A recent letter writer to Touchstone magazine (responding to a review of a couple of D.G. Hart’s books) says this: “If one wishes to locate a separate Protestant “confessional” tradition, where should one go? Conservative American Protestantism is root and branch a tradition that depends for its existence and vitality on revivalism and the historical forms we describe as Evangelical. A theologically orthodox Protestant who would stay Protestant must make peace with that fact–and all its related ironies and tensions.”
As a confessional Protestant, I have no trouble with accepting this assessment, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Not only do confessional Protestants have to make their peace with revivalism, the kind of movement to which they generally object, they also have to make their peace with genuine movements of the Holy Spirit, which can be far more troublesome. In the revivalist stream, the institutional Church often suffers at the hands of nutjobs, and they come and punch holes in the wineskins with the icepick of fanaticism. This does create ironies and tensions. But the new wine of the Spirit is sometimes just as unkind to the wineskins. As we recall, there was a time when virtually every trained theologian in Jerusalem voted to kill the Messiah.
A high view of the institutional (and confessional) Church does not necessitate a view that we can now see where the wind comes from or where it is going. One of the things we confessional Protestants confess is that God converts how, when and where He pleases. When He does this, He is bringing His bride to a glorious consummation, and at that day, there will be no wrinkle or spot. The tensions will have been removed.
We don’t have to choose. High Church Puritanism is possible and highly desirable. But if you make me choose, I prefer the Ringling Brothers tent of Evangelicalism to the marble mausoleum of Rome.