“We’re becoming less exclusive and more inclusive,” said Mr. Weatherfold, who, together with his peers across Canada, is engaged in ongoing discussions about hot-button social issues that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago.
Tim Schroeder, the national pastor for Willow Creek, a cross-denominational leadership resource, is cautiously optimistic about evangelical churches evolving beyond their right-wing roots to a more progressive stance. “Forget the term conservative Christian,” he said. “The primary characteristic of Christianity is to love God and love your neighbour as yourself. When we forget that, we tend to get weird and make up a bunch of negative rules and cling to irrelevant traditions.”
Ministering to families of all shapes and sizes is the church’s best offence against secularization, says University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby, an expert on religious trends in Canada. “However, if you’re no longer sending people off to foreign lands and stressing the negatives about what you don’t do, then what is the congregation going to be about?”
The tension between relevance and tradition is coming to a head over whether women can be ordained as lead pastors. “I don’t think women in leadership positions would be an issue for two-thirds of evangelicals,” Mr. Schroeder said. “You give me a choice between a gal of character with an authentic love of God or a guy who wants to play the role and is lacking in integrity and it’s a no-brainer.”
“We need to have and celebrate female leaders so that it isn’t just a bunch of old white guys sitting around running the show,” Mr. Weatherford agrees, but says he has no choice but to defer to the Bible to determine what’s right. “The struggle is whether a woman can be a lead leader. The Alliance has chosen to say, no, not according to Scripture.”
He walks a similar fine line when it asked if First Alliance extends a welcome mat to homosexuals. “The Bible is clear about sexual relationships. They are for the context of marriage between a man and a woman. … It’s one of those big rock things,” he said. “Are we checking people at the door? Heck no. We have people of all kinds of sexual orientation that attend and are accepted. The question comes at the level of involvement and leadership.”
Bobbing and weaving – that’s Mr. Bibby’s description of how progressive church leaders are responding to changing times. Is this simply the religious version of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or a kinder, gentler form of fundamentalism? That’s the question facing not just First Alliance, but the larger evangelical movement on both sides of the border.
“If somebody comes in and says we need to rally around issues of social justice, we need to build homes for the homeless, then more power to them,” said Karl Gilberson, the author of The Annointed, a new book that explores the reasons why charismatic American Evangelical leaders have triumphed over secular truth today. “What’s happening in America just won’t happen in Canada. It will be a much more Christian conservatism that is more likely to be focused on the things that Christ emphasized than on a very small set of social hot buttons like gay marriage.”
This is where Canada’s First Alliance Church feels very much on solid ground. “In the States it’s a gong show. There’s an entitlement on both sides that leads to arrogance and polarization,” said Mr. Weatherford. “Part of the Canadian’s natural suspicion of leaders is healthy and a cultural nuance that we need to maintain.”
