Evangelicalism at its best
Stuart Piggin gets it.
I bumped into him in Sydney last week and picked up a copy of his history of Australian evangelicalism, Spirit of a Nation.
He contends that true evangelicalism is experiential, Biblicist, and activist. It is concerned with the Spirit, the Word, and the world. It aims to produce right-heartedness (orthokardia), right thinking (orthodoxy), and right action (orthopraxis). It calls for the consecration of heart, head, and hand.
Where these three concerns were held together in synthesis, evangelicalism was strong in itself and made a significant contribution to the shaping of Australian society and culture. But where one was promoted to the neglect of the the other two, or even two at the expense of the third, the movement lacked vitality and was even divided against itself.
His history of Australian evangelicalism is centred around the idea that evangelicalism is best understood, not as a theology, a party, or an ideology, but as a movement concerned with three major elements Spirit, Word and world and where these three synthesised the movement is strong, and when they are separated the movement is weak.
