Ecclesiastical Divisiveness and Lack of Christian Love
When Bible-believing Christians separated from the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America over liberalism, those who left felt deserted and betrayed by those who remained[1]. More problematically, the periodicals of those who separated devoted more space to attacking those who disagreed with them than to addressing liberalism itself, and those who left refused to pray with or maintain fellowship with true believers who had not separated[1]. This resulted in inward-turning, self-righteousness, and hardness, with the impression that separation had made them so right that anything could be excused—habits they later applied to treating each other poorly over minor differences[1].
Inadequate Ecclesiology and Doctrinal Minimalism
Evangelical movements adopted a minimalist approach to doctrine and marginalized the church, replacing integrated doctrinal formularies with atomized statements of faith designed to support parachurch organizations that came to replace the church itself[2]. This reflects a broader weakness: Presbyterian evangelicalism has exhibited a tendency for ecumenical charity to dissolve into doctrinal indifferentism and for social crusading to drift into moralism and conformity to humanism, creating a map of the dangerous highway leading away from authentic Reformed tradition toward doctrinal cafeteria-style Christianity[3].
The fundamental tension is that in the flesh, one can stress purity without love or love without purity, but not both simultaneously—without reliance on Christ and the Holy Spirit, stress on purity becomes hard, proud, and legalistic[1].
[1] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), 4:97–98.
[2] Kenneth Brownell, “Review of Deconstructing Evangelicalism—Conservative Protestantism in the Age of Billy Graham by D. G. Hart,” Themelios (2006), 31:2:102.
[3] Richard F. Lovelace, “Evangelical Revivals and the Presbyterian Tradition,” Westminster Theological Journal (1979), 148.
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