Ep. 68 / The Spirit in a Disenchanted Age: An Evangelical History with Bruce Hindmarsh

Headlines love to shrink “evangelical” to a political label. In this episode we open the frame with historian and theologian, Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh. We journey all the way back to the Great Awakenings of the 1730s—when nominal churchgoers found living faith and began writing testimonies and hymns. We observe the rise of missionary societies, social reform and a global network that crossed denominational boundaries. Along the way, Dr. Hindmarsh shows how simple, portable essentials—conversion, the cross, Scripture, activism—helped the movement travel and translate across cultures and centuries.

We explore the Spirit’s through-line often missed in quick takes. From John Wesley’s emphasis on sanctification to the Keswick movement, from the Holiness movement to Azusa Street and later charismatic waves. The story is one of re-enchantment in a disenchanted age. The Holy Spirit personalizes the work of Christ, gives assurance and commissions people into service—a pattern that explains both revival energy and sustainable mission. Dr. Bruce also names the turning point from “clouds of wonders” to institutions, as evangelicals built magazines, schools and agencies to keep the fire from becoming “the work of one generation.”

We close by considering the contested name. Should we keep “evangelical”? Dr. Hindmarsh argues yes—because the word carries a living heritage of renewal and mission. If you'd like to learn more from Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh, you can go to his website or purchase his latest book. 

And please don't forget to share this episode and join the conversation on YouTube! 

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Transcript

Setting The Stage

Brian Stiller 0:09

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, Brian Stiller. I'm pleased to welcome Bruce Hindmarsh, a leading historian of evangelicalism and Christian spirituality. Bruce is the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology in Vancouver at Regent College, where his work seeks to bridge history, theology, and our lived-out faith. His work traces the deep roots of the evangelical tradition from the Wesley Brothers and Whitfield to movement shaping our modern evangelical community and its identity. Bruce is the author of important books tracing the development of the evangelical movement. What sets Bruce apart is his ability to help us see the present through the lens of the past. Rather than treating evangelicalism as a recent movement and crises, he reminds us that it has always been shaped by renewal, fragmentation, cultural pressure, and deep spiritual longing. In a time when many are asking whether evangelical faith is declining, transforming, or being reborn, Bruce offers historical clarity, theological depths, and a steady voice of wisdom. I'm grateful to have you with us today. Bruce Hindmarsh, welcome to Evangelical 360.

Bruce Hindmarsh 1:36

Thank you. Good to be with you, Brian. Good to see you again.

Brian Stiller 1:39

Bruce, you have such a rich understanding of the church. Your doctoral studies, your teaching at Regent for 25 years, your writing of many books. A lot of our community will be familiar with or be part of the evangelical church community. Although we have a number of people who are watching who are who are Catholic or non-religious or other religions. But given that this is Evangelical 360, and one of the interests we have is creating a global platform for evangelicals and for those that are interested in knowing about evangelicals, I'd like us to come back to the very core question that many will have, even people who are part of the evangelical church, and that's to ask you as a historian, what are the roots of today's contemporary evangelical church, which amounts to almost a quarter of the world's 2.4 billion Christians.

