Top Five: Biggest problems with “An Evangelical Manifesto”

Recently a group of Evangelical authors got together and produced “An Evangelical Manifesto.” Even more recently, a book group that I belong to absolutely tore the document apart over the course of two or three hours. Here’s the top five problems we found.

1. It’s not a manifesto!

Well not on the whole anyway. There are some bits that would fit as “a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization,” but much of the document is dedicated trying to get evangelicals to act right according to the authors.

2. According to the document itself, the idea of an Evangelical manifesto is incoherent.

If, “no one speaks for all Evangelicals, least of all those who claim to” then the strongest claim the authors can and do make is to “speak for [themselves] but as a representative group as Evangelicals in America.” Such a group cannot write a manifesto for “Evangelicals in America.” Obviously this is a significant factor in the first problem.

3. It makes the same mistakes that it is criticizing.

One of my favorite statements from the document is when the authors claim that, “we insist that we ourselves, and not scholars, the press, or public opinion, have the right to say who we understand ourselves to be. We are who we say we are, and we resist all attempts to explain us in terms of our ‘true’ motives and our ‘real’ agenda” (p. 4). But then four pages later the authors do just such a thing to Fundamentalists. This is particularly egregious since Fundamentalism actually has a document that led to the definition of the movement. That’s something that Evangelicals can’t claim, yet the authors want to tell people what Fundamentalists are all about while chastising them for doing the same to Evangelicals.

4. Failure to capture Evangelicalism.

The authors may be forgiven for not giving necessary and sufficient conditions for applying the label “Evangelical”; it’s not that sort of a movement. At the same time, the desire to pitch a big tent seems to have led the authors to soften the stances that would traditionally be associated with Evangelicals. Vaguely, there is a problem with the handling of sin. The subject only seems to come up in discussions of what Evangelicals have done wrong. The doctrine of depravity is in the background, if present at all. Relatedly the authors fail to mention hell, even while affirming heaven. And finally, perhaps most importantly, there is not even a passing mention of inerrancy. It’s true that there has been no small debate over the nature of inerrancy, it is reflects poorly on the authors to have left the issue out all together.

5. Shockingly bad writing.

If these are the intellectuals of the Evangelical movement then let me out right now. I know it was produced by a committee, but that’s still no excuse for the dreadful ambiguity and out-and-out poor writing of the document. One would think that before nationally publicizing a work the authors would have run it by an editor competent enough to catch mistakes like the hyphenation of “fellow-creatures” on page six and the long list of sentences that yield three or four or more possible interpretations.