Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 136:543 (Jul 1979)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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BSac 136:543 (Jul 79) p. 277

Book Reviews

The Worldly Evangelicals: Has Success Spoiled America’s Born Again Christians? By Richard Quebedeaux. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. 189 pp. $7.95.

Richard Quebedeaux is fast becoming known as an outstanding modern historian of the evangelical movement. This book is “must” reading for all evangelicals. Quebedeaux defines evangelicals as “that group of believers who accept the absolute authority of the Bible, have been converted to Christ (are born again), and who share their faith with others” (p. 7). He chronicles issues, controversies, and various movements within the evangelical movement. He identifies three subcultures within the evangelical movement—the fundamentalists, the charismatics, and the neoevangeticals.

He sees the central current issue within evangelicalism as the issue of Christ and culture. He says that fundamentalists believed in the “Christ against culture” view, whereas evangelicals are beginning to affirm the “Christ who transforms culture.” With this emphasis, evangelicals, he affirms, are placing more stress on social justice and activity and less stress on future salvation.

Quebedeaux gives nice words of evaluation for Dallas Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, but he still places Fuller Theological Seminary as the leading center of learning for the evangelical movement. However, he expresses concern over the tendency of Fuller Seminary toward neoorthodoxy. In a provocative chapter entitled “Today’s Evangelicals/Tomorrow’s Liberals?” he raises a number of questions which evangelicals will want to ponder. The main questions which need to be thought through are these: Are evangelicals moving to the theological left? and Will success spoil the evangelicals? The more difficult question of how Christ relates to culture is one with which all biblical students should be concerned. This book may serve as a stimulus in this critical area.

E. A. Blum

BSac 136:543 (Jul 79) p. 278

Pocket Guide to Christian Beliefs. By I. Howard Marshall. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1978. 144 pp. Paper, $2.95.

The author is senior lecturer in New Testament exegesis at the University of Aberdeen. He writes with the firm conviction that believers, in order to be effective in their service for God, need a working knowledge of Christian doctrine. On the doctrine of the church, Marshall says that “the church can best be understood as the new Israel, composed of those who accept Jesus as the Messiah and entry to it is by becoming a disciple of Jesus and knowing Him as Lord. We can, therefore, speak of the church as having existed in the Old Testament (

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