The Making of Evangelical Spirituality

By Jason Cherry

How did it come to be that evangelicals expect individualized, extrabiblical revelation from God? What has happened culturally, historically, and theologically to make this the ubiquitous assumption of evangelical spirituality? The Making of Evangelical Spirituality is a compound of history and theology applied to the subject of evangelical spirituality--specifically, the phenomenon of evangelicals thinking "God spoke to me" in a still, quiet voice. The story is complex, multifaceted, and urgently in need of telling. Few Christians know the history of the spiritual expectations heaped upon them. Few know the individuals who gave shape to evangelical spirituality, spiritual chieftains who were often guided by uniquely ephemeral, social, and cultural forces. There is no towering figure like Martin Luther that stands as the lone front man for the esoterica of evangelical spirituality. Instead, it's the osmosis of many fascinating people struggling through life in the storm of worldly and cultural momentum. This book is the story of those hermits, monks, reformers, heretics, politicians, outcasts, and preachers who gave shape. Failure to tell the story now risks it becoming just another part of historical compost, threatening to make evangelicals forever ignorant of what they are tossing into the garden of their soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666753844

Jason Cherry

Jason Cherry is an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as a teacher and lecturer of literature, American history, and economics at Providence Classical School in Huntsville. He graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with an MA in religion and is the author of the book The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call. His writings have been published at the Salvo Magazine, Evangelicals Now, Biblical Perspectives Magazine, and other publications.

Book preview

The Making of Evangelical Spirituality

Jason Cherry

The Making of Evangelical Spirituality

Copyright ©

2023

Jason Cherry. 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,

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paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-5382-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-5383-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-5384-4

09/17/15

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright ©

2001

by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Section One: Cultural Reflections

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Taxonomy

Chapter 3: Individualism

Chapter 4: Knowledge

Chapter 5: Decipherment

Section Two: Historical Reflections

Chapter 6: AD 100–500

Chapter 7: AD 500–1500

Chapter 8: Reformation and Enlightenment

Chapter 9: Early America

Chapter 10: Nineteenth Century

Chapter 11: Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

Section Three: Theological Reflections

Chapter 12: Scripture

Chapter 13: Spirit

Chapter 14: Enablement

Chapter 15: Critique

Bibliography

A thirst for contact with divine things has come upon people, a burning thirst demanding to be quenched.

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Section One

Cultural Reflections

Chapter One

Introduction

A New Characteristic of Evangelicalism

T

o write a book

about spirituality in American evangelicalism is quite like walking across a theological minefield. The seventh Earl of Shaftesbury said, I know what constituted an evangelical in former times. I have no clear notion what constitutes one now.¹

The starting point for many definitions of an evangelical comes from historian David Bebbington’s famous quadrilateral of evangelical traits: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism.² The former Christianity Today editor Dr. Kenneth Kantzer argued that the first time a movement took on the label evangelicalism was at the Reformation when Martin Luther used the term evangelical as early as

1520

. Many have since thought of evangelicalism as synonymous with Protestant Orthodoxy. But the label has been taken much too broadly by others; for example, in South America, the term evangelical simply means Protestant.

Historian Catherine Brekus argues that the roots of American evangelicalism trace back to the eighteenth century, especially the Great Awakening of the 1730

s and

1740

s. During these years, revivalists stressed the need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that comes through the new birth and subsequent faith in the saving gospel—evangelion—of Jesus Christ.³

Bruce Hindmarsh adds that eighteenth-century evangelicalism happened because the gospel was preached to a modernizing world that was losing its sense of the transcendent.⁴ Moving through the eighteenth century, evangelicalism emerged as the alternative to the sort of deism represented no more publicly than by Thomas Paine. Evangelicalism was also an alternative to what Gregg Frazer calls Theistic Rationalism, a mixture of Christianity, natural religion, and rationalism, with rationalism as the predominant element.⁵

More specifically to the creation of the present-day category of evangelicalism, Dr. Carl Henry argued that in the nineteenth century, neo-evangelicalism arose to combat the loss of cultural credibility for orthodox Christians. Where Protestant liberalism and neoorthodoxy failed to give a Christian alternative to modernity, mainly through abandoning their historic Christian origin, modern evangelicalism appeared as a credible Christian response following historic biblical Christianity.

