What do we do when a formerly vibrant back-to-the-Bible movement drifts into a toxic swamp rimmed with attack dogs? Charles Redfern faces that grim question squarely. He discovers that American evangelical Christianity, which surged in the mid-twentieth century and offered a more genteel, intellectually vigorous alternative to caustic fundamentalism, fell into the hands of intimidators and backbiters. It was a short journey from there to the movement's partisan sell-out and the abandonment of time-honored creeds. Redfern describes his own story, in which he came into the faith at the movement's height in the 1970s, then views evangelicalism's decay across its spectrum. He doesn't spare conflict-adverse moderates in the process. But he also discovers hope: A winsome remnant survives, and its wooing the back-to-the-Bible people back to the Bible, bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit as they do so.
Оглавление
Charles Redfern. The Intimidation Factor
The Intimidation Factor
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
From Evangelicalism’s Height to its Depths
Climate Change and a Heretic Hunt
Apostles, Prophets, & Protestant Popes
The Faustian Pact
Cracks in the Foundation
A Battle Between Allies
The Beat Goes On
Moderate Complicity
Introducing the Real Jesus People
Gotham’s Good Calvinist
Rescuing God’s Creation
The Whole Gospel in the Midwest
Conclusion
Bibliography
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How Scare Tactics Smother American Evangelicalism
Charles Redfern
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My next church—an intentional interim pastorate nearer to New Hampshire’s coast—was a veritable delight. An intentional interim actively brings healing and resolution to conflicted congregations, but these people healed me. They were hilarious—and they fawned over our son, loved my wife’s cello, and tolerated my long sermons.
I seemed fated to serve Hatfield-McCoy churches, so I learned all about toxic organizations and conflict management. I signed up for workshops and seminars everywhere. My favorite organization was Peacemaker Ministries, founded in 1982 by Ken Sande, a Montana lawyer saddened by all the internecine church in-fighting. Sande imported the insights of Alternative Dispute Resolution, which offers more consensual mediation and arbitration methods, while bonding himself to God’s Word. He wrote it all up in a book called The Peacemaker, which I recommended with enthusiasm and used as a basis for preaching.
