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If historic Christianity is again to compete as a vital world ideology, evangelicalism must project a solution for the most pressing world problems. It must offer a formula for a new world mind with spiritual ends,[1] involving evangelical affirmations in political, economic, sociological, and educational realms, local and international. The redemptive message has implications for all of life; a truncated life results from a truncated message.

Evangelicalism may never succeed, on the missionary approach, in remaking the modern mind in such a way that the future world culture can be identified fully as a Christian civilization. In order to become globally vigorous, Fundamentalism need not share the dream, now being discarded by liberalism, of an immanent utopia; an adequate insight both into human nature and into New Testament truth furnishes good ground for doubt that the kingdom can be established without the advent of Christ.

But Fundamentalism does not share the recent tendency, found both in neo-supernaturalist and higher liberal circles, to view man as a sinner by an ultimate necessity of his nature, as though he were destined originally to contradiction and failure. The evangelical and non-evangelical views grow, at this point, out of differing attitudes toward primal anthropology. The Fundamentalist holds that primal man was a divine creation, endowed with moral righteousness, so that man is not a sinner by a necessity of his original nature, but rather by voluntary choice; consequently, the hope for a better order is directly proportionate to the appropriation of redemptive grace in human society. The neo-supernaturalists and liberals adopt the evolutionary view of origins, and discard any notion of a fall from primal perfection involving man in original sin. Man's imperfection, on this approach, is identified with inherited brute instincts or the limitations of his nature as a man; the hope for a better order, on this view, is directly proportionate to his success in affirming a higher self as against his natural self, with a bias in the direction of failure. In the light of the two world wars, liberalism thus discards its faith in automatic progress which formerly characterized the social gospel; we are now told by Paul Tillich, for example, that "the authentic Christian message is never utopian."[2] Evangelicalism does not believe that man's progress is limited by man's nature as man, as much as by his refusal to appropriate divine regenerative grace.

Therefore evangelicalism can view the future with a sober optimism, grounded not only in the assurance of the ultimate triumph of righteousness, but also in the conviction that divine redemption can be a potent factor in any age. That evangelicalism may not create a fully Christian civilization does not argue against an effort to win as many areas as possible by the redemptive power of Christ; it can engender reformation here, and overthrow paganism there; it can win outlets for the redemption that is in Christ Jesus reminiscent of apostolic triumphs. If Christianity cannot bring new life to Russia, that is not argument for not bringing it to China; if it cannot bring reformation to Spain, that is no reason for not bringing it to South America. A single voice that speaks for Jesus in our global conferences can be a determinative voice. The world has awakened suddenly to the astonishing potentiality of an individual veto. It is apparent how great nations are keyed to powerful leaders; a single statesman with the convictions of Paul would echo the great evangelical affirmations throughout world politics.

Evangelicalism will have to contend for a new order in education. The western concept of popular education has its legitimate rootage in the determination of the church to indoctrinate the masses in the major doctrinal essentials of the Christian world-life view. For the past three centuries, the state has steadily supplanted the church as the indoctrinating agency, and today secular education largely involves an open or subtle undermining of historic Christian theism.

Evangelicalism must contend, under such circumstances, for two great academic changes.

First, it must develop a competent literature in every field of study, on every level from the grade school through the university, which adequately presents each subject with its implications from the Christian as well as non-Christian points of view. The bias and prejudice to which modern secularism yielded, in the very name of a revolt against dogmatism and in the supposed interest of impartiality, is becoming increasingly obvious to anyone familiar with the modern mood. Evangelicalism must contend for a fair hearing for the Christian mind, among other minds, in secular education. Almost every philosophic viewpoint can be taught by men who hold those convictions -- whether Platonism, Aristotelianism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, or whatever else -- except that the universities seem studiously to avoid the competent presentation of the Hebrew-Christian view by those who hold it.

Secondly, evangelicalism must not let the fact that the state has now become an agent of indoctrination obscure the evangelical obligation to press the Christian world-life view upon the masses. The church and the publishing house are not fully adequate to fulfill this ministry; the importance of the evangelical school must be reaffirmed. The Protestant churches of America are planning postwar rebuilding and alterations in the amount of many millions of dollars; not all of this represents orthodox convictions, but a great bulk of it does. The program of home-front expenditure has been severely criticized, in view of the heightened missionary needs on foreign fields. Without purposing to minimize the foreign needs, it can be said that there is something unrealistic about this criticism. The distinction between home and foreign missions is a generation outmoded; Christianity again faces the apostolic task of seeking to transform an environment that is quite unilaterally hostile. Furthermore, since the churches have on their own account decided to apportion this money for reconstruction and expansion at home, a more realistic plan may be appropriate. From an investment standpoint, the average evangelical church building has many disadvantages.

