How dispensationalism swept the American Evangelical World in the first part of the 20th century is an amazing story. With the Schofield Reference Bible and its notes becoming the Bible of the Evangelical world, the domination was complete. Yes, Reformed Evangelicals (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, and Methodist) did not buy in, but they were smaller and less influential. It has taken many years for Evangelicalism to extricate itself.
I trace the beginning of the process of extricating to a group of scholars in the late 1940s. Dr. Carl Henry, the theologian for Billy Graham and the editor of Christianity Today wrote the Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism in 1947. The critique hit hard on the abdication of a biblical approach to social issues and justice. The absence of Dispensationalist Fundamentalists from the Civil Rights struggles of the 50s and 60s was a case in point. The theology of just getting people to be saved and to escape the tribulation departed from social responsibility. This was far from the 19th century Evangelicals like Charles Finney, and the Beecher family (Lyman, Henry Ward, and Harriet who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) Would slavery had ended the dispensationalist quietist views on social issues dominant in the 19th century? Dr. Morris Inch, Theology Professor at Wheaton and a classmate of Dr. Martin Luther King was quite passionate about this.
Besides Henry, other groups of young scholars were breaking ranks. Edward John Carnell the famous professor of apologetics and philosophy of religion at Fuller Theological Seminary and then President wrote The Case for Orthodox Theology, arguing for Evangelical Orthodox theology. He included a blistering critique of Fundamentalism, but mainly Dispensational Fundamentalism. He passionately critiqued its narrowness, censoriousness (finding heresy to criticize everywhere), its social quietism, and strange methods of Biblical interpretation and speculation. He was mainly speaking of Dispensational Fundamentalism. He argued that Fundamentalism was Orthodoxy gone cultic. It did not begin that way when the brilliant scholars wrote The Fundamentals.
George Ladd of Fuller wrote Crucial Questions and the Kingdom of God (1951) where he broke from Dispensational Fundamentalism on the issue of the Kingdom of God and the Gospel of the Kingdom which, according to Ladd, is the Gospel we preach. It is not just the Gospel for the Jewish people in the coming tribulation as they taught in contrast to Dispensationalism’s Gospel of Grace. Ladd’s early work harkened back to the pre-dispensational pre-millennial views that were so common among those who were early Christian Zionists. (For example, Lutheran scholar J. A. Bengel-1687-1752)
The great Evangelical philosopher at Wheaton College, Dr. Arthur Holmes, of dear memory used to say in reflecting really on Evangelical Fundamentalism, “We have lost 100 years.” Perhaps at that time not really 100 but easily 60.
Dispensational Fundamentalism is still the majority popular Evangelicalism but is in decline. In the Evangelical scholarly world, outside of its own schools that define doctrine so narrowly that only Dispensationalists can be on the faculty, Dispensationalism is in decline. Think of Wheaton, Trinity, Gordon Conwell, Asbury, Denver, Regent Canada, Regent in Virginia, Wycliff, Tyndale (Oxford), and I could go on and on. Even in a few of the leading dispensational schools, we hear of Progressive Dispensationalism which is 50-70% return to pre-dispensational pre-millennialism. However, there is still much work to do to get beyond this, to prepare God’s people for revival, partnership with the Messianic Jewish community, and to fulfill the prayer of Yeshua that we might be one. This is especially the case in Israel where due to mission influences, there is still a great influence of this viewpoint.