Truth Unites - Evangelicalism Has Fractured. Now What?

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Gavin Ortlund considers the current fractures within evangelicalism, and how we can seek renewal in the church today. Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Evangelicalism seems to be fractured and fracturing even more. Most of us can feel this. We look around at the church. We see all these divisions and disintegration. It's not an encouraging time. I'm recording this in early 2025. We do see some great things happening. I'm going to talk about that. But overall, it's hard to deny. I mean, even that term evangelical, it's not actually clear what that means at this point. It's taken on different meanings. Lots of people are uncertain about whether to use that. Let's talk about what is happening and then where to go from here. This video is my attempt to sort of put some hope and vision before people who would identify as evangelical Christians, such as myself. You know, if we could all huddle together in a room and sort of talk about what's happening, big picture,

what's the big, how are things basically going in the church, and what should we be striving for right now in 2025? What would that be? This is the kind of thing I hope Truth Unites is serving. and I would say renewal in the church and revival and re-centering on the gospel and so on and so forth. We'll talk a little bit about this in this video. In some respects, this video will give you an orientation to my heart's desire with what I'm trying to do with Truth Unites. So this is a big picture video, looking at everything. I've been reading the decline and renewal of the American Church by Tim Keller. This is, I think it might be, someone can correct me in the comments.

I think it's the last thing he wrote. It's not really an official book, but you can download the PDF. it's sort of a white paper after his book on forgiveness. I think this comes around the same time or a little after. And it's basically talking about the state of the evangelical church, especially in America right now. And his diagnosis is pretty dire. He uses the term intervention. The church needs an intervention. And I've talked a little bit about some of these statistics in my video on deconstruction. 40 million people, about 15% of the U.S. population have de-churched. They've stopped going to church, the percentage of religiously unaffiliated people in the United States has gone over

the last 30 years from 5% of the population to 30% from 1 out of 20 to 1 out of 3, roughly. And if the trends keep going, Christianity will be in the minority position by 2017. We all feel that. We all look around and we see declension and decline and so forth. And so the question that animates my life, really, at this point, my ministry, other than just walk with Jesus, take care of my family is what does renewal look like? What do we do about this? How do we reverse that trend? And that's what he's talking about a little bit in this white paper as well. And he lists three steps in the chapter on renewal. Number one, unite around historic Protestant theology. Number two, seek revival, gospel renewal dynamics. And number three, begin a new movement. Oh, how I love those

words, a new movement. This is what I want to give my life to. This is what I want Truth nights to be serving, the promotion of Christianity, new energy, new positive, constructive energy toward the gospel. That's what I hope apologetics and other things are serving, ultimately. Let's start a new movement. Let's have the gospel go on the offense in the 2020s, 2030s, 2040s for the promotion and the increase of Christianity. There's openness right now among some people. So some of that you'll have heard me say before. But what Tim says first here surprised me as I'm reading through this right now with my dad. He says the first step to that begin a new movement is divide but with tears and grace. Something like the evangelical fundamentalist split of the 1940s may need to

happen or is happening again. At that point, men like Billy Graham, Carl Henry, Harold Okingay, and Jay Howard Pew, divided from fundamentalism, created a number of new institutions, and took the new name evangelicals to make the differences clear. That is really interesting. So as we're looking at the current fragmentation in the current divisions, what does that look like? Well, Tim puts it in four zones. Now, don't get overwhelmed by this picture. We'll work through this. I'll define the four zones in just a second. We'll leave this up. You get plenty of time to look at it. If you're listening to the podcast, there's a picture with four zones on it right now. Notice first what I've highlighted in yellow toward the top of this picture. This is where Tim says that renewal will come mostly from the center

of zones two and three, but trying to reach others in zones two and three on the edges of those groups, but division is necessary with zones one and four. That's what compelled me to add the circle and the arrows here. I did this before I knew I'd be taking a picture of it. But let's define these zones, because this is one way to try to sketch out very simply what's happening right now, the current fragmentation of evangelicalism. In some respects, this four zone schema is kind of a simplified version of what Mike Graham does in his excellent article at Mere Orthodoxy called the six-way fracturing of evangelicalism. I'll put a link to that. It's really insightful. Take a look at that. Keller just has four zones. So basically, these are four camps resulting from the fracturing of evangelicalism.

Zone one is fundamentalism. Zone two is conservative evangelicalism. Zone three is moderate evangelicalism. Zone 4 is ex-Vangelicalism. People have left evangelicalism, so just think as the numbers get bigger, you're moving to the left on a spectrum. So zone one is a, we sometimes use the term neo-fundamentalism. This is a very, a group that's very stridently against any talk of social justice, very militant, very political, hyper-complementarian. This zone is very much ascendant right now, though already sort of fracturing internally in various ways. Zone 4 is kind of similar to the old. older liberal mainline denominations, lower view of Scripture, often unorthodox views of marriage and sexuality, sometimes can be just as militant as zone one. Zones two and three have some

