The Making of Evangelical Spirituality
Ebook
How did it come to be that evangelicals expect individualized, extrabiblical revelation from God? What has happened culturally, historically, and theologically to make this the ubiquitous assumption of evangelical spirituality? The Making of Evangelical Spirituality is a compound of history and theology applied to the subject of evangelical spirituality--specifically, the phenomenon of evangelicals thinking "God spoke to me" in a still, quiet voice. The story is complex, multifaceted, and urgently in need of telling. Few Christians know the history of the spiritual expectations heaped upon them. Few know the individuals who gave shape to evangelical spirituality, spiritual chieftains who were often guided by uniquely ephemeral, social, and cultural forces. There is no towering figure like Martin Luther that stands as the lone front man for the esoterica of evangelical spirituality. Instead, it's the osmosis of many fascinating people struggling through life in the storm of worldly and cultural momentum. This book is the story of those hermits, monks, reformers, heretics, politicians, outcasts, and preachers who gave shape. Failure to tell the story now risks it becoming just another part of historical compost, threatening to make evangelicals forever ignorant of what they are tossing into the garden of their soul.
“Thomas Chalmers once asserted, ‘The Spirit guides us unto all truth and all truth is to be found in the Bible; the Spirit therefore guides us unto the Bible.’ This once widely understood principle has been obscured and all but forgotten by the peculiarities of evangelical mysterialism. In this brilliant book, Jason Cherry not only shows us why this is, he shows us the sure pathway back to biblical orthodoxy.”
—George Grant, pastor, Parish Presbyterian Church
“Have there ever been people who can generate heresies with the insouciance of American evangelicals? Perhaps it has something to do with our ‘spiritual populism’ and ‘mysterialism.’ Those are terms that Jason Cherry employs in this helpful book as he examines the inversion of authority in evangelical Protestantism—once the basis for authority was Scripture, now for many people it is some form of personal revelation. How did it happen, and what can be done? Jason can help answer those questions.”
—C. R. Wiley, author of In the House of Tom Bombadil
“As Jason Cherry shows, the biblical portrait of the Spirit’s work has been distorted by the lust for spontaneity, the elevation of the self, an unbiblical dualism between the head and the heart. Cherry has done the historical and theological spadework to help us distinguish genuine intimacy with the living Spirit from the distortions of ‘esotericism’ and ‘mysterialism.’”
—Peter Leithart, Theopolis Institute
- Title: The Making of Evangelical Spirituality
- Author: Jason Cherry
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666753844, 9781666753820, 1666753823, 9781666753837, 1666753831, 166675384X
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666753844
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-03-16T11:47:23Z
Jason Cherry is an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as a teacher and lecturer of literature, American history, and economics at Providence Classical School in Huntsville. He graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with an MA in religion and is the author of the book The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call.