanted, they said, to take off the blinders of the
old fundamentalist indifference to social ethics. Of course the
sectarian nuttiness of Falwellian, Robertsonian Christian
Rightism already existed in the avatars of Major Bundy's Christian
Anti-Communism Crusade and several others. What the
Neo-Evangelicals really wanted to do was to carve out a comfortable niche
between this extreme and the mild social liberalism of the
Mainline denominations. If the Mainline
magazine The Christian
Century represented the Democratic Party at Prayer, the
Neo-Evangelicals were the Republican Prayer
Breakfast.
In all these secondary changes the Neo-Evangelicals
mostly succeeded in alienating themselves from their closest kin,
the fundamentalists, still virulent, still militant, and now
happy to turn their polemical guns on the Neo-Evangelicals, whom
they dismissed as revisionists with the same inquisitorial zeal
the Soviets directed against the Maoists at about the same time.
But the Neo-Evangelicals did manage to conjure into being
a sacred cosmos of their own in the form of several
religious institutions including the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association, Fuller and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminaries, Christianity Today,
and the National Association of Evangelicals.
They made quite a bit of headway on the coat-tails of
Billy Graham and his controversial program of "Cooperative
Evangelism" whereby he took advantage of burgeoning ecumenical
sympathies to enlist the cooperation (or at least joint sponsorship) of
the Mainline Protestant and Catholic churches in the cities
he targeted for crusades. One might blush at being seen on the
same podium with a man who railed against Commies and
predicted Jesus' soon return, as Billy did in those days, and yet count it
worth the price when one's share of those conversion cards came
one's way.
It was Cooperative Evangelism that probably goaded the
fundamentalists to their greatest fury, since it seemed to them
an alliance with apostate pseudo-Christianity. Well, guess
what, folks: the same thing happened in 1973 when the aging
Neo-Evangelical elder statesmen tried to flog some semblance
of life into the old nag of cooperative
evangelism.
Gordon-Conwell professor Dean Kemper, in a
1975 issue of The Reformed Journal, appraised the year-long effort made by
the Key 73 planners at "Calling our Continent to
Christ" and ridiculed it as an evangelistic Edsel, a lemon best left in the
junkyard.
Kemper said that the crusade largely fizzled because
Evangelicals and denominational Liberals had become alienated and
polarized by the social struggles of the 60s.
The Evangelicals sided with Nixon in the 60s and early
70s, despite the minority voice of "Evangelicals for
McGovern," and the Liberals were no longer interested in joining them in
evangelism. One might even compare it, I don't know, let's
say, to children in the marketplace calling to one another,
"We piped and you did not dance; we
wailed, and you did not mourn."
But if the Liberal co-sponsors of yesteryear were mostly
reluctant to play, the rightist fundies were on hand, eager to
assume their old role, issuing pamphlets and tracts with titles
like "Key 73--Blessing or Blasphemy?" (Guess
which?)
When Thanksgiving weekend of the same year witnessed the
convening of the Neo-Evangelical bigwigs and the new generation
of what were already coming to be called the Young Evangelicals
(Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Richard Quebedeaux, Donald W. Dayton
and others) to sign a Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern,
essentially a hand-wringing apology for taking so long to get
on the moderate liberal political bandwagon, one almost had to
wonder if the Evangelicals were not trying by this gesture to atone
for their sins in the eyes of the Liberals. But if so, it was
too late. The year and the crusade were about over. And so
was an era.
Soon after, Carl Henry, Neo-Evangelicalism incarnate,
wrote a brief book in which he bemoaned (he was almost always
bemoaning things; it seemed to be his mission
ever since his first book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism) the fact
that just when Evangelicalism had begun to gain media prominence
(Jimmy Carter had recently confessed that as a regenerated Born
Again Christian he still looked at hot babes but felt guilty
about it), the movement was fragmenting.
This lament revealed a couple of things. First, the
arrogance that Evangelicals were a super-race with a saving message
for everybody, as if everybody hadn't already heard the pitch
of "the old time religion" (which also seems to have been
the astonishing premise of the whole Key 73 debacle). Second, that it
would be desirable to have everybody agree on religious opinions.
