The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology

David E. Fitch

Feb 2011 · Theopolitical Visions Book 9 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

About this ebook

In The End of Evangelicalism? David Fitch examines the political presence of evangelicalism as a church in North America. Amidst the negative image of evangelicalism in the national media and its purported decline as a church, Fitch asks how evangelicalism's belief and practice has formed it as a political presence in North America. Why are evangelicals perceived as arrogant, exclusivist, duplicitous, and dispassionate by the wider culture? Diagnosing its political cultural presence via the ideological theory of Slavoj Zizek, Fitch argues that evangelicalism appears to have lost the core of its politic: Jesus Christ. In so doing its politic has become "empty." Its witness has been rendered moot. The way back to a vibrant political presence is through the corporate participation in the triune God's ongoing work in the world as founded in the incarnation. Herein lies the way towards an evangelical missional political theology. Fitch ends his study by examining the possibilities for a new faithfulness in the current day emerging and missional church movements springing forth from evangelicalism in North America.

About the author

David E. Fitch is B. R. Lindner Professor of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary, Lombard IL. He is also a pastor at Life on the Vine Christian Community in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago. He is the author of The Great Giveaway (2005).