Defining Evangelicalism Beyond Politics

Awakening In The 1730s

Bruce Hindmarsh 2:39

That's right. That's right. Mark Hutchinson and John Wolfe wrote a little volume for Cambridge University Press, a short history of global evangelicalism. And towards the end of the book, they they mention what you just mentioned is it looks like evangelicalism is like a major block within world religions. Like it's a it's a significant global phenomenon. And I'm glad you said that because we can forget that sometimes with the um kind of uh political noise of the present moment that is often very, very loud, and uh especially in America, and forget that uh that I find myself often talking about evangelicalism is deeper historically and wider internationally than the kind of buzz that you might hear sometimes in the modern headlines. So um the word evangelical, um, you know, the um the English word um derives from a from from a Greek noun, um, you know, the evangel. Um, but in English, we don't say the evangel, we say the gospel. And so sometimes we lose the connection between the gospel, the message of Jesus Christ that sets people in joyful motion and sets them free of the gospel and evangelical. We don't hear the connection like you would in French or in German or other languages. And indeed, evangelical, evangelism would have been a word used in of Reformation churches. The Luther and his followers were concerned about the gospel and to be justified by faith alone uh through grace, you know. And so that kind of language appears. However, when we use the word today, we're often talking about uh a more historically specific movement that emerges in the age of the Enlightenment on the cusp of the modern period, as the world is modernizing on the ground, as it's changing in terms of its ideas and its structures, in terms of its political structures, of toleration and things that will ultimately will arrive at the kind of modern situation of uh modern pluralism of religion and so on. All that's changing. The old world, historians called it the Ancian regime, the old regime. And it's much more a tight union of church and state, and um and a sense that perhaps, you know, when when the evangelical movement in the Anglo-American English-speaking world emerges, uh, just prior to that, for a lot of people, there would be a sense that I discover myself to be a Christian. The way Bruce Hindmarsh discovered himself to be Canadian, I just sort of woke up into a consciousness of it. You know, I just sort of never really thought about it. You know, most of the people around me, I never thought about it until I lived in another country, until I lived in Britain. What I'm, you know, really, really what it meant to be Canadian. But, you know, so there's that kind of consciousness. And sometimes people, when they encountered Christ in a meaningful personal way, when the revivals began, they would say, I'd never heard anything in all my days going to church. I thought all of religion consisted in being observant, going to church, and doing no harm. I just kind of basic, you know, being a good person. And I had no idea this had to do with me and my own life. So that um the roots of evangelicalism in the it looks a little bit different if you look at Germany, sort of European roots. But in the English-speaking North Atlantic world, it begins in the 1730s, and there had been a sense. Uh, people wrote things about um the decay of the dissenting interest. They wrote wrote about the work of conversion goes on slowly. Ministers complained that people were sermon-proof, they couldn't get through to them. The glory days of the Puritans and the sort of experiential Protestantism of the previous century, something had decayed. And people, there are ministers corresponding between Scotland and New England and London, and they said, you know, reformed people who had a history and a heritage in the Reformation, and they said, you know, it's going to take nothing less than an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Like, we don't know what it's going to take for there to be an awakening of our people. And then it came. And it was uh, and this connects evangelicalism in its origin to revival and to conversion happening in clusters. And it's interesting, Brian, that the the conversions that happened weren't proselyte conversions. They weren't people so much converting from one religion to another. They were people who were nominal Christians who became, found a personally meaningful faith in Christ. They found an assurance of sins forgiven, and it mobilized them, it set them free. And when that happened in clusters, when there were groups, when it seemed to be concentrated in time, um, people would talk about they wouldn't necessarily, they would say there's a revival of religion, they would say there's an awakening. They the most common word they use is this was a work of God. So uh Jonathan Edwards famously writes us uh a faithful narrative of a surprising work of God in the conversion of some 300 souls in the Connecticut Valley in um in um in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Brian Stiller 8:05

And what period of history is it are you talking about?

Bruce Hindmarsh 8:08

This is uh 1734, 1735, and uh this is the sort of thing people had been praying for, and to see people's hearts um uh moved, see their consciences quickened. Uh and Edwards writes about it, and it seemed to be um a genuine surprise. And uh, and then people in Scotland, in Glasgow, near Cambus Lang, read about this, and uh John Wesley read about it in in England, riding between London and Oxford, and said, hmm, evidently one work with what we have here. And there is and there's a sense, not so much that this was like dominoes that that that fell, as it's not an elegant metaphor, but it's like popcorn popping. Almost like the heat in the North Atlantic got to a certain point where kernels of popcorn popped in different places. And initially, it's the conversion of individuals, individual ministers like uh Daniel Rowland and Howell Harris in Wales, uh, George Whitfield at Pembroke College in Oxford.

Brian Stiller 9:16

Give us some dates on this so we have a sense of the flow of history.

