Emergents have recently floated some rumors suggesting the possibility of having meetings on restarting the non-bureaucratic machinery of their undenomination; their great conversation as ebbed and their great experiment in decentralization has produced some underwhelming results, and they think that barbecuing some people might rekindle an interest in their religious commotion.

Time will tell.

Fundamentalists continue their riveting debate on what a fundamentalist was, what a fundamentalist is, and what a fundamentalist should look like. We wish them the best of luck with that.

And up in Chicago's suburbs, Mark Galli bangs his head against a wall and speaks about what it means to be an evangelical:

Some use strict definitions that include a complex set of beliefs and behaviors, and so define evangelicals as a step above the ordinary mortal. Others use loose definitions in which the word seems to mean nothing more than "nice religious person." Evangelicals by these definitions fare pretty badly when compared with the rest of the world.

In this article, I lean toward the looser definition. We might feel better about ourselves as a movement if we restrict the word to the most committed-that would eliminate the problem of nominalism anyway.

(I think referring to evangelicals as those who hold to "a complex set of beliefs and behaviors" was intended to be vicious sarcasm. The one thing we know is that evangelicals do not entertain complex beliefs, and no one thinks of an evangelical as "a step above the ordinary mortal".)

I can't predict what will make evangelicals feel better about themselves, but I would feel better about evangelicals if they could tell us what it is they believe, not how committed they are to it.

You may remember Mark Galli. He wrote this about evangelicals:

In this sense, the history of the Christian faith is littered with evangelicals, from the apostle Paul to Antony of the Desert, from Francis of Assisi to Teresa of Avila, from the monastic movement to camp meetings, from Beth Moore to Mimi Haddad, from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to Evangelicals for Social Action.

In the current article Galli takes the typical CT approach:  he throws together a collection of blurbs, casual summaries, glib stereotypes and superficial characterizations, pretends that doing this constitutes historical research and then he pontificates vapidly. In this case he pontificates about the need for having "a vertical relationship with God". He has nothing at all helpful to say about what it means to have a vertical relationship with God—and a few of his readers have noticed this. Having a vertical relationship with God is just one more empty metaphor by which he can continue misapprehending and misrepresenting the faith.

Imagine going to The Great Hall of Evangelicalism to sign up only to be told by some drooling clerk that it is irrelevant what you believe; whatever it is you believe, your application has been denied because you lack sufficient commitment.

I think it is worth your reading Mark Galli: clearly he has no answers, but if you want to catch some sense of the spirit of the age, this should do the trick. If you want to get a feel for the modern evangelical's intellectual incapacities, Galli is your man.

Ignorant armies clashing by night.