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diff --git a/common/longlog/2026-09-18.gmi b/common/longlog/2026-09-18.gmi new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d348c87 --- /dev/null +++ b/common/longlog/2026-09-18.gmi @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +# Book review: The Post-Evangelical Debate (1997), SPCK + +The Post-Evangelical Debate (1997). Cray et al. London: SPCK. ISBN 0-281-05108-9. + +In the past wee while, as the shortcomings of my own church community have become ever more grating to me, I've been searching for a reason to fall back in love with my own Christian tradition. That search brought me to this essay collection from 1997, reflecting on how the British evangelical movement might be renewed for the twenty-first century. The book remains astonishingly relevant and has been an important help to me on my own journey. + +'The Post-Evangelical Debate' was written in response to a 1995 monograph by Dave Tomlinson, titled 'The Post-Evangelical', in which Tomlinson controversially described himself by that name in order to express his continuing commitment to evangelical values while distancing himself from the evangelical movement. He modelled the name 'post-evangelical' off of 'post-modern' - the cultural moment to which, he argued, evangelicalism was failing to adequately respond. The six authors of this collection, all evangelicals of one kind or another, and two of them having moved later in life to a different Christian tradition, reflect on how evangelical communities in the post-modern context can drive people like Tomlinson out, and how those left behind ought to respond. Each has different experiences and analyses of the evangelical tradition, and each has wrestled with it in their own way. + +I was surprised to learn just how diverse the evangelical movement in Britain is. Several of the authors describe part of their own formative experiences with evangelicalism, and they are very different from one another. Some came from the Church of England, others from independent churches, some charismatic, some not, some flirted with (and even converted to) Anglo-Catholicism, some very definitely didn't. Nick Mercer, perhaps the most 'post-evangelical' of the six, gives a particularly fascinating auto-biography. For an evangelical who struggles to understand why someone would drift from evangelicalism into Anglo-Catholicism, his account may open hearts and minds. For me, I felt reassured that I'm not the only one to find his own Christian tradition difficult at times, and to transform my attitudes over the course of my life. + +A major problem for all the contributors was how to remain faithful to the unchanging core of Christian commitment while the cultural language in which we must make that commitment evolves. Saying the same things, the same way, in a different language, may actually distort rather than preserve our historic inheritance. + +Maggi Dawn's essay was exceptional here. She went beyond theory and showed what this means in practice in worship. She convincingly argued that Christian religion must be 'relevant', but not 'fashionable'. Critiquing the trend for 'alternative' worship, she showed how a worship style which presents church worship as a theatre act, with contemporary music, AV and lighting systems, prayers led from the front, a polished speech from a podium and a PowerPoint, makes God known to the congregation as hierarchical, patriarchal, and distant, and may only change the surface flavour of worship while leaving its deep inner core unchanged. Meanwhile, a service which removes the podium, de-centres the physical space, and brings prayers in from the floor, can invite more equal participation, making God known as immediate, impartial, and living and breathing in each person. Her essay helped me to reflect on my own experiences of worship, and enabled me to engage critically in how in my own community we preach through our liturgy. + +But even more than this, the book focused on Tomlinson's key critique of evangelical culture: that it is too often close-minded, promoting sub-cultural ghettoes, placing 'broken glass on top of the walls' between inside and out, defining strict boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not, and treating anything on the outside with grave suspicion. Thus the anecdotes of an evangelical chorus travelling to Santiago de Compostela to pray that the ill-guided pilgrims would repent of their mistake, the CU group in Cambridge that prayed for those who went to chapel, and Nick Mercer's assertion that some of his friends almost certainly pray for him to give up his Anglo-Catholicism. + +In this book, the authors, including the