June 17, 2008

Kingdom come
The public meaning of the Gospels

by N. T. Wright

In his new book, The Great Awakening, Jim Wallis describes how as a
young man growing up in an evangelical church, he never heard a sermon
on the Sermon on the Mount. That telling personal observation reflects a
phenomenon about which I have been increasingly concerned: that much
evangelical Christianity on both sides of the Atlantic has based itself
on the epistles rather than the Gospels, though often misunderstanding
the epistles themselves.

Indeed, in this respect evangelicalism has simply mirrored a much larger
problem: the entire Western church, both Catholic and Protestant,
evangelical and liberal, charismatic and social activist, has not
actually known what the Gospels are there for.