(Caveat lector: my sole exposure to either author lies in my gleanings from the past 2 days’ discussions of their work, although Hart’s bibliography seems to locate at least his theology near the orbit of my own.)

While a case can easily be made for the positive impact of the larger evangelical community on the shaping of American culture, the movement has not always been quick to acknowledge and correct its faults. Grievous errors of the waning decades of the neo-evangelical era have sprung from a Boromir’s temptation which attempted to grasp cultural transformation through temporal, socio-political means*.

An increasing amount of light, however, is now being shed on many deviations of the movement from its historically orthodox roots; some of us hold out hope that the apparent wreckage of the ship as a political entity could ultimately prove of more benefit for both the culture and the church. One area is directly tied to the critiques of both Hart and Murray.

Among Reformation distinctives which have slid overboard as American evangelicalism drifted from its confessional havens, the loss of the understanding of Vocation in the light of the Cultural Mandate has taken a toll. As the movement was transformed from a grateful acknowledgment of like-minded believers fulfilling similar callings in other communions to a high-profile, high-stakes, high-pressure enterprise replete with media, business and political managers, those with their fingers most firmly on the wrist of the culture were considered nearer heaven in the eyes of many as surely as the religious had been elevated above the secular prior to Luther.

Among several casualties traceable to this loss of the doctrine of Vocation, the disengagement of too many evangelicals from ordinary secular callings–especially in spheres which would put them into direct contact, as neighbors, co-workers, and church members, with the bottom fifth, most especially in the inner city–in favor of a hopeful return to prosperity in a happy place, has done needless damage.

But I have been blessed to see the corner being turned in remarkable ways, as increasing numbers of very ordinary people have renounced leaning on the broken reed of worldly power and have found full contentment in the callings to be salt and light in some very putrid and dark corners. We’ll see whose fruit lasts.

* no little irony has resulted from the church’s flagrant adoption of worldly–ie, secular–methods to accomplish its mission concurrent with its loudest spokesmen denouncing secularism. As Michael Horton notes: “while evangelicals are often quick to launch public protests against ‘secular humanists’ for diminishing the role of God in American society, it would seem that the more likely source of secularization is the church itself.” (Modern Reformation, March/April 2008 article, Are Churches Secularizing America?, )