Paul for the World (and a look at the past fifty years of Evangelicalism)

A few weeks back, I finished a new book, Nijay Gupta’s Paul for the World: A grounded vision for finding meaning in this life, not just the next (Brazos, 2026). Often, we think of the apostle Paul’s New Testament writings mostly in terms of eschatology, and while the future is important in Paul’s thinking, he is just as concerned (if not more) with how we live now. Gupta suggests that if we reduce Paul’s theology to mere escapism, we’ve missed the entire point. For Paul, “Life in the here and now—however challenging or confusing or difficult it may be—has meaning, purpose, and hope in Christ” (3). Gupta urges his readers to practice what he describes as holy worldliness.

This is a rich theological work written by a younger evangelical theologian whom I highly respect, and while it’s impossible to summarize its contents in a short essay like this, I want to draw our attention to how Gupta integrates insights from the Stoic philosophy of Seneca and Epictetus with Paul’s understanding of Christian life and maturity. The Stoic’s were contemporaries to early Christianity and offered a way of life designed for Roman citizens during that time.

Seneca sees human maturity as “the pursuit of becoming a “good” person,” as a journey of progress” (55), toward perfection. Moreover, that journey involves struggle. While Seneca does not possess a notion of the fall of humanity or sin, he does see human vice as deeply serious and as such pursuing  “the good” cannot be mere hobby.

Epictetus expressed similar views and integral to his Stoic philosophy, as Gupta describes it is “growth in virtue so as not to have one’s emotional life rocked and swayed constantly by circumstances but to be controlled by the will to bring steadiness and happiness” (58).

All well and good. But in early Christianity, believers “would say that sin is the great obstacle and that divine redemption is necessary to overcome the flesh through the Spirit. Christ needs to dwell within us by the Spirit so Christ can take full shape in the believer’s life, and that is what really facilitates growth toward wholeness or completeness” (59). As Paul writes in Ephesians, the goal of the Christian life is maturity; God has provided pastors and teachers to equip us for ministry, to build up the church, and bring us “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13).

How do we get there, to maturity? Maturity is growing into “the full stature of Christ,” meaning our goal is, in Gupta’s words, “to become like him in every way in our behavior, thinking, maturity, and lifestyle” (60). We get there, according to Gupta, through paideia (“training in righteousness” or “discipline.”) Paul sees paideia in 2 Timothy 3:17 and in Ephesians 6:4 in the household code “where he challenges fathers “not to harm their children but rather raise them with healthy training (paideia) and discipline” (61). Paul’s use of the term echoes Stoics like Seneca but grounds it in Christ. “We are called to a program of paideia, training in the way of Christ, which leads to teleios, wholeness or completeness in Christ” (63).

Moreover, in Roman thought paideia was limited to upper class Roman men—politicians, politicians, and others. But in Christ, paideia was available to all of Jesus’s followers; “To transfer these images to Christ—a low-class Galilean Jew—was to reshape the whole system to include everyone in Christ and through Christ: men and women, highborn and lowborn, rich and poor, insider and outsider” (61).

This is a small taste of the rich theological and apologetic insights that Nijay Gupta offers throughout this book. Think of it as an instruction manual for living the Christian life in the already-but-not-yet Kingdom of God. In other words, Gupta has written a clear, concise guide for discipleship and following Jesus. It’s a great companion to his earlier work (co-authored with A.J. Swoboda) Slow Theology: Eight Practices for a Resilient Faith in a Turbulent World (Brazos, 2025). Nijay Gupta’s work here is reshaping how I approach reading Paul’s letters, and I wholeheartedly recommend his work for you.

“The year of the Evangelical”

Right now, the Advent Christian church is debating whether or not to adopt a new declaration of principles at the General Conference meetings next month. I’ve been following the debate closely for the last several months and recently, the question of whether Advent Christians see themselves as “evangelicals” and how has entered the conversation. I find that interesting given the massive shifts in American evangelicalism since Newsweek magazine called 1976 “The Year of the Evangelical.” In 1976, I was strong in my evangelical commitments; but now, not so much because of so much damage done by evangelicals themselves to their theology and polity. (I identify now as a Nicene Christian, for what it’s worth.) Historian George Marsden has been a reliable guide to evangelical history, and I find his reflections in the July/August 2026 “Christianity Today” to be very helpful. For me, it is not a question of whether one identifies as an evangelical; instead it’s a matter of whether one holds to the biblical Christianity confessed by the whole church for all of its history and confessed in the Nicene Creed.

“The Year of the Evangelical.” That’s what the October 25, 1976 issue of Newsweek magazine described in its riff on this phrase coined by pollster George Gallup. Three days earlier, then Christianity Today editor David Kucharsky wrote, “Evangelicals suddenly find themselves number one on the North American religious scene.”

Those were heady days for American evangelicals. I was a young adult 50 years ago and identified American evangelicalism as my tribe. This was just before the rise of the religious-right, so my moderate-to-liberal political leanings were pretty much welcome in this rather large tent because theologically, my Christian faith was largely evangelical. (Looking back, I’d probably best be described as a Wittenburg Door evangelical, so there’s that.)

In the most recent Christianity Today (July-August 2026), the historian George Marsden surveys the last 50 years since “the year of the evangelical” and describes what has unfolded since. Marsden is one of my favorite American historians and his seminal work Fundamentalism and American Culture rocked my world when it first read it back in the 1980s. Marsden sees 1976 and “the year of the evangelical” declaration “as both a turning point for evangelicalism and the most pointed illustration of why the subject is so elusive” (44). Marsden continues, “that phrase is itself the most prominent example of the ongoing…tendency to turn a widely variegated plural into a singular. There is no one ‘evangelical.’ Rather there are, in the United States alone, hundreds of different types of evangelicals. And around the world, many more” (44-46).

Obviously, there are some theological commonalities, but before 1976 the term evangelical was rarely used and there was no such thing as “evangelical politics.” In the 1960s, a self-conscious evangelical movement emerged consisting mostly of parachurch organizations and ministries “that were, broadly speaking, in the orbit of evangelist Billy Graham” (46). But even as the movement grew, there was no organizational authority in the same way as you found in the various Protestant denominations or the Roman Catholic Church.

In many ways, from 1976 on American evangelicalism witnessed a contest between a smaller “evangelical left” (think, Ron Sider, Jim Wallis and Sojourners magazine, and Bill Pannell) and a much larger “religious right” (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and a host of televangelists). It’s a complex story and Marsden does outstanding work in boiling down the narrative to a magazine article. And the story leads us to Donald Trump, who in many ways becomes the darling of the religious right.

Yet, Marsden is still relatively optimistic about evangelical futures (more optimistic than I am). “In 2026, on another national anniversary, we should be careful not to exaggerate the degree to which white American evangelicalism has been corrupted by politics…Some American evangelicals have become politicized, yes. But that politicalization does not characterize evangelicalism as a whole, nor even the whole of evangelicalism in America” (49). Marsden’s caution is well taken, especially with how social media skews our perspectives. And I hope that he is right.

“The Year of the Evangelical” by George Marsden is found in Christianity Today (LXX: 4; July-August 2026), 44-49. For those who have not read any of Marsden’s important works start with Fundamentalism and American Culture, third edition (Oxford UP, 2022) and A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards (Eerdmans, 2008).