The day has now come for evangelicalism to rethink its whole building program. By tremendous outlay of funds, most church communities provide a worship structure which usually stands idle except for two Sunday services and a midweek prayer meeting, if the latter. No secular steward could long be happy about such a minimal use of facilities representing so disproportionate an investment. Out of the modern crisis may come a better stewardship. Perhaps the answer is the building of evangelical educational plants, with attractive auditoriums that will serve for worship purposes, providing a week-round program that out-educates the secular educators. The fact that Christian teachers are not over-numerous further attests the need for such a program. Beyond doubt the time is here for an all-out evangelical education movement, and alert churches will think through the wise investment of their funds. The maintenance of evangelical grade and high schools, and evangelical colleges and universities, with the highest academic standards, promises most quickly to concentrate the thinking of youth upon the Christian world-life view as the only adequate spiritual ground for a surviving culture. A huge share of the gifts which made possible the present secular colleges and universities of America came in the first place from evangelicals with just such a vision; it remains for evangelicalism, despite the encrustations of modernism and humanism, to fulfill that vision. If it entails sacrifice, it will not on that account be displeasing to Jesus Christ.

Such education must not be only otherworldly, but must make its impact also upon all men and all nations with a contemporary evangel. It will not lose sight of the fact that the church's prime task is to challenge men and women individually in such numbers that the manifesto is global. As the world felt Hitler's threat at the borders of Czechoslovakia and Poland and England, and Mussolini's at the border of Greece, so too must it feel the promise of deliverance by Jesus at the fringe of our civilization, calling men to spiritual decision.

The Christian life must be lived out, among the unregenerate, in every area of activity, until even the unregenerate are moved by Christian standards, acknowledging their force. The unregenerate are not, on that account, redeemed; nevertheless, they are more easily reached for Christ than those who have made a deliberate break with Christian standards, because they can be reminded that Christian ethics cannot be retained apart from Christian metaphysics. To the extent that any society is leavened with Christian conviction, it becomes a more hospitable environment for Christian expansion.

The evangelical mood must not withdraw from tomorrow's political scene. One can believe in separation of church and state, as do the Baptists, without sacrificing world statesmanship to men of godless convictions. The Roman Catholic church has trained its candidates for world diplomatic posts with singular vision; in today's world the ministry of world affairs is no less important than any other. Evangelicalism cannot remain silent, when society is being organized along the lines either of totalitarian absolutism or isolationist atomism; nor can it be content with a democratic way of life from which the redemptive element is abstracted. Always evangelicalism proclaims that the true center of a living community is God, known in His redemptive work through Jesus Christ; that kingships that ignore the true Lord of the universe are usurpative; that the value of human personality is guaranteed only in a redemptive context; that the liberties legitimately to be sought for man do not include a secularistic freedom from God; that without a transcendent spiritual ground in the living Redeemer no government can surmount the threat of disintegration.

Evangelicalism must not make the mistake, so common in our day, of regarding Communism or state Socialism as the adequate rectification of the errors of totalitarianism or the inadequacies of democracism. No political or economic system has utopian promise if the essential redemptive ingredient is missing from it. A redemptive totalitarianism is far preferable to an unredemptive democracy; a redemptive Communism far more advantageous than an unredemptive Capitalism, and vice versa. But the very element which is abstracted from currently proposed solutions is this redemptive element. The evangelical task will be to reproclaim it. No economic reorganization, however much it overcomes the antithesis of absolutism and individualism, is on that account to be identified with the kingdom of God and, further, only in a redemptive context can the antithesis be perfectly overcome. Communism may have more interest in individual rights than does Fascism, but it is no more to be identified with a Christian culture than is the democratic way of life. For it is the redemptive element that distinguishes Christianity, and it is the redemptive element that the jaded world culture so sorely needs.

Evangelicalism will be presumed not to have a mind on great world issues unless it speaks, but there is no justification for evangelical attempt at solution in non-redemptive frameworks. These have been tried and found wanting; let evangelicalism now speak the redemptive mind.

An efficient united nations organization may go a long way toward world peace, but it is not the best nor a permanent guarantee. Sharing the atom-bomb secret may go a long way toward removing international suspicions, but it is neither the best nor a lasting remover. Sacrificial distribution of food and clothing to the world's naked and starving multitudes may spare countless lives, but it does not provide a superlife which makes existence meaningful. Increasing the laborer's pay may remove some of the inequities of labor-management relations, but it makes no provision beyond the needs of the economic man.

What attitude then shall the evangelical take toward important modern attacks on deep-seated world problems when such efforts do not go deep enough to retain significance for the very improvements they seek to accomplish? This problem remains to be considered. Of the necessity for a redemptive framework the evangelical has no doubt. But those who work for lesser reforms, and outside of that framework, will expect him to be on the side of right. What should be evangelicalism's attitude then?

[1] See the author's Remaking the Modern Mind (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1946).

[2] Van Dusen, Henry P. (Editor), The Christian Answer, p. 44 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945).

(Chapter VI THE UNEASY CONSCIENCE OF MODERN FUNDAMENTALISM, by Carl F. H. Henry, William B. Eerdmans, 2003 [originally published in 1947]. Reproduced by permission of publisher and all rights reserved. This book is available by clicking here.])