Chapter 4 of Dave Tomlinson’s The Post-Evangelical is entitled ‘Longing to Grow’.  In this chapter, an attempt is made to explain the evangelical ‘problem’ in terms of a couple of psychological models.  ‘The problem’ for Tomlinson, as is becoming increasingly clear as the book develops, is that evangelicals are way too sure of themselves and need to grow up and start doubting things.

A couple of stories are given of people who started off as evangelicals but (you guessed it) became disillusioned with evangelical certaintism and found no welcome for their doubts and questions. …

Chapter 2 of The Post-Evangelical, by Dave Tomlinson, is entitled, ‘We’ve Never Had it so Good!’

Here, the author asks why, if evangelicalism has experienced such a resurgence over the past 30 years, many people have become dissatisfied with it.

Tomlinson notes a very considerable transformation that took place in British evangelicalism between 1980 and 1990.  This was due to a considerable extent to the ‘charismaticizing’ of mainstream evangelicalism.  Whereas the charismatic movement in its early days in the last 1960s and early 1970s was seen by many as a threat to evangelicalism, the former has been assimilated by the latter to a remarkable extent, so that much of the energy of current evangelical activity derives from charismatic believes and practices. …