Category: Beyond Evangelical

Being an Evangelical should lead us beyond being an Evangelical. How so? Evangelicalism was an answer to the Catholic Church’s claim to God-ordained, infallible authority to interpret the scriptures on our behalf. The Evangelical mantra is Sola Scriptura: only the infallible scriptures have authority, not churches or people. This was an effort to take the church back to its pristine origins before thirst for power and control got a hold of the church’s leaders. In the beginning, and for several hundred years, there was no bible. Nobody agreed about what writings were considered authoritative and it didn’t matter because they relied on God, not on a book that didn’t exist yet. Though these early Christians turned the world upside down, the lack of scripture brought with it problems (the reason half the New Testament was written), but that’s the reality of the early church. To continue the Protestant Reformation, and get beyond Evangelical and back to the “faith once and for all delivered to the saints,” (as the bible calls it) we need to believe like they believed, and believe and live like Jesus Christ believed and lived.