The End of Evangelicalism in Our Day?

 

Are we going to see the end of evangelicalism in our day? This might seem like a radical question, but I don’t think it is. When you consider the serious missteps that evangelical leaders have tied their movement to, from Prohibition in the early 20^th century, to the seeker sensitive movement, a.k.a watered down light rock concert style church with little teaching, to the prosperity gospel, to feminism, and many other examples, you can see that this movement has tied itself to some very unorthodox beliefs and ideologies. Not the least of which is how heterodox end times views have come to dominate in the evangelical space.

I think history can give us some insight here. When we look at how history rhymes, we might be able to answer this question, somewhat.  

In 1535 something incredible happened. In the Middle of the Protestant reformation while Luther and other Reformers were overturning many Catholic traditions. Right in the heat of the famous schism between those two traditions, something unbelievable happened. The Protestants and Catholics joined forces to deal with something they considered an even bigger concern. Catholic and Protestant magistrates joined forces to put down a rebellion in the town of Munster.

Why? What would inspire such divergent groups to lay aside differences like that? In the middle of their most heated time of dispute?

Well, in the late 1520's and early 1530's the Anabaptist movement was captured by apocalyptic forces. The Anabaptists started off with a very moderate, and peace focused leadership. They believed that Christians should meet voluntarily, and not be born as members of the state churches. Many took on board a strong form of pacificism, that shunned any use of force for any reason. Others believed that the state held this power and should use it for good, but not to compel conscience. Both views had a strong lineage in Church history. It did not matter, their break with their state churches brought upon them swift and harsh persecution. The measured leadership of their early days was mostly gone by the early 1530’s, having perished in that tribulation.

This created a leadership vacuum that allowed apocalyptic preachers, like Melchoir Hoffman and John of Leiden, to proclaim the end of days was immanent, and that the kingdom of God was about to be established. Hoffman believed his own prophecies and allowed himself to be put into jail, believing he would be freed when Jesus returned. He died in prison years later, a victim of his own errors. Leiden proclaimed himself king of the beleaguered people of Munster. He was publicly put to death when the rebellion failed.  

Other false prophets came along as well. They built on the messages of men like Hoffman and through a serious of events they took military control of the town of Munster, proclaiming it the New Jerusalem. Leiden was among the most influential of these people, but there were many others.

This led to conflict and eventually war with the authorities in the region. Anabaptists flocked to the city, believing it to be a refuge, and finding it to be in reality an apocalyptic nightmare. But to many the events of the Reformation, the tumults happening all over Norther Europe, lined up so well with the book of Revelation that they fell under the trance of these false prophets. Their prophecies were even considered to have more weight, because of the great tribulation happening in those days.

Eventually, the abominable behaviour of the leaders of this city provoked such an outrage in the region, that the Catholics and Protestants authorities aligned together to put down what became known as the Munster Rebellion. Many Anabaptists perished in the defeat of this rebellion. Among those that perished were some of the pacifist variety who got caught up in the middle of the conflict, and just thought the city of Munster would be a refuge from the travails of the Reformation persecution raging around them. But it did not matter, they were punished along with many of the instigators of the rebellion. The word Anabaptist became a curse word for centuries. Even though Anabaptists had peaceful branches like the Mennonites, the stain of Munster lived long in people’s memories.

Now, we see history gearing up to rhyme in our day. False prophets have been declaring that war with Iran is a must for the End of Day’s events. We are seeing bad prophecy being self-fulfilled in our days by many of its own adherents. The Spirit of Munster was really the Spirit of false prophecy. When these kinds of people get military power, they can cause great damage. Because they can seek to bring to pass their own apocalyptic ideas. And we are seeing this in action, and some strains of evangelicalism are right in the midst of this.

Are we seeing evangelicalism's Munster moment?

I think this is entirely possible. For decades too many pastors have been silent about false apocalyptic narratives. Caught up in the seeker sensitive movement which has been dominant for too long in western churches, many pastors have been trained to avoid such topics. Only those who passionately believe in these end times views tend to buck this trend, at least generally speaking. Privately pastors will talk about how bad such theology is. Publicly they are pan-millennialists who don’t want to get into it, for fear of upsetting people, or causing division. But this has allowed bad theology to become generally accepted among a large swath of the evangelical church. Has this silence of the vast majority of pastors in the church fostered tragedy? Has this allowed the evangelical church to be captured by the same sort of errors as Munster, just in a different form?

I don’t think we will see all of evangelicalism come to an end. The Anabaptists live on, but only because they rejected their earlier apocalyptism. Evangelicalism will continue, but I think large streams of it will begin to be shunned by more and more Christians. Already many people avoid the end times parts of the Bible because they have heard too many bad interpretations. But with credible reports of powerful Christians using bad prophecy to justify war in the Middle East, many are seeing in real time how this brings disrepute on the church, that is not far different to what Munster did. This will cause a reaction against the kind of literalist Bible reading that became a staple of the reformation, but in some quarters has morphed into a type of end times view that expects the Old Testament to come alive again in our day.

There is not doubt that the Iranian regime is bad. Radical Islamist governments are bad. That is easy to declare. But there are many bad regimes in this world. We are not at war with most of them. Two things can be true at once. They can be bad, and what is happening now can also be the fruit of bad theology and bad ideology.

We are seeing the convergence of many false apocalyptic ideologies coming to war with each other in the Middle East right now. I see many Christians online talking about the errors of fundamentalist Islam. But I see many of the same Christians decreeing that this war is God’s will, at the exact same time. Can you see the irony? Because many of them cannot. Christians need to do some real soul searching about their part in fostering these kinds of theologies.

I would say a good place to start this soul searching is reading a book like The Anabaptist Story, by William R. Estep. Estep does a good job of showing how two very different streams of theology ran through the Anabaptist movement, and he shows how one led to tragedy, and the other led to a movement that is still vibrant and peaceful till this day.

Wrestling with how past Christians faced and handled negative apocalyptic movements can help give us theological clarity in our day. The Bible is not subject to history, or man’s word. But faithful believers who loved God’s word have faced many of the same challenges that we do today, and they learnt how to navigate them. I think evangelical pastors should consider addressing this as a priority in the coming days, weeks and months. Because the church is called to be salt and light, it is created to be influential, but sometimes it gets hijacked by bad ideas and that influence turns sour.