Testimony, Hymns, And Personal Faith

Bruce Hindmarsh 9:20

Everything I'm talking about right now is the 1730s. It's like the middle third of the 18th century. And so for about a generation, there had been a sense that not much had been happening spiritually. People seemed a bit cold spiritually. Um, things went on much the same. People are being sort of observant and uh you know going to church, but but something happens in the 1730s, it happens in New England, it happens in in uh old England, it happens in Scotland, it happens in Wales. And ministers, people like John Wesley, who were intensely religious, uh, you know, had a heart conversion. I felt my heart strangely warmed and felt that I I trusted in Christ. I trusted from me that my sins were forgiven. And so often you get this personal pronoun, the sense that this has to do with me and my life, and a quickened sense of the love of God and a desire for the conversion of others. You know, I think in the late age of modernity and consumer um capitalism were sometimes very anxious about individualism, you know, that but in this period it's the opposite. It's like religion was just a matter of conformity to the established church. And people discovering this has to do with me and my life. People, it's interesting, the forms of literature that come out of a movement, the dominant forms here were testimony, autobiography. I want it, I want to talk about what God's done for my soul. I find that this is meaningful to the details of my life, and I want to talk about it. And hymnity, and I want to sing about it because of the joy, the joy, the abulliance, the the energy that's come out of this. So it so in clusters in in London, in um in Scotland, in Wales, in New England, um you begin to have groups of people who um go through the travail of conversion, a conviction, um, a conviction of their own sin, an awareness that it's not just a matter of doing my best and doing no harm, but that God's law applies to my whole life, all my actions and my interiority, my heart. And then with a quickened sense of urgency, they call up to Christ as Savior. And uh, I've had the privilege, Brian, of working in archives. I read Dead People's Mail, and I've read hundreds, I'm I'm tempted to say, maybe not thousands, but but hundreds and hundreds of accounts by ordinary lay people. And it's very moving to see the the the this transition, this awareness that uh, you know, a single young mother in London who's been abandoned by you know by her husband who's raising two kids without a welfare state, and she goes and she hears the young preacher George Whitfield preaching outside. And she said, In all my days at church, I'd never heard anything like this. And she's desperate to get into the small groups. She finds a woman named Sister Robinson. She calls it's interesting, she wants to use um kinship language, Sister Robinson. This is about the heart. She gets into the small group hearing people tell their stories. She feels like she wants to tell hers. And she goes through the experience of uh conversion and it draws her into narrative. We have her letter. She writes to Charles Wesley, she wants to tell him about uh what she's experienced, and we see this happen um over and over again. So initially they didn't say, oh, this is modern evangelicalism. They would talk about people who are awakened, they would talk about serious Christians, they might use you know various kinds of language, but we can look back and now see an aggregate, and they saw an aggregate, they what they said is this is evidently one work of God, concentrated in time in the 1730s and 40s and extended in space across the North Atlantic. And we could go wider yet, because it's happening in um it's happening deep in Central Europe. And uh there's a movement that I love to study and write about called the Uprising of the Children. And uh, Brian, you and I have been involved working with uh young people, and uh, you know, I used to work with Youth for Christ with junior high kids um in my 20s, and junior high age young people in the Oder River Valley in Central Europe um began a revival in Central Europe that would ultimately lead to the birth of the um Moravians under Zinzendorf, and from there would lead to the birth of modern missions with the Moravian missions to South Africa, to Greenland, uh, to the West Indies, and so on. So there are polycentric origins to evangelicalism. You could begin the story in New England, you could begin the story in London, you could begin the story in Scotland or Wales, or deep in Silesia and modern-day sort of Poland.

Brian Stiller 14:36

You could you have you have that in the 1890s, 1730s? What's the next major era?

