In 1984 Francis A. Schaeffer published a book called The Great Evangelical Disaster.1 It was disturbing to see how evangelicals, even if at times unconsciously, are, nevertheless, tragically compromising some of the great standards of the Word of God. The word Francis Schaeffer uses for it is “accommodation,” which serves as something of the theme of the book. In what areas does Schaeffer observe this accommodation? He mentions a number of areas.
First of all is that of biblical authority, something that I and others have been particularly concerned about for quite some time. The noteworthy thing is not the fact that liberals deny that the Bible is the Word of God. They have been doing that for a long time. The problem is that this same spirit of putting the mind of man over the mind of God, the intellect and knowledge of the scholar over the Scriptures, is permeating evangelicalism. Those who a generation or two ago would never have questioned Scripture are now in so-called evangelical institutions, and they are teaching things about the Bible that would have been rejected in earlier decades. For example, they say, “Well, it’s true in a certain sense that the Bible is the Word of God. But you have to understand that it is also the word of man. Or if it is the Word of God, it at least comes to us in a way which means that it’s not always absolutely accurate. We have to sift through it with our own intellect to see what we can believe and follow.” Schaeffer rightly says that if the evangelical church continues to maintain its pattern of “accommodation,” its foundations will crumble.
He also talks about the “right to life” issue. This is somewhat different than the issue of Scripture because there has been a quickening of the evangelical conscience. Francis Schaeffer points out that when he and Dr. C. Everett Koop produced the film series Whatever Happened to the Human Race? and scheduled the seminars around the country that were meant to launch that film series and the related publications, they did not get strong support from the evangelical institutions. As a matter of fact, they were in some cities where the well-known evangelical schools, the colleges in particular, would not advertise it. When they asked why the schools would not even at least put up the posters, the school responded, “Oh, our faculty is divided on that matter.” Imagine, an institution claiming to be Christian being divided on the right to life and the importance of taking a stand against abortion.
Another example Schaeffer discusses is that of ecumenism, the desire to get all Christians together under the same umbrella whether or not they hold to the cardinal doctrines of Christianity. Schaeffer refers to a particular meeting of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver, British Columbia, a meeting which was a disaster by all objective accounts, so much so that even the secular magazines said how ironical it is for these men to be calling upon the name of Christ while they issued the kind of proclamations they do. And yet strikingly, there were so-called evangelicals present at that assembly who were favorable to it and published various articles to that effect.
[1]Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1984).