differences, you know, a different posture towards societal issues, some different leanings doctrinally, there will be some tensions there, but both of those two zones are within historic evangelicalism. Both affirm an orthodox view of sexuality and marriage, both affirm a high view of scripture is the inspired word of God, both affirm the essentials of the faith like the Apostles Creed and so on and so forth. Now, obviously, a sketch like this is painting with a broad brush. We could pick at this to death. We could pick it apart. You know, not everyone's going to fit neatly into one's own. Real life is more complicated than this kind of schema and so on and so forth. This is just a heuristic device. But it starts to get us oriented to some of the divisions that we

see. The churches and the institutions and the ministries that have historic ties back to 20th century, evangelical movement with Billy Graham and Harold John Ock and Gay and Carl Henry and so on and so forth, the group that split off from fundamentalism then has today splintered into these different kinds of camps. And this is the world we now inhabit. And these zones can be pretty different from each other. And what Keller is essentially saying is the way forward is to divide from zones one and four and try to bring as many people and institutions as we can together from zones two and three into a new movement of gospel renewal in our day. Now, what is implicit in that is two things. First of all, that division is sometimes necessary. It really struck me that that was the first point

he made under the beginning of new movement is that sometimes, unfortunately, you have to just recognize that we can't have cooperation and partnership with everybody. Division is sort of inevitable, and it's happening so much right now at the only alternative to wise, reflective division, and hopefully division with grace and love is a sort of impulsive, reactive division, because it's going to happen. By the way, by division here, I don't mean questioning someone's salvation, saying they're not a Christian. I'm not talking like that. I'm talking about how we partner for gospel renewal right now, who we can really link arms with to come together to do ministry and to promote the gospel and so on and so forth. And it's okay just to recognize that there are some

folks who are so far away from our position, we pray for them. We keep an open heart to them personally, but we recognize we're really in a different zone to use that term. But remember Keller's words, do it with tears and grace. So that's the first thing that's implicit in this way of thinking is that, yeah, there's going to be some different camps. There's going to be some divides, and we can be honest about them. But the other thing that's implicit is that the division takes place in two different directions. On the one side, you have this tremendous pull, this tremendous undertow towards zone four. And if you don't feel that, it's real. It depends on where you live and who you talk with, but tremendous pull towards secularism and deconstruction. Lots of people leaving Christianity

or certainly leaving evangelical Christianity. This is part of the statistics I've given here. This is why a huge part of what I want to give myself to at Truth Unites is basic apologetics. think that's really needed now, even though it may be apologetics in 2025 needs to feel a little different than apologetics in 1995 or even 2015. Nonetheless, we need apologetics. We need, you know, so I want to promote historic Protestant doctrines like Sola Fide. I want to promote historic Christian doctrines like the deity of Christ, promote arguments for the existence of God. Again, kind of positive, constructive force for the core of Christianity. That's one of the things I want to give myself too. At the same time, right in the midst of the instability and polarization of the world,

there's this reaction in the other direction, a kind of fundamentalism. A lot of people, understandably concerned by the left, are sort of lunging in the opposite direction. And this is also very concerning, and this is not the historic evangelical posture. I have a whole video talking about fundamentalism 100 years ago and fundamentalism today, and where there can be similar temptations. evangelicalism has historically been situated between these two, between liberalism and fundamentalism. And one thing I think we would benefit from now is historical study about what is fundamentalism, what is liberalism, what is evangelicalism? In that video, I try to work through examples of this.

I think that gives historical context for what we're going through today. I also did a video on heresy where I'm trying to address this. And the reason I'm really, I'm going to keep hammering this point home because I think it's so important because lots of people are confused about what actually is liberalism. And people are sliding into zone one, calling zones two and three as if they were zone four, if you follow that. In other words, they're calling views liberal and heresy that actually were common among fundamentalists a hundred years ago.

And I've given examples of that, like my views on creation. People today over and over will call this heretical or liberal, even though it's the views of Jay Gresham-Machin and B.B. Warfield and Charles Hodge and Charles Spurgeon and on and on and on down the line, or it's roughly in that space. And so there's just a lot of ignorance about church history, and this is where these kind of filling out these categories with historical examples, I think, can help us. So the point is that division is going to be necessary in multiple directions. You can't partner with every single other professing Christian in the world. Sometimes the differences are too great. But again, we want to do it with tears and grace. And that's true of

historic evangelicalism. You know, when Billy Graham is doing his crusades in the 20th century, he's literally being called satanic by people on the fundamentalist right. And then, of course, the liberals are not happy with him either. So let's talk a little bit about what do we do with all this. If the point here is we want to try to seek the gospel renewal movement in our day coming to together as much as we can within the realms of zones two and three, roughly. That's very broad. How do we do that? And I'll just give three things I've been thinking about. Number one is refocus on the gospel. 2025 does not seem like a good time to be squabbling about tertiary doctrines. The needs in front of us are so dire and so desperate. Amidst the collapses and shifting foundations

of our times, people are rebuilding and they're rethinking from the bottom up and an enthusiastic, eager promotion of the core truths of Christianity can really mean needs right now. And so that's what I'll hope to do with Truth Unites videos, but also doing triage and church history. These are two topics, you know, these are two things I'm interested in. If you watch my channel, you know that. Triage means ranking different doctrines according to how important they are.

