Some progressive evangelical commentators are worried that evangelicals has reached a tipping point and that progressive evangelicals are becoming essentially indistinguishable from mainline protestants.
In my view this is only part of the story. The other part is that post-liberal mainliners are looking more and more like “evangelicals.” Richard Hays, N.T. Wright, Bruce McCormack, Miroslav Volf, and many others, are just as home giving talks at Wheaton as at Duke.
Why is this bad? From my perspective, it’s good — very good. Why is it something to worry over that Fuller is sending lots of graduates to the PCUSA and some Princeton grads are teaching in evangelical schools like Wheaton and some United Methodist pastors are writing books read in evangelical markets? Why is it bad that some younger evangelicals are joining and enlivening moribund mainline congregations?
The notion that there ever was an “Evangelical Coalition” is an ahistorical myth. The notion that some sort of hand-wringing needs to be done over the increasing convergence of the “conservative” mainline with “progressive” evangelicals seems to me a waste of energy.
Let the fences come down, and let there be a great convergence of historically rooted but contemporarily engaged Christians — a “New Mainline” if you will.