1. We offer some observations on David Hunter’s “Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 3-20. David Hunter is a well-known sociologist of American religion with a quality Ph.D. He’s also well-published.
2. “Theologically conservative Protestantism” is one player in the worldwide religious front. It is a player on the American scene.
3. “Evangelicalism” and fundamentalism arose within and from the mainline Protestant churches.
4. Since 1965, liberal Protestant churches have had an annual five-year decline rate of 6.5% while evangelicals have had an average rate of 8% increase.
5. In 1985, the 1800 members of the National Religious Broadcasters handled 85% of Protestant religious broadcasts in the U.S. and 75% worldwide.
6. This book was written 23 years ago. When Dr. Hunter penned it, he queried, “What of the next generation of evangelicals?” We are seeing some modern answers to that.
7. Socio-economically, evangelicals hail from middle to lower echelons of the “social class hierarchy.” Job-wise, they are engaged in “lower level white collar or blue collar work.”
8. “What will become” of the next evangelical generation? As a prediction for the future, Dr. Hunter will offer a “qualified no” for the effort. His effort will be to establish “cultural trends in the Evangelical movement.”
9. He will assess theology, work, morality and the self.
10. Correctly, he notes that “Theology has long occupied a central place in Protestant culture, perhaps the central place.” He refers to Protestantism as Reformational in origin as the “articulation and re-articulation of the substance of Protestant belief.”
11. The issues have been “boundaries.” Romanism, liberal Protestantism, and the world. Boundaries as the “range and limits of acceptability,” or the boundaries of “cognitive, moral and behavioral boundaries of one sort or another.”
12. For our forum, as Confessional Churchmen, this is important. Further, unlike non-Confessional evangelicals, we are the heirs of Confessional Protestant Churchmanship, faith, worship and piety. Broad evangelicals have no ideas about this. Never mind the Pentecostalist Montanists who oppugn and impugn academic theology, learnedness, confessions, and liturgies in favour of their frenzied worship services and other ungoverned excesses and errors.
13. Let us actively know, believe in heart and mind, and “confess” our Confessional faith. We are not "non-Confessor minimalists," but true to our heritage, as Reformational "Confessors." Semper Fidelis!
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