What's the problem if they don't?
But the fragmentation he was talking about was no doubt
the leftward drift both socially and theologically of those
pesky Young Evangelicals, who now assumed the Prodigal Son role
once played with such relish by the Neo-Evangelicals
themselves. Ockenga and Lindsell launched thunderbolts at Jack Rogers
and all the others who dared touch the ark of biblical inerrancy.
It turned out that the Neo-Evangelicals had been pretty much
kidding when they declared themselves willing to rethink these
questions. Or maybe the elder statesmen were just getting older and
thought it would simplify "cramming for their finals"
if they had an inerrant answer book on which to
rely.
The Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern (this last
a safe euphemism committing no one to anything at all) had been
a barely-passed compromise document, and the ink was hardly dry
before the signatory powers spun centrifugally away in all
directions. The
Young Evangelicals, in the pages of Sojourners and The
Other Side soon found themselves falling victim to the curse
of Evangelical "me-too-ism," falling in line (once
they decided to strike an anti-abortionist stance) with the Catholic
Left. Warmed over Stringfellow-and-Berriganism formed a large part of
the vegetarian diet of these radical Christians, giving a new
venue to the radicals of the 60s, like has-been
nightclub singers making the rounds of the nostalgia-circuit. Here was a
moving target of uncertain views, an unstable amalgam of
Liberation Theology and Mennonite anarchism.
Jane Fonda as Christ figure.
And here was a far cry equally from the Establishment
liberalism of The Christian Century (in whose pages Teddy Kennedy
seemed to be the regnant theologian) and from the safe "Every
Litter Bit Hurts" editorials of the
insufferably smug Christianity
Today. Karl Barth once referred to the latter as
"Christianity Yesterday." Reinhold Niebuhr had similarly accused Billy
Graham of set ting back Christianity 100 years, to which Graham
responded that he hoped to set it back 2,000
years.
Others wanted to set it back even further, apparently to
the time of the prophet Samuel in the Bronze Age. It would not be
too many years before the political influence Henry apparently
coveted for the mealy-mouthed Neo-Evangelicals would be usurped by
the hate-spewing legions of Falwell and Robertson. Gunning down
abortion doctors could not be far in the
future.
So the Declaration was still-born, its "Evangelicals
for McGovern" agenda increasingly irrelevant while Jim Wallis
and Jerry Falwell highjacked the high ground. Had Key 73 fared any
better? It had hoped to share yesterday's news, ah, that is, the
good news, with an America already bored with it. Instead, the
Evangelicals stood to learn a few lessons from it themselves.
For one thing, it seemed that a lot of their
scalp-hunting rhetoric which had sounded one way in the mythic never-never
land of hot-house revival preaching, sounded another way when
they went public with it. Now just what the
hell do you mean by
"calling our continent to Christ"? Jews became quite properly
alarmed when Key 73 singled them out as special targets. Proselytism
had become politically incorrect. Not the thing to do in polite
society. The old-time fundies never let that bother them.
But remember Neo-Evangelicalism was built on respectability,
the veneer of civility and dialogue. Perhaps in reaction to
the stinging rebuke called forth by Key 73's obliviousness,
some Evangelicals including Gordon College's Marvin Wolfman,
soon began genuine two-way dialogues with Jews aimed simply at
better mutual understanding.
And yet for all the ironies of the Declaration of
Evangelical Social Concern and Key 73, those twin Golems of twenty
years ago, they have in some ways proved prophetic indicators of
what has become the future. This may have been accidental, much as
Inspector Clouseau proved to be in the right in A Shot
in the Dark. Here's what I
have in mind.
Old-time fundamentalism continues to survive and to
prosper, though at least in its media career it has fallen upon
harder times recently. It has a major
competitor in its twin the Charismatic Movement with its crazy "Dominion
Theology" of triumphalism and mind-over-matter metaphysics. No matter how
many sex-scandals deface it, it fills stadium after stadium. But
how fares Neo-Evangelicalism? I see it slowly dissolving into its
constituent parts.
