Michael Horton has an interesting article regarding the relationship between reformed churches and evangelical churches in America over the years. The whole thing is fascinating, but I was especially taken by this quote by Dietrich Boenhoffer since I have been reading his Letters and Papers from Prison
At the end of his lecture tour in the United States, Dietrich Bonhoeffer characterized American religion as “Protestantism without the Reformation.” Although the influence of the Reformation in American’s religious history has been profound (especially prior to the mid-nineteenth century), and remains a counterweight to the dominance of the revivalist heritage, Bonhoeffer’s diagnosis seems justified:
God has granted American Christianity no Reformation. He has given it strong revivalist preachers, churchmen and theologians, but no Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ by the Word of God….American theology and the American church as a whole have never been able to understand the meaning of ‘criticism’ by the Word of God and all that signifies. Right to the last they do not understand that God’s ‘criticism’ touches even religion, the Christianity of the church and the sanctification of Christians, and that God has founded his church beyond religion and beyond ethics….In American theology, Christianity is still essentially religion and ethics….Because of this the person and work of Christ must, for theology, sink into the background and in the long run remain misunderstood, because it is not recognized as the sole ground of radical judgment and radical forgiveness. 5