{"id":1691,"date":"2026-05-03T19:17:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T18:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/?page_id=1691"},"modified":"2026-05-04T21:51:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:51:46","slug":"appendix-a","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/dominion-theology-recovering-our-social-and-political-responsibility\/appendix-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Appendix A\u2014Post-Evangelicalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Appendix A\u2014Post-Evangelicalism<\/h2>\n

It is beneficial to distinguish between the neo-evangelical\u00a0position and the post-evangelical position, the former we have mentioned repeatedly, whereas the latter has only been mentioned in passing. A \u201cneo\u201d evangelical is a broad designation that normally refers to evangelicals from non-traditional, often non-Western, jurisdictions that have had some kind of conversion, revival, or renewal to orthodox Protestant Christianity; for example, many Latin American Protestant and some non-classical Pentecostal\u00a0churches[1]<\/a> might be described in this way, but the core of the various diverse expressions and practices is still a commitment to a set of evangelical theological propositions. Post-evangelicalism\u00a0was very different: its central concern is pastoral and relational, how Christianity\u00a0should deal with culture. In this sense, it has something in common with dominion theology and, notably, the social gospel (which, as a historical movement, we considered in more detail in the main text) and, thus, is on the surface a potential competitor to them, which is why we take the time to mention it here.<\/p>\n

Historically, there were some clear cultural and intellectual precursors to the view,[2]<\/a> but it was Dave Tomlinson, a onetime leader within the British charismatic movement during the 1980s, who popularized this term in his 1995 book Post Evangelical.<\/em> It is also important that a revised American edition came complete with a \u201ccritical\u201d commentary by some who had attempted to import the movement into the US, where the sociological term \u201cnew emergent\u201d had been applied; it was as an example of an <\/a>exciting new movement that had emerged because of the shortcomings of the status quo. Thus, it was both driven by a pastoral dissatisfaction with evangelicalism\u00a0and was intellectually interesting to the academy; Dave had initially hoped academics might pick the ideas up in this way and give some sort of rigorous expression to them.<\/p>\n

The academy did, indeed, manage a small, single-volume set of six essays edited by Graham Clay in 1997 as The Post Evangelical Debate<\/em>, and they were bona fide academic essays. With the intense interest showed in it at once-Christian festivals, such as Greenbelt (Dave relates how people crowded into a tent to hear him speak[3]<\/a>), it appeared it was going to be a major movement; however, that did not materialize, and the potential threat to dominion theology, which was also asserting itself in the charismatic Christian conscience at the same time, evaporated. It is worthwhile understanding why this was the case.<\/p>\n

As stated, as a matter of historical fact, it was Dave who really brought post-evangelicalism\u00a0into the Christian mainstream consciousness because of his status and influence within British, American, Australian, and New Zealand charismatic Christianity. Dave, after leading a fifteen-person team and founding fifty charismatic churches for the best part of a decade, became \u201cdisillusioned by the theology and spirituality of the charismatic movement\u201d and, in 1989, left and, not only that, became apostate from the charismatic movement more generally, which, at least formally, had maintained an evangelical commitment. Dave gives this compressed personal history,[4]<\/a> which captures well the essence of his approach and the impetus behind the wider movement. To be clear, Dave still considers himself Christian and is now a Church of England minister, though on the (very) liberal, rather than the charismatic, wing of that broad church.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

To give him his due, spiritually, Dave, I believe, is someone with an apostolic mantle\u2014whatever he will choose to build will grow as a gift from God. As the gifts and callings of God are without repentance, we can just as effectively build because it is the ability to build that is the gift from God, but in terms of this logic, what is built is not necessarily from God\u2014in contrast to that which is established and successful because what is believed is sound theology reflecting metaphysical truths about the way the world really is, and is successful because of that. What I mean there is similar to <\/a>the paradox of the successful unbeliever, who, like Paul\u00a0describes, has such a keen sense of conscience and, thus, in the understanding of the law of God, they are blessed and succeed on that basis.<\/p>\n

Thus, for our purposes here, what makes this so interesting is that \u201cpost\u201d is best understood for Dave and the post-evangelical \u201cmovement\u201d as meaning \u201cafter,\u201d in the historical, sequential sense. Once, there was the evangelical, now we are \u201cpost\u201d that movement and, most importantly, everything it intellectually stood for. So, for example, in Dave\u2019s 2012 book How to Be a Bad Christian<\/em>, you will not find a statement of the imperative for repentance from the perspective that it is required for justification and, thus, salvation before a holy God, that we are required to believe the blood of Jesus was shed as an atonement for our rebellion (sin) against God, which places us under condemnation, and that we are required to believe in our heart and confess with our mouth to receive salvation as our means as deliverance from sin.[6]<\/a> In other words, you will not find some kind of exposition of the gospel as distilled in just two verses from the first eight chapters by Paul\u00a0in Rom 10:8\u20139.<\/p>\n

