I was recently invited to attend a forum where Os Guinness spoke on “A World Safe for Diversity,” essentially on the importance of “civility” in public life. About the same time I began reading a new book, American Grace: How Religion Divides Us and Unites Us, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell. They said many of the same things, and it was very convicting.
 

How do seasons of revival come? One set of answers comes from Charles Finney, who turned revivals into a "science." Finney insisted that any group could have a revival any time or place, as long as they applied the right methods in the right way. Finney's distortions, I think, led to much of the weakness in modern evangelicalism today, as has been well argued by Michael Horton over the years. Especially under Finney's influence, revivalism undermined the more traditional way of doing Christian formation. That traditional way of Christian growth was gradual – whole family catechetical instruction – and church-centric. Revivalism under Finney, however, shifted the emphasis to seasons of crisis. Preaching became less oriented to long-term teaching and more directed to stirring up the affections of the heart toward decision. Not surprisingly, these emphases demoted the importance of the church in general and of careful, sound doctrine and put all the weight on an individual's personal, subjective experience. And this is one of the reasons (though not the only reason) that we have the highly individualistic, consumerist evangelicalism of today.

In Jeremiah 26 the prophet preaches a public sermon telling the people of Jerusalem that disaster was coming to them from the hand of God if they did not turn from their evil ways. The response of the priests and other prophets was to seize him and call for his death (26:11). Fortunately for Jeremiah, the priests and prophets had to bring their case before a cross-section of other officials.