Polycentric Origins And Moravians

Bruce Hindmarsh 14:43

Yeah, I think there's different ways that sometimes people, historians, one of the first acts of interpretation is periodization. So, like what period are we looking at? And I would say in the 30s and 40s, uh, maybe a little bit beyond, people are walking in a cloud of wonders. There's even language of is this a kind of latter-day outpouring of the spirit, something almost eschatological. Uh, there's a phrase that Charles Williams used of the early church. He said, they did such theology as they could in what time they had left over from coming into existence. There's a sense that this is just happening. God is doing something, and it's sending people out into mission, and so preaching and so on. And I think, you know, depending on the vantage point and where you're looking, there's a pretty significant shift that happens. John Wesley dies in 1791, 1780s and 90s, things are changing politically. There's uh political developments in France, you know, you've had the American Revolution, there's different things going on. But part of what happens is the um spread of the gospel and people who are assimilated into this movement and it's growing and even organizing in some ways, especially under people like Wesley and different networks developing, is it begins to move up socially to the place where you have figures in the 1790s, um, 80s, 90s, and beyond, like William Wilberforce. And uh you begin to have some political, significant political movements, some elites, and there's new opportunities for evangelical activism in the movements for the abolition of the slave trade, and uh other movements that will come later, let's say 1790s to 1830s, 40s, 50s, into the Victorian period, tremendous movements of social reform, factory reform, and and associated with all this is if you like all those movements and energy that's going on to reform and and evangelism within the English-speaking world, but also the birth of missions. So, you know, 1790s up until the um high Victorian period, um, this kind of thing is going on. More elites, more organization, more evangelical identity. People are beginning to call themselves evangelicals. We're not Anglo-Catholics, we're not liberals, we're evangelicals. They have magazines and institutions. So um John Wesley was very anxious. He said, How will this, and he uses the Latin phrase, but how will this not be the work of one generation? What will allow this to be preserved and to continue? And he's very concerned with his own Wesleyan Methodists. Like, like, how how does this not just die out? And how is this and so sociologists use the language of the the routinization of charisma? Goes back to Max Weber, and that language has been picked up in religious circles. It's some of that language is used in Vatican II by Catholics. But but the question is, how does something how is something preserved beyond one generation? What are the mechanisms by which something is passed on to a second generation and a third generation? And it's interesting, Wesley says um education and family devotion is where he focuses. You know, that within families, we need to help families cultivate, you know, the education, the nurture of children, and we need to begin to take seriously education. Um, but in various ways and forms, I think that the development after the 1730s and 40s is institutionalization, it's institutions that last beyond a lifetime. So, how will this be preserved into another generation? It is often through evangelical organizations and mission organizations. And from the beginning, you know, we haven't talked a lot about the characteristics or characterize the movement, but from the beginning, there is something of an interdenominationalism. And um, somebody like George Whitfield, the Billy Graham of his generation, and you know, the young preacher, the boy preacher who at 21 years of age is uh much to his own surprise, drawing massive crowds outdoors, you know, 10,000, 20,000. Um, some people say the numbers are evangelistic, like they're there, like we're not exactly sure how many there are. But we've got, you know, we've got him preaching um and traveling, I think more than I don't know, 13 times crossing the Atlantic, and that wasn't on Air Canada, and uh back and forth and traveling. So in his own person, he experiences a kind of advanced pluralism, and he encounters New England congregationalists, Scottish Presbyterians, and and English Anglicans, and he recognizes a common work of God. So something happens very early that evangelicalism will be um multi-denominational and come to recognize that you and I might disagree about elements of church order and governance and the administration of the sacraments, but I recognize in you the presence of the Spirit of God and genuine spiritual life. So, what can we do together? Maybe we can do missions together, maybe we can do Bible society together, maybe we can do factory reform together, and so you begin to get these organizations, if you like parachurch organizations, maybe we can do education together that allow evangelicals not just to bear witness to a common spiritual life across denominational lines, but actually to um manifest it, manifest it in common works and so on. So evangelicalism is going to move towards the more simple rather than the more complex. The great tool of the Puritans in the 17th century for doing theology was the syllogism. I can logically extend core ideas and and enlarge them into great complex works of theology, and I can begin to map things um in very complex ways. Whereas for evangelicals, um, it was the axiom. How can I reduce this to its essentials? What is axiomatic? Not the complex, sort of almost gothic um development of systems, but what are the simple things that we can agree on that are essential to mission and devotion? And how can we boil this down to its essentials? So I think that what part of what that means is evangelicalism emerges in the modern world with its bags packed, ready to travel. Because with that kind of simple, a more simple sense of what constitutes the very essence of uh Of the gospel means that we can move into other cultures, we can cooperate together, and there'll be tremendous energy that will take us into eventually three centuries, five continents, and um and the later kind of periodization of evangelicals in Victorian early 20th century, and then with globalization, you know, this kind of uh phenomenon that we're aware of today.

