Since the Garden of Eden, Satan has employed a single strategy: corrupt the truth just enough to make the lie believable. New Evangelicalism is not a new idea. It is simply a new branding of the same disease and deceptionthathasplaguedmankind since the beginning. What the 1900s called Modernism, our generation calls New Evangelicalism. Both terms are synonymous, and both reflect a humanistic approach to biblical doctrine and its application to daily life.
Humanism believes that the chief end of life is the happiness of man. The product of humanism is pragmatism—the philosophy that if something is successful, it must be right—because it seeks to please the lustful desires of man without any conviction. It is “the tickling of the ears” that draws the multitudes, owing entirely to its fleshly appeal.
New Evangelicalism is not a new idea—it is a new branding of an old deception.
New Evangelical churches today are seeker sensitive. A nightclub atmosphere, CCM worship, and endless positivism in the pulpit characterize them. They have replaced holiness with humanism and the pure preaching of the Gospel with a pragmatic strategy to grow their own kingdom instead of God’s. The question every serious believer must ask is this: How did we get here? To understand where we are, we must understand where this darkness came from.
I. Understanding the Darkness of New Evangelicalism — II Cor. 6:17
The roots of New Evangelicalism reach back to the liberalism that flourished in Europe during the 1700s and 1800s. The Protestant churches had grown dead and powerless, and into that spiritual vacuum rushed a wave of liberal ideology. Several individuals served as the catalysts for what would become modern unbelief.
King Frederick II, the “philosopher king,” reigned in Prussia from 1740 to 1786 and ushered in the Age of Enlightenment. Frederick was “a thorough rationalist and patron of ‘free thought.’ The sight of a cross, it was said, was enough to make him blaspheme.”
H. E. G. Paulus (1761–1851) was a professor in Heidelberg, Germany, who taught that Jesus did not die on the cross but only swooned, and that, in the coolness of the tomb, He revived and, after an earthquake, moved the stone, walked out, and appeared to His disciples.
Frederick Schleiermacher (1768–1834) of Halle, Germany, exalted personal experience and feelings above biblical doctrine. He said, “With my intellect I am a philosopher, and with my feelings quite a devout man; ay, more than that, a Christian.” Schleiermacher refused to allow doctrinal preaching from the pulpit. Iain Murray, in his book New Evangelicalism Divided, observed that “Schleiermacher seemed to provide a means whereby the essence of Christianity could remain unaffected, no matter how much of the Bible was rejected.”
F. C. Baur (1792–1860) founded the Tübingen School of New Testament criticism and believed the New Testament was simply the natural history of the church. His school provedenormouslyinfluentialinthe spread of Modernism and textual criticism.
Each of these men planted seeds of doubt in the fertile soil of a powerless church. Those seeds would eventually cross the Atlantic.
II. The Birth of New Evangelicalism in America
The man credited with coining the phrase New Evangelicalism was Harold Ockenga, pastor of Park Street Church in Boston. In his 1947 address at the founding of Fuller Seminary, he declared:
“The ringing call for a repudiation of separatism and the summons to social involvement received a hearty response from many evangelicals.”
He further stated:
“Neo-evangelicalism was born… in connection with a convocation address which I gave in the Civic Auditorium in Pasadena. While reaffirming the theological view of fundamentalism, this address repudiated its ecclesiology and its social theory.”
In plain terms, Ockenga was calling the church to do four things:
- Reject the clear biblical mandate of separation from error, false teachers, and false gospels.
- Reject the clear biblical teaching on the form and function of the church.
- Reject the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible.
- Replace the confrontational Gospel with a social gospel and social theory.
What makes Ockenga’s shift so striking is that he had once stood firmly on the other side. In 1936 he declared:
“Tragic as it is, the controversy between Christianity and Modernism is necessary. … [If] the present, powerless, depleted, diminished Church is again to enjoy God’s blessing and receive times of refreshing from on high, that Church must purify itself from the hoary heresies of antiquity and from the questionable ethics of many of its leaders. … Then it falls to us to withdraw all membership, influence, and financial support from Modernistic organizations and throw it one hundred percent toward Bible Christianity.”
His friend and colleague Billy Hawks pleaded with him as the shift became apparent:
“I feel like weeping and lamenting and mourning over you. … Some of the things you are doing only cause me grief and heaviness of heart. It grieves me, Harold, to see you giving way here a little and there a little to policies that will be the ruination of our country. You ought to be a trumpet of God in America, yet you are fast succumbing to the inclusivistic trends that will sink us into the sea of oblivion spiritually as surely as it has the countries across the sea. … Combination is weakness! Separatism is power in the sight of God.”
The church is strongest when it refuses to be absorbed by the world it is called to confront.
The warning went unheeded, and the fruit was exactly what Hawks feared. Harold Lindsell, vice president at Fuller Theological Seminary, later confessed:
“I must regretfully conclude that the term evangelical has been so debased that it has lost its usefulness. … Forty years ago the term evangelical represented those who were theologically orthodox and who held to biblical inerrancy as one of the distinctives. … Within a decade or so, neo evangelicalism was being assaulted from within by increasing skepticism with regard to biblical infallibility or inerrancy.”
The movement had devoured itself from the inside. It always does.
III. The Call to Separation
Scripture declares that the church is to be “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). The integrity of the church is found in its purity. God has called His people to be separate from the world, and He has given us clear reasons why.
- We are chosen out of the world — John 15:19
- We are identified with Christ — John 17:16
- We are to withdraw from and reprove the darkness — Ephesians 5:11; Romans 16:17
- We are called to be separate and holy — II Corinthians 6:17
The believer has been purchased, pardoned, and purified by Christ. Separation, therefore, is not a negative concept for the Christian.
It is a privilege—a privilege to be separated unto Christ, to bear His name, and to be conformed to His image. Christ is worthy of the reward of His suffering, and He is not honored by a church that courts the world in order to fill its pews.
Conclusion
The darkness of New Evangelicalism did not descend upon the church overnight. It crept in through compromise, rationalism, and the slow surrender of conviction— one generation at a time. The men documented in this article were not anonymous villains. Many of them began in the right place. That is precisely what makes their drift so sobering and instructive.
The church of Jesus Christ has always faced pressure to soften its message, broaden its fellowship, and trade its prophetic voice for cultural acceptance. The answer in every generation has been the same: return to the Word, contend for the faith, and remain separate from the unfruitful works of darkness.
This is not a call to bitterness or isolation. It is a call to holiness. It is a call to be the church that Christ purchased with His own blood—a church that shines all the brighter because it refuses to be absorbed by the darkness around it.
“Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.” — II Corinthians 6:17