Rather, for the post-evangelical, sin is not defined as something we need redemption from; in contrast, the mere use of the word \u201csin\u201d becomes a narrative device, the purpose of which is pejorative; the focus on sin within Christian discourse for the post-evangelical becomes a stumbling block for some to receive the unconditional love of God. That is, the postevangelical prescription is to throw any theological clarity into the bin of that historical religion and tradition that has gotten in the way of a relationship with the loving God, who loves all without prejudice and precondition; it is never defined as the mindset and heart condition that separates us from God and that it is required of us to repent to receive freedom, which would then allow us to experience the operation and working of the love of God. Repentance for Dave is recast as a psychological exercise necessary for mental hygiene, which, of course, it is, but it is also a necessary spiritual transaction, a precondition of our justification before God.<\/p>\n

We would perhaps say that Dave\u2019s book really is a manual for the \u201cbad Christian\u201d because it never clearly states the \u201cgood news\u201d of the gospel as deliverance from the dominion of the said \u201csin,\u201d preferring the sentimental \u201cunconditional love of God\u201d as a substitute for it. God\u2019s love in the salvific sense is not<\/em> unconditional, rather it is freely available<\/em> to all those who meet his conditions<\/em> of repentance. The \u201cgood Christian\u201d recognizes <\/a>that God so loved the world, he gave his Son for the purpose that those who repent and believe would be saved; a failure to comply with these preconditions really does mean permanent separation from God and an eternity in hell, regardless of the removal of hell from the Alpha course and the evangelical consciousness, let alone the liberal Christians who excised it a century or two ago.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

So, as a wider theological method, post-evangelicalism, with its nonjudgmental acceptance of all, is brutally defective in terms of basic Christian theology; but this was unimportant to the post-evangelicals themselves because it has always been much more about the practice of Christianity\u00a0than any theoretical or theological account of it\u2014a relaxed, non-confrontational, supremely liberal, friendly, \u201cinclusive\u201d approach that creates a \u201ccommunity where all are welcomed and accepted.\u201d This passive stance, in thoroughly postmodern fashion, wants to parade its wares in the markets of the public square and hope that someone midway between the clothes and music stalls might stumble across our bench and then realize they had found what they were really looking for. In other words, all that post-evangelicalism had to offer is a sort of rarefied Alphacourse experience, which itself had faced criticism as a sanitized, hell-free Christian option for professionals looking to actualize their spiritual life with this optional add-on of Jesus.<\/p>\n

This, of course, is where we see the contrast with dominion theology most dramatically and the explanation as to why dominion theology has and will endure. For the dominion theologian, it is about a complete, integrated intellectual and spiritual worldview, a practice flowing from a coherent and cogent theology that presents a narrative for every sphere of human culture. The subjective spiritual experience is fortified by the objective knowledge from the Scriptures.<\/p>\n

In contrast, post-evangelicalism, at its very best, has a fuzzy subjective concept of the Scriptures as an important relic worthy of veneration, but subject to the enlightened intellect and practices of the modern world, free of all those ancient prejudices, bigotry, and arguments about the content of Scripture, and then further about the canon of Scripture.<\/p>\n

With respect to the issue of canonicity, a genuine church merely recognizes<\/em> the canonicity of books; it does not decide<\/em> on them; the prerogative with regards to <\/a>Scripture\u00a0is always with the divine author, not with humanity.<\/p>\n

Thus, on analysis, post-evangelicalism\u00a0becomes the religion of personal and collective preferences and survives based on its toleration by the hosting culture; it has no power to change or to set culture in its intellectual definition, or, more correctly, it is unable to direct culture because of its lack of any such definition. However, not wishing to take anything away from the post-evangelical mindset, it is certainly of note as a subcultural phenomenon of sorts that has some affection for an unoffensive \u201cquiet\u201d Christianity\u00a0in the public square, which once mythically existed in the Judeo-Christian past cultural consensus of Western nations. However, in contrast to dominion theology, it has lost the intellectual essence of Christianity, trading it for the innocuous and ultimately false gospel of unconditional love, acceptance, and inclusion.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> That is, those outside the historical Pentecostal\u00a0denominations of the Assemblies of God (AOG), COG, COGIC, Foursquare, and Elim.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Loydell, \u201cEvangelical Mind,\u201d para. 1.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Tomlinson, Post Evangelical<\/em>, ix.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Tomlinson, \u201cDave Tomlinson.\u201d<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> https:\/\/www.saintlukeschurch.org.uk\/.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Tomlinson, How to Be.<\/em><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> One reaction to liberalism, the neo-orthodox movement of Barth\u00a0and Brunner in the 1930s, also equivocated on the concept. Brunner was more forthright in his renunciation of the doctrine than Barth, who was more ambiguous and frequently redefined theological terms (as he often did) to mean something other than their historical meaning. The concept is psychologically offensive to most thinking people and would seem to be at odds with the \u201cGod of love,\u201d of the Scripture, but that forgets the same book also teaches \u201cGod is just.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Conclusion<\/a><\/div>\n
Appendix B\u2014The Late Jesus<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Appendix A\u2014Post-Evangelicalism It is beneficial to distinguish between the neo-evangelical\u00a0position and the post-evangelical position, the former we have mentioned repeatedly, whereas the latter has only been mentioned in passing. A \u201cneo\u201d evangelical is a broad designation that normally refers to evangelicals from non-traditional, often non-Western, jurisdictions that have had some kind of conversion, revival, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1624,"parent":1636,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1691","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1754,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1691\/revisions\/1754"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetmacneil.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}