The founders, Henry, Ockenga, Lindsell and the others
eventually became the spitting images of their fundamentalist
forbears, grumbling at the excesses of the gutsier younger
generation. The seminaries they founded, occasional efforts at
retrenchment not withstanding, seem destined to fight a losing battle
against a drift toward Neo-Orthodoxy among their students. There
seems increasingly little difference between these students and
those at mainstream Protestant seminaries. Neither of them
either learn or care much about classical biblical criticism, the real
kind, the kind people used to debate over.
The Society of Biblical Literature is a tame tiger, where
the center of gravity has settled down to a kind of
apologetics and harmonization, of retreat into non-threatening diversions
such as trendy feminist ideology and literary approaches to the
gospels. Summarizing the text has come to count as criticism.
Since Evangelical seminaries have more students and bigger budgets,
they can pour more scholars into the membership of
organizations like this, tipping the balance of the plausibility
structure.
On the other hand, Evangelical seminarians have been made
to feel guilty for being politically incorrect, and so have been
shamed into a hitherto-unheard of degree of liberalization at
the point of God-language and God-concepts. Conversely, students at
main stream seminaries quite often combine the most simplistic
kind of Sunday School biblicism and pietism (perhaps clothed in
the pseudo-clinical idiom of the Twelve-Step Movement) with
radical feminism and ultra-leftism.
And just as Evangelicals are liberalizing at some
surprising points, so are Liberal Protestants being forced to
reconsider evangelism. Their memberships declined precipitously in
the 60s and 70s in a grass-roots reaction to ill-considered
denominational blunderings into radical politics and posturing.
The World Council of Churches supported church-persecuting Commie
terrorists in the Third World. The confused Presbyterians,
trying too hard to be relevant, like Jimmy Durante wearing
"with-it" hippie threads on The Hollywood Palace, donated money to
defend terrorist Angela Davis. One denomination's big crusade
currently is to get the Cincinnati Reds to change their name--to, let's
see, the Cincinnati Native Americans? They're
still at it.
So now, with the kind of butt-covering theology made
famous by the Mormon Church which received a revelation that it was
finally OK for blacks to become priests once the Mormon Church
was about to forfeit its tax-exemption, the Mainline denominations
suddenly rediscovered the "biblical mandate for
evangelism." Really, for meeting budgets. As my favorite theologian, the Church
Lady says, "How convenient!" One can only imagine the
grotesque spectacle of genteel Episcopalians and Lutherans stammering through a
Campus Crusade for Christ pamphlet.
Some Mainline denominational churches have aped Robert
Schuller and the fundamentalist megachurches in creating
quasi-religious shopping mall churches with plenty of programs but no
real theology. Vacuity sells, and so it triumphs. This too is
the legacy of Key 73, as it was the first major effort to
sell the gospel like a deodorant. Evangelism as Madison Avenue
advertising. Bill Bright's "Here's Life America" a few
years later, followed by various other similar ad campaign crusades
continued the trend. Televangelism made it a cardinal tenet of American
religion. And now we sit and wait for the Nielson Ratings of
Salvation.
You know, come to think of it, 1993 recalls another
important religious year. It marks an even century since the World
Parliament of Religions convened in conjunction with the
Chicago World's Fair. It was a series of presentations in which
notable representatives of the major faiths were invited to
address various issues in the manner of the United Nations. I wonder
if the future took a wrong turn somewhere, because this sure
sounds like a better candidate for the wave of the future than the
more recent fiascoes discussed here.
Do we need more religious imperialism, more tiresome
evangelistic huckstering? Or do we need a forum where the (sometimes
literally) warring religious factions may present their
grievances and perspectives, and in a happier circumstance, share their
treasures? Should we deem it a greater religious virtue to
listen to a different heart-felt viewpoint, or to try to cajole the
other into agreeing with you? If you'll excuse my paraphrasing
Billy Graham, I guess I'd rather set back the clock a hundred
years to the World Parliament of Religions than
a mere twenty to Key 73.
Robert M. Price