But far from being a monolith, evangelicalism reached different degrees of maturity along differing timetables. Frances FitzGerald argues that it is inaccurate to speak as if there is one evangelicalism in the United States. Since the fundamentalist-modernist controversy worked itself out along different timelines from north to south, Northern evangelicals were forced to dig theological redoubts sooner than their Southern counterparts. FitzGerald also serves as an example of the present-day ambiguities that come with the term evangelical. Her book’s preoccupation with the political expression of evangelicalism signals a more political meaning rather than the historic theological meaning of yesteryear.⁶

In this book, we use the term evangelical in the historical sense, while lamenting that the word seems to be taking on a newer, more political definition in the twenty-first century. As far as definitions go, we start with the view that conversion from sin to Christ is a preponderant characteristic of evangelicalism. Conversion—repentance from sin and faith in Christ as the forgiver of sin—leads the new believer into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Most evangelicals believe that God is present and his power accessible through the indwelling Holy Spirit. This relationship, in its broadest sense, is Christian spirituality. Or maybe we can call it religion.⁷

Religion or Relationship?

It has become common in Christian circles to draw a sharp distinction between religion and relationship. If by religion one means legalism, or mere ritualism, or mere externality, or formalism, then there is a difference. But if by religion one means passionate devotion or commitment or binding to Jesus Christ, then Blaise Pascal would find the difference arbitrary. Pascal thought of religion as a lived relationship. And if by relationship one means a covenantal relationship where God says, I will be your God and you will be my people, then the difference, again, is arbitrary. But if by personal relationship, one means sitting in the prayer closet having a chat with God over cafè latte, then Christianity knows no such relationship.⁸

A Physical and Spiritual Religion

Christianity as relationship sans religion is spiritually idealistic, removing necessary physical components. Christianity as religion and relationship is spiritually realistic, keeping necessary physical components. God doesn’t diminish the physical in favor of the spiritual. Paul said to the Romans, For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (Rom

1

:

20

). The spiritual realities are seen through a physical world.

The moment Christianity is reduced to only spiritual things, it is lost. God made a physical earth and filled it with physical people. Those people ate of the tree. Death came. Creation was subjected to futility. God the Son took on a physical human form and died a gruesome physical death. But the physical death was accompanied by spiritual separation from God the Father to pay the penalty of sin. Then there was a resurrection. Not a spiritual one, but a physical one. By grace through faith, people believe in the sin-crushing effect of that physical death and physical resurrection. People are born again to a living hope and a life of good deeds. Real deeds, like filling orphans’ tummies and visiting elderly neighbors in the hospital. True religion, a famous half-brother once called it.

Christianity provides many spiritual benefits, but it also has physical expectations for God’s children. And these good works are precisely what his children were created for (Eph

2

:

10

) and empowered to do through the Holy Spirit (Col

1

:

29

). Christianity provides access to the Transcendent through transformation. Transformation produces repentance. Repentance comes through religious devotion to God’s written word and prayer. The point is this: all three words—religion, relationship, spirituality, defined properly—are needed to understand Christianity.

Searching for a Fresh Revelation

There is an overlooked characteristic of evangelicalism that has developed over the centuries. Flowing from the hallmark evangelical characteristic of Christians having a personal relationship with God is the desire to have an even more personally intimate experience of God. To that end, evangelicals often seek and cultivate experiences of God’s realness and presence by searching for the fresh voice of God outside of the Bible.⁹ Such longings are not novel in church history. But they were once isolated to monasteries, enthusiasts, and esoterics. Now the desire is mainstream and common, making up a part of popular evangelical spirituality.¹⁰

Where did this characteristic of evangelical spirituality come from? The story is complex, multifaceted, and urgently in need of telling. Few Christians know the history of the spiritual expectations heaped upon them. Few know the individuals who gave shape to evangelical esotericism, the spiritual chieftains who were often guided by uniquely ephemeral, social, and cultural forces. There is no towering figure like Martin Luther that stands as the lone frontman for the esoterica of evangelical spirituality. Instead, it is the osmosis of many fascinating people struggling through life in the storm of worldly and cultural momentum. This book is the story of those monks, hermits, reformers, heretics, politicians, outcasts, and preachers who gave shape to evangelical spirituality. Failure to tell the story risks it becoming just another part of historical compost, threatening to make evangelicals forever ignorant of what they are tossing into the garden of their soul.

