My Evangelical Phase

Third Tuesday of Easter

In the second semester of my third and final year of Divinity School, I applied to Ph.D. programs. I decided to go to the best school I could get in. I applied to Harvard, Yale, Duke, and Vanderbilt. I was rejected at Harvard and Yale, accepted at Duke and Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt made a better scholarship offer, but Duke was the better school and better program. I stayed home at Duke again.

I taught my first college class in September of '72, Intro Old Testament. I taught it in the same building, in the same classroom where I had taken it eight years earlier. During that semester I heard some of my students talking about a church that a lot of them went to, a Presbyterian Church just off Duke East Campus. I decided to go one Sunday. It was a very different church experience from what I was used to. The church was packed. More than half of those attending appeared to be Duke students. I got there about ten minutes before the service. The place was abuzz. There was a sense of excitement and anticipation that I had really never experienced in a church before. The church was Blacknall Presbyterian. The pastor was Ed Henegar. I would spend the next two and half years deeply involved in that church, serving as a part-time assistant minister my second year. 

Here's what Blacknall was like then. Theologically I would call it a soft Calvinism. There was a deep reverence for the Reformed tradition (Calvinism in its various forms and denominations--not us. We are the Wesleyan tradition). Preaching was expository; that is, the sermon was a thorough verse by verse analysis of the text. There was not much in the way of illustration, not much in the way of contemporary application. Ed's preaching was low keyed but compelling. 

Many of the students there were involved with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, a nationwide non-denominational (but definitely Reformed tradition) network of chapters on college campuses. Just about every college or university had one. They had one large meeting a week (about 80 students) and numerous small groups that also met weekly. I joined a small group, about eight students. I was the only one who was a grad student. I was struck especially by the prayer time. Everyone in the group prayed aloud at some point in the prayer time. The prayers tended to be quite specific and were prayed with a clear expectation that they would be answered. The next meeting would talk about the answered prayers. In the discussions there was a lot of God-talk People spoke in sentences that began, "The Lord showed me...," "The Lord told me...," "The Lord did..." God was almost always called "The Lord." There was a very strong personal sense of God's presence in direct ways in the lives of these students. I found this sense of intimate personal interaction with God to be fascinating and refreshing. I thrived on it. 

Inter-Varsity students read different stuff from what we read in Divinity School. The big name was Frances Schaeffer, who was more of a hardline Calvinist than most of the students were. Inter-Varsity had and still has an active press which publishes hundreds of titles a year, many of which are by top flight scholars.

While I was in Blacknall and in Inter-Varsity I came more and more to realize that I was a Wesleyan and would never think like even the softest form of Calvinist. I think the best thing about this whole Evangelical period of my life is that I learned that I was not an Evangelical. My Methodist rooting was far too deep. 

Next up in this Faith Journey series is the "J.C. Power and Light Company."

Faithfully,

Christian