From Revival To Institutions

Brian Stiller 22:30

Okay, Bruce. So Bruce, we have the 1700s. That's my heart was strangely warm, this enormous move of personal conversions and and spiritual euphoria. Then you mentioned in the 1800s moving towards more of an establishment, creating some concrete organizations for longevity and missions and so forth. What is the next phase as we move towards the end of the 1800s into the early 1900s? What is in the evangelical community then and what is it becoming?

Bruce Hindmarsh 23:03

I think there's you know, there's movement, continued movement into you know mission work. There's a kind of high water mark for evangelicals in England in 1851. There's a religious census that was done, and um, there's a kind of salience in the culture and a kind of Victorian, you know, Second British Empire confidence of the gospel going out with the British Empire and um and uh sense of mission with the Keswick movement, and you'll remember um Keswick Youth Camp and um the Keswick Conference in Ontario, and uh with the Keswick movement, it's been described as the first global spirituality, and and it was fairly simple in the sense that it was entire consecration to Jesus Christ, a call to consecration, and even to the to try to break through into a kind of higher Christian life and and holiness, and but consecration and missionary service, and it becomes a global spirituality. And so in the later 19th century, I think that's quite significant.

Brian Stiller 24:10

Is it become the precursor to the charismatic movement?

Bruce Hindmarsh 24:13

Yeah, in many ways. Yeah. There's, I mean, maybe um, and being overcomplex here, let's use David Bebbington says 18th century enlightenment, 19th century romanticism, 20th century modernity, and in the midst of big cultural changes, you have a core that remains the same. And uh, you and I have talked about uh David uh in trying to simplify this talks about there's an there's an emphasis on conversion that remains the same through these different periods and the rise of missions and some of the organizations we've talked about. And um there's uh concern for conversion, there's uh a spirituality that centers on the cross of Christ. You know, uh there's some movements that maybe emphasize more the incarnation or the sacraments and so on. And it's not that evangelicals don't care about those things, but there's a distinctive emphasis on the cross and the substitutionary atonement that in the cross Christ has done for me what I could not do for myself. It is here that I find my sins forgiven and I'm set free. There's an emphasis upon um uh conversion, cross, on activism, on uh activism for service and uh mission is uh is a huge emphasis.

Brian Stiller 25:40

What does the Pentecostal movement then do to the evangelical world?

Interdenominational Cooperation

Bruce Hindmarsh 25:44

Yeah, oh you know what, Brian, I I my last sort of major book was with Oxford, was called The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism, and I'm looking for the heart of the movement. And uh David, you know, David gives us these these characteristics of um David Bebbington, David Bebbington of you know uh conversion, the cross, bible, and activism. So those four. But I think what I noticed is um we really need to talk about the spirit. And I and at the end of the book, I said, What was the spirit of early evangelicalism? What was kind of you know, the spirit in the sense of the heart of it, and it was the Holy Spirit. You know, come, Holy Ghost, all quickening fire, come and in me delight to rest, drawn by the lure of strong desire. Oh, come and consecrate my breast, the temple of my soul prepare and fix thy sacred presence there. Charles Wesley. There is a, I think what produces, as I say initially, this is not a prosthetic conversion. This is a matter of my faith becoming real and personal. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And I think we can trace over against a modernizing world, science. Uh, in a sense, there's a kind of evacuation of the spiritual from the worldview of the modern scientific world. God is up there, and we have the world down here, and and it is what people call a disenchanted world. The evangelicals are concerned to re-enchant the world. God is present. Their favorite book was The Life of God in the Soul of Man, a real participation in the divine nature. It is the spirit that makes faith personal. So I think there's a thread that we could go. I mean, you can do genealogies of evangelicalism by looking at great preachers, from um George Whitfield, you know, to Charles Finney to Billy Sunday to Billy Graham. You can do, you can trace it that way. You could look at revivals, awakening, and reform as uh McLachlan has done in America to look at phases where there's renewal and um and issues in social reforms. And you can see in a way like waves, you know, first awakening, second awakening, prayer meeting revival, gilded age, evangelicalism, and so on. But I think you can also do that this you could you could trace a genealogy in terms of um the kind of work of the spirit, the kind of work of the spirit, and you can see that it's there in um you know in in the beginnings of the movement, you can see it's there in the Wesleyan concern for sanctification, you can see it emerge in the holiness movement, and then you can see it emerge in Pentecostalism through Azusa Street, you can see it in the first, second, third wave charismatic movement, you can see it in uh the vineyard in Holy Trinity Brompton, you can see the concern, the attentiveness to the work of the spirit. Um, but even where it's not sort of um, you know, the sign gifts and tongues and so on, it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to make personal the things of Christ. In Calvin's Institutes, he writes Book One uh is sort of theology proper God, uh book two is Christ and his work. Book three is really about the Holy Spirit, and it begins, Calvin says, everything we've just said about the work of Christ as mediator is useless if you are not joined to Christ. And the Holy Spirit is the bond that effectually unites us to Christ. It is by the Holy Spirit that we're united to Christ and all his benefits flow to us. And so I think on the cusp of the modern period, in a disenchanted world where people are discovering themselves to be individuals and have more choice in politics and in the consumer economy, there is a movement of God where an awareness of the Holy Spirit. And I think it's a work of the spirit that produces assurance, that produces joy, that sends people out in mission. So I think it's something we could emphasize more. The religion of the heart is there from the beginning, the work of the spirit is there from the beginning.

