Lesslie Newbigin:

One almost universal feature of the world scene…seems unlikely to change in the near future. It is what has been described as the revolution of rising expectations. People in every part of the world are agreed in making demands upon society which in former ages were made only by a small segment in each nation…. Everywhere people demand and governments promise “the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and everywhere people grow impatient and rebellious when the promise is not fulfilled; if there is one generalization about the human situation today that is almost universally valid, it is surely this. The inner relationship between this expectation of a new world and the Christian gospel of the reign of God is one of the issues that must be discussed in any contemporary theology of mission.

That last line is tantalizing. I eagerly await what Newbigin has to say about it (assuming that he finds his way back to it later in the book).

Lesslie Newbigin:

We are forced to do something that the Western churches have never had to do since the days of their own birth — to discover the form and substance of a missionary church in terms that are valid in a world that has rejected the power and the influence of the Western nations. Missions will no longer work along the stream of expanding Western power. They have to learn to go against the stream. And in this situation we shall find that the New Testament speaks to us much more directly than does the nineteenth century as we learn afresh what it means to bear witness to the gospel from a position not of strength but of weakness.

Finished reading: Forgive by Timothy Keller 📚

A really thorough treatment of the topic of forgiveness. Forgive is saturated with Scripture and packed with really practical advice on how to live out the biblical principles.

Finished reading: Who Is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis by Thomas S. Kidd 📚

A short, useful overview of the evangelical movement in America. Kidd does an admirable job trying to salvage the term as (fundamentally) a theological designation rather than a marker of partisan politics. For my part, I find the theological emphases of the movement to be rather flimsy and not especially compelling. Kidd suggests three core aspects of evangelical identity: being born again, the primacy of the Bible, and an emphasis on “experiencing” the presence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Given the provenance of these teachings and the present crisis of identity within evangelicalism, it certainly forces one to consider what is actually worth conserving about this decidedly American movement.

Thomas S. Kidd, on the tension that has always existed within evangelicalism between the “establishmentarian impulse” and the more activist/reformist impulse:

Evangelicals have been most faithful to their tradition when protesting against manifest injustices like slavery rather than trying to impose a de facto or de jure establishment. Attempts to ban Sunday mail delivery, the sale of alcohol, and the teaching of evolution all reflected that establishmentarian impulse. This impulse has routinely taken evangelicals away from their dissenting roots. Well-meaning (or crassly opportunistic) politicians have often led rank-and-file evangelicals into such establishmentarian efforts. Some of those politicians (such as [William Jennings] Bryan) have been evangelicals, some not. But the establishmentarian crusade of the early 1920s culminated in Bryan’s sensational collapse at the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial.” Promoting anti-evolution laws was one of the most misguided evangelical ventures ever because it focused so much energy on mandating a particular Christian view of science in public schools. The Scopes Trial was a major precedent for the crisis of politicization that bedevils evangelical Christians today.

Brad East, with an intriguing comment in the midst of his review of Ryan Burge’s new book:

As for how Christians should respond to this fresh mission field, that is the question of the hour. If any tradition could make serious inroads with working-class young men and two-shift single moms, that mythical American phenomenon—revival—would surely be afoot.