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scientism. Technological society can only receive the gospel through technological
means. Young people raised on TV or who are most comfortable in front of a screen will
best understand the message of the gospel through those formats. Those in the market
place best understand through marketing techniques and images such as advertising. In
this sense those who claim the standards of conservative theology such as Evangelicals
represent the new technological liberalism or the liberalism of conservatism. One critic of
televangelism noted the tendency of church services to adapt television format and
remarked that this phenomenon is most popular among "fundies" and "evangelicals" who
are portrayed in the media as backwards, intolerant and lacking modern savvy,

Today some of the most theologically conservative churches are among the
leaders in religious marketing and promotion. In this sense they are the real
liberals. Old-style mainline churches, such as Methodists and Lutherans, are far
more skeptical of the new worship styles and marketing techniques. Not
surprisingly, such traditional churches are not growing. Overall, the church in the
United States is becoming more "American" and less traditional-more like
televangelism.
8
There is no fundamental difference in epistemological approach between
Classical Liberalism and contemporary Evangelicalism. Both attempt to adapt its
message to modern epistemology. Advocates for new technologies will defend their use
of innovative technology on the grounds that the church must modernize and keep pace
with the times.
9
Even going so far as to accept technological Darwinism that believes in
the survival of the technologically fittest, "If you don't change, you die."
10
Those who
adapt to new technologies will increase, while those who do not will recede. No essential
difference exists between modernizing to accommodate a technological epistemology or
a scientific and ideological modernization in line with the liberalism found in Bishop
Spong who argues similarly that "Christianity must change or die."
11
Both attempt to
modernize along the lines of how modern people perceive truth. One receives knowledge
and understanding through the scientific method, the other through technical form.
Technological modernization involves a way of thinking as much as science does.
Evangelicalism has openly resisted rationalism only to allow a subtle form of technicism
in through the back door. Rudolf Bultmann synthesized liberal Christianity with
existentialism and classical liberalism with rationalism. But Evangelicalism is in danger
of synthesizing conservative Christianity with technicism.
Jacques Ellul demonstrated the connection between rationalism and technicism,
"technique is the translation into action of man's concern to master things by means of
reason."
12
Ironically, Evangelicalism uncritically embraces the product of its bitter
enemy, rationalism, while liberalism stemming from rationalism has largely rejected
modern communication technology. This may be due to Romantic elements in
8
Schultze, Televangelism and American Culture, 15.
9
Ben Armstrong, The Electric Church (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979), 7, 11, 53, 176-177.
10
Leonard Sweet, SoulTsunami: Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1999), 73.
11
John Shelby Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile (San
Francisco: Harper Collins, 1998).
12
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), 43.