(CIEF-Chile) An editorial posted to the Christianity Today web site on October 19, 2006, inadvertently admits the Laodicean character of contemporary evangelicalism.

The article, "Let's Improve the Public Perception of Evangelicalism" frets about public misperceptions of their movement, especially that "in the public's mind" evangelicalism is "linked with extreme fundamentalism." Horror of horrors! For 50 years the New Evangelicals have been trying to portray themselves as the reasonable, scholarly, positive face of Christianity, but society still thinks they are just fundamentalists. It is laughable.

The author recounts the beginnings of modern evangelicalism as follows: >"Let's agree that the word evangelical still works, but not like it did when the pioneers of the neo-evangelical movement adopted it. At that time, it signaled their positive stance for the gospel along with a fresh, non-fundamentalist agenda of cooperation and cultural engagement."

Observe that the writer admits that New-Evangelicalism is this generation's heritage, and he glories in the fact that evangelicalism has rejected separatistic fundamentalism for a "positive stance." This confirms what we have long said, that evangelicalism and neo-evangelicalism have become synonyms over the past 50 years.

The author then boasts about evangelicalism's greatness as follows: "We now have institutional resources and influential churches to a degree barely hoped for 50 years ago. Our people are better educated and more affluent." The Lord must be terribly impressed. "Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked" (Rev. 3:17).

Friday Church News Notes, October 27, 2006, www.wayoflife.org.