Brian Stiller 30:10

Given that that uh intense and brief but rich overview of uh the evangelical community from over the last few centuries, given that, overlay that with what you see today. Uh we mentioned earlier that evangelicals today, I guess back in 1960 there were about 90 million, today there's about 650 million, and some would say even more. Todd Johnson of of Gordon Conwell would say even more. Uh but we are we are living in a at least in North America and in other parts of the world, like in Brazil and Zambia, we're living where there is a more of a collusion with uh with evangelical uh theology and social political interests. So how would you overlay what you've described with where what you see today?

Victorian Confidence And Global Missions

Bruce Hindmarsh 31:06

What we see in its origins is now global. Three centuries, you know, five, six continents, this movement has spread and there is continuity. I think you know, people aren't always evangelicals are concerned primarily with that I'm evangelical, they're concerned with the gospel. And you know, there's surveys our old friend George Rollock uh commissioned and helped Angus read with some of these. And as they survey for salience within the population of some of the characteristics that would make one an evangelical, they found all these people who are evangelical that didn't know it, you know, because they have the they have these characteristics and they're wired together like that. So sometimes you'd almost have to say, as we define this movement, you can kind of discern it. And then there's also sometimes some infrastructures or networks that help it um manifest itself and people to recognize each other, whether it's the um, you know, the some of the house churches in in China, um, whether it's uh some of the movements in Brazil, and and sometimes it's the mission organizations, it's the international organizations that help these groups um find each other. I think one of the things that might be useful to talk about a little bit is in connection to the past and the present. Is we talked about evangelicalism emerging with a certain simplicity. Its impulse was not to write statements of faith like the Reformation, you know, the Book of Concord, the 39 Articles, and so on. It was much more in via, it would be much more like the Alpha Course or something like that. Um, you know, works of devotion and so on. So um as it emerges, it's not primarily um politically aligned. In some ways, it's it's reacting against the Ancian regime and too tight a connection to the state. If the state is religious and religion is political, there's a kind of combination there that they felt like we need to break free of that and make sure that you know that this is meaningful for you and your own life and your own agency. So evangelicals have been monarchist, royalist, and republican. They have been Whig and Tory, they have been Republican and Democrat, they have been socialist and capitalist, they have been Keynesian and Austrian school. Uh, they have they've been aligned in a number of different directions politically. So I think the association today, especially in American politics, where people see evangelicalism as just reflecting uh evangelicals have been engaged in politics and very concerned, and and evangelicals have concerns for human dignity and human freedom and and and and have been opposed to authoritarianism as you know, have being have been concerned about these things. But there isn't kind of one politics that I think defines evangelicalism, past or present, um, locally or um or universally. It's also true that, and I've been trying to think of a good metaphor for this, Brian. Maybe you can help me, but um, evangelicalism emerges as um with certain emphases and certain things it could take for granted. So there's a whole theology of, let's say, the Nicene Creed and so on. When Wesley went to Wales, he said, these people are ignorant, they don't know anything, they are complete pagans, they know no more of Christianity than Tomu Chachi and the Creek Indians in Georgia. All they know is the creed, the catechism, the Lord's Prayer, and he starts listing off all these things that I kind of go, that's kind of quite a lot, you know. Um, and um, you know, obviously his concern was that they know this by rote, but it's not in their hearts. But when Whitfield stood up and said to people, you need to be a real Christian, not a nominal Christian, there was a whole they a whole he could take for granted creation, uh, providence, uh, scripture, um, a whole number of kinds of doctrines. So I think evangelicalism has these distinctive concerns, but it has to be nested or built upon a substructure. And if that substructure disappears, it it becomes like a stream that runs on without its source. It continues to try to be like a fire that burns without fuel. So underneath evangelicalism, it's been quite adaptable. There's a kind of hybridity. There can be a kind of Anabaptist framework in theology for some of our Anabaptist brothers and sisters and you know the Mennonite brethren in Canada and groups like this. There can be a reformed, a very naturally reformed structure underneath for some of our more reformed and Presbyterian brothers and sisters, a kind of reformed foundation and an evangelical expression. Uh there can be, I think there could be a neotomist, uh kind of uh uh Aquinas, you know, but there has but without a deeper theology underneath, the danger of evangelicalism is because it is inherently populist and oriented towards ordinary people, and that's its strength, but can also be a weakness. Because where's the theology that will help me engage with culture and engage with issues?

