The Unmooring of Evangelicalism

A Reflection on Ordo Amoris and Evangelicalism as The Fourth Branch of Christendom

Introduction

It was back in November that I wrote The Emerging Fourth Branch of Christendom, and to my great surprise, it became my most-read and most-discussed essay on Substack. More than 7,000 people have read it, 232 have liked it, and 71 have left comments. Some expressed deep gratitude, saying I had put into words the very thing they had long felt about Evangelicalism but had not been able to articulate. Others accused me of being divisive, of setting up unnecessary barriers where none should exist.

It is a strange thing, the way truth provokes two entirely opposite reactions in those who encounter it. The same light that warms one man’s face will make another shade his eyes.

And yet, the more I reflect on it, the more I am convinced that my argument was not only correct but, if anything, understated. The recent discourse surrounding J.D. Vance and Ordo Amoris has only deepened my conviction.

Two Ways of Seeing the World

I mentioned Ordo Amoris yesterday and, as before, the responses followed the same pattern. Some saw in it a great and ancient wisdom—the truth that love itself has an order, a structure, a weight of glory, and that to flatten it into an amorphous sentiment is to unmake it entirely. Others, however, reacted with hostility. One commenter announced that they were unfollowing me because they would not support someone who, in their words, “justifies hate, racism, and homophobia.”

And here we arrive at something crucial. It was never about whether love exists, but about what love is.

To the modern mind, love is a formless thing, a mist without edges, a vapor that conforms to the shape of whatever container it is placed in. But to the classical and Christian mind, love is not merely something one feels—it is something given shape, bound by duty, tethered to the good, the true, and the beautiful. Love is no disembodied thing. It must have substance, hierarchy, and order, or else it is no love at all.

This brings me back to the conclusion I reached before: historic Christianity—the three great branches of Christendom, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Reformational Protestantism—operates on an entirely different foundation from modern Evangelicalism.

I know that some will resist this conclusion. They will say that Evangelicalism sprang from Protestantism, and therefore it cannot be a separate branch. But a tree does not cease to be a tree simply because a branch has been cut from it. A river does not remain the same once it has split in two. The Great Schism produced two distinct traditions; the Protestant Reformation likewise severed medieval Catholicism from what followed. Evangelicalism is no different. It has become something else.

The proof of this is found in its theological instincts. Most modern Evangelicals do not know what Ordo Amoris is, nor do they particularly care. Not because they lack intelligence, but because they have been shaped by a different vision of Christianity—one that sees love as a vague, well-intentioned impulse rather than a structured and rightly ordered thing. They have been taught to approach theology not as an inheritance to be received, but as an argument to be won. And so, when they do not see the Latin words Ordo Amoris in their English Bibles, they assume the idea itself must be foreign to Christianity. They do not realize that this way of thinking—this fixation on whether a precise term appears in Scripture—is itself an innovation, a modernist habit of mind.

This is the great chasm that separates Evangelicalism from the historic Christian faith. It is not merely a matter of doctrine, but of imagination, of instinct, of what one finds natural and obvious. And once a people have lost the ability to see what their ancestors took for granted, no amount of argument will restore their vision.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

And so, I stand by my claim. Evangelicalism, as it exists today, is emerging as a separate branch of Christendom. It is no longer Protestant in any meaningful, historic sense—it is something else entirely.

And if that unsettles Evangelicals, I fear they would be even more disturbed by Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.

This ancient phrase, meaning “The law of prayer is the law of belief,” speaks to something that Evangelicalism has all but forgotten. That worship is not merely an expression of doctrine but it’s very foundation. What we believe is shaped by how we pray. The structure of our worship molds the structure of our theology. It is no coincidence that those who worship without form, without liturgy, without connection to the past, so often find themselves untethered in doctrine as well.

This is why Christian history has always placed such emphasis on ordered, structured, and common prayer. It is why the early Church composed creeds, why the Reformers retained elements of liturgy, why the Orthodox and Catholics alike have preserved ancient rhythms of worship. Because worship is not merely a response to belief—it is the very thing that forms belief. As St. Prosper of Aquitaine put it, “Ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi”—"Let the law of prayer establish the law of belief."

But in the Evangelical world, where worship is transient and ever-changing, dictated more by the shifting tides of culture than by anything ancient or eternal, what happens to belief? It drifts. It adapts. It loses its shape, its boundaries, its form. And soon, it becomes indistinguishable from the spirit of the age.

This is why Evangelical theology is so often in flux. It is why modern Evangelicals cannot articulate a clear doctrine of love. It is why some churches seem to grow further from anything recognizable as historic Christianity. Or what they even were a decade ago, for that matter.

Because their theology is only as strong as their liturgy.

I do not write this to gloat. This is no exercise in polemics for its own sake. The purpose of saying such things—of drawing these lines—is not to condemn, but to illuminate. If a man is walking toward the edge of a cliff, it is not unkind to cry out to him.

And so, the question is not merely whether Evangelicalism has become its own branch, but whether it will continue down the path it has set for itself—or whether some, at least, will turn back toward something deeper, older, and more grounded. The choice is not mine to make, nor yours. But it will be made.

Evangelicalism is at a crossroads, whether it knows it or not. And it will either recover its connection to historic Christianity or it will become something else entirely.