I think that and church history are really important right now, just like. with apologetics. So when I think about the kinds of videos I want to do, I want to do apologetics, but I also want to do videos where I'm like expositing the Apostles Creed. That was one video I did recently, for example. And the goal with all of that is we're in such a time of fragmentation and disintegration, people are trying to find their bearings. And church history and triage can help people find their bearings and re kind of land back on the gospel and then work outward from there. And so that's one thing I want to give myself to. To everyone watching this, I would just make an invitation for us to consider this. What if 2025 was a time to refocus on the gospel

afresh? Oh, kind of a happy thought. What would it look like in the midst of the craziness of 2025 to experience the beauty of Jesus himself in a kind of fresh way, kind of recalibration to Jesus himself? And maybe just more of a gospel focus would mean, maybe it means studying the Apostles Creed, you know, like my video on that. Maybe it means reading Augustine's City of God or reading a biography of John Wesley. Maybe it means just focusing on scripture for reading nothing but scripture for a season. Maybe it means taking a particular doctrine like heaven or God's sovereignty or adoption or adoption as God's children or whatever it might be and just meditating on that, making that the theme of 2025. But what I'm just trying to say here is

if we were asking as evangelicals, what's the way forward? The first and foremost step is the evangel. We want to re-center on the gospel. Second, recommit to Christian love. This is something that I am especially burdened about. Because of John 13 and John 17, Jesus gives us the commandment to love one another. He prays for our unity. The purpose clause in both of those passages has to do with the world believing the gospel so that they will know you are my disciples, so that the world will believe you have sent me. And what is implicit in that is that the credibility of the gospel is, if by how Christians treat not just the world, important as that is, but each other. And right now, I think we see a lot of Galatians 515 among Christians, which talks about biting and devouring and

ultimately consuming one another. The polarization in our culture and its acceleration because of social media is coming into the church. It's not just a problem out there. It's a problem among us. And if we would just make a fresh commitment to conduct our disagreements in a Christ-honoring way within the body of Christ, I believe that would make a huge difference. I wrote a book about this, The Art of Disagreeing, simply because I'm so passionately convinced this is such a need in our time. I think this is an important area. When people want to minimize this area, how Christians talk to each other, especially in public contexts, like on Twitter, I think we need to be sobered by remembering the scriptures in Proverbs and James about the power of the tongue and just how much destruction can be

unleashed. One of the things I've been thinking about if we're trying to get practical is, what would it look like for us all to come up with our own personal policy for how we're going to use social media? If we use it at all, and maybe even write out on a sheet of paper, here's my game plan for how I'm going to conduct myself in a Christ-honoring way where I'm exhibiting the fruits of the spirit on social media, and then we just commit to following that. Maybe I have someone else who holds me accountable to that in my local church, and I steal myself to doing that. When I fall short, I repent of that. But that gives me a blueprint. That helps us not get swept up. up into the times in which we live. And sometimes we do need to repent and offer an apology

or have an open heart to someone. Other times someone's behavior is so hateful toward us that we cut off relationship, but we can still pray for them. But regardless, I think this is a huge area. How Christians disagree with one another, we've got to work at this so we don't dishonor the gospel and its credibility in the eyes of the world. That's basic, but I think that's important. I think that's what Jesus is saying in John 13 and praying for in John 17. Third and last, pray for revival. It's encouraging to remember that revival doesn't come as the result of optimal conditions. Oftentimes it comes in the midst of instability as we humbly seek the Lord and ask him to part his spirit.

I'm going to take a lot of 2025 to study historic revivals, like the Second Great Awakening and the Welsh revival of 1904, 1905. I'm reading books like this amazing book, England before and after. after Wesley. I'm going to talk a lot about John Wesley, how God used him. And we're going to, I'm going to share these stories with the hope that they might inspire people to pray for renewal in the church today. Because that's one way I think, hopefully, Truth Unites videos can serve this cause, is just putting out hope for people and saying, let's pray for this. You know, let's not just shrink back in fear because of the craziness of the world. Let's lean in

with hope and prayer and gospel basics, you know. One of my favorite passages is Habakkuk 3-2, where basically the prophet is saying, I've heard of what you've done, and then he recounts a number of things God had done in the history of Israel, but then he says, in the midst of the years, revive it, in the midst of the years, make it known.

In other words, he's saying, do it again. And that's a wonderful prayer to pray. I'll say this. I won't stop talking about this, praying for this, giving my heart to this, until we see the vision in my mind is stadiums of young people, especially college-aged,

gathering, finding Jesus. And let's start a movement for that. Let's start a positive Christ-focused movement for that. Let's drown out the voices and divide from the voices that are going to tear us onto other things and tear us down from that and keep our eye on the prize. And let's come together to seek a movement for that. How can it not work to go for that? How can praying for that and seeking that not work, you know? Why wouldn't the Lord honor those prayers? So look out for some videos on revival, and this is, to me, I know this is basic, but this is what I want to give my life to. And so you'll see Truth United's videos related to all this. And I would invite you to join me. Let's seek a new work in our day.