In Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism, John G. Stackhouse, Jr., professor of theology and culture at Regent College, argues for the position of generic evangelicalism, which he unabashedly calls "the most authentically evangelical of the four positions represented in this book." Stackhouse reminds me of the mischievous speaker in Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall," questioning Keith T. Bauder (fundamentalism) and R. Albert Mohler (confessional evangelicalism), who say "Good fences make good neighbors," while challenging Roger E. Olson (postconservative evangelicalism), who sees little need for fences. Generic evangelicalism, as Stackhouse defines it, recognizes that some doctrinal fences serve the vital purpose of demarcating orthodox territory from heretical, and therefore demand routine maintenance. Other fences, however, needlessly promote strife between evangelicals and their Mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox neighbors. Stackhouse calls for a friendly but responsible neighborliness, which cautiously inquires like the speaker in the poem: "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offense."
The wall of generic evangelicalism permits "gaps even two can pass abreast," as Frost puts it. Therein "communion is made fruitful by the exchange of gifts between the churches insofar as they complement each other," according to Pope John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Sint. Following George Marsden's cue, Stackhouse names those gaps transdenominationalism—the fifth characteristic he adds to David Bebbington's well-known quadrilateral. Here is Stackhouse's summary of generic evangelicalism:
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