Ambivalent Christianity

I received a mailing yesterday announcing the upcoming National Pastors Conference in San Diego. One of the participants, a professor from Baylor, is going to lead a presentation called, "How to be evangelical without being Conservative." And therein lies the ambivalence of Christianity today. We want to be "all things to all people" in the worst possible sense of that phrase. To be evangelical today has, for many people, connotations of the "religious right," in the political sense, of course, and probably some connotations of theological conservatism from which some religious academics would like to distance themselves. It is unfortunate that those beliefs which were considered mainstream Christian orthodoxy 50 years ago have now come into such disrepute that they are considered conservative. The church is largely ambivalent about traditional Christian language and teaching, and largely ambiguous about what it really believes. Ask the average mainline Christian preacher to state beliefs on Christology, the Bible, the attributes of God, or any number of key Christian topics, and you'll get few clear-cut answers. If you ask in what sense certain words are being used such as "salvation," "evangelism," the "Gospel," you may find that the meanings long attached to those words in past decades are not necessarily what is meant by a lot of ministers today. We seem afraid to stand for traditional Christian doctrines. Are we scared of science or technology? Have we been so spooked by pluralism that we are afraid to speak the truth, not wanting to offend anybody? Are we shocked by all the "New Age teachings," and fear our Christianity has run its course? Philosophies come and go. We need not fear worldly systems or skeptical constructs. Even liberal Christianity is not new. And the church has always had to resist heresies and call them by their right name. Whether one desires to be a "conservative" is not important. I will, however, seek to be evangelical and orthodox. Today, that may make me a conservative; but there was a time that it would have just meant that I was a Christian.