The Intimidation Factor. Charles Redfern

      The Intimidation Factor

      How Scare Tactics Smother American Evangelicalism

      Copyright © 2020 Charles Redfern. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®; NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

      Resource Publications

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      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

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      paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-6582-0

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-6583-7

      ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-6584-4

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 08/19/20

      For Andrea, my beloved and godly wife, and Caleb, our son

      Acknowledgments

      This is dangerous. I’m about to thank people, which means I’ll invariably forget key individuals without whom I never would have survived. So I do this in fear and trembling.

      I begin with Gil Salk, a great buddy who served as copy editor. He encouraged me (he said he found the book intriguing, which surprised him: he’s isn’t familiar with the evangelical world) and, more important, he rescued me from my blindness to my own errors. His requests for clarifications rendered this more understandable to non-religious readers. Gil is one of those non-Christians who prompt sentences like, “If more Christians were like Gil . . .”

      I think back in time. I think of my parents, who raised me and my only sister and sibling in that rare find called “a healthy home.” There was laughter; there were hugs; there was the Episcopal Church and its liturgy. I now realize that my parents’ religion spawned a prenatal faith that prepared me for my spiritual birth at the age of 16. I think I disappointed my late father when I didn’t seek ordination in his beloved Episcopal church, but he didn’t object.

      I think back to the beginning of my Christian life and the loving people of Wintonbury Church of Bloomfield, CT. There’s Andrew Gerns, my best high school pal who eventually became an Episcopalian priest; there’s Peter Mason, who became a Conservative Baptist pastor; there’s his sister, Priscilla; there’s Scott Davis, Steve Whiting, Mark and Gail Brewer, Billy and Doug Truit, and so many others—including Rich and Cathy Ainsworth, the pastoral couple who guided that local body for decades. Wintonbury—even today—defies the evangelical caricature and still weds love, grace, and biblical integrity. I always remembered its example as I navigated my way through the hostile world.

      I think of my spiritual exhaustion in the wake of my spent journalism career and my rejuvenation in the mid-1980s (I learned that Ed Gorham, my best friend since college, was praying for me as I walked through my Dark Night of the Soul). God nurtured me through my professors at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. There was the gracious Garth Rosell, whom I still consider a friend, and the late Nigel Kerr of the church history department. There was David Wells, John Jefferson Davis, and Richard Lints in the theology department—and Stephen Charles Mott, a United Methodist who opened my eyes to the Gospel’s social implications. I also fondly remember Greg Beale, a staunch Calvinist and genuinely caring New Testament professor. Many of my former professors would probably frown on this book—especially its characterization of Calvinism. To that I can only respond: “If only more Calvinists were like you.”

      I think of my spiritual journey shortly after seminary and someone I never met: John Wimber, the late founder of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Wimber led many down the path toward genuine kingdom living: Life in the Holy Spirit is not merely meant for the sweet bye-and-bye. It can be real now, and we needn’t adopt an idiosyncratic theology. I thank him and the Vineyard as a whole.

      I think of my denomination, The American Baptists, USA, and Judy Albee, Connecticut’s executive director (now retired). I thank them for their warm welcome and collegiality.

      I reserve my most important thanks for last. I married a godly woman named Andrea LaCelle Redfern in the winter of 1987 when I didn’t know if I’d survive my first cancer bout. In 1993, she gave birth to our only child, Caleb, who has paid a price for his father’s peculiar calling. We have navigated a sometimes precarious path together, and I am deeply grateful for their faith in Christ, their love, and their integrity. This book is dedicated to them.

      Introduction

      Surveying The Rubble

      What do I do when the river that swept me into the life of Christ now empties into a toxic swamp, rimmed with snarling attack dogs sniffing for political and doctrinal heretics? Is there hope or only despair?

I ponder those questions as the not-so-secret secret unravels: White American Evangelical Christianity has plunged into a theological, spiritual, and moral abyss. Many claiming the evangelical label laud an obviously decadent president while jettisoning the movement’s time-honored convictions: Lifeway Research found that majorities believe the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force, that Jesus was a created being, and that family worship is an acceptable swap for regular church attendance.1 Meanwhile, new doctrines have been traded for the old. Anyone affirming human-induced climate change, for example, is suspect—even though no traditional creeds or biblical passages are at stake.

      So much for that ol’ time religion.

      Two questions hover over discussions among the movement’s thinkers and academics: What went wrong and what’s the remedy? An inevitable third question flows from the second: Should we fight to preserve the evangelical tag (for which Richard Mouw compellingly argues in Restless Faith: Holding Evangelical Beliefs in a World of Contested Labels), or must we abandon it as too sullied?

      It’s now difficult to remember what “evangelical” once conveyed. The term signaled a more ecumenical, gracious, and intellectually viable species of back-to-the-Bible Christian, more generous than “fundamentalist.” Evangelicalism encompassed Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Pentecostals, Wesleyans, Calvinists, Lutherans, and others. They agreed to disagree on non-essentials and could even lean to the political left. In fact, scholars such as Timothy Smith, Donald Dayton, and David Moberg found that Wesleyan-oriented nineteenth-century evangelicals pushed for reform. Many advocated abolitionism; others intentionally dwelled in slums and befriended the poor; they were the first to ordain women.

      Now? Not so much.

      Again, what happened?

      Various writers have diagnosed the disease and prescribed their remedies. Some Calvinists have lamented the movement’s supposed drift from those halcyon days of the 16th and 17th centuries, when John Calvin reigned in Geneva and English Puritans wrote the Westminster Confession. They fear infiltrating theological liberalism, which left much of the Bible on the cutting room floor in its 19th-century heyday. They’d sanctify linear thinking, jettison almost all emotion, and relegate charismatics and Pentecostals to suspect status. I fear they’ve misdiagnosed the disease and now patrol a fortress-like doctrinal perimeter, often mistaking potential allies as opponents. They’ve nurtured intimidation.

      Others—from Brian McLaren to Rob Bell to the late Rachel Held Evans to John Pavlovich to Frank Schaeffer—have decreed the opposite verdict. They’ve thrown out the label and the back-to-the-Bible theology it once described. They were often