Brian Stiller 36:46

Then what happens if you've got a sub a substructure that's primarily secular? How can it appeal to people who have secular assumptions?

The Spirit’s Thread To Pentecostalism

Bruce Hindmarsh 36:56

I think that's the genius of something like the Alpha Course, that it's a course. And it's not just, you know, the crusade evangelism of the mid-20th century, in which some of these assumptions that are are are still latent in the culture. There's a kind of Christian something there that Billy Graham could stand up and invite people to come to Christ and make a personal, what was it called, make a decision for Christ, right? In something like the Alpha Course, it's like going back to the early church and the longer periods of catechism. Come learn Christianity. And then um, and I think also conversion might look different uh today than in the 18th century. In the 18th century, it's more like this there's so much awareness, there's so much Christian culture and heritage that you just picked up in with your mother's milk, but it needs to be a personally meaningful faith. And here today, there might be, you know, and and also there was therefore a quickening of conscience that Whitfield didn't have to say very much, and people knew you're right, I'm a sinner. I have broken God's law, I stand under his judgment. I'm aware of the traditional last things death, judgment, heaven, and hell. And as soon as my conscience is quickened, I realize I'm in danger of standing before a holy God with eternity in front of me. What all that was there. Well, what about today? Well, I think today it might be um it might look a little different. There in Richard Baxter, uh, in the 17th century, his great conversion narrative and his reliquiae Baxteriani, he was worried about that so much had been done in his own life by education and not by he worried that it was all education, not regeneration, that he couldn't point to a specific moment or a crisis where he came to faith and his conversion didn't look like that, that he heard about in funeral sermons from great ministers. And then there's a line, Brian, that for me was worth the price of the book, and it's a big book. He said, At last I realized that God breaketh not all men's hearts the same. That every heart that comes to Christ will have to come under conviction. You know, I'm not what I should be. The gospel will have to go to work to change me, but it might be, it might look different. It might be, you know, it sooner or later I will come to the sense of how desperately I need God. But it might be initially in a secular world that the presenting question is not like Luther. How do I set my conscience at rest before a holy God? How do I find forgiveness for my guilt? That may, for some people, that may be a presenting question, but for some people, the presenting question today in a secular world might be the one that, like in the early church, whose God is God? Is God real? And so I think like the Alpha Course is partly trying to help people reckon with is God real? Uh, whose God is God? Who is it's a pagan question? Who is the God of this place? Is God real? And then it may be a longer process of discovering what this God is like, and He is a holy God. And so, you know, my own uh wife, Brian, her conversion experience was initially just uh, you know, as an 18-year-old sitting at AW and a friend sharing the gospel with her, and they went home and they stayed up all night, and she was just flooded with a sense of the presence of God. But it's later in her life that she really understood God's holiness. And just as surely as any other you know, conversion in the 18th century, she became aware of her own sin, the need for Christ to do for her what she couldn't do for herself. Um, but it was it didn't quite look like these uh conversions or the substructure is Christendom.

