From evangelical to post-evangelical: a “conversion” story

Over at Faith & Theology, you can find my contribution to the new series, “Encounters with tradition”: from evangelical to post-evangelical. My post discusses the transition—even conversion, of a sort—from a fundamentalist evangelicalism to a broad “post-evangelicalism” (a term I explain at the end of my post).

At the start of my brief autobiography of faith, I list the ways in which I grew up in your textbook evangelical home. In retrospect, I think it works better if I paraphrase St. Paul:

If anyone has reason to be confident in the evangelical flesh, I have more: strong nuclear family, large extended family (presently over 50 first cousins), rooted in Scripture (devotions every night; Bible memory verses at every dinner), committed to biblical inerrancy and a male-female complementarianism (i.e., hierarchicalism), avid believers in six-day creationism, distrustful of anything related to the secular academy, loyal Republicans, Baptist heritage, descendants of Jonathan Blanchard (founder of Wheaton College), homeschooled, raised with strong moral principles; as to zeal, an active leader in our local nondenominational church at every level of ministry; as to devotion to evangelicalism, blameless.

To hear the rest of the story, check out the full post over at F&T.