most vehemently still-evangelical, agree that this tendency to self-ghettoisation and intolerance is harmful (although some point out that evangelicals are far from the only religious group to suffer from this malaise). There are some intelligent discussions of what might drive it, including Pete Ward's description of the shift from the 1970s from a highly confessional evangelical culture to one largely defined by pan-evangelical, inter-denominational organisations such as the Evangelical Alliance, the UCCF, and the flourishing evangelical festival industry. Michael Saward demonstrates, if a little too zealously at times, how evangelicals need not accept all aspects these cultural shifts as given by God but can engage critically and struggle against their more malign features. An evangelical who has a deep distrust of non-Christians and other Christian traditions may therefore find this book morally challenging. + +For me, the book really came together in Nigel Wright's essay, rounding off the collection with his diagnosis and proposed remedy for what he called 'cultural pharisaicism'. Wright acknowledges that the evangelical love of certainties, of 'simple answers to complicated questions' as Saward puts it, is ill-suited to the post-modern cultural situation. On the other hand, evangelicals cannot accept the post-modern philosophy which reduces all truth to power without giving up the faith in an absolute, transcendent God, which is essential to being Christian. + +His 'third way' is 'convictions, not certainties'. On the one hand, evangelicals should acknowledge the truth in the post-modern insistence that nobody can claim privileged access to a pre-existing, directly revealed, absolute truth, and that all knowledge is partly constituted by the cultural context which gives it shape. On the other, evangelicals should maintain total subjective commitment to the God they hold to be absolutely true as a result of their own, subjective and non-absolute, experience. This framework enables Christian faith to be re-stated in post-modern terms while remaining true to historic Christian faith. + +Having disposed of their pharasaical 'certainties' and renewed their zeal for their convictions, Wright argues convincingly that evangelicalism is essential to the continuing Christian heritage in Britain. He makes a strong case that while some mature Christians do become disillusioned with the evangelicalism of their youth, evangelicalism remains by far the most accessible open door to faith in Christ in Britain today (particularly, he argues, for the working classes). That is not incidental: when the Church is no longer missionary, it is no longer the Church. + +I would love to read this book again alongside another person from my church, particularly someone older than me, who grew up in a different evangelical culture to the one I know and has seen things change. This book has opened my eyes to aspects of the evangelical tradition I was blind to before, reassured me in my troubles, and given me new confidence to continue participating in my own culture from the inside. diff --git a/http/public/scripts/feed-condense-content.js b/http/public/scripts/feed-condense-content.js index 5203517..984dbce 100644 --- a/http/public/scripts/feed-condense-content.js +++ b/http/public/scripts/feed-condense-content.js @@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ export function toggleContentExpanded(id) { "Tried to toggle 'Read more' button to say 'Read less' but could not find it", ); } else { - buttonAfter.textContent = "Read more"; + buttonAfter.textContent = "Read less"; } if (buttonBefore) { buttonBefore.remove(); diff --git a/http/src/css/feed.uppcss b/http/src/css/feed.uppcss index d90a8cd..3a1aca6 100644 --- a/http/src/css/feed.uppcss +++ b/http/src/css/feed.uppcss @@ -12,26 +12,26 @@ ul:has(> .h-entry) { } } -.h-entry { +.h-feed .h-entry { display: flex; flex-direction: column; } -.h-entry + .h-entry { +.h-feed .h-entry + .h-entry { margin-block-start: var(--spacing-block-md); } -.h-entry > * { +.h-feed .h-entry > * { order: 1; margin: 0; } -.h-entry .dt-published { +.h-feed .h-entry .dt-published { order: 0; font-size: var(--font-size-sm); } -.h-entry .p-name { +.h-feed .h-entry .p-name { font-size: var(--font-size-md); font-weight: 400; } @@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ ul:has(> .h-entry) { content: ' >'; } -.e-content { +.h-feed .e-content { border-bottom: solid 1px; &:not(.e-content--expanded) { height: 10rem; @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ ul:has(> .h-entry) { } } -.h-entry > button { +.h-feed .h-entry > button { width: max-content; align-self: center; margin-block-start: var(--spacing-block-xs); |