It’s about Revelation

One of the goals of this book is to use history to shake people out of their spiritual dittoes. This book may be classified as historical theology light, where the theological category in question is revelation. The doctrine of revelation answers the question How has God made himself known to his creation? The very existence of a theological category of revelation assumes that the only way anybody anywhere can accurately know God is because this God has revealed himself. It assumes that unless God had decided to show us himself, unless he chose to make known his existence and ways, we simply would know nothing about him. Apart from God’s spoken revelation, human discussion of God would be only the work of imagination and longing.¹¹ With creatures distinct from their Creator, divine revelation is as necessary as it is inevitable.

The aim, however, is not to develop a historical theology of either special revelation or natural revelation, at least not as they are conventionally understood. These subjects have already been dealt with by systematic theologians. Instead, the spine of this book is to explore the historical and theological situation in which it became normative for Christians to pursue God with the expectation of direct revelation apart from Scripture. The goal is to consider the process by which direct revelation from God to individuals, apart from Scripture, became a prominent aspect of people’s assumptions of revelation. The intention is to lay bare this history up to the present day, especially in conservative, evangelical Christianity.

This is largely an unexplored subject,¹² indeed it seems there aren’t even accessible theological categories to work with. Nevertheless, it is an important issue that requires investigation, especially for all Christians who believe in the revealing God of the Bible. A

2018

Pew Research Study shows that

40

percent of Americans who believe in the God of the Bible say God talks to them outside of the Bible.¹³ Tremendous implications are created both for those who expect such a fresh revelation and for those who think God has finally and completely given his revelation in the Bible.

Where Theory and Practice Meet

For some, all this sounds like How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Or what Freud called the narcissism of minor differences.¹⁴ Is it theological pettifoggery? Too theoretical? Too divisive? Too left-brained? Do we risk quenching the Spirit? What about the practical? The relevant?

These objections assume a division between thinking and living, a division that has little warrant in Scripture. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done (Rom

1

:

28

). Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind (Rom

12

:

2

). You shall stumble by day; the prophet also shall stumble with you by night; and I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me (Hos

4

:

5–6

a). Living and thinking can’t be divided. Practical teaching that doesn’t target the mind doesn’t provide lasting behavior transformation. Mere emotional highs turn into emotional lows.

So Shall My Lungs Coin Words till Their Decay

Coining a new phrase for sub-systematics is fraught with hazards, so we will be using a few different words to describe the topic under our microscope. This topic, again, is a cultural, historical, and theological study of the expectation that God will directly reveal himself to persons apart from Scripture. As such, the phrases evangelical esotericism and mysterialism will be used in an almost synonymous fashion.¹⁵ Since our primary subject is a narrow sliver of the systematized theological category of revelation, it might seem like we are marching through neologistical territory, what writer Arthur Plotnik calls the sweet click of coinage. While mysterialism could be considered a subset of mysticism (the conscious experience of the divine presence), and mysticism a subset of spirituality (the entirety of lived relationship with God), our topic fits more precisely within the theological category of revelation.¹⁶

Truth be told, we aren’t creating anything new so much as creating new labels for preexisting yet insufficiently probed categories. Too many Christian writers commit the error of afghanistanism—a term coined by Jenkin Lloyd Jones—when they manage to overlook many of the actual issues affecting actual Christians in actual local churches. Just as John Bunyan depicts Hopeful telling Christian that he is so drowsy he can’t hold open his eyes, so too can Christians of all ages drowse. In particular, Christians today are snoozing on the issue of spirituality, falling asleep on the top of a mast in the midst of the sea (Prov

23

:

34

) while the soul is in grave danger of enchantment with the self.

