Everyone by now must have noticed that there is a large and unsightly crack running down the middle of that highly vocal and energetic sector of Western Christianity that thinks of itself in the broadest sense as "evangelical". It is not the only fault line—Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Pentecostalism and what I suppose we must still call "liberal" Christianity (it seems a waste of a good word) are similarly divided from one another and from evangelicalism. But this is the one that I live closest to—actually, very close to at the moment; and I have a hard time explaining it.

On one side of the fault line is a fairly coherent grouping of Reformed churches and theologies, recently reinvigorated. On the other side… well, things are not quite so clear.

A year ago David Fitch identified it as a loose ecclesial-theological coalition of "Neo-Anabaptist, Centrist-communal-wholistic-Baptist, Holiness/Charismatic oriented, Kingdom minded, evangelical Missionals". To make "Missionals" the key denominator is probably too restrictive, and "Kingdom minded" is an inadequate basis for developing an alternative evangelical theology. But clearly we are struggling to put a name to the large territory that lies to the left of the great divide. So for now I will call it "post-Reformed", because I think it is held together primarily by the conviction that it is too much to expect the Reformation to provide resources to meet the complex set of challenges that the church faces at the end of Christendom.

This has to be the basic reason why the ground has opened up in this way—the land mass of evangelicalism has come under immense "eschatological" strain, and we are having to decide where the future lies. Then perhaps what happens is that the fundamental structural oppositions of the collective mind align themselves with the cultural shift—certainty against uncertainty, tradition against reason, deduction against inference, progress against reaction, answers against questions, inclusion against exclusion, control against release, universals against particulars, word against spirit, singularity against plurality, and so on. And there we have it—the thoroughgoing dissociation of the Reformed mindset from the post-Reformed mindset.

But I approach the matter right now largely on a personal basis. The church that we are part of has a moderate Reformed theology (combined with a rather immoderate charismatic practice), and I find myself often having to negotiate what can feel like genetic differences of outlook and belief. It appears that we are far enough apart to be distinct species, sufficiently divergent at the genetic level that we are unable to interbreed, even if by the grace of God we find that we can safely intermingle.

As an simple exercise in self-understanding, therefore, I have listed here a number of contrasting features. They are approximate, somewhat random, and a little disorderly. They reflect my own perspective on the situation, which is necessarily limited and to whatever degree ill-informed. Others will, no doubt, map things differently.