Читать книгу The World's Christians - Douglas Jacobsen - Страница 65

Since 1950 the worldwide dynamics of Protestantism have changed once again. Protestantism has become global, and most of its growth has occurred in the southern hemisphere. Protestant theology has also been reshaped by new ideas contributed by women, people of color, and other previously disenfranchised groups. Protestantism has always been a movement in motion, but the pace of change has accelerated and the diversity of the movement has expanded enormously during the last seventy‐five years.

At present, there is a major global divide within the Protestant world between Ecumenical Protestantism on the one hand and Evangelicalism on the other. The word “ecumenical” comes from a Greek word meaning “one house” or “one household,” and the main goal of Ecumenical Protestantism, which seemed attainable in the mid‐twentieth century when ecumenism was at its peak, was to gather all the world’s Christians into one large, unified household of faith. Ecumenical Protestantism developed out of the missionary movement when the proliferation of Protestant churches seemed to impede the effective communication of the gospel to previously unreached people. The relatively minor differences across the churches of Europe and America appeared meaningless or irrelevant in many global settings, but those differences often caused confusion among people who were hearing the gospel for the first time. These concerns eventually led to the creation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948, a largely Protestant organization dedicated to championing “the visible unity of all Christians.”

The World Council of Churches and the Ecumenical Movement have been highly successful in helping many Protestant churches develop a deeper sense of commitment to and cooperation with each other. The movement has also expanded its vision of what ecumenism entails. Especially during the last fifty years, concerns about peace, justice, human rights, and reconciliation – issues that focus on treating everybody in the world fairly and equally – have become increasingly prominent within the WCC. In the mid‐twentieth century, Ecumenical Protestants supported a number of liberationist movements around the world, including the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the anti‐apartheid movement in South Africa. More recently, ecumenical activists have focused their attention on issues related to gender and sexual orientation, encouraging churches to become more welcoming of LGBTQ members and ministers. Perhaps ironically, pursuit of these justice‐oriented goals is now having an anti‐ecumenical impact within Protestantism, dividing churches along divergent ideological lines. Partly for this reason, the term “ecumenical” is now used less frequently, and the word “progressive” has become the more common label for this Protestant sub‐group.

Figure 3.5 Key events in Protestant history.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Evangelicalism represents an alternative style of contemporary Protestantism. The roots of the Evangelical Movement can be traced back to Pietism with its emphases on biblical study, prayer, discipleship (following the moral and spiritual guidelines of Christianity in everyday life), and world evangelism (spreading the “good news” of Christianity around the world). The United States is the center of global Evangelicalism, but it is a worldwide phenomenon. For many years, Evangelicals were largely nonpolitical, focusing mostly on personal faith and the inner spiritual life of the individual. In recent decades, however, Evangelicalism has become much more overtly political, promoting candidates and policies that reinforce “traditional values,” especially with regard to sexuality and access to abortion.

While they are in many ways paradigmatic Protestants, Evangelical Christians have also unintentionally begun to complicate the idea of just who is and who is not a Protestant. Up until the 1960s, the identification of Evangelicals was unmistakable: Evangelicals were conservative, conversion‐oriented Protestants who thought Catholics were thoroughly mistaken in their religious views and who viewed Pentecostal Christians as wild‐eyed fanatics. But during the last half century, leaders of the Evangelical Movement have reached out to both Catholics and Pentecostals, seeking allies in their fight to define and defend traditional Christian values. Evangelicalism’s new linkage with Pentecostalism is especially noteworthy because it is a worldwide phenomenon. This alliance may or may not be sustainable in the future. While traditional Protestant Evangelicals share some ideas and values with Pentecostals, the two movements are not identical. Their differences are explored and explained in the following chapter, which focuses on the global Pentecostal movement, the last of the four mega‐traditions that define Christianity around the world today. (See Figure 3.5 for a summary of key events in Protestant history.)