Definitions and Explanations

There exists a connection between the historical context that advanced mysterialism and the theology assumed by the practice. A brief explanation will be needed to begin our study. The culture of mysterialism is interested in hearing from God, not necessarily or exclusively via the Bible, but from God speaking in a mysterious (thus mysterialism) alchemy of events, uncanny coincidences, unexplained dreams, and/or still quiet thoughts. There is an entire corpus of book titles that capture the idea: Hearing God, God Whispers, Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God, The Power of a Whisper, Experiencing God, and Dialogue with God. God’s whisper is thought to be a direct message from God provided in such a way that man is not responsible for its content and the very possibility of error is removed. These experiences are subjective and inner rather than objective and external, though some may believe the experience occurred objectively.¹⁷ The notion of Christians wishing and seeking to individually hear from God isn’t new, but its infusion into mainstream, white, middle-class Christianity is the new paradigm of Protestantism, to borrow the label used by sociologist Donald E. Miller.¹⁸ Lest you think this can be slotted into the cessationist versus non-cessationist debate, it’s even more narrow than that and probably more important.

The Yearning for the Extraordinary

The longing to hear from God comes out of another, the yearning for the extraordinary. Some desire an extraordinary experience. Others desire an experience with an extraordinary God. Either way, it isn’t enough that God is speaking to the church whenever the Bible is preached. It isn’t enough that in the middle of darkness and secularization, a light of wonder shines in a suburban living room through the plain prayers of brothers and sisters. It isn’t enough that the Spirit raises a dead soul to life when a thirteen-year-old church kid makes a public profession of faith. It isn’t enough that believers find themselves growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, or that the gospel is proclaimed during the Lord’s Supper, or that missionaries are sent out, or that fellowship around the body of Jesus Christ is enjoyed, or that creeds are recited and prayers given by elders. All those things are entirely too ordinary for a church that has unabashedly drunk from the well of an increasingly secular world.

Today, the church’s answer to everything is something extraordinary: a new Pentecost, another revival, a large political turnout, or the next victory in the culture war. The new salvation by works is experiencing the extraordinary. The Spirit is thought to work only in spontaneity. Anything planned is thought to quench the spirit. If the Spirit is working, the results must be quick and radical. If the Spirit is working at all, the Christian life will be lived recklessly. The intense longing to hear a fresh revelation from God comes not because we have adapted to the culture, but because we have adopted the values of the culture. The church wants the next big thing, the next great movement of God.

The problem is this: while the church has prioritized the extraordinary, they have failed to ask how God works. What if God typically works through ordinary means of grace that the world finds boring? What then of the extraordinary? What if the God of the Bible is the sort of God who sends his Son, the king of creation, dressed like a peasant? What if this king came to serve? What if this king is stripped of his heavenly glory and takes on humility, poverty, and humanity? What if we search for this king in the extraordinary castle, but he is hiding in a stable?¹⁹

Why Is This Book Needed?

There is no shortage of salient books discussing the guidance of the Holy Spirit and his role in the Christian life. Kevin DeYoung’s Just Do Something is a fine treatment of searching for the will of God in your life, as is J. I. Packer’s Guard Us, Guide Us: Divine Leading in Life’s Decisions. Arthur Johnson’s Faith Misguided: Exposing the Dangers of Mysticism provides a stiff critique of mysterialism. Evan B. Howard’s The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality, combined with the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, edited by Glen G. Scorgie, are useful guidebooks to learning the vocabulary of Christian spirituality. There are many good theological books on the Holy Spirit, including those by J. I. Packer and Sinclair Ferguson. Ray Yungen’s A Time of Departing: How Ancient Mystical Practices Are Uniting Christians with the World’s Religions, documents the influence of Eastern mysticism on the evangelical church, and David F. Wells’s Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World provides an eye-opening explanation of the rebirth of spirituality in the West. Despite this bibliographic celebration, there remains a hole that needs to be filled.

With a hat tip to all the fine books that deal with the subject matter, there is no one book that first, exposits mysterialism (why does it attract so many?), second, explores the history of esotericism in the church (how did we get here?), and third, offers theological reflections (what does the Bible say about it?). That such a literary hole exists is rather striking when you consider David Wells’s warning that this sort of privatized spirituality is the issue that looms large over the whole evangelical enterprise, threatening to attack its very authenticity.

With the diversity of denominations in the United States, even just within conservative Christian