The future of evangelical Christianity
By Phillip Jensen
My mother had a few favourite verses from the Bible that she used with great effect to irritate her children. For example, whenever we asked about something that was going to happen in the future, she would quote Amos 7:14—“I am not a prophet nor a prophet’s son”.
In the lead up to this address, I wrote to many of you to say that I planned to make a “significant statement about the state of Australian Christianity and the future of evangelicalism”.
It was a little distressing to see that this fairly ambitious and probably unwise suggestion of several months ago was recently advertised on a Christian website as follows:
JENSEN TO SPEAK OUT: On Saturday July 8, leading Sydney evangelical, the Rev. Phillip Jensen, will deliver a stinging attack on the state of Anglicanism worldwide … according to publicity material for the 25th anniversary of the UNSW campus ministry’s Mid Year Conference. Watch this space for details.
I do not blame the website for this, as rumours have spread wildly, but as far as I know nowhere have we promised “a stinging attack on the state of Anglicanism worldwide”—not that it would be hard to deliver.
However, the topic that I was thinking of talking about was the state of where we are at the moment in Australian Christianity and what the future holds for evangelicals. Let me firstly make a few observations about the current state of Christianity in Australia, before discussing the future for evangelicals.