I Am MORE than an Evangelical

I’m headed off to my seventeenth men’s retreat at Camp Wooten in southeast Washington State’s Blue Mountains, sponsored annually by a church in the Pullman-Moscow area. Our guys from Grace Bible Church of Diamond Lake have joined over the years, initially due to a fellow elder’s connection via his brother in that church. Last year I was privileged to be one of the main speakers. (See links to the talk and notes below).

This year I am doing one of the smaller breakout seminar sessions as I’ve often done. The topic of the retreat is evangelism. It’s got me thinking about being an “evangelical.”

In the Autumn of 1980 I was shocked out of my until then largely unquestioned dispensational fundamentalism when I encountered the Holy Spirit in a liberal Presbyterian theologian. During my decades of dancing with Catholic monasticism, I was always struck by periodic testimonies of evangelicals turning (back?) to Rome. More recently I’ve noticed those with evangelical beginnings like my own—Bart Ehrman and Frank Schaeffer, for instance—just sliding away from it all, it seems.

As for me, I just can’t jettison the basics, such as Jesus crucified and resurrected, the Bible as trustworthy and authoritative, and salvation needed from sin. But I have grown to need more of the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For all the wonderful Truth in my tradition, I have this against it: My teachers left out too much!

It seems to me that an honest appraisal of two millennia of Christian faith forbids presumption that only one denomination of theology has gotten it right. I see no evidence in general or special revelation (categories of my limited tradition!) that God is sectarian. O Lord, I am confident that I can know you and love you and your truth. (Hear my prayer, O God.) But this is now my standard boilerplate: “I have blind spots and a lot more to learn about everything!” (Like the cosmic as well as the personal dimension of redemption.)

Last year’s retreat talk on teaching marriage to our children:

http://www.efreepalouse.org/media/5%20Dan%20Peterson%20Teaching%20Marriage%20to%20our%20Sons%20and%20Daughters.mp3

Last year’s notes on teaching marriage to our children:

http://www.efreepalouse.org/media/2013/05/Teaching-Marriage-to-Our-Sons-and-Daughters-DLP-notes.pdf