Brian Stiller 40:50

Okay, Bruce, in the this last couple of minutes that we have on this uh podcast, uh those that are listening to your both detailed and sweeping uh historical review of what it means to know Christ. Today the word evangelical in some cases has been has been uh has been marred, has been uh uh put under dispute because in some cases it's been politically aligned and in a sense uh almost corrupted, and people would push back and say, I I I don't I don't want I don't want that kind of religion that is uh aligned with some social political ideology. To that kind of person, what would you suggest they do and go to in their innate and their their their soul-driven desire to know God?

Global Growth And Political Perceptions

Bruce Hindmarsh 41:50

Oh, that's wonderful. Um I was sitting on an airplane coming back from Denver to Vancouver, and somebody beside me asks me what I do, and um I explain. And he said, Are you one of those born-again Christians? And my response was, Tell me what you mean by born again. And he proceeded to talk about quite an abusive kind of religion and experience that his girlfriend has had, and and in this authoritarian church, and blah, blah, blah. And I said, No, that's not what I believe. Let me tell you what I believe and tell you who I am. So I think sometimes you have to get C.S. Lewis talked about trying to get past watchful dragons. You have to find a way to get past the noise and find a way. I I I talked to Jim Packer about this one time, J.I. Packer, my colleague at Regent, and I said, you know, people are very anxious about um politics and the alignment of evangelicals with um certain kinds of politics and sort of singularly aligned with certain kinds of politics. And he said, My dear Bruce, if you understand something, you can always use other words to describe it. And I thought that's good. The problem is it takes a lot of words. You know, my friend Mark Knoll will talk about uh um Protestant experiential biblicist, and I said, I don't think that's gonna catch on anytime soon. You know, it's um not very catchy. And um, so you know, I don't know what the elevator conversation is about, you know, evangelicals. I I might say, Oh, I like the definition of William Tyndall in the 16th century. Uh, evangelical is a Greek word, and it meaneth to make a man's heart glad and maketh him leap, dance, and sing for joy. It's good news that sets the heart free. It's about being a real Christian, not just a nominal Christian, and that it affects my whole life and it sets my heart free. But I think um so sometimes if it if there's a longer conversation, we'll do some of what we did today and just say, you know, I'm unwilling to give up the word evangelical despite its political um that it's become a problematic word in a certain political conversation. But I want Think of that conversation as quite parochial, as quite narrow, and and to give up the word evangelical would be serious, and I'm not willing to do it because I don't want to give up the heritage. There is a tradition here that has shaped people and given life. There is a pidea, there is that that that's that means there's a formative culture to be apprenticed to. There's a whole genealogy of people and movements and institutions that brought the gospel to me, and I don't want to be cut cut off from that. Whatever the name is for it, I feel like it's precious. The Princeton Evangelical Fellowship on the campus of Princeton University dropped the word evangelical to be the you know the Christian fellowship. And I had Princeton Christian Fellowship, and I understand the reasons why. You want to be able to have that first conversation and not have people just shut you off or or things become divisive immediately. However, they did that without changing a single thing about their identity, their theology, or their history. And I don't want to, and I think it's dangerous to if in losing the word we lose all that history and heritage and all that that is wide and it's deep. Uh that to me is a problem. You know, and so there are short conversations where I might bring up, you know, William Tyndall. There are longer conversations that you can sit down with people and try to de-center the political discussion. But it's uh it's admittedly, you know, it's a bit of a challenge in terms of the association with uh a certain kind of electoral politics and culture wars and so on today in America.

Brian Stiller 45:42

Bruce Hindmarsh, thank you so much for joining us in Evangelical 360.

Bruce Hindmarsh 45:46

Thank you, thank you, Brian.

Brian Stiller 45:49

Bruce, your understanding of the church is so helpful in us understanding the current dynamic. In short, your analysis is helping us understand the times. And to my listeners, thank you for being part of the podcast. And be sure to share this episode with your friends and join the conversation on YouTube. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, check the show notes for links and info. And if you haven't already received my free ebook and newsletter, just go to Brianstiller.com. Thanks for joining us today. Until next time.