Noah Lykins’s Reviews > Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal > Status Update

We cannot tell how much of the righteousness of the kingdom will be established within ordinary history, but it is our responsibility to pray and work that that kingdom will be established on earth as it is and will be in heaven… cannot wholly distinguish its foothills from its ultimate fulfillment where there is no longer day and night, revival and decline, but only perpetual light in the face of the Lamb of God.

“As we examine the shifting balance in eschatologies during the history of the evangelical movement, we can draw several general conclusions. First, the main eschatological consensus in the church tends to vary according to the apparent success or defeat of the Christian enterprise.”

“In this century the Evangelical sector has specialized in theological and personal repentance and the "liberal" sector has specialized in social repentance. This division of labor has not worked very well.”

“Born-again racists and totally individualistic pietists at so numerous still….”

“the whole momentum of Dispensational theology moved toward a form of premillennialism which was evangelistically active but socially passive. This outlook expected the world to become increasingly corrupt and conceived of the church's main duty as witnessing to the justifying work of Christ, not making disciples whose growth in sanctification could change the world.”

“By the early 1900s a different pattern in American lay support took shape: wealthy lay people tithed their incomes to the church but quietly steered its social and political witness in directions which supported their interests. This pattern prevails today. Concern for the kingdom no longer controls our giving; the church is simply a spoke on the wheel of a wide variety of benevolent causes.”

“The social and cultural passivity of twentieth-century Evangelicalism… have to be corrected through a reinvigoration of the church's fighting spirit. As many younger voices have indicated, the automatic conformity with middle-class living standards common among Evangelicals may have to be scaled back to a simpler lifestyle so that more money can be released for God's work.”

[one] alienated from Evangelicalism can very easily conclude that the movement is a stalking-horse for conservative politics and economic reaction… to assume that Evangelicalism is offering American society a cheap fix with the opiate of the masses… offering cut-rate religion with cheap grace and minimal repentance, an agenda which certainly fits the classic profile of the false prophet.

Our innate pride, however, especially the pride which can be an incidental effect of the possession of truth, makes it all too likely that we will turn every situation into a Galatians 1 affair and never get around to 2 Timothy 2.

Today the observer walking around the American Zion and considering her ramparts sees an extensive fortress originally built by evangelicals, whose descendants are either camping outside or huddled in a few central hiding places, while nontheological mechanics control most of the buildings and battlements.