Post-war evangelical theology: a generational perspective

Abstract

This paper uses the Hansen/Herberg thesis of immigration as a model of the changing relationship between three generations of postwar evangelical theologians and the academy. The process has been one of gradual, but uneven, assimilation, as proposed by the Hansen/Herberg thesis, and raises questions about the challenge faced by the fourth generation. For this generation the historical roots of postwar evangelical scholarship are more distant, causing them to face the challenge of what distinguishes evangelical scholarship from other contemporary biblical or theological scholarship more acutely than for their predecessors.