A while back I blogged here about evangelical embarrassment about the supernatural, miracles. I admitted then that most American evangelical Christians pay lip service to the reality of miracles but seem reluctant actually to believe in contemporary miracles—except “on the mission fields” (viz., Africa and Asia). This is a major change from when I was growing up in the “thick” of American evangelicalism. I suspect two things changed American evangelicalism’s attitude toward miracles and the supernatural: 1) wanting respectability in secular culture, and 2) fear of and embarrassment about “miracle ministries” that tended to see miracles everywhere.
Let’s face it. American evangelicalism has largely accommodated to American culture. Whichever way the winds of culture blow evangelicals are quietly swept along. Oh, of course, we know about “those evangelicals” that tout social and political conservatism, but to me that’s an illustration of my point. American society in general has leaned heavily to the right on social and political issues, with a few exceptions, and many, if not most, evangelicals have leaned with it. The kind of prophetic liberal activism on behalf of the weakest members of society that heavily marked much of nineteenth century evangelicalism (read Donald Dayton’s Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage, 2nd edtion [Baker Books]) virtually disappeared along with the rise of Social Darwinism in American social thought.
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