The Crisis Of Evangelical Preaching
by S. M. Hutchens
In the Protestant world the vigor of the churches is to a large degree a function of the vitality of preaching. The Reformers’ de-emphasis on the Mass as the principal means of grace in the divine service elevated the ministry of the Word in those churches which developed the most self-consciously Protestant frame of mind. When preaching languishes, the churches which are directly dependent upon it for their life and health will also decline. And indications that this is happening are legitimate cause for alarm.
There is little doubt that Fundamentalism and its Evangelical offspring are major repositories of the preaching tradition of Protestantism, not only because of the strongly Protestant character of these movements, but also because their roots are firmly fixed in a revivalist tradition to which the sacraments are essentially dispensable and the means of grace are to be found in the voice of the preacher rather than in the hands of the priest.
It had been my own impression for some time that rich and moving preaching among the Evangelicals was harder to find than it once was, but I tended to chalk that up to changes in myself rather than in the character and quality of the preaching. The question “Where have all our great preachers gone?” finally caught and held my attention when it was asked by a remarkable woman whose long career on the president’s staff of a major Evangelical college had placed her at the center of its world and its preaching. She knew American Evangelicalism from the inside, and knew it very well. Behind her question I saw a uniquely informed perception which made the matter worthy of very serious consideration. Since she brought it to my attention I have heard a number of other Evangelicals complaining about the quality of preaching in their churches (see, for example, J. N. Akers’ editorial “Bored to Fears” in Christianity Today, 22 April 1988). My friend’s question pointed to a problem which I am coming to think may be epidemic and a very serious matter indeed among those churches formed and constituted by preaching.
I am old enough to remember her great preachers. I heard some of them speak when I was a boy and they were near the ends of their careers, for my family attended a large conservative Baptist church where I had the frequent opportunity to sit under them. I especially remember their power. I was a fairly attentive boy and heard them with the defenseless impressionability of early youth. Their words swept over me with unchallenged authority. They were memorable men. Theirs was the great preaching my friend remembered from the center of her life and I from my nonage. She was right—this sort of preaching seems to have all but disappeared from the Evangelical churches. We have heard well-crafted, uplifting, clever, and occasionally inspiring and edifying sermons—but the old power, without which no preaching can be called great, seems to be nearly exhausted.
Whence came the power? In one sense it was a holdover from the certitude and authority typical of the evangelical preaching of the nineteenth century, which was itself inherited from revivals of earlier times. But what allowed it to survive in certain strains of conservative religion into this far more tentative age? For a large number of early and mid-twentieth century preachers it was simply not optional. It was an essential part of the rhetorical panoply that a Fundamentalist needed to maintain his credibility and stand his ground during the controversies of the twenties, thirties and forties, to build great churches and other ministries out of the rubble of rejection and discredit. It was his sword and shield against the Menckens, Darrows, Fosdicks and Sinclair Lewis’s of his world, the sound of well-cultivated conviction, confirming to the preachers that they were right, not only about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but about the religious culture which they created around it—a culture in which only the gospel was deemed to move with freedom and power. These were strong men, and their sermons were strong, too. One came away from them tired, chastened, and yet strangely exultant, desiring to do better than one had been doing at the things that were important to us. (Yes, there was the guilt as well, but that must not be mentioned as if it were merely pathological, or the sum of it all.)
Where have these great ones gone? Why weren’t the gaps which they left filled with vigorous young men made in their images? Why do so many Evangelical preachers now appear to rely primarily on the stimulative power of technique—which no longer really moves their people—rather than deep and infectious conviction? And why do so many of them, like the preacher J. N. Akers referred, seem so dreadfully bored? Has the Spirit departed? My friend’s question set me to thinking on all of this.
Those old warriors were Fundamentalists, ending their ministries in a day when a certain kind of conservative religion was in many quarters reassessing itself, and they were in a sense becoming vestigial parts of a new organism. In many places they were replaced by those who were not content to call themselves Fundamentalists. A new generation arose, the type of preachers that some of the older men were already becoming—that calmer, better educated, and far more accommodating breed: the Evangelical. My friend has moved principally in the Evangelical world since this changing of the guard, and what she has noticed is a difference in the tone of authority between Fundamentalist and Evangelical preaching. I think that if she were to return to hear those who are still willing to call themselves Fundamentalists she would find the same type of preaching that she remembered. Having been for years an Evangelical, however, she would find it disappointing. For the vigor she remembered would be there, to be sure—but I think she would face reawakened memories of the narrowness, that is, of the theological irresponsibility of Fundamentalist preaching which had originally propelled her into the Evangelical camp. She desires the best of both worlds—the better culture and more gracious manners of Evangelicalism and the power and authority of Fundamentalism.
So why does Evangelical preaching appear to lack the virility and conviction and authority of Fundamentalism? It would seem that one of Fundamentalism’s dire predictions concerning “neo-Evangelicalism’s” descent down “the perilous path of compromise and middle-of-the-roadism” has come true—much of the power of conviction has dissipated. On the other hand, it would seem that the Evangelicals were right in their criticism of the Fundamentalists—the power which they enjoy in their preaching, and from which flows much of their self-confidence, is not all legitimately come by. It arises not so much from the gospel itself as from the avidity of its style. It must be granted that some of the strength of Fundamentalist preaching rests in the power of the gospel, but there is also much by which the Evangelicals were understandably repelled. This was part of the justification for the birth of their own movement. This does not, however, excuse the weakness of the Evangelical preaching.
At root, Evangelicalism has this dilemma: it does not wish to be confused with Fundamentalism, but it lives in the theological shell of this movement of which it is so embarrassed. Evangelicalism still associates the power of Fundamentalism with its mistakes, and refuses to be identified with it. So it preaches a watered-down version of the Fundamentalist gospel.
For example, Evangelicalism is, like Fundamentalism, millenarian, but it no longer displays much confidence in its inherited eschatology. (Dispensationalism was decidedly unpopular among students of the traditionally dispensationalistic Evangelical seminaries that I attended.) It need hardly be noted that the old system of traditional personal and social abstinences (called “revised asceticism” by J. D. Hunter) is falling on hard times. Unwilling to adopt the authoritarian mannerisms and ascetic program from which much of the distinctive character and power of Fundamentalism flows, Evangelicalism has failed to develop a similarly cohesive, integrated, and convincing shape of its own. Carl F. H. Henry, an Evangelical scholar of stature, doubts whether adherence to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, as important as he considers this to be, should be regarded as the definitive mark of an Evangelical, and thus places himself on the left side of a deepening rift in the movement. Moreover, and perhaps most significantly, in light of its increasing recognition of the possibility of genuine and vital Christianity in the liturgical, sacramentally oriented churches, it must even question the absoluteness of its revivalist soteriology. In the Evangelical world Fundamentalist theology is being modified, but it has not undergone the sort of transformation which would come with the development of a distinctive character of its own. Its preaching has suffered much from this irresolution, weakening in a day when strength is required, and in a world which needs—and has a right to expect—something far better from the Evangelicals.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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