Promise Unfulfilled

Book excerpt: The New Evangelicalism was conceived if not born with the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942. This new group was in the main led by younger professing fundamentalist scholars and leaders who had become dissatisfied with their heritage and wanted to carve out some evangelical middle ground between fundamentalism and neo-orthodoxy. This book is an analysis of the break-away movement in terms of the issues ideas, and practices that led to its beginning, its expansion to an apogee in the 1970s, its subsequent loss of biblical and doctrinal stability, and its slide toward virtual irrelevancy in a postmodern world culture of the 21st century. The twenty-five chapters are grouped under nine main sections: Historical Antecedents; the Formation of the New Evangelicalism; Ecumenism; Ecclesiastical Separation; The Bible and Authority; Apologetics; Social Involvement; Doctrinal Storms; and Evaluations and Prospects. It will be a valuable addition to the pastor’s library and a strategic resource for